This Thanksgiving, Will would like to share his cracker with the world.

And a truer T-shirt adage may have never before been worn.

The real inner conflict resides in the body.

When I was in high school, I had a dream that continues to haunt me. I was in a house comprised of all hallways. All the rooms were long and narrow and gloomy and painted this awful, dingy, nauseous green. I navigated the hallways until I found the kitchen, another hallway, though this one was lined with kitchen appliances and cabinets. All sick and green. I began to open the doors to microwave, dishwasher, oven... and out of each tumbled a full-grown, naked man. They were beautiful-- white-skinned and dark-haired. Well-muscled. And significant quantities of some milky fluid burbled out of the appliances as they lurched forward from their tucked and cambered postures. And blood. Needless to say (or maybe needful, I don't know), all the men were dead. As is often the case in my dreams, I felt screams well up in my chest, but I just couldn't scream. This non-screaming happened here. And so, in lieu of screaming, I found a scabby-looking screen door at the end of the kitchen-hallway and I banged through it, barely breathing. I found myself on a big expanse of a beach, a swollen, tumescent sky above. I ran to the water, hoping to wash off the blood and fluid that had spilled all over me in the kitchen, but I found more of these beautiful dead men washing up onto the shore. The entire ocean was amniotic and cloudy. I don't suppose I've ever had a dream in which I've felt that level of terror-- before or since.

The imagery of this dream does not strike me as particularly subtle. Though I was probably only about 14 or 15-- and still miserably virginal-- it's clear as day that I was already feeling some anxiety about birthing babies. Dead bleached-out corpses, falling from narrow openings amidst assorted bodily fluids? Yeah, they are tough to miss, my still-born sons. Next week, I'll be 31 and my worries about using my body to produce children have shifted a little. It's not so much a horror show of death and blood anymore-- and more about a simpler vanity, I suppose. I still get carded virtually every time I buy alcohol-- and though I find this ridiculous, as I most certainly look older than 21-- I must admit that I kinda like the fact that all my body parts are still in the right places. I must also admit that I LOVE the social cache that my body parts being in the right places afford me. God help me, I love male attention. Preferably, male attention of my own choosing, but even less desirable male attention is nice, so long as it doesn't cross boundaries. And I worry, to an embarrassing degree, that all that will dry up when I get that post-baby belly-sag and breast-droop. I worry about it so much that I'm finding it difficult to apply language to the thought. And I'm shuddering a little to think of it.

Now, the irony here doesn't escape me. I spend an awful lot of time thinking about sex-- how to get it and what it means, why it's such a powerful force and how it's a filter for virtually everything in my life. And so, I find this insane bodily tug-of-war--- between the ways our bodies goad us into reproducing and a real physical tremulousness at the actual prospect of birthing a baby-- pretty funny. Surely, it's totally stupid that I have such a massive libido and also so much trepidation regarding the natural effects of indulging said libido. But whatever. No human drive is ever simple.

I bring all this up now because, a few weeks ago, I watched a little film called Stephanie Daley, and I found it so difficult to watch that I haven't been able to write about it since. Now, very few films make me squeamish (unless it's got vomit in it, and I feel like I've covered my vomit issues aplenty in this blog). On the list of films that have gotten to me is probably Requiem for a Dream (I really did have to fast forward through the gang-bang-followed-by-vomit scene-- give me exploding track-marks any day!) and well, Four Rooms-- though this is back to vomit again (there's no goddamn WARNING!!!). But in all honesty, I was really on the verge of fast-forwarding though a long, brutal sequence of this film. I managed to weather it, but it's tough, I'm telling you.

The basic story is about a 16-year-old girl and her shrink. The shrink is hugely pregnant and, we learn, found herself in such a state very shortly after suffering a still birth. The girl stands accused of murdering her baby while claiming to not have known she was pregnant in the first place. In many ways, it's clear that the writer/director, Hilary Brougher, drew inspiration from some sensational headline or other. But, ultimately, it's a story of two women dealing with the flip-sides of the birthing conundrum: when you don't want it, it comes so easily, to the detriment of your whole life-- and when you pine for it, it eludes you in the most painful way possible. It's a thoughtful exploration of quiet aches and particularly female aches they are.

However. My goodness. There is a scene in this film. It's pretty much muted out and you get only brief smatterings of sound. It's shot primarily through the gaps around the door of a public bathroom stall. And it's all close-ups of this girl's face while she's giving birth into the leg of her ski-pants. If you ever want to know what it feels like to have your guts ripped out through your vagina, please consult Amber Tamblyn's face during this scene. Her confusion, her physical pain, her utter all-alone-ness are palpable in the most disturbing way. Since when does the sheer emotion on the face of another human make me turn away in the same way that a puke scene would? Well, it's never happened until this film, during which I found my own head buried in my sofa pillows. I can only assume this is the case because the idea of forcing a kid out of my own body engenders no small amount of anxiety in my person-- as foretold by my scary dream.

