I suppose it's really too much to ask that I arrive at my destination on the same date that my boarding pass lists. After all, these dates are clearly mere suggestions to the air travel industry.
Tonight, I was scheduled to go back to Nashville to spend 9 days going to the NaFF offerings and hanging out with my baby schmogface Noah. When I arrived at the airport, it was sunny and lovely and still outside and the signs at the gate indicated that everything was running on time. Soon however, there was a delay... and another delay... and then, they pulled off the plane, saying that there was no way I'd make my connector... and, well, it's the same old tedious story all over again. I am an airplane jinx and really, the sooner I learn to accept this, the less stressed out all of this will make me, I'm sure of it.
Needless to say, I'm back in my apartment in Alexandria tonight. I have a rescheduled flight at 6 AM tomorrow.. which means I have to be at the airport between 4:45 and 5... which means I have to leave my apartment no later that 4... which means, in order to get my ass out the door at that hour, I have to rouse myself no later than 3. 3 fucking AM. I may have seen 3 AM on the other end of the day several times in my life but I have not once begun a day at such an ungodly hour. And by "ungodly," I mean that I assume that even God is on hiatus at that hour.
Now, I really don't know what the deal is with air travel these days...but this is really getting ridiculous. My dad suggests that I invest in a horse in hopes that he/she would be a more reliable mode of transportation. However, I don't know that my coccyx is up to the challenge. I'd be one serious mosey-er subsequent to one such trip.
This sucks. I fucking hate being a jinx.
Friday, April 20, 2007
corpus congealed
Thanks to Mom for this totally great, totally creepy thing.
She says she saw the real thing on a recent trip to Chicago. The one she saw was a boy. Apparently, this was both apparent and transparent.
I can only hope that my own pancreas turns out to be so cauliflower-like. And makes such lovely splooshing noises when extracted. I can only hope.
P.S. Play the video. You just gotta.
She says she saw the real thing on a recent trip to Chicago. The one she saw was a boy. Apparently, this was both apparent and transparent.
I can only hope that my own pancreas turns out to be so cauliflower-like. And makes such lovely splooshing noises when extracted. I can only hope.
P.S. Play the video. You just gotta.
Monday, April 16, 2007
In case you're bored with the new-releases shelf...
Next weekend, I'm taking some vacation time and heading back to Nashville, just in time for the Nashville Film Festival-- which has proven to be a worthy investment of time in recent years and will doubtlessly be so again. And in case anyone reads my blog for info about independant films (as opposed to reading it because you are either a person who likes me or a person who is related to me (thanks, Mom!)), never fear! If there's a hot spot somewhere in the lobby of the Green Hills Commons 16, you'll doubtlessly find me there with my laptop. Maybe Jim Ridley, my movie-writing hero, will spot me and offer me a job. How cool would it be to get paid to write the sort of gobbledegook I spew out here where the brown rabbits roam?
In the meantime, here are a couple of short commentaries on a couple of older movies that I love:
The other night on cable, they showed one of my old favorites-- Marguerite Duras' The Lover. Duras is a writer I love because she is so very good at taking a couple of my fascinations-- sex and racial discontent-- and irrevocably entangling them with a unique and gorgeous poetic sensibility. In Hiroshima, Mon Amour, she goes so far as to name her two lovers after the cities from with they come: Nevers, France and Hiroshima, Japan. And in this way, that which is intimate becomes that which is geographic and sociological. Hiroshima, Mon Amour is another great film I'd highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it-- black and white, tragic, full of regret, and simply beautiful.
But, The Lover, a quasi-autobiographical story, is more invested in its erotic narrative than its politics... and yet, the politics persistently thrust themselves into its foreground. The basic story is one of a 15-year-old French girl, living in in Sa-Dec, outside of Saigon, who meets a wealthy Chinese man and begins a rigorous--and I mean RIGOROUS-- affair with him. The real tension of the story come out of the fact that, while her family rapidly becomes dependant on his money, they assume superiority over him for no good reason other than that they are white. And at the same time, he cannot acknowledge his sexual obsession with the girl, which he sort of pathetically insists is Love (capital L) despite her emotional unavailability, in any public sort of way because it is, or course, culturally unacceptable for him to engage with any woman who isn't a Chinese virgin (oh, to be a Chinese virgin...). The tension that results from both the Chinese characters and the French characters each assuming they they are socially superior to the other supplies the story with a wistful tone of doom-- but, while this tension is really just an undercurrent to the more overt soft-porn aspect of this film, it's really what makes it worth watching again and again and again. And in Jeanne Moreau's narrating voiceovers, you get to hear little snatches of Duras' liquidy prose... and, oh, how that makes me want to read the book all over again and again and again.
And then there's Sex, Lies, and Videotape. If you haven't seen it in a while, rent it again. It's friggin' brilliant. It's one of Steven Soderbergh's early directing efforts and it shows potential that he's been a little hit-or-miss about acheiving ever since. Its pacing is so unflinching and intense that it builds a sort of suspense from which most thriller-writers would do well to learn. And though this movie was made in '89 and is about a now obsolete video recording device, it has become, I think, even more relevant now than ever. What I mean is, there's an ever-present anxiety/desire that the private thoughts, cravings, images that we send back and forth to each other will somehow surface for the purposes of public inspection. People make sex tapes of themselves and post them on the web; people exchange flirtatious emails via their Outlook systems at work with full knowledge that their companies hire email spies; people fix their hair and pick their butts in the mirrored domes of drugstore security cameras. It's like so many of us are dying to spill out our secrets to anyone who'll listen or watch-- and yet the surveillance anxiety persists, too. Last week, my team at work had a meeting in a room set up for focus groups-- complete with cameras in the corners, drop-down microphones and one of those single-sided mirrored windows-- and I felt nervous during the entire meeting that someone was on the other side of that mirror. And while this movie came out of a pre-internet era, it feels as though it anticipates all of the anxieties of early 21ist Century life.
Beyond that, James Spader is just so damn good. The character isn't as unabashedly freakish as some of his subsequent roles but he's not exactly well-adjusted either. The movie's pacing allows him so many conversational awkwardnesses and silences that a lesser actor might have been tempted to fill with chatter-- but Spader just lets the space between people become corpulent in its discomfort.
Seriously. Pull one of these off the shelf while you're breathlessly awaiting the results of my film festival samplings. They deserve revisitation. But I shan't keep you waiting for long, even anyway, my dear devoted readers (um... yeah, that's still just you, Mom!).
In the meantime, here are a couple of short commentaries on a couple of older movies that I love:
The other night on cable, they showed one of my old favorites-- Marguerite Duras' The Lover. Duras is a writer I love because she is so very good at taking a couple of my fascinations-- sex and racial discontent-- and irrevocably entangling them with a unique and gorgeous poetic sensibility. In Hiroshima, Mon Amour, she goes so far as to name her two lovers after the cities from with they come: Nevers, France and Hiroshima, Japan. And in this way, that which is intimate becomes that which is geographic and sociological. Hiroshima, Mon Amour is another great film I'd highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it-- black and white, tragic, full of regret, and simply beautiful.
But, The Lover, a quasi-autobiographical story, is more invested in its erotic narrative than its politics... and yet, the politics persistently thrust themselves into its foreground. The basic story is one of a 15-year-old French girl, living in in Sa-Dec, outside of Saigon, who meets a wealthy Chinese man and begins a rigorous--and I mean RIGOROUS-- affair with him. The real tension of the story come out of the fact that, while her family rapidly becomes dependant on his money, they assume superiority over him for no good reason other than that they are white. And at the same time, he cannot acknowledge his sexual obsession with the girl, which he sort of pathetically insists is Love (capital L) despite her emotional unavailability, in any public sort of way because it is, or course, culturally unacceptable for him to engage with any woman who isn't a Chinese virgin (oh, to be a Chinese virgin...). The tension that results from both the Chinese characters and the French characters each assuming they they are socially superior to the other supplies the story with a wistful tone of doom-- but, while this tension is really just an undercurrent to the more overt soft-porn aspect of this film, it's really what makes it worth watching again and again and again. And in Jeanne Moreau's narrating voiceovers, you get to hear little snatches of Duras' liquidy prose... and, oh, how that makes me want to read the book all over again and again and again.
