so high and mighty am I!

This past weekend, my delectable friend, Mathina, and I held a little dinner party. We cooked our li'l tushies off and it was worth it. Well, in particular, Mathina's Persian love cake was worth it. Even though it's full of stuff I try real hard not to eat (dairy, sugar, wheat... puh!), I have no doubt that it'll visit me in my dreams for some nights to come. And it will probably replenish the previously cooked-off tushy. Ah, well.

As is wont to happen, a discussion arose over said LUUUUV cake about the film Crash. The prevailing attitudes about said movie were primarily positive, with a few pip-squeak-y disavowals of such favor from a couple of us. I, for example, am not crazy about that film, and yet I think I was less than articulate when given the floor to extemporaneously explain why. Fortunately for me, I have my very own forum in which I can more thoughtfully elucidate my concerns about this movie and its behemoth-proportioned acclaim and popularity. Dear fellow party guests, please forgive me for the spouting off I am about to do:

First and foremost among my concerns about this film is that it's not much more than a bunch of easily digested, difficult-to-disagree-with moralizing. It's message is so monolithic that it verges on propaganda. I mean, who's really going to argue with the stance that making assumptions about people based on their skin color, religion, and/or ethnic heritage is wrong? And this is the stance with which the film unremittingly bashes us over the head. It's the sort of film that we good little liberals go see and congratulate ourselves for our choice in movie-viewing as it affirms all our best intentions toward social consciousness. We can watch all of its goings on from a safe distance of our stadium seating and judge the characters' respective levels of nobility and deplorability exactly as the filmmakers would have us judge them.

But the thing is, I don't much care for an aesthetic experience in which I'm coached to think one thing over another. But more on this later.

In our discussion, Matt Dillon's racist cop character was cited as a multi-dimensional man who defied judgment. With this notion, I could not disagree more. This character is nothing more than King Kong. He's less than Frankenstein's monster. And his monstrosity is handily established early in the film so that we in the audience are able to, simultaneously, establish our psychological safe distance from him. He's a racist. He's a molester and a sexual predator. He is a bad man. We do not like him. We think, Oh, I would NEVER behave like that. He is the opposite of me. And then, of course, because he is King Kong, we learn that there's a little gold in his heart. He can be heroic when the moment so calls for it. And yet, because we've already safely distanced ourselves from him, we can acknowledge that he's just a human without really forgiving him for being the asshole he was in the beginning. He's so trope-ic that he's quite possibly the least interesting character in the film.

For my money, however, his foil, Ryan Phillipe's rookie-with-a-conscience character is the one to watch. He is aware of the pervasive racism around him. It niggles him and he protests, a little whinily, against it. He thinks racism blows, man, and he wants to do something about it. The audience identifies with him. At last! Here's a man we can like. Here's a man who shares our liberal guilt. And he is posited so clearly in relief against Dillon's character that, really, we are given little choice but to noddingly adore him. With his little blond curls and big blue eyes and smoothly protruding lower lip, has Ryan Phillipe ever been convincing in any role other than that of an over-grown cherub?

But here's the one thing the film really does almost right: it uses this character to implicate the audience. Though this film is, by and large, earnestly committed to force-feeding its willing audience, with all its heavily-shouldered weight of ethical responsibility with regard to race relations in America, a very straight-forward message about how much racism sucks, it kinda sticks it to us in the end by reminding us that even the guiltiest among us can still cave to the basest of fears. Because we've identified with Phillipe's character's goodness throughout, how can we not feel as though we, too, just might submit to our sub-surface race-sourced fears when faced with a honest-to-god stressful moment? When in the car, alone with a black kid digging in his pocket (for a stick of gum? for a gun? for a religious fetish? ), Phillippe's Officer Tom Hansen doubts his convictions just long enough to shoot an innocent man to death. And what would we, good little liberal audience that we are, do in a similar situation? Oh, right. The film's message: we're all a little racist deep down. I'd forgotten. Also, just for a second, I'd gotten fairly numb from the head-bashing obviousness of it all.