For all you girls who've done it? Good god. You're all my heroes-- though I'm still not sure if I'll ever wanna be you.

yeah, yeah, yeah, 9/11. But also...love and the lost self

It seems that a number of typically snark-jock movie critics really seem to like Reign Over Me. It's true, the real allure of Adam Sandler resides in his characteristic cocktail of rage, self-loathing and soulfulness. And, at last, this film is a real showcase for those aspects of his soul. He's subtle and funny and furious and it really works. For once, viewers can, perhaps, put Opera Man out of their heads while watching... not that I really have anything against Opera Man, per se. I'm of the camp that concedes that some of Sandler's deconstructionist comedy in the SNL Weekend Update segments were really fairly innovative. However, this piece is about character, not rule-breaking, and he carries it pretty well. It's no doubt he won some critic-fans with the role-- and the film.

However, all the reviews discussed the barely-scabbed-over lives of those whose families were affected by 9/11-- and how sensitive a story this movie is... blah, blah, blah. Sure, I guess it IS sensitive, but, just for the sake of argument, let's take 9/11 off the table. What if this were just a story about a couple of guys who've conceded some portion of their selfhoods to their relationships?

I've oft heard a very female lament about the girl who marries her dreamboat of choice and then winds up "losing herself" to the relationship, sacrificing her identity, her soul, her likes and dislikes, for the purpose of being the wife HE wants her to be. Oprah is a big pusher of the notion of the tragic narrative of the just-can't-say-no girls. I've had friends complain about having lost track of some aspect of identity when ensconced in a romantic relationship-- and I think I might even have phrased my own complaints similarly (though, in retrospect, I know I have most often been the one to force concessions from my partners--having a strong personality sometimes breeds some curious obliviousness), but I've wondered: what of the men who no longer recognize themselves, so lost are they in the daily morass of gesture and habit and ritual? Surely, assimilation into a relational unit couldn't possibly be a single-gendered activity, could it?

And along comes this movie. In it, we've got two guys. One guy loses his wife and three daughters (it's significant that all three kids are female, I think) to one of the passenger projectiles that have since entered our lexical commonality. As a result, he devolves into some crazy amalgam of automaton, ghost and rabid wolf. Simply put, without his family, his female flotilla, he has no real self left. When they were alive, his life was full because of them. And without them, there really isn't much man to spare. And the other guy, well, he still has his wife-- and two female children. But as a result of his "putting family first," he's manifested such a disconnect with his own desires, his own identity, that he begins to foment a fairly expected variety of resentment towards his wife.

Now, the solution to this problem is really the hinge of the plot. Both men seek refuge from domesticity in each other and, because they each adopt this outlet, they are able to return (or at least begin to heal in order to return at some point in the future) to some modified version of the family fold. Easy. Total cake. It's a reasonable and real-life solution to the emotional deprivation experienced by some men. And it works. But, it's also not all that interesting to me.

What is interesting, however, is the set of social constructs that create the types of ravenous hunger so readily apparent in these men. To be fair, I'm sure this aspect of the film's emotional tenor stuck out to me because I've been reading Laura Kipnis' book Against Love: A Polemic of late. This is a book that would be incendiary if it were required reading for the population at large, but, as it is, it's more like a flagpole sporting some tattered rag outside a seedy bar on the fringes of town. It rages about the ways in which conventional companionate co-habitation squelches our emotional lives and lulls our libidos into sad little stupors. The book wants more for us than so-called wedded bliss. It wants actual bliss. And I suppose I'm reading it because I, too, want actual bliss-- for myself and for the people (plural) with whom I fall in love. And so I read books that swear up and down that that which is packaged as blissful (love, stability, monogamy) is actually the enemy of the temporality and flightiness of real, mindful fun. I keep hoping that if I resist that which feels like it might entrap me or own me, I'll find a new transgressive joy. So far, so good. No, wait: so far, so occasionally good. It's a trepidatious mountain passage at best.

But anyway, I look at the stories of these two men-- one who is a veritable wraith of loss without his primary relationship and one who can barely speak, so gagged by the confines of being a "good father" or "good husband" or even "good man" is he-- and I am fascinated by the meandering avenues through which their marriages lead them-- and deposit them squarely in their respective marital miseries. Sure, they find their ways out again (via the flip-side of the self-same love that drove them to despair in the first place, mind you), but it is the insularity of love that is the problem for each. I can't help but wonder: if these two men dedicated a little less of themselves to their primary relationships-- and a little more to a legitimate pursuance of bliss? Would they feel so stranded and without recourse when those primary relationships wind up NOT being the be-all-end-all? Would they feel so alone, were they not so protective of their own emotional fidelity? If they put a couple of eggs in other baskets? Who's to say?