And then there's Sex, Lies, and Videotape. If you haven't seen it in a while, rent it again. It's friggin' brilliant. It's one of Steven Soderbergh's early directing efforts and it shows potential that he's been a little hit-or-miss about acheiving ever since. Its pacing is so unflinching and intense that it builds a sort of suspense from which most thriller-writers would do well to learn. And though this movie was made in '89 and is about a now obsolete video recording device, it has become, I think, even more relevant now than ever. What I mean is, there's an ever-present anxiety/desire that the private thoughts, cravings, images that we send back and forth to each other will somehow surface for the purposes of public inspection. People make sex tapes of themselves and post them on the web; people exchange flirtatious emails via their Outlook systems at work with full knowledge that their companies hire email spies; people fix their hair and pick their butts in the mirrored domes of drugstore security cameras. It's like so many of us are dying to spill out our secrets to anyone who'll listen or watch-- and yet the surveillance anxiety persists, too. Last week, my team at work had a meeting in a room set up for focus groups-- complete with cameras in the corners, drop-down microphones and one of those single-sided mirrored windows-- and I felt nervous during the entire meeting that someone was on the other side of that mirror. And while this movie came out of a pre-internet era, it feels as though it anticipates all of the anxieties of early 21ist Century life.
Beyond that, James Spader is just so damn good. The character isn't as unabashedly freakish as some of his subsequent roles but he's not exactly well-adjusted either. The movie's pacing allows him so many conversational awkwardnesses and silences that a lesser actor might have been tempted to fill with chatter-- but Spader just lets the space between people become corpulent in its discomfort.
Seriously. Pull one of these off the shelf while you're breathlessly awaiting the results of my film festival samplings. They deserve revisitation. But I shan't keep you waiting for long, even anyway, my dear devoted readers (um... yeah, that's still just you, Mom!).
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Different anxieties, same ol' doom in the end
The entrance essay that I wrote to get into the school from which I received my undergraduate degree (Drew University) was all about how, not only was I convinced that Armageddon was right around the corner, but how I assumed that humankind, with all its simultaneous fragility and fury, would be wholly accountable for triggering the demise of its own species. Such an optimistic child of eighteen I was, wasn't I? I think I'd just watched some sort of new TV version of War of the Worlds (not the vomitously exploitative Tom Cruise version-- but some remake of the original radio play) the previous night and found myself newly troubled with a fear of the end of the world.
And truly, it seems that we humans have been scared to death that the sky was gonna fall on us pretty much as long as we've been sentient. This is why we have the Book of Revelations, which is, you know, a rather old document. And there are plenty of Doomsday predictions that predate Revelations, right? But there are also plenty of new anxiety-ridden films that seem to be sprouting up lately, aren't there? But the interesting part is that there seem to be two distinctly different tenors arising out of this more recent incarnation of apocalypse-fear.
On one hand, you've got the Left Behind boys. For any of my illustrious readers who might not have boned up on their Jesus-freak lit lately, Jerry Jenkins and Tim LeHaye are the two guys responsible for a laughable series of books-- and now movies, starring none other than Kirk Cameron-- about The End of Days. When I worked in a bookstore, the people looking for these books often also bought a lovely little piece of work entitled The Faith of George W. Bush-- and truly, has there ever been a more sure sign of impending death and destruction than the fact that the same folks who fear The Rapture have no fear whatsoever of our gigantic screw-up of a president? Seriously?! But all kidding aside, the idea behind these books is that, very soon, The Faithful will be lifted right outta their kitten heels and SUVs and taken straight to heaven, while the rest of us losers will be abandoned to the discretion of demons and fire-breathers and syphilitic lepers with bad breath and scabies. Oh, man! I can't wait!
And on the other hand, you've got another sort of dire prediction arising from an egghead-ier demographic--namely, scholars of ecology, economics, anthropology and sociology. And, of course, Al Gore! And Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novel V for Vendetta. And this brings me to my recent viewing of Children of Men. In many ways, this film is just another branch in the intellectual genealogy that includes all those folks like Orwell and Bradbury and Huxley and Rand and so on. But it's basic tweak is that humankind has been struck barren-- the question of whether this infertility is the product of pollution or nuclear fallout or divine punishment being exacted upon us is never fully answered, but we do know for sure that any and all members of our species are dropping like little radioactive flies-- and we can't seem to produce any replacements-- and it's our fault!!! In and of itself, the story is compelling because it feels timely and portentous, but then, most stories of this nature feel that way to me.
What's really and truly remarkable about this film, though, is its technical craftsmanship and artistry. There are several very carefully choreographed, very loooooong shots which build such a palpable sense of the characters' desperation that I found myself leaning forward off my couch several times. There's one scene, towards the end, in which, early on in the shot, blood gets spattered on the camera-- and doesn't get wiped off for a good five minutes as we watch our incidental hero (Clive Owen) duck and cover and scramble and trip and wriggle through and over and around the rubble of some English city that has become a bombed-out refugee camp. Frankly, I'm generally unimpressed with special effects in movies-- particularly those of the CG variety. But a carefully orchestrated synthesis of technical maneuverings and actorly emotiveness... well, OK, I bought it-- 100% bought it. And while I was completely aware that what I was watching was just so much filmmaking artifice, that artifice didn't , for once, manage to chuck me right out of the story in the way that most effect-heavy movies usually do.
Now, to make a more explicit contrast between the Left Behind movies and Children of Men, I'd like to offer that the former is uniquely American while the latter is pointedly British. American fundamentalist Christianity has taken on a curious countenance of primitive superstition. It strives for a purity of belief that cannot be dissuaded with any sort of evidence to the contrary-- and frequently invents mythologies that explain away that which cannot be accounted for in a hardline biblical interpretation. Truly, its singleness of mind is remarkable. And it is simultaneously a long, ominously black viper wriggling across the underbelly of American culture and a laughable, kitschy subject of derision -- like Elvis memorabilia or something.
Children of Men, on the other hand, in its best Queen's English, posits that England will be the last bastion of human civilization, and, as a result, all remaining survivors of nuclear holocaust and global warming and pestilence and strife must beg pitifully for entrance into Mother Britain. Indeed. Early in the film, as our hero boards a bus, we note a mounted TV screen on the bus that, in clear tribute to the Orwellian charactization of mass-indoctrination, runs an advertisement that has a series of pictures of the ways other countries around the world met their demises and then flashes a clever slogan: "England soldiers on." While I do not find it all that far-fetched to think that the belching, pawing, fossil-fuel drooling behemoth that is the current incarnation of The United Sates of America would be one of the first to fall in apocalyptic times, I am just a smidge skeptical that the Brits will be the ones left standing. I mean, Tony Blair's still on our side for the time being. This does not bode well for them, I think.
However, this movie is also able to use its Anglophilia to brilliant and pointed end. The final scene (yep, it's me, your favorite spoiler, once again) has a girl-- who's just birthed the first baby the world's seen in 18 years-- in a tiny rowboat, in the middle of a fog, off the coast of England. And she's being picked up by a boat run by this mysterious organization called the Human Project, allegedly, the saviors of humanity. But what I found so striking about this image is that it's so clearly a Return-of-the-king moment. Mists? Off the coast of England? Is it not our very Arthur reborn, and just in the nick of time? I thought it was a particularly well-conceived and cleverly executed way to end this movie. And had it not been so very British, I'm not so sure that this sort of referencing of a particularly nationalistic sort of mythology would have played nearly so well.
Also of note, in the bonus material on the DVD, there was a little documentary full of assorted eggheads opining on the end of the world-- and I highly highly highly recommend this documentary. Because these economists and ecologists and sociologists are all using their respective vocabularies to say essentially the same thing, their conflated message is moving, terrifying and elucidating. And there's this one great character of a guy--with a strong Eastern European accent and one of those lisps that makes him whistle all his S's-- who has a very interesting (though much different from my own) interpretation of the boat scene at the end. OK, really? this short-form documentary is the best part of the movie, in my opinion-- that is, if you enjoy watching nerds get excited about their respective fields of expertise, particularly if that field of expertise has a political angle. And I for one am not ashamed to admit that excited nerds get me all excited, too.
Oh. Yeah. I've probably just implicated myself in nerdiness here, too, huh? Yes, and I OWN that!
