Photo by Emilio Madrid There’s a throughline in Kate Berlant’s new HBO special “Parmesan,” and it’s not cheese.
“My addiction? My phone,” the comedian says at the beginning of the hour.
With slapstick style and performative haughtiness, Berlant yearns for a time before cellphones in the special, out Oct. 16. Chronicling the hyper-niche behaviors that define our online existence, Berlant describes the seemingly inescapable embarrassment of wasting one’s life away in an endless scroll. She delivers verdicts on the great issues of our time, like whether to cover a baby’s face with an emoji or comment “PARMESAN” to receive a link to a pasta recipe. In one of the funniest bits, she talks about watching videos of “unspeakable violence” to “unwind,” like “gorillas fistfighting zookeepers, tourists being eaten by sharks.”
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