So, that's my argument against the particulars of that movie. I think it's heavy-handed. I think it leaves no room to for profound questioning and deeper engagement. And I think other films have done it better. And here, I'd cite Grand Canyon, maybe. Grand Canyon isn't a perfect movie, either. It's a little overly optimistic and perhaps a smidge sentimental. And it's not even a perfect comparison, as Grand Canyon has more on its mind than bigotry alone. But it's an ensemble film about how, in spite of racially-tinged anxiety, we're still a community! And while gaps in need of bridging abound, the bridging can--and does--happen. Mushfest though it may be, that damn movie still warms me ol' heart cockles.

And now, allow me to move on to some bigger issues. During the course of the discussion about Crash, while I was being interrogated about why I don't think it's just the greatest effin' movie since Titanic (cue laugh-track, please!), I think I heard someone say something about how I didn't like it just because I'm a snob (read: elitist). To be fair, I believe that person was quoting me, and not being an ass. True enough, in a convolutedly self-deprecating way, I will sometimes refer to myself as a snob. I do not actually think I'm a snob, but really more a seeker. A hungry, insatiable seeker who recognizes that minimal nutritional value is to be got from the likes of most Hollywood schlock. I have no stomach for watching kid's movies or romantic comedies. I think I've written, a few times probably, about how that which is supposed to entertain simply does not entertain me. I want more out of a film-going experience than entertainment. I want to be both stirred and shaken. I want my assumptions questioned. I like the age-old sparring match between artist and audience and, if I'm going to commit my $10.50 to being an audience member, you better believe I feel as though I owe the experience the deepest engagement I can muster. And so, what's so wrong with asking that the filmmakers hold up their end of the bargain?

Does the fact that I'm a demanding audience make me an elitist? I go 'round and 'round about this in my head. It just so happens that, this weekend, I happened to pluck Jeanette Winterson's book, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, from the shelf on which I'd set it when I first bought it a couple months ago. And this was a providential reading selection, indeed, as she has much to say about the artist/audience relationship and elitism. Here's a little pithy something she says in the essay, "Art Objects":

"The media ransacks the arts, in its images, in its adverts, in its copy, in its jingles [I almost transcribed this word as "jungles." How funny!], in its tunes and journalist's jargon, it continually offers up faint shadows of the form and invention of real music, real paintings, real words. All of us are subject to this bombardment, which both deadens our sensibilities and makes us fear what is not instant, approachable, consumable [!!!!]. The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an effort anathema to popular culture. Effort of time, effort of money, effort of study, effort of humility, effort of imagination have each been packed by the artist into the art. Is it so unreasonable to expect a percentage of that from us in return? I worry that to ask for effort is to imply elitism, and the charge against art, that it is elitist, is too often the accuser's defence against his or her own bafflement. It is quite close to the remark, 'Why can't they all speak English?', which may be why elitist is the favourite insult of the British and the Americans."

Even ignoring the ingenious association she makes between an audience's desire to have art conform to their expectations and the racist notion that all other culture should assimilate into the predominate one, I can't help but feel she lets me off the hook a little for my perceived elitism. And then, a little more pointedly, she writes in another essay, "Writer, Reader Words":

"As a member of the proletariat myself, I can confirm that there is nothing drearier than the embrace of a bunch of Oxbridge intellectuals who want to tell you that art (theirs) is for you. the express view of the highbrow Moderns was cleaner: take it or leave it. What they knew, and what the eager young men of the Thirties reluctantly came to know was that is is not possible to produce a living literature that includes everyone unless everyone wants to be included. Art leaves nobody out, but it cannot condescend, we have to climb up if we want the extraordinary view."