And truly, it seems that we humans have been scared to death that the sky was gonna fall on us pretty much as long as we've been sentient. This is why we have the Book of Revelations, which is, you know, a rather old document. And there are plenty of Doomsday predictions that predate Revelations, right? But there are also plenty of new anxiety-ridden films that seem to be sprouting up lately, aren't there? But the interesting part is that there seem to be two distinctly different tenors arising out of this more recent incarnation of apocalypse-fear.
On one hand, you've got the Left Behind boys. For any of my illustrious readers who might not have boned up on their Jesus-freak lit lately, Jerry Jenkins and Tim LeHaye are the two guys responsible for a laughable series of books-- and now movies, starring none other than Kirk Cameron-- about The End of Days. When I worked in a bookstore, the people looking for these books often also bought a lovely little piece of work entitled The Faith of George W. Bush-- and truly, has there ever been a more sure sign of impending death and destruction than the fact that the same folks who fear The Rapture have no fear whatsoever of our gigantic screw-up of a president? Seriously?! But all kidding aside, the idea behind these books is that, very soon, The Faithful will be lifted right outta their kitten heels and SUVs and taken straight to heaven, while the rest of us losers will be abandoned to the discretion of demons and fire-breathers and syphilitic lepers with bad breath and scabies. Oh, man! I can't wait!
And on the other hand, you've got another sort of dire prediction arising from an egghead-ier demographic--namely, scholars of ecology, economics, anthropology and sociology. And, of course, Al Gore! And Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novel V for Vendetta. And this brings me to my recent viewing of Children of Men. In many ways, this film is just another branch in the intellectual genealogy that includes all those folks like Orwell and Bradbury and Huxley and Rand and so on. But it's basic tweak is that humankind has been struck barren-- the question of whether this infertility is the product of pollution or nuclear fallout or divine punishment being exacted upon us is never fully answered, but we do know for sure that any and all members of our species are dropping like little radioactive flies-- and we can't seem to produce any replacements-- and it's our fault!!! In and of itself, the story is compelling because it feels timely and portentous, but then, most stories of this nature feel that way to me.
What's really and truly remarkable about this film, though, is its technical craftsmanship and artistry. There are several very carefully choreographed, very loooooong shots which build such a palpable sense of the characters' desperation that I found myself leaning forward off my couch several times. There's one scene, towards the end, in which, early on in the shot, blood gets spattered on the camera-- and doesn't get wiped off for a good five minutes as we watch our incidental hero (Clive Owen) duck and cover and scramble and trip and wriggle through and over and around the rubble of some English city that has become a bombed-out refugee camp. Frankly, I'm generally unimpressed with special effects in movies-- particularly those of the CG variety. But a carefully orchestrated synthesis of technical maneuverings and actorly emotiveness... well, OK, I bought it-- 100% bought it. And while I was completely aware that what I was watching was just so much filmmaking artifice, that artifice didn't , for once, manage to chuck me right out of the story in the way that most effect-heavy movies usually do.
Now, to make a more explicit contrast between the Left Behind movies and Children of Men, I'd like to offer that the former is uniquely American while the latter is pointedly British. American fundamentalist Christianity has taken on a curious countenance of primitive superstition. It strives for a purity of belief that cannot be dissuaded with any sort of evidence to the contrary-- and frequently invents mythologies that explain away that which cannot be accounted for in a hardline biblical interpretation. Truly, its singleness of mind is remarkable. And it is simultaneously a long, ominously black viper wriggling across the underbelly of American culture and a laughable, kitschy subject of derision -- like Elvis memorabilia or something.
Children of Men, on the other hand, in its best Queen's English, posits that England will be the last bastion of human civilization, and, as a result, all remaining survivors of nuclear holocaust and global warming and pestilence and strife must beg pitifully for entrance into Mother Britain. Indeed. Early in the film, as our hero boards a bus, we note a mounted TV screen on the bus that, in clear tribute to the Orwellian charactization of mass-indoctrination, runs an advertisement that has a series of pictures of the ways other countries around the world met their demises and then flashes a clever slogan: "England soldiers on." While I do not find it all that far-fetched to think that the belching, pawing, fossil-fuel drooling behemoth that is the current incarnation of The United Sates of America would be one of the first to fall in apocalyptic times, I am just a smidge skeptical that the Brits will be the ones left standing. I mean, Tony Blair's still on our side for the time being. This does not bode well for them, I think.
However, this movie is also able to use its Anglophilia to brilliant and pointed end. The final scene (yep, it's me, your favorite spoiler, once again) has a girl-- who's just birthed the first baby the world's seen in 18 years-- in a tiny rowboat, in the middle of a fog, off the coast of England. And she's being picked up by a boat run by this mysterious organization called the Human Project, allegedly, the saviors of humanity. But what I found so striking about this image is that it's so clearly a Return-of-the-king moment. Mists? Off the coast of England? Is it not our very Arthur reborn, and just in the nick of time? I thought it was a particularly well-conceived and cleverly executed way to end this movie. And had it not been so very British, I'm not so sure that this sort of referencing of a particularly nationalistic sort of mythology would have played nearly so well.
Also of note, in the bonus material on the DVD, there was a little documentary full of assorted eggheads opining on the end of the world-- and I highly highly highly recommend this documentary. Because these economists and ecologists and sociologists are all using their respective vocabularies to say essentially the same thing, their conflated message is moving, terrifying and elucidating. And there's this one great character of a guy--with a strong Eastern European accent and one of those lisps that makes him whistle all his S's-- who has a very interesting (though much different from my own) interpretation of the boat scene at the end. OK, really? this short-form documentary is the best part of the movie, in my opinion-- that is, if you enjoy watching nerds get excited about their respective fields of expertise, particularly if that field of expertise has a political angle. And I for one am not ashamed to admit that excited nerds get me all excited, too.
Oh. Yeah. I've probably just implicated myself in nerdiness here, too, huh? Yes, and I OWN that!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Don't get mad; get plaid!
I was going to write a short comment in response to the post about mandated high school attire in Nashville over on Jon's blog, but I got going in my comment window and realized I have more to say here than I thought.
The truth is, I don't really have a strong enough opinion about this to really offer anything terribly interesting here but I can say this: having gone to a high school where uniforms--not the khaki pants and polo shirt, but plaid skirts and saddle oxfords--were required, I really found the uniform rather empowering. I mean, the Catholic schoolgirl image is an American pornographic icon-- and because we weren't religiously affiliated, we got to hem our skirts so short as to blur the line between "skirt" and "belt." The sexual heritage of that uniform is a really rich ground from which a young hyper-sexual girl such as my high school self could draw a certain variety of self-affirmation. In retrospect, of course, I realize that those uniforms were really not terribly flattering-- the skirts were too high-waisted, the blobby sweatshirts we all wore all winter long were pretty damn hideous, and a yellow oxford-cloth shirt (2 sizes too big-- to hide your over-developed/under-developed boobs--I had the latter) just doesn't look that good on anyone.
But, now, the most common complaint from the other girls was that the uniform "prevented us from expressing ourselves." And while I do agree that clothing is one way in which kids can and do "express themselves," wearing a uniform provided an opportunity for me to decide that no matter what I wore, I was really very dissimilar to the other Harpeth Hall girls. And even now that I'm an adult, I tend to dress somewhere more on the conservative side, with a little too much cleavage now and again (oh, and, well, with liberal applications of various pairs of fuck-me shoes). And while my clothing, I'm sure, engenders opinions from other folks, it's certainly not the last word on my personality. Really, once I open my mouth, people generally appreciate my relative freakishness with great speed. So what I'm saying is, the self-expression argument doesn't hold much water with me.
There is, however, one of Jon's points that does, in fact, hold plenty of water for me. That argument being the cost thing. I went to a fancy-pants private school. I mean, quite literally, I'd bump into a cranky first-thing-in-the-morning Reese Witherspoon with her big black horn-rimmed glasses and her stringy-from-the-shower hair every morning by the lockers. Harpeth Hall, with its rolling lawns and big white-pillared buildings and state-of-the-art Fine Arts building is like another planet when compared to your average Nashville public school. My parents could afford two or three high-waisted plaid skirts. Joe Schoolboy from Stratford High in East Nashville? Maybe, maybe not... the point is, he shouldn't be required to publicize his parents' socio-economic status via the conduit of his clothing. I doubt that would be the sort of self-expression some of these kids are arguing for, right? Of course, the argument here is that dressing all the kids in the same clothes will help erase class strata in the classroom... but you just know there are plenty of kids who get by wearing hand-me-downs.. and those are the ones who'll be having the hardest time dressing within the confines of the dress code every morning. And aren't they the ones proponents argue will be helped the most? I'm skeptical.
