Ethnographic Sins, like shedding purple kush

The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. -- Henry James

The game of first billing, the subtextual energy it generates, this is difficult to encapsulate, just as much as the components that make up successful theatrical performances. An episode Firefly? Didn't register. The good wife against Chris Rock in the anemic I Think I Love My Wife? Forgettable black comedy too simply delineated. Up against a Danish actor playing the ultimate American monster, however, Gina Torres comes into her own, except that her intimacy with Laurence doesn't quite conflate the viewers' attention under the episode director.

One can commiserate on the slight with Thomas Harris. He created Hannibal and earned his moola and bravo to that, but the character is no longer his. The methodical death machine is now a celebrated art. He belongs to Anthony's accolades as much as to the author who conceptualized him. Mads and others only add to the comparison. But what kind of language is it? The craft of pretend must have some of the structural comforts that made the work of Levi-Strauss so influential in its time. We read actors like brands now, within their mediums. Laurence, for instance, doing the buck hustle in Searching for Bobby Fischer offers a kind of wry, almost pleasing augmentation. Great movie which anticipates what going digital was about to do to us. A visit to the real Josh Waitzkin's website invites bewilderment, however. Exactly what kind of genius are we supposed to recognize? New age Facebook savvy?

Gina Torres shouldn't have to carry a black identity, and from what I'm able to infer since paying attention to her glamour register, she herself seems ambivalent about putting a face on translucence. Every diva wants to try her hand at the death scene. Bette Davis, Charlize Theron, Sandy Dennis. Even Sally Field trashes up the place badly in Two Weeks, but in her few minutes against Mads, Torres benefits from the necessity for television editors. There is something vibrant in her struggle for dignity against loathsome motives.