So, here's the thing: it's not that accessibility makes art bad. Or that inaccessibility makes art good. It's just that propaganda isn't art any more than the pop culture Winterson describes is. If it takes a stance, rather than forcing its audience to think through its own stance, I question the artistic integrity of the work. Although art is democratic and open to all, art requires attention, engagement and EFFORT from its audience, as Winterson admonishes us. Because I not only seek out art that is difficult (the more difficult, the greater the reward for the effort, I find), but also strive to meet the more stringent work on its own plateau, I'm an elitist? This disheartens me. I don't want it to be easy. I don't get anything out of easy. And I want something. I heartily yearn for...something. Something incisive and shivering. Something that throws me for a loop. Hence I keep this blog-- this journal of my trial-and-error engagements with the world outside of myself. And hence, I am unimpressed with the likes of Crash, that did little more than applaud me for thinking racism one of the world's greater evils.

And on a side note, my reading of Winterson actually made my day yesterday. Art Objects contains an essay about one of my top five favorite novels of all time: Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Heaven help me, I heart that book. It's bizarre and subversive and galvanically taut and funny. Good god, is it ever funny. In this essay, she describes assorted historical depictions of the persona of Virginia Woolf before eschewing such descriptions, claiming authorial personality should have minimal effect on one's reading of any given text. But she makes a lovely little economic assessment of one such persona: "To some, [Woolf's] madness was a weakness, to others, it has been a confirmation of her genius and a sign of her spiritual health (to be ill-adjusted to a deranged world is not breakdown)."

I am sheepish to admit I might have identified with this sentiment just a touch. Oh, my sweet sister Virginia! I, too, feel ill-adjusted to a deranged world! If only I could write a line that could balance on dental floss like she could. If only I, too, could be so exact. But don't worry, fair reader(s)--- you shan't find pebbles in my pockets just yet.

So, thank you, dear friends, for inspiring the first real exercise in critical writing I've mustered in some weeks! I should have thought to have fed you all ages ago!

An Excerpt on the Topic of Loneliness

From Peter Trachtenberg's book, 7 Tattoos: A Memoir in the Flesh (parentheticals mine):

"Here are the benefits of being alone and celibate:

"You can read all night long and no one will nag you to turn off the light. (This one is particularly handy when your loneliness generates a savage bout with insomnia.)

"You can go off to Borneo on the spur of the moment without anyone wanting to know when you'll be back. (...assuming you have buttloads of superfluous income and a job that does not require your actual, physical presence.)

"You can prepare meals so disgusting you'd be ashamed to eat them in company: grill a slice of bologna till it curls up at the edges; fill the cup with baked beans; then top with a slice of Kraft American cheese and broil till melted. Serve with dill pickle and sliced tomato. (Or, eat nothing but lentils, raw, unsalted cashews and whole cartons of cherry tomatoes for a week at a time, if that bologna thing makes your nose wrinkle a little.)

"You can fart to your heart's content without having to say 'Excuse me,' though you may grow so accustomed to this that you find yourself doing it in public places -- on the line at your savings bank, for instance -- and getting nasty looks from strangers. (This one must be a guy thing. I'm not knocking farting... I just don't think it's a reason to be glad you're lonely and celibate. Nor is it something I really spend time considering one way or the other.)

"You can entertain religious delusions. (I'm pretty sure I can tell the future now via tarot cards and my pendulum.)

"You can spend your fury at the world by playing Einsturzende Neubauten and Nine Inch Nails at bone-splintering volumes and dancing along, vaulting and twitching and torquing as though electrocuted while shouting the lyrics you've improvised because you can't make out the real ones: 'I gave you no permission!/I give you no remission!/Newt Gingrich, burn in Hell!/Jesse Helms, burn in Hell!/Larry Wildmon, burn in Hell!/I'll know where to find you when I come callin'/In the row next to Hitler and old Joe Stalin.' (Yeah, I don't do this either. Though, Nina Simone winding up on my iPod's shuffle mix with the same damn song -- "The Other Woman," of course!-- twice in one day was enough to make me feel fairly dismayed with ol' Nina for a while.)