I would like to understand more about men's emotional lives. Though male actors continue to dominate the screen, rarely do we find filmic plumbings of male loneliness, detachment, estrangement, and ache for simple human connection of the nature found in Reign Over Me. I won't say that it goes this distance flawlessly-- it occasionally waxes maudlin and, frankly, it overshoots in terms of subplots and connectivity of narratives-- but at least it's trying. At least it's attempting to represent the ways in which the conventional social institution of marriage fails these guys in terms of their rawest, simplest emotional needs. It's supposed to be another diary page from the post-9/11 New Yorker. Ultimately, national tragedy is just a backdrop here. Because I came to this film with Kipnis in my head, I'm having a hard time seeing the real subject matter as other than how these men fight for stability in a landscape in which the bedrock of relational love swims in and out of their reach.

Another concession: the time-change has hit me like a brick. I'll acclimate soon, surely. But for now, I've had a week of imagined heartbreak and utter listlessness. Oh, sunshine! Oh, serotonin! How I miss you. This Seasonal Affective bullshit is a bitch. Time to fire up the Happy Lite again. So, apologies if I, too, am waxing overly maudlin. It's been a weird and weepy week. At least I can blame it on body chemistry, rather than real problems.

cultural climate in which renegades, instead of the line-towers, look like zombies

It's been a good long while since I posted about a film. Don't ask me why. I've been watching them. It's just that sometimes I get sick of my own usual foul-mouthed, sexpotted rigamarole. It's a shame, isn't it? So, I figure I may as well get back on track with a big bloody, fiery, explosion-porn-rife zombie flick. Sure. Why not?

Much has been said of the cultural reflectivity of this particular genre. I don't suppose I really need to rehash it-- but, it's true. The Archetypal Zombie can function as cinematic folk devil for any measure of societal ills. Joshua Clover does a slick, dense little rundown about this film genre here. And I suggest you read his smart version, rather than allow me to indulge in blatant plagiarism. And it just so happens that his write-up is also about 28 Weeks Later, my sofa adventure this evening. What I find particularly interesting about this other blog-review is the comparison between the zombie outbreak in this film and the French Revolution-- or, say, ideological insurgency of any kind.

As my regular readers might have noticed (ha! regular readers... that's funny!), I'm sorta partial to rebels and outlaws, rule-breakers and transgressors of all colors. Well, maybe not all (some could argue that the likes of Hitler-think arose out of social rebellion, I suppose). But in general, social order doesn't often sit all that well with me, so I think folks that undermine it are kinda fun. But in Clover's analogy, the zombie are the rebels-- and they spread disease in rapid-fire. And they're pretty fucking scary, even considering they don't really have access to me personally, safe in my apartment, an ocean away from the rage-syndrome-ridden British Isles of the film. (Yeah, it takes a lot to ACTUALLY scare me.) They puke blood and are mindless consumers of human flesh. Chills and thrills all around.

But if we relay this back to our current American cultural Bogeymen--suicide bombers, insurgent militias and renegade ideologues of the Middle East-- well, then, would this film not reflect back to us a particular anxiety about THEIR ideology being contagious to us? We rational, not-religiously-zealous-AT-ALL, tolerant and diversity-loving Westerners? Yeah, that sounds just LIKE us! So, if we're worried that ideological insurgency is both contagious and zombie-fying, my sarcasm in the preceding sentences alone could lend itself to the argument that we're ALREADY zombies.

And so, in this circular method of thinking, rebels wind up right back on top--and paradoxically, at the bottom-- of the hero pile. And here's why: fear of zealotry can entail blindness to one's own version of zealotry which leads to the application of social pressure towards intellectual conformity which often manifests in a manner remarkably similar to (hey, surprise!) zealotry and therefore, the only voice of reason becomes the renegade--who is, indeed scary, because his or her new and innovative ideology might well be every bit as contagious and zombie-fying as the original form of zealotry. Christ. I think I might have lost myself in this argument. No, that makes sense, right? It's the same old overturn-the-government-with-a-new-regime-that's-every-bit-as- problematic-as-the-first-regime-because-both-have-been-devised- by-bumbling-humans argument, isn't it?

In any case, the movie's fun. Probably not as emotionally ripe as its prequel, 28 Days Later, but bloody and absorbing and anxious in its own way. As a zombie flick should be.

In honor of the re-legalization of absinthe in NOLA---and for Joe

Ms. Dita as Le Feé Vert.

Crusaders who get naked

Please note the addition of the prettydumbthings blog to my blog roll. This site is kind of a hub of the stripper-literati discourse, as written by Chelsea G. Summers. I quite like her brand of feminist parsing and she's got a fairly fascinating bunch of sex-text links worth exploring on her own blog roll. Also, her archive lists April as "the cruelest month," which, I suppose gives her a little extra lit-nerd street cred. Enjoy.