Jonathan Bree travels back in time to Soviet Russia for this exclusive interview.
Anastasia Doniants, part of the ‘Inside the Iron Curtain’ creative team, writes:
Why should we expect our artists to have something to say, to become experts on subjects they don’t really care about? They’ve done their work, why not preserve the mystique and let their art be the only messenger?
In his first public interview, Jonathan didn’t feel like giving anything away about himself; his only request was to time travel. He picked the year 1974.
We juggled between France and the Soviet Union. Soviet Russia seemed to be the ideal setting for an interview about nothing and being Russian born and bred meant that it was easy for me to facilitate the trip. I was only 7 years old when Communism came to an end, but the warm memories of the days gone by are still alive and well. Back then, no real message ever came through the televised propaganda. Every shape of artistic expression was heavily censored and, since the only channel was busy broadcasting collective farmers praising their machinery, the Soviets mostly used their TV sets to treat insomnia.
Religion was branded “the opium of the people” and subsequently banned; in the same way, stars and anyone with a public persona had to become faceless. The cultural fade to grey opened up a new niche in Soviet hearts – the love of the facades. Behind closed doors you could listen to The Beatles and read Bulgakov. Outside? Just turn up to work on time and don’t walk around humming ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
In the 70s, USSR people became obsessed with 60s French movie trilogy Fantomas, named after a masked villain from France. This was a huge hit and it didn’t even matter that the trilogy was released 10 years after the rest of the world had seen it.
Jonathan’s anonymousmusical persona makes him right at home in Soviet Russia. A perfect communist hero.
1974 was also a year the Bulldozer Exhibition took place. A bunch of avant-garde artists got together in an urban forest on the outskirts of Moscow to show off their creations. The result: the exhibition was destroyed in its entirety by the police force who bulldozed all the artworks flat to the ground, hence the name. We wanted to reference real events in the interview, so this gets a mention.
I wrote the interview and play the host. It was shot by Kermath, Jonathan’s friend and video collaborator, at his Grey Lynn flat. Kermath used 70s broadcast cameras borrowed from Wellington. Can you tell?
Jonathan Bree’s album Sleepwalking is out tomorrow.
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Feminist icon, daytime TV judge, baloney-screamer: Judge Judith Scheindlin is the true queen of reality TV.
The book of Judith is about a woman who ingratiates herself into the favour of a stupid and powerful man, and then cuts his head off to save her people and her country. Is it cut throat and bloodthirsty? Yes. Is it a feminist text? Absolutely.
Judge Judy is a television programme where a powerful and intelligent woman does the right thing and doesn’t spare anyone’s blushes along the way. Is it cut throat? Yes. Is Judy a feminist? According to her, absolutely not. Is it a modern feminist classic? Absolutely yes!
Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes. (Judith Scheindlin not pictured.)
The cases are real. The people are real. The judgments are final.
Judge Judy has been a part of the culture since September 1996 (making the show a Virgo, which it obviously and absolutely is). For the uninitiated, I’ll give you a quick run down:
Judge Judy is a reality show that takes place in a small claims court in California. Real people with real small claims grudges present their cases to Judge Judith Scheindlin. She reams them out and makes a totally binding verdict. In doing so, she exposes not only the plaintiffs and defendants to temporary ridicule and notoriety, she also exposes the vagaries of human nature to the audience.
I have recently begun watching Judge Judy as my comfort television, meaning I’ll stream 4 or 5 half hour shows from youtube while sprawled out on my bed playing point and click games on my ipad. Despite my split focus, my millennial brain has managed to take in a lot of the details, and I shall now present to you my favourite types of cases, plaintiffs, and defendants, and advocate for my queen Judith Scheindlin and her ballbusting techniques. May we all learn and grow.
1. Don’t co-sign on a car with your son’s girlfriend.
The amount of cases that come before Her Holiness The J that involve a parent co-signing on a car loan with their child’s insignificant other is baffling. “I wouldn’t cosign for a car loan with my child. I might buy my child a car, but I wouldn’t cosign for one.”
In fact, don’t give anyone a loan, at any time, for anything. If you put your child’s car in your name, make sure your child actually understands that it’s a loan and not a gift; if you sell your ex-girlfriend your car and don’t get the cash up front, she’ll make up some bullshit about you telling her brother that she didn’t need to pay for it after all; and if your friend has 5 kids and you drive a fancy car, make sure you don’t loan her $2000 because… Well, just watch this clip, because it has the most satisfying conclusion. I took a sharp, gleeful inhalation at the twist ending:
2. Parental alienation is a stupid way to handle your regrets.
“Do you have children with this man? No? Good.”
Judge Judy has been married more than once, and has her own children and step children. Judge Judy has been around the block with her own experiences of marriage, divorce, and parenting, and she was a family court judge in New York City. When Judge Judy looks into the soul of a plaintiff or defendant and warns them against having children with the oaf that’s turned up next to her, they listen.
Similarly, Judge J lets parents know the ways in which a parent’s behavior can impact their child’s perception of their parent. To a grow-ass man trying to sue his adult son’s mother after the grown-ass man punched out her car mirror and threw a crowbar through the windscreen (I know, outrageous), JJ said: “If you have done something in the course of your son’s life to make him lose respect for you, that is on you not him.”
BA-BOOM! YES QUEEN! PRINT IT ON A T-SHIRT!
This clip has a really great explanation of parental alienation that is stressful but worth listening to:
3. You are dumber than Judge Judy and don’t even think for one moment that you aren’t.
My favourite examples of this unbendable or unbreakable rule are:
The twenty year old guy with TEN kids to “about four” women tries to crack a funny about how one of his baby mamas is Judge Judy’s daughter.
The woman who sold two PHOTOGRAPHS of phones on eBay and thinks she isn’t a scammer. Judy’s sweet burn to her: “If you live to be a hundred and fifty you will not have as much intelligence as I have in one finger.” Game, set, match, owned, burned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7e-sdi_Aq0
An extra fun bit of Judge Judy are the terms “baloney” and “ecumenical abuser”. Here’s a cute little clip of JJ keeping her rage under wraps and deploying both terms expertly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BymfWJXVBEM
4. Who killed the cat?!
This is the whackiest case I’ve ever seen and I don’t know how many words I can make about it. I think you should just watch it.
Judge Judy is the ultimate in angry escapism. If you like women who don’t take shit and love to dish it out – or if you’re just an Aries who loves to fight but loves to stay home even more – then you should be spending much more time than you currently do watching Judge Judy. Also the bailiff, who is called Byrd (short for Petri Hawkins-Byrd), is the best low-key sidekick outside of a superhero movie.
I don’t have a law degree, but watching Judge Judy gives me the confidence and swagger of a white boy at law school. It’s an educational romp through the absurdities of the United States judicial system that makes me glad I live in a country where we don’t sue the pants off each other at the slightest raised eyebrow or cocked snoot. It’s fabulous sick-day viewing – or if, like me, you use reality television to disconnect from the responsibilities of your own reality, then it’s great escapism. It’s as comforting as a bowl of soup and as spicy as seasoning that soup liberally with hot sauce. If you haven’t got the patience for law school, or the wiliness to sneak into an enemy camp and bewilder your sworn foe, then Judge Judy should suffice. Watching Judge Judy is as empowering as I imagine it is to cut the head off an enemy that you have swindled.
