Contrarian Culture Club Recommendations
All-Newark edition!
With his record-setting Senate speech this week, Cory Booker gave demoralized Democrats some much-needed inspiration. He also reminded any of us who might have forgotten that he has always been an unusually telegenic politician.
Before he’d even been elected to office, Booker rose to national prominence as the subject of the 2005 documentary Street Fight, which chronicled his first, unsuccessful run for mayor of Newark in 2002. Directed by Marshall Curry, the Oscar-nominated film contrasted Booker, then a young city council member, with Sharpe James, the city’s incumbent mayor (later indicted on corruption charges). More than just a portrait of an idealistic reformer taking on an entrenched political machine, the documentary also grappled with thorny issues of race and authenticity, showing how James sowed enough doubt about Booker’s Blackness (by, among other things, calling him a “f---ot white boy”) to secure himself another term. (Stream on YouTube.)
Like a small-screen sequel to Street Fight, Brick City followed Booker during his first term as mayor as he attempted to revitalize Newark. Frequently likened to a real-life version of The Wire, the series tells the story of a troubled yet resilient community from multiple, sometimes conflicting perspectives, including the police, gang members, and relatives of murder victims. Balancing optimism with a healthy dose of skepticism, Brick City aired on Sundance for two seasons beginning in 2009—long enough to win a Peabody, but sadly not long enough to capture the 2012 incident in which Booker literally saved a woman from a burning building. (Stream for free on sites including Philo.)
And speaking of The Wire, if you are hungry for another series set in Newark that is wildly different yet also relevant to our current, er, predicament, then consider The Plot Against America. Adapted by Wire auteur David Simon and Ed Burns from Philip Roth’s novel of the same name, the chilling miniseries imagines an alternative history in which famed aviator and notorious Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh defeats F.D.R. in the 1940 race for the White House, ushering in an era of facism and anti-Semitism in the United States. (Gee, how implausible!) The story unfolds from the perspective of the Levins, a middle-class Jewish family in Newark led by Bess, a homemaker (Zoe Kazan), and Herman (Morgan Spector), an insurance salesman, who watch in horror as anti-Semitic violence erupts in their community—and across the country. The Plot Against America aired in the spring of 2020, during the early, terrifying days of the pandemic. The disturbingly prescient finale offered a sober warning about the state of American democracy a few months before Jan. 6. (Stream on Max.)
Meredith Blake is The Contrarian’s Culture Columnist
Mr. Booker
Thank you for doing SOMETHING. It's good to know you're out there.
I hope that the TV version of "The Plot Against America" is better than the book was. I'm a big fan of alternate history fiction and so was excited when the book came out. But after I read it, what I was left with was disgust.
Note that spoilers to the book follow.
In the book Lindbergh and his fellow fascist sympathizers take power and start changing the U.S. for the worse, including getting friendly with Nazi Germany. What I objected to strongly in the book is that when Lindbergh is eventually taken out, we hold a special election, put FDR back in place, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor behind schedule, the U.S. goes into WWII and somehow everything turns out exactly the way it would have without the Lindbergh detour into fascism.
And that sent a horrible message, which is that it's ultimately not that big of a deal if we flirt with fascism -- because if we don't like it, we can fix the consequences quickly and won't suffer lasting harm.
Reality is very different. If Trump were gone tomorrow, the United States would take years to dig out from the damage he's done in less than three months. The damage doesn't just go away when the bad person leaves office.
While I won't comment on the literary merits of the book, as alternate history it was terrible.