"You can fall asleep with a stack of books next to you on the bed, and if you're a heavy sleeper, you won't even wake up when you knock them to the floor. (I'm not a heavy sleeper. As much as I think books make reasonable bedfellows, that slushy paper crush in the middle of the night does nothing to help the insomnia issues. It only makes you feel guilty that you've injured your only friends.)

"You may come to know freedom from the tyranny of your penis, which thus dethroned becomes only a benign little tube for the expulsion of urine. (OK, I really can't relate here. Not on any level. Not with any analogous body parts. The ache in the throat. The ache in the heart. The ache behind the eyes. The ache in the lady parts. It all becomes one big seeping blister. One that even your sheets abrade. One that incites not a small measure of panic when you think you see the little red halo of infection developing around its outskirts. If crazy was infectious, that is.)

"In time you will know yourself so thoroughly that you finally realize what all those people had against you. (Yep. Yep. Pretty damn sick of what the inside of my head sounds like. This rather reminds me of how sick of myself I got when I was trying to write my grad school manuscript. God, I'm insufferable.)

"You will pray wholeheartedly to be changed. 'Make me good,' you'll call at night, down on your knees in a bedroom that is used only for sleeping, that smells of nothing but your cigarettes and the dust baking beneath the radiator. 'Please, God, just make me good.' (When you decide that being good is a lost cause, you just pray to be less stupid. Please, God. I like brains. I thought I had one. Maybe you can help me locate it? It appears misplaced!)

"On bad nights you can scoop up your cats and cuddle them shamelessly, even kissing them on the nose, though they usually dislike this and will try to shove you away with their paws. If worse comes to worst, you can press your face against their bodies and weep copiously into their fur." (I might consider it. If I had a cat. Wonder if my stuffed wombats would be amenable to becoming cat substitutes?)

Thank you, Mr. Trachtenberg.

Quite possibly the best blog title in the history of blog titles

So. My fantastic, witty, beautiful and deliciously snarky friend Jen has changed the name of her blog. She's been over there in my blog roll for most of the lifespan of this blog, but her old blog, Princess Sarcasma (which is also a good title, but I mostly think so because I take credit for coining this particular nickname for Jen) is now defunct.


Please welcome (grand fanfare, if you please) Bloodypickle to my new and updated blogroll.

If Jen so desires, she can reveal the source of this completely genius-rific title. But in the meantime, please allow me to bask in its glorious suggestiveness, its coy filthiness, and, well, the fact that she says I'm the first one to think it meant something dirty.

How can I be a crackpot when so many scientific studies back me up?

What I say here and what this article says here are basically the same thing. Well, except the article I'm linking actually cites loads of great studies that support the assertions I've been making for years.

So, where are you, prospective beau? I can't smell you from here, but when I do, I'll know it's you!

The most demoralizing thing ever. Revised.

About a year and a half ago, I got my current job in DC. At the time, it was probably the biggest relief of my life, as I'd spent the two previous years in various states of quasi-unemployment (read: near-unbearable anxiety and fretfulness) and, when I got this job, I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that my amassment of fine art degrees and deep-seated intellectual curiosity about all that will not ever turn a profit had rendered me entirely unemployable. I wrote this post about this wholly demoralizing article. I'm still pretty convinced that I am the very soul described within that article. How is it not squarely miraculous that I've got a job at all (albeit, one I bitch about a lot... one that doesn't pay me for the work I do... one that often conflicts with a number of my ethical stances regarding eduction...one that doesn't actual fulfill me in any intellectual way)? But it's a job nonetheless, and the fact that I holding it down proves that Time Magazine doesn't know everything. Thank Jimmy in heaven. I pay my rent every goddamn month. Seriously. Thank Jimmy in heaven.

