Book 2: NSFW by Isabel Kaplan

The book:

Hollywood is famously solipsistic, and each year sees more movies in theaters exploring the glamor, nostalgia, and tragedy of show business. From Sunset Boulevard, to La La Land, to shows like 30 Rock on the small screen, Hollywood creatives have spent significant energy crafting love letters to Hollywood creativity.

NSFW is not a love letter to Hollywood. It is an unshrinking description of the ridiculousness and depravity that coexist in entertainment, exposing the gilded nature of Hollywood glamor. Somewhere between satire and exposé, NSFW follows a young woman working as an assistant, forging a career in television. Here is where I admit that I fall prey to the solipsism, as well. I enjoyed this book largely because I am also a young woman working as an assistant, forging a career in television, and at times I felt an uncanny similarity between myself and the (unnamed) protagonist. Her job title is nearly identical to mine, and the more she described the location of her apartment, the more convinced I became that she lives within blocks of my own apartment. As a result, I cannot claim to be anything close to an objective reviewer.

My favorite moments in NSFW are those in which the narrator describes the comical inscrutability of industry terms and standards. The expectation that assistants will answer phones from the bathroom, the lack of explanation for phrases like “pod” and “overall,” the archaic but unchanging department processes, and the ridiculous whims of executives (like making sure a Fitbit reaches 10,000 steps)– all of these details ring true to me, and all of them made me laugh.

Kaplan does not stop at describing the banal workplace injustices; she also tackles the pernicious culture of sexual harassment. (Luckily, this thread of the novel didn’t resonate with my personal experience. NSFW is set in 2013, and in some ways, it’s a record of the ways the #MeToo movement has succeeded. Of course, there’s still sexism and sexual harassment in the industry, but I hope I’m not being naive when I say there’s less of it.)

One of the most interesting threads in NSFW is the narrator’s relationship with her mom, a successful lawyer who made her name defending sexual assault victims. Her mother is a fascinating character, whose expectations have guided the narrator’s decisions, and whose own decisions disappoint and disillusion the narrator. I could have read many more pages of these two characters sparring over feminism, ambition, and the workplace.

Overall, NSFW is a novel whose realistic view of the entertainment industry is at turns amusing and upsetting. It’s thought provoking but still manages to be an enjoyable read, if a bit too cynical for me at times. I would place NSFW within the broader trend of “millennial novels” (e.g. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Beautiful World, Where are You), all of which tend to contain a strong dose of anxiety and cynicism. Many also have female authors and female protagonists-which I mention only to express how grateful I am that we’re allowing books about women to move beyond the label of “women’s fiction.”

Reading experience: 8/10

The soundtrack:

Interestingly, none of the songs on this playlist are ones that the protagonist willingly listens to. Instead, Ms. New Booty plays during a hip-hop hot yoga class the narrator takes as she compulsively attempts to lose weight and chase beauty. The other four pop songs play on the radio as the narrator Ubers home after a traumatic experience.

There’s a tongue-in-cheek delivery to the description of the hip-hop yoga class and its soundtrack, but there’s a deeper level of irony, as well. How can the narrator scoff at Ms. New Booty, when her own journey of self-improvement (of always optimizing) is equally ridiculous? She may be aiming to look like the most successful woman in the board room rather than the sexiest woman in the club, but in a patriarchal workplace, isn’t the effect the same? Isn’t she still shaping herself to fit male desire? Isn’t this desire even more pernicious for taking place at the office and not the club?

The four pop songs situate the narrative in a very specific era - all three were released in 2013, and they form a believable top 40 lineup. More interesting, however, is the irony that can be read into each track. She listens to Wrecking Ball and Roar while she feels violated and silenced. Enmeshed in a rigidly hierarchical and immensely toxic workplace, she’s not flexing her agency like Katy Perry in Roar or throwing off the hallmarks of traditional success like Lorde in Royals. The last song, Blurred Lines, is the most straight forwardly connected to her situation, and it’s the song that finally convinces her to turn off the radio.

Like the book itself, Kaplan’s choice of songs is smart, layered, and deeply cynical, but the resulting playlist is short and generally unexciting to listen to. None of the songs were new to me, and while I enjoyed thinking about them in the context of Kaplan’s larger critiques about gender and the workplace, it didn’t mean I enjoyed listening to them back-to-back. I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to Ms. New Booty all the way through before, and I don’t think I will again.

Listening experience: 4 / 10

Songs mentioned: 5

• Ms. New Booty

• Wrecking Ball (“A former child star turned provocateur compares herself to a wrecking ball”)

• Roar (“an anthem about rejecting silence and letting the world hear you roar”)

• Royals (“a soulful repudiation of the material trappings of pop royalty”)

• Blurred Lines (“peppy ode to blurred lines”)

Artists mentioned: 0

Albums mentioned: 0

Fictional Songs: 0

Fictional Artists: 0

Fictional Albums: 0