And, truthfully, khaki pants and tucked-in shirts are a whole lot more Orwell and a whole lot less Jenna Jamison. Had I been forced to wear nothing but khaki for the duration of my early education, I might not have been so complacent as I was in my plaid. And, I know, I know... staid grown-up that I am, I supposed to think it's bad when kids look too sexy. But-- and I've made this argument plenty of times before--teenagers have sexual agency! And, within reason, what the hell is so wrong with enjoying your pre-spare-tire body?
So maybe this is the thing: if we ban khaki and institute an all-plaid clothing policy... and help the kids parse out the cultural mythologizing of what the plaid has come to mean... maybe everyone-- dirty old men included-- will be just thrilled with the whatever dress codes Metro Nashville decides to put in place.
The truth is, I don't really have a strong enough opinion about this to really offer anything terribly interesting here but I can say this: having gone to a high school where uniforms--not the khaki pants and polo shirt, but plaid skirts and saddle oxfords--were required, I really found the uniform rather empowering. I mean, the Catholic schoolgirl image is an American pornographic icon-- and because we weren't religiously affiliated, we got to hem our skirts so short as to blur the line between "skirt" and "belt." The sexual heritage of that uniform is a really rich ground from which a young hyper-sexual girl such as my high school self could draw a certain variety of self-affirmation. In retrospect, of course, I realize that those uniforms were really not terribly flattering-- the skirts were too high-waisted, the blobby sweatshirts we all wore all winter long were pretty damn hideous, and a yellow oxford-cloth shirt (2 sizes too big-- to hide your over-developed/under-developed boobs--I had the latter) just doesn't look that good on anyone.
But, now, the most common complaint from the other girls was that the uniform "prevented us from expressing ourselves." And while I do agree that clothing is one way in which kids can and do "express themselves," wearing a uniform provided an opportunity for me to decide that no matter what I wore, I was really very dissimilar to the other Harpeth Hall girls. And even now that I'm an adult, I tend to dress somewhere more on the conservative side, with a little too much cleavage now and again (oh, and, well, with liberal applications of various pairs of fuck-me shoes). And while my clothing, I'm sure, engenders opinions from other folks, it's certainly not the last word on my personality. Really, once I open my mouth, people generally appreciate my relative freakishness with great speed. So what I'm saying is, the self-expression argument doesn't hold much water with me.
There is, however, one of Jon's points that does, in fact, hold plenty of water for me. That argument being the cost thing. I went to a fancy-pants private school. I mean, quite literally, I'd bump into a cranky first-thing-in-the-morning Reese Witherspoon with her big black horn-rimmed glasses and her stringy-from-the-shower hair every morning by the lockers. Harpeth Hall, with its rolling lawns and big white-pillared buildings and state-of-the-art Fine Arts building is like another planet when compared to your average Nashville public school. My parents could afford two or three high-waisted plaid skirts. Joe Schoolboy from Stratford High in East Nashville? Maybe, maybe not... the point is, he shouldn't be required to publicize his parents' socio-economic status via the conduit of his clothing. I doubt that would be the sort of self-expression some of these kids are arguing for, right? Of course, the argument here is that dressing all the kids in the same clothes will help erase class strata in the classroom... but you just know there are plenty of kids who get by wearing hand-me-downs.. and those are the ones who'll be having the hardest time dressing within the confines of the dress code every morning. And aren't they the ones proponents argue will be helped the most? I'm skeptical.
And, truthfully, khaki pants and tucked-in shirts are a whole lot more Orwell and a whole lot less Jenna Jamison. Had I been forced to wear nothing but khaki for the duration of my early education, I might not have been so complacent as I was in my plaid. And, I know, I know... staid grown-up that I am, I supposed to think it's bad when kids look too sexy. But-- and I've made this argument plenty of times before--teenagers have sexual agency! And, within reason, what the hell is so wrong with enjoying your pre-spare-tire body?
So maybe this is the thing: if we ban khaki and institute an all-plaid clothing policy... and help the kids parse out the cultural mythologizing of what the plaid has come to mean... maybe everyone-- dirty old men included-- will be just thrilled with the whatever dress codes Metro Nashville decides to put in place.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Daddy issues
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw,
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
Apologies. Every so often, a girl's just gotta quote Plath.
And tonight, I do so with purpose. The last time I went to see the woman to whom I often refer as simply "The Psychic," I'd spent the entire previous night awake with a guy with whom I knew good and well I had no future. And in that session, she told me that I'd been that very same guy's father in a previous life (sorry, honey, she said it... I know you think it's crap, but I'm not making it up). And she also issued forth a rather ominous warning that women tend to marry their fathers, regardless of the anxieties exacted upon us by our fathers ... a la the Plath quotation above. Truth be told, this is a recurrent quandary for me anyway. While I've gotten along rather well, for some years now, with my own father, I certainly do not want to live out my duration with a knee-jerkily reactive and jealous person such that he is.
Alongside this train of thought regarding fathers in general, and my own in particular, is a train of thought about what an audience in general and me in particular looks for in a film. Recently, a friend of mine made an assumption that I would enjoy a particular movie-- of a genre I generally deem "a waste of time"-- because he thought I had something in common with the main character. Now, really, I do not seek out films to which I hope to "relate" in some way. This idea of relatability strikes me as very Oprah Book Club...and simply not a priority for my in terms of what I look for in an aesthetic experience. After all, if someone makes a movie about it, it damn well better be more interesting that my little life, right?
That said, every once in a while, a little movie shows up in which I recognize some aspect that is so particularly human that I can't help but acknowledge seeing an all-to-familiar molecule of myself therein. And it is Come Early Morning that reflects back some of my sins-of-the-father issues. This is Joey Lauren Adams' directorial debut, and damn if it isn't pretty good. Ashley Judd plays a drunk-a-little-too-often girl who seems to be working far too hard to scrounge up some male affection. And when some poor guy actually delivers, she transmogrifies into a polluted dervish of boy-repellent. Why? Because, of course, her father is a taciturn, affection-withholding, artistically stunted, drunken ne'er-do-well himself!
The thing is, all of the characters in this film seem as though they've been plucked right outta family therapy on Party of 5 or something. Their foibles are nothing new. However, they're all just a little bit smarter than prime time television. In one scene, Judd's character goes to speak with her father-- invites herself into his home, because he won't do so himself-- and ostensibly, he's heard through the small-town rumor mill about all the man-trouble into which she's gotten herself. But she just wants to talk. Instead, he plays his guitar for her. And at first, this frustrates her-- until she realizes that this is how he--sufferer of extreme stage-fight that he is-- lets her in and accesses his own conflicted feelings about their relationship. So, while this moment doesn't, by any means, repair thr rended fabric of their relationship, she suddenly realizes that she'd misinterpreted her own father for pretty much her entire life. That's a big damn deal, you know?
And were I to happen upon such a moment in my own life, I'd like to think I'd know I'd accomplished something. So, dammit, although I'd really rather shy away from insinuating my own life onto all these celluloid stories, well, here, it seems to have happened. And, as a result, it seems I'm unable to offer much commentary other than "I like this movie a whole lot." And, yeah, I know, it's not really about me at all.
However, seeing as this post is already all about me, I now ask, self-servingly, what does it say about me that I relate more to a furious sexpot relationship-saboteur than a kicky urban career girl who actually manages to land her (trite, one-dimensional, tiresome) boyfriend/job-of-choice in the end? I shall not name to the movie to which I'm referring here, but let's just say, I've already disparaged it in a previous post...
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw,
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
Apologies. Every so often, a girl's just gotta quote Plath.
And tonight, I do so with purpose. The last time I went to see the woman to whom I often refer as simply "The Psychic," I'd spent the entire previous night awake with a guy with whom I knew good and well I had no future. And in that session, she told me that I'd been that very same guy's father in a previous life (sorry, honey, she said it... I know you think it's crap, but I'm not making it up). And she also issued forth a rather ominous warning that women tend to marry their fathers, regardless of the anxieties exacted upon us by our fathers ... a la the Plath quotation above. Truth be told, this is a recurrent quandary for me anyway. While I've gotten along rather well, for some years now, with my own father, I certainly do not want to live out my duration with a knee-jerkily reactive and jealous person such that he is.