And then, I think, somewhere in the last few months, I encountered yet another article-- one that trumped the aforementioned article's dismal message. I think I would have linked this second article, but it made me so depressed that I just couldn't stomach it, and now I've lost track of it. But, I think I can sum up: the gist of it was that, at various points in the history of women seeking gainful employment, the wage gap between the genders has been attributed to the notion that women aren't as aggressive as men, the notion that women are more emotional, and therefore less able to operate cool-headedly in the workplace, than men, and/or the notion that women are all secretly green slimy slugs beneath there skin and are therefore not to be trusted with the finer (or courser) points of American capitalism. The article went on to say that, as none of these nodes of ridiculousness could be measured in any meaningful way (one teaspoon full of green slime too much and no money for you!), clearly, they could not be the real culprits behind why women make less money than their equally-educated, equally experienced, penis-bearing counterparts.

All that sounds vaguely, tritely positive, right? But then that article just sucks all the wind out of our sails, ladies. It basically says that men who are perceived as aggressive and actually ask for raises are rewarded for their straightforwardness. But employers (male and female alike) perceive women who ask for deserved raises as pushy and demanding and are, therefore, not only likely to deny them their raises, but are also likely to punish them for their pushiness by demoting them! So, either we're not aggressive enough and don't ask for what we deserve or we're too aggressive and are punished for asking for fair compensation for good work done. How does this not sicken us all? So I guess I didn't link that article because I didn't want to think about the studies cited within it any more than I absolutely have to. Dwelling on such things feels like a pretty defeatist activity. And I particularly do not want to be thinking about those studies now, as I'm coming up on two years of pouring out some sloppy quantities blood, sweat and green slime well beyond the stated parameters of my current position. No, I do not think that article's a good one to be obsessing about right now, as god knows I need me a freaking raise.

And then today, I found the most demoralizing article yet. Lucky for me, this one tackles a broader issue than my own piddly little financial worries. This one is about how capitalism doesn't value any of the things that interest and excite me the most. And, bless its little heart, the article sure tries to be positive about that, but I can't help it. I find it deeply, deeply saddening that the only way our American culture can attribute value to the humanities is to espouse a little consolation prize of an argument: the humanities have INTRINSIC value (but none other than that). Three consumptive little cheers for intrinsicity!!

As the article says, the humanities are an end unto themselves and we've got to be satisfied with that. But I'm not. I spent my 20s pretty much avoiding getting a real job because I was just so sure that somewhere out there, someone was going to put a monetary value on all that time I spent sitting around thinking-- about painting and poetry and sex and ethics and all these other little filthy by-products of human existence. But no one did. Because they really are just that-- by-products. And who's gonna pay for theoretical run-off?

I hate how true this whole premise is. It makes me wanna puke.

Because really? If there weren't those things out there, what on earth would I find about which I could give a flip?

Well, there's always creative vegan cooking, electric cars, sexy shoes, hair products that prevent frizz, my dog Noah, and the fact that I can impress my hot chiropractor with how bendy I am as a result of 11 years of yoga practice, right?

I guess I'll just have to go on living.

look pretty/smell good/have a higher IQ/produce healthier babies through genetic diversity/it all adds up

For your consideration:

Article A: In which the WaPo reviews a book about how smells rule the world. And that's just exactly what I said here and here. None of the studies cited in the review look like new news to me, and the "academic at best, clunky at worst" assessment of the writing has prevented this book from landing on my (already rather unweildy) Amazon wish list, but, you know, it's good to find source materials to back up my crackpot theories.

And Article B: I'm linking this one not because it's new news either, but, rather, because it's got information that I've heard before (information that seems immanently logical, given the way outward indicators reflect genetic strength and overall health) but that seems to go against the pretty-is-as-pretty-does conventional wisdom. The truth is pretty people tend to be healthier, stronger, smarter, AND more reproductively viable BECAUSE their genes are stronger. And being smarter is every bit as much of a Darwinian advantage as having nice tits or a strong jawline, I would think. And so, I quite like this theory. Because nerds are sexy.