Alongside this train of thought regarding fathers in general, and my own in particular, is a train of thought about what an audience in general and me in particular looks for in a film. Recently, a friend of mine made an assumption that I would enjoy a particular movie-- of a genre I generally deem "a waste of time"-- because he thought I had something in common with the main character. Now, really, I do not seek out films to which I hope to "relate" in some way. This idea of relatability strikes me as very Oprah Book Club...and simply not a priority for my in terms of what I look for in an aesthetic experience. After all, if someone makes a movie about it, it damn well better be more interesting that my little life, right?
That said, every once in a while, a little movie shows up in which I recognize some aspect that is so particularly human that I can't help but acknowledge seeing an all-to-familiar molecule of myself therein. And it is Come Early Morning that reflects back some of my sins-of-the-father issues. This is Joey Lauren Adams' directorial debut, and damn if it isn't pretty good. Ashley Judd plays a drunk-a-little-too-often girl who seems to be working far too hard to scrounge up some male affection. And when some poor guy actually delivers, she transmogrifies into a polluted dervish of boy-repellent. Why? Because, of course, her father is a taciturn, affection-withholding, artistically stunted, drunken ne'er-do-well himself!
The thing is, all of the characters in this film seem as though they've been plucked right outta family therapy on Party of 5 or something. Their foibles are nothing new. However, they're all just a little bit smarter than prime time television. In one scene, Judd's character goes to speak with her father-- invites herself into his home, because he won't do so himself-- and ostensibly, he's heard through the small-town rumor mill about all the man-trouble into which she's gotten herself. But she just wants to talk. Instead, he plays his guitar for her. And at first, this frustrates her-- until she realizes that this is how he--sufferer of extreme stage-fight that he is-- lets her in and accesses his own conflicted feelings about their relationship. So, while this moment doesn't, by any means, repair thr rended fabric of their relationship, she suddenly realizes that she'd misinterpreted her own father for pretty much her entire life. That's a big damn deal, you know?
And were I to happen upon such a moment in my own life, I'd like to think I'd know I'd accomplished something. So, dammit, although I'd really rather shy away from insinuating my own life onto all these celluloid stories, well, here, it seems to have happened. And, as a result, it seems I'm unable to offer much commentary other than "I like this movie a whole lot." And, yeah, I know, it's not really about me at all.
However, seeing as this post is already all about me, I now ask, self-servingly, what does it say about me that I relate more to a furious sexpot relationship-saboteur than a kicky urban career girl who actually manages to land her (trite, one-dimensional, tiresome) boyfriend/job-of-choice in the end? I shall not name to the movie to which I'm referring here, but let's just say, I've already disparaged it in a previous post...
Sunday, April 1, 2007
April is National Poetry Month (Period)
During my three years of blissfully part-time employment at the UofA Poetry Center, today would mark the annual changing of the banner on the front of our (now bulldozed) little stucco house. Or really, at some point in early April, I'd drive to work and notice, hey! the Poetry Month banner is up! But apparently, there had been some controversy about this very banner. From what I understand, the damn thing had to go back and forth from the printer several times because "April is National Poetry Month." is a complete sentence... and some felt the rules for bannerness negated the need for correct punctuation while others felt correct syntax was paramount. The punctuation sticklers won out. And now, during this month, every time I have to datestamp something, I hear "April is National Poetry Month (period)" in my head.
This is all just to say, Happy Month to all those who are poetically inclined. Bless you all. And let the media spotlight shine a little brighter on your deserving work during this very special time of year.
Isn't it cool how the vocabulary of Christmas almost, very nearly, applies?
This is all just to say, Happy Month to all those who are poetically inclined. Bless you all. And let the media spotlight shine a little brighter on your deserving work during this very special time of year.
Isn't it cool how the vocabulary of Christmas almost, very nearly, applies?
Monday, March 26, 2007
I am still me I am still me I am still me I am still me
Last week, I acquired my very own single office at work. When I first learned about this, I was quite sad as my former officemate is adorable and often offered me a much-desired distraction from work by sharing the ongoing tribulations of planning her wedding with me. And though I miss her (well, really, she's now next door to the communal printer and I can get a Celeste fix whenever I really need one), I've realized I can decorate my office with all manner of weirdness and no one can say a word!
This weekend, I bought some images for my walls with the idea that having weird things around me will contantly remind me that I'm weird myself, and will prevent me from assimilating into the corporate morass, even though I feel it licking hungrily at my heels every day.
Here's a list of my purchases:
Symphony for Felicia, Joan Snyder.
Snyder's a neo-abstract-expressionist lesbian painter... and the painting officially lives at the High Museum in Atlanta, a place that I love. This particular painting has slightly more subtle vaginal imagery than most of Snyder's other work, so I figured it wouldn't offend anyone. And hey, one of my colleagues has her little Georgia O'Keefes all over her office... a few more pictures of vaginae aren't gonna hurt anybody.
Blue Mountain, Vassily Kandinsky
This is a really gorgeous early, more representational Kandinsky than most. As I love to read the first books of poets, I find that I often also love the earlier, more formative work of big deal painters-- the stuff that shows where and how they learned their lessons, the stuff that's a little less iconic. Pasiphae, that transitional Pollock painting, has always been my favorite of his... mostly because it so obviously shows all his growing pains. I think this work shows a similar stage in Kandinsky's development.
I, and the Village, Marc Chagall
I once spent an entire afternoon at MoMA stairing at nothing but this painting. I mean, I made a special trip into NYC just to go spend time with it. I love it for all its otherworldliness, its nostalgia, and also because Chagall uses more green in the composition than one can usually get away with. A predominately green painting will, more often than not, fall flat. Trust me, I've tried -- green paintings are just hard to pull off. But this one totally glitters.
Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, Maryland, Diane Arbus
Who doesn't need a picture of a circus freak on her wall at work to remind her of her own freakishness?
publicity poster for Cremaster 5, Matthew Barney
Really, this is just a big, slightly creepy photo of some severed doll heads and Barney himself covered in some white powder. However, it has the word "cremaster" in large typeface across the bottom of it. And though I doubt anyone would actually make a big deal about it, I'm really putting it on my wall because not too many people actually know what the cremaster is... and because I know a few folks from my office read my blog, I'll allow their curiosity to goad them into googling it themselves, instead of spelling it out here. They all pretty much know I have the dirtiest mind in the building anyway. But god knows I love the fact that artists like Barney exist (see my July 25th, 2006 post for more about Barney)-- because someone has to do that purposefully rarified, whacked-out stuff, right?
And so, in this way, I hope to not lose track of myself.
This weekend, I bought some images for my walls with the idea that having weird things around me will contantly remind me that I'm weird myself, and will prevent me from assimilating into the corporate morass, even though I feel it licking hungrily at my heels every day.
Here's a list of my purchases:
Symphony for Felicia, Joan Snyder.
Snyder's a neo-abstract-expressionist lesbian painter... and the painting officially lives at the High Museum in Atlanta, a place that I love. This particular painting has slightly more subtle vaginal imagery than most of Snyder's other work, so I figured it wouldn't offend anyone. And hey, one of my colleagues has her little Georgia O'Keefes all over her office... a few more pictures of vaginae aren't gonna hurt anybody.
Blue Mountain, Vassily Kandinsky
This is a really gorgeous early, more representational Kandinsky than most. As I love to read the first books of poets, I find that I often also love the earlier, more formative work of big deal painters-- the stuff that shows where and how they learned their lessons, the stuff that's a little less iconic. Pasiphae, that transitional Pollock painting, has always been my favorite of his... mostly because it so obviously shows all his growing pains. I think this work shows a similar stage in Kandinsky's development.
I, and the Village, Marc Chagall
I once spent an entire afternoon at MoMA stairing at nothing but this painting. I mean, I made a special trip into NYC just to go spend time with it. I love it for all its otherworldliness, its nostalgia, and also because Chagall uses more green in the composition than one can usually get away with. A predominately green painting will, more often than not, fall flat. Trust me, I've tried -- green paintings are just hard to pull off. But this one totally glitters.
Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, Maryland, Diane Arbus
Who doesn't need a picture of a circus freak on her wall at work to remind her of her own freakishness?
publicity poster for Cremaster 5, Matthew Barney
Really, this is just a big, slightly creepy photo of some severed doll heads and Barney himself covered in some white powder. However, it has the word "cremaster" in large typeface across the bottom of it. And though I doubt anyone would actually make a big deal about it, I'm really putting it on my wall because not too many people actually know what the cremaster is... and because I know a few folks from my office read my blog, I'll allow their curiosity to goad them into googling it themselves, instead of spelling it out here. They all pretty much know I have the dirtiest mind in the building anyway. But god knows I love the fact that artists like Barney exist (see my July 25th, 2006 post for more about Barney)-- because someone has to do that purposefully rarified, whacked-out stuff, right?
And so, in this way, I hope to not lose track of myself.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Time for another round-up
So what happens when I watch a bunch of movies that I like well enough but don't have a hell of a lot to say about them? I write pointless capsule reviews so that I have an excuse to post something... anything... Seems the only way I can keep the writerly water running is to leave the faucet constantly dripping. Otherwise, we return to the desert... which is good for alleviating the frizz in my hair, but not so good in terms of its metaphoric repercussions on my creative drive. *sigh.*
A few weeks ago, I watched A Guide for Recognizing your Saints and liked it quite a lot. It really has quite a heart and Rosario Dawson's brief little performance pretty much steels the whole movie. And I really couldn't accurately opine on how Robert Downey, Jr. has become the actor that he is, but there's some real ache he put into this character that I've only ever seen in glimpses from him before now. And, Jesus, he is aging well. Those new lines in his face lend him a particular sex appeal that he lacked as a preternaturally red-mouthed youth. Wow, I'm not saying anything at all about this movie, am I? Well, no matter. See it for RD, Jr, Rosario Dawson and Chaz Palminteri. Oh, and the final credits run to that old Kiss song "New York Groove" and somehow, it totally works. It's worth it.
I also saw two movies about folks who seem to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, back to back. I was hoping the comparison would lead to a blog post unto itself, but I wasn't overwhelmed one way or the other by either of them. The first was Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I felt like this movie was a very stylishly executed romantic comedy. At it's heart, it's a chick-flick all the way. It's just that there are several good bits with animated corrugated cardboard and a felt horse-- and Gael Garcia Bernal's typical pathos-- that at least give you more to look at that more average fare for this genre. Though, I wonder if Bernal's character had just a smidgen of Asberger's Syndrome or something... he's like a sexy retard. Could that be a thing that exists?
Well, anyway, my intended counterpoint to The Science of Sleep was Terry Gilliam's thing, Tideland. And I'm not sure where exactly this movie took a wrong turn... but perhaps it was Gilliam's totally patronizing introduction in which he claimed some people would love this movie while some would hate it, that children are resilient and that the movie might be disturbing but it was "innocent" because it was from a child's perspective. Come. On! Children are both resilient and innocent? This is something we MUST be told in order to understand his deeply artistic vision for this movie? Whatever. But moving on, I had a hell of a time staying awake for the duration. I mean, there's a kid crawling all over the corpse of her father, some blinky Barbie doll heads and and a tweaky dreadlocked chick fucking the grocery delivery boy and some hyper-colored cinematography... and even with all that,-- all those images that ostensibly should evoke the goldmine of the subconscious-- this movie just bored me. Though, I would like to offer that Jennifer Tilly is friggin' great for the 5 minutes in which she's in it and Jeff Bridges' character seems to be something like Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys, though 20 years aged. I think Gilliam just likes that guy and wants to put him where ever he can.
And then there's La Mujer De Mi Hermano. It's a well-dressed little Mexican sex drama about a gay guy, his wife and his brother. Or rather, it's about a woman, her gay husband and his virile but assholic brother. And, boy, those folks sure are pretty. However, in the course of the story, during the part when we're not supposed to know that the husband is gay, I kept getting uncomfortable as he adopted more and more tritely effeminate gestures. He insists on wearing two pairs of socks because he doesn't like his dainty little tootsies to get cold. There's more than one reference to back-waxing... that sort of thing. And so, OK, I get it. Obsessing over one's appearance and bodily comfort = gay. Being a slovenly womanizer = stud. Got it! I'm so glad someone clued me in regarding these social cues. And the ending sat somewhat uncomfortably with me as well-- or maybe I just felt it was unsatisfying. She, of course, gets pregnant via the brother, tells the brother (who tries to convince her to abort it), tells the husband (who says he'll raise it so long as he can have sex with men every now and again without her complaining), and thusly, the couple appeases the husband's grandbaby-hungry mom and the brother goes on thinking the husband has no idea the baby isn't his and they all live deceptively but quasi-happily ever after. Oh, and there's this totally unnecessary subtext between the two brothers that the gay one molested the straight one when they were kids---because OF COURSE it's only logical that any old queer would also be inclined to engage in incestuous pederasty. Of course! So, while this movie appears to be trying really hard to "be sensitive to the plight of The Gays," it just somehow missed its mark. Though Barbara Mori is one hot chick.
And on the tail of that sex drama, I watched Conversations with Other Women, yet another sex drama. What? As if any among you, my paltry yet loyal audience, have not yet ascertained my fixation on sexual politics, both intimate and social... don't look at me that way... But anyway, most of the interest in this movie surrounds this gimicky split-screen tactic that the director took. I think he filmed it that way for two reasons: 1) So that he could tell the flashback parts simultaneously with the present parts and 2) so that he didn't privilege the point of view of one character over the other. And while that's interesting in theory, after about 15 minutes of not knowing exactly where to look, I kinda started to ignore it. And because I was able to ignore it, I'm not sure it was all that successful. However, as always, I find Helena Bonham Carter fascinating to watch. She's so pretty and fragile and perpetually detached... and a little bit of a sour puss. Actually, she smiles more in this movie than in practically any other movie in which I've seen her... and her smile actually makes her face appear more pinched and anxious than ever. But the movie, overall, is modest and well-paced. And as a particularly careful disregard for resolution. The two characters were once married, lost touch, meet up again, have sex, he pleads for her to come back to him, she leaves to go back to her new family. It's not complicated but it's underplayed and resonant.
And so, I buckled and rented The Departed even though I wasn't all that excited about it. And basically, it's an entertaining movie. Entertaining. Nicholson played the same old smarmy, unctuous turd he's been playing for years, Whalberg played a tiny role exactly as it was written, and Vera Farmiga's police shrink was really the most luminous character there in. So, firstly, let me say what annoyed me in this movie, just to get it off my chest: rapid-fire murders were funny and video-game-like at the beginning Desperado. But as a method of resolution in a movie that won Best Picture? I just want MORE! I found them anticlimactic and very pat. By the time the movie got around to killing everyone off, well, yeah, of course, all those lousy SOBs had to die... and some not-so-lousy SOBS too, just for good measure. sure. Why not? And then there's that stupid rat crawling across the windowsill at the end? Why on earth would Scorcese put that absurd image there? I mean, everyone likes to pat themselves on the back for their own cleverness now and again, but, please, Marty, that was just self-indulgent.
Now, although I'm predisposed not really get as excited about primarily plot-driven movies, I do actually have some nice things to say about The Departed, too. I gotta say, DiCaprio did a better job than I would have anticipated with his role. His character didn't have a chip on his shoulder in the way I might have expected... he was legitimately petrified throughout. The way DiCaprio contains and judiciously releases that character's anxieties give a little glimpse of that of which he is capable of doing as an actor.
However, because DiCaprio seems to be one of those celebrities about which everyone has an opinion, well, it's difficult to judge his performances without having to negotiate his sometimes-questionable stature as a sex symbol-- and the fact that his public persona pretty much always supersedes whatever acting skill he may or may not have. As my friend Bob recently said, his face is actually a little "rodent-y." And really, I don't think he'll age well. He was pretty and smooth-skinned and sexually non-threatening when he first became famous-- all prerequisites for being the sort of fellow thirteen-year-old girls squeal about. But now he constantly sports patchy facial hair and squints a lot, and is a little twitchy. However, he has this really dynamic moment wherein he shows up at the shrink's house all rabbity, but, again trying to bottle the rush of it all... and he flips some switch and shifts almost imperceptibly. One second, he's like a caged puppy and the next, he quite purposefully re-channels all that animal energy into something sexual... and he approaches her.. and in his demonstration of this confusion of instinctual behaviors, I got it-- I finally understood why he's a sex symbol. And that's it, right? That conflation of intellectual intention and bodily experience-- well, that's where you find that flintspark every time. Of course, then he jumped back into himself pretty shortly thereafter. But the few moments of real humanity, like that one, that wrenched themselves through the scrim of genre fiction made The Departed interesting even for a tired movie cynic like me.
And on that note, I now have to completely undermine that very assertion of my own cynicism that I just made. Yesterday morning, I flipped on the TV and found an old childhood favorite on cable. The Last Unicorn was a movie I used to watch as though it were looped on the living room TV when I was little. It's an old anime that came out in the early 80s and the animation is just gorgeous. It's voiced by Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow-- and I still adore this little movie, despite the fact that someone should have told Mia Farrow she can't sing for shit. Watching it now, I'm a little surprised that, even as a six-year-old, I was so enamored of such a sad story-- one without much in terms of a happy ending, even. And now, as a grown up, it would be so easy to interpret the story as a metaphor of trauma and recovery. But that's kinda beside the point. It's sad and smart and really very pretty... and sometimes, that's enough.
A few weeks ago, I watched A Guide for Recognizing your Saints and liked it quite a lot. It really has quite a heart and Rosario Dawson's brief little performance pretty much steels the whole movie. And I really couldn't accurately opine on how Robert Downey, Jr. has become the actor that he is, but there's some real ache he put into this character that I've only ever seen in glimpses from him before now. And, Jesus, he is aging well. Those new lines in his face lend him a particular sex appeal that he lacked as a preternaturally red-mouthed youth. Wow, I'm not saying anything at all about this movie, am I? Well, no matter. See it for RD, Jr, Rosario Dawson and Chaz Palminteri. Oh, and the final credits run to that old Kiss song "New York Groove" and somehow, it totally works. It's worth it.
I also saw two movies about folks who seem to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, back to back. I was hoping the comparison would lead to a blog post unto itself, but I wasn't overwhelmed one way or the other by either of them. The first was Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I felt like this movie was a very stylishly executed romantic comedy. At it's heart, it's a chick-flick all the way. It's just that there are several good bits with animated corrugated cardboard and a felt horse-- and Gael Garcia Bernal's typical pathos-- that at least give you more to look at that more average fare for this genre. Though, I wonder if Bernal's character had just a smidgen of Asberger's Syndrome or something... he's like a sexy retard. Could that be a thing that exists?
Well, anyway, my intended counterpoint to The Science of Sleep was Terry Gilliam's thing, Tideland. And I'm not sure where exactly this movie took a wrong turn... but perhaps it was Gilliam's totally patronizing introduction in which he claimed some people would love this movie while some would hate it, that children are resilient and that the movie might be disturbing but it was "innocent" because it was from a child's perspective. Come. On! Children are both resilient and innocent? This is something we MUST be told in order to understand his deeply artistic vision for this movie? Whatever. But moving on, I had a hell of a time staying awake for the duration. I mean, there's a kid crawling all over the corpse of her father, some blinky Barbie doll heads and and a tweaky dreadlocked chick fucking the grocery delivery boy and some hyper-colored cinematography... and even with all that,-- all those images that ostensibly should evoke the goldmine of the subconscious-- this movie just bored me. Though, I would like to offer that Jennifer Tilly is friggin' great for the 5 minutes in which she's in it and Jeff Bridges' character seems to be something like Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys, though 20 years aged. I think Gilliam just likes that guy and wants to put him where ever he can.
And then there's La Mujer De Mi Hermano. It's a well-dressed little Mexican sex drama about a gay guy, his wife and his brother. Or rather, it's about a woman, her gay husband and his virile but assholic brother. And, boy, those folks sure are pretty. However, in the course of the story, during the part when we're not supposed to know that the husband is gay, I kept getting uncomfortable as he adopted more and more tritely effeminate gestures. He insists on wearing two pairs of socks because he doesn't like his dainty little tootsies to get cold. There's more than one reference to back-waxing... that sort of thing. And so, OK, I get it. Obsessing over one's appearance and bodily comfort = gay. Being a slovenly womanizer = stud. Got it! I'm so glad someone clued me in regarding these social cues. And the ending sat somewhat uncomfortably with me as well-- or maybe I just felt it was unsatisfying. She, of course, gets pregnant via the brother, tells the brother (who tries to convince her to abort it), tells the husband (who says he'll raise it so long as he can have sex with men every now and again without her complaining), and thusly, the couple appeases the husband's grandbaby-hungry mom and the brother goes on thinking the husband has no idea the baby isn't his and they all live deceptively but quasi-happily ever after. Oh, and there's this totally unnecessary subtext between the two brothers that the gay one molested the straight one when they were kids---because OF COURSE it's only logical that any old queer would also be inclined to engage in incestuous pederasty. Of course! So, while this movie appears to be trying really hard to "be sensitive to the plight of The Gays," it just somehow missed its mark. Though Barbara Mori is one hot chick.
And on the tail of that sex drama, I watched Conversations with Other Women, yet another sex drama. What? As if any among you, my paltry yet loyal audience, have not yet ascertained my fixation on sexual politics, both intimate and social... don't look at me that way... But anyway, most of the interest in this movie surrounds this gimicky split-screen tactic that the director took. I think he filmed it that way for two reasons: 1) So that he could tell the flashback parts simultaneously with the present parts and 2) so that he didn't privilege the point of view of one character over the other. And while that's interesting in theory, after about 15 minutes of not knowing exactly where to look, I kinda started to ignore it. And because I was able to ignore it, I'm not sure it was all that successful. However, as always, I find Helena Bonham Carter fascinating to watch. She's so pretty and fragile and perpetually detached... and a little bit of a sour puss. Actually, she smiles more in this movie than in practically any other movie in which I've seen her... and her smile actually makes her face appear more pinched and anxious than ever. But the movie, overall, is modest and well-paced. And as a particularly careful disregard for resolution. The two characters were once married, lost touch, meet up again, have sex, he pleads for her to come back to him, she leaves to go back to her new family. It's not complicated but it's underplayed and resonant.
And so, I buckled and rented The Departed even though I wasn't all that excited about it. And basically, it's an entertaining movie. Entertaining. Nicholson played the same old smarmy, unctuous turd he's been playing for years, Whalberg played a tiny role exactly as it was written, and Vera Farmiga's police shrink was really the most luminous character there in. So, firstly, let me say what annoyed me in this movie, just to get it off my chest: rapid-fire murders were funny and video-game-like at the beginning Desperado. But as a method of resolution in a movie that won Best Picture? I just want MORE! I found them anticlimactic and very pat. By the time the movie got around to killing everyone off, well, yeah, of course, all those lousy SOBs had to die... and some not-so-lousy SOBS too, just for good measure. sure. Why not? And then there's that stupid rat crawling across the windowsill at the end? Why on earth would Scorcese put that absurd image there? I mean, everyone likes to pat themselves on the back for their own cleverness now and again, but, please, Marty, that was just self-indulgent.
Now, although I'm predisposed not really get as excited about primarily plot-driven movies, I do actually have some nice things to say about The Departed, too. I gotta say, DiCaprio did a better job than I would have anticipated with his role. His character didn't have a chip on his shoulder in the way I might have expected... he was legitimately petrified throughout. The way DiCaprio contains and judiciously releases that character's anxieties give a little glimpse of that of which he is capable of doing as an actor.
However, because DiCaprio seems to be one of those celebrities about which everyone has an opinion, well, it's difficult to judge his performances without having to negotiate his sometimes-questionable stature as a sex symbol-- and the fact that his public persona pretty much always supersedes whatever acting skill he may or may not have. As my friend Bob recently said, his face is actually a little "rodent-y." And really, I don't think he'll age well. He was pretty and smooth-skinned and sexually non-threatening when he first became famous-- all prerequisites for being the sort of fellow thirteen-year-old girls squeal about. But now he constantly sports patchy facial hair and squints a lot, and is a little twitchy. However, he has this really dynamic moment wherein he shows up at the shrink's house all rabbity, but, again trying to bottle the rush of it all... and he flips some switch and shifts almost imperceptibly. One second, he's like a caged puppy and the next, he quite purposefully re-channels all that animal energy into something sexual... and he approaches her.. and in his demonstration of this confusion of instinctual behaviors, I got it-- I finally understood why he's a sex symbol. And that's it, right? That conflation of intellectual intention and bodily experience-- well, that's where you find that flintspark every time. Of course, then he jumped back into himself pretty shortly thereafter. But the few moments of real humanity, like that one, that wrenched themselves through the scrim of genre fiction made The Departed interesting even for a tired movie cynic like me.
And on that note, I now have to completely undermine that very assertion of my own cynicism that I just made. Yesterday morning, I flipped on the TV and found an old childhood favorite on cable. The Last Unicorn was a movie I used to watch as though it were looped on the living room TV when I was little. It's an old anime that came out in the early 80s and the animation is just gorgeous. It's voiced by Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow-- and I still adore this little movie, despite the fact that someone should have told Mia Farrow she can't sing for shit. Watching it now, I'm a little surprised that, even as a six-year-old, I was so enamored of such a sad story-- one without much in terms of a happy ending, even. And now, as a grown up, it would be so easy to interpret the story as a metaphor of trauma and recovery. But that's kinda beside the point. It's sad and smart and really very pretty... and sometimes, that's enough.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Natalie, Martie, Emily and John
I'm no kinda music critic. No way. Upon reading that admission, some might be prompted to question wherefrom I went and gots all my movie critic street cred. And to that, I'd say, well, I went to the street cred store and picked out all the vocabulary that I noticed applied to both books and movies, paid my bill (yep, at the bursar's office) and went my merry way. As a special gift with purchase, I noticed that I seemed to have acquired some political lingo, too... but while at the street cred store, I'd gotten all intimidated by the musical people and decided they were way too cool for me to talk to... and didn't ever feel comfortable learning their language. But now, a bunch of documentaries about the politics of celebrities-- or the politics celebrities espouse, more precisely-- have recently emerged and I can't just NOT talk about them.
Last weekend, I watched The U.S. vs. John Lennon. As far as documentaries go, it's not exactly stylistically adventurous. It's a bunch of talking heads reminiscing about dear departed John and not-so-dear departed Richard Nixon. Among the highlights was Gore Vidal snarling, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" Indeed. I was moved. OK, not really.
There were a couple of strange notes hit within the course of this movie, however. One was the who's-in-charge? note. Parts of the film talked about how John grabbed hold of the great media machine and slung it about by its tail, sculpting his own image as artistic genius/left-wing loony to suit his every predilection. And then, like, 15 minutes later, the same folks are talking about how some of the big name 70s activist-politicos, like Abbie Hoffman and so on, saw John as the cash cow he could be for the anti-war movement and milked him for all he was worth. And the end, I wasn't entirely sure which depiction was more accurate. This probably has more to do with how little I know about John Lennon than how well the movie explained it, though.
Also of note is the way the Yoko-John relationship was described over the course of this movie. It's very careful to dodge any of the more... controversial, let's say, aspects of their relationship and instead, presents them as artistic and political kindred spirits. And dammit, they were just so cute! Sittin' around in their PJs with all their hair in their faces for weeks on end...
So, anyway, I know this movie was conceived and released in this day and age because infotainment shows like The Today Show like to pose supposedly non-leading questions like "should celebrities use their public platforms to speak about politics?" as though they take it for granted that celebrities somehow have more alienable free speech rights than the rest of us just because they have a larger podium from which they speak. And in this way, all of Lennon's run-ins with the Nixon administration are now providing backdrop for all the crap that's come to be expected when any living celebrity has an opinion and expresses that opinion aloud.
And due to clever structuring of my online video rental queue, I watched the Dixie Chick documentary Shut Up and Sing this weekend. It just followed so logically! Though, I must say, the format of this documentary was really ingeniously conceived. I'm not sure who had the foresight to start filming every conversation those girls had with lawyers, managers, publicists and other assorted consultants... but the publicity machine is a fascinating thing to watch. And watching those women weather the tug-of-war between their desire to remain a financially viable brand and remain steadfast in their refusal to capitulate to an audience that appeared to disrespect their human right to hold political beliefs is truly riveting. But the film flips back and forth between behind-the-scenes and concert footage of from 2003 and recording studio footage from 2005 and then more concert footage (under death threats) in 2006. And this kinda problem-solution/ what-happened;what-happened-next formal aspect of this documentary makes it really rather unusual. I mean, we all already knew the whole story... but there's so much we didn't know! And now, I guess, I'm glad I know more.
Admittedly, there were a couple of moments during which I winced at Natalie's glibness. She's caught on camera, after all, calling our dumb fuck of a president, well, a dumb fuck. It's a response to his saying they shouldn't get their feeling hurt if people don't want to play their music anymore (himself notably glib regarding the obvious financial hit they and Sony and all the rest of their backers took). But she looked right at the camera to say it! But then I suppose that makes me a bigger chickenshit than she is... I can't say that I wouldn't have been a little cowed by the outcry that followed those 12 fateful words ("we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas").
But then, there was an undeniably sexy-comic moment in which the three girls were talking about having to get up in the middle of the night to deal with babies. Natalie confesses she offered her husband $1000 to tend to their noisy child. An then Martie said something to the effect that blowjobs are more effective currency in her house... No doubt! Still, there's no denying they're hot girls!
Now, my tiny musical commentary, for the record: It was the screeching vocals of "Twist and Shout", not "Give Peace a Chance," that cemented John's position Marjorie's Favorite Beatle long ago. And the first time I heard "Lullaby" off the Chicks' rebuttal album, Taking the Long Way, I'm pretty sure my heart stopped a little bit. In fact, I've been listening to that song obsessively all day as I've been conjuring this blogpost in my head. It's really just such a lovely, tender foil to the fury that rages forth out of most of the rest of the album.
Last weekend, I watched The U.S. vs. John Lennon. As far as documentaries go, it's not exactly stylistically adventurous. It's a bunch of talking heads reminiscing about dear departed John and not-so-dear departed Richard Nixon. Among the highlights was Gore Vidal snarling, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" Indeed. I was moved. OK, not really.
There were a couple of strange notes hit within the course of this movie, however. One was the who's-in-charge? note. Parts of the film talked about how John grabbed hold of the great media machine and slung it about by its tail, sculpting his own image as artistic genius/left-wing loony to suit his every predilection. And then, like, 15 minutes later, the same folks are talking about how some of the big name 70s activist-politicos, like Abbie Hoffman and so on, saw John as the cash cow he could be for the anti-war movement and milked him for all he was worth. And the end, I wasn't entirely sure which depiction was more accurate. This probably has more to do with how little I know about John Lennon than how well the movie explained it, though.
Also of note is the way the Yoko-John relationship was described over the course of this movie. It's very careful to dodge any of the more... controversial, let's say, aspects of their relationship and instead, presents them as artistic and political kindred spirits. And dammit, they were just so cute! Sittin' around in their PJs with all their hair in their faces for weeks on end...
So, anyway, I know this movie was conceived and released in this day and age because infotainment shows like The Today Show like to pose supposedly non-leading questions like "should celebrities use their public platforms to speak about politics?" as though they take it for granted that celebrities somehow have more alienable free speech rights than the rest of us just because they have a larger podium from which they speak. And in this way, all of Lennon's run-ins with the Nixon administration are now providing backdrop for all the crap that's come to be expected when any living celebrity has an opinion and expresses that opinion aloud.
And due to clever structuring of my online video rental queue, I watched the Dixie Chick documentary Shut Up and Sing this weekend. It just followed so logically! Though, I must say, the format of this documentary was really ingeniously conceived. I'm not sure who had the foresight to start filming every conversation those girls had with lawyers, managers, publicists and other assorted consultants... but the publicity machine is a fascinating thing to watch. And watching those women weather the tug-of-war between their desire to remain a financially viable brand and remain steadfast in their refusal to capitulate to an audience that appeared to disrespect their human right to hold political beliefs is truly riveting. But the film flips back and forth between behind-the-scenes and concert footage of from 2003 and recording studio footage from 2005 and then more concert footage (under death threats) in 2006. And this kinda problem-solution/ what-happened;what-happened-next formal aspect of this documentary makes it really rather unusual. I mean, we all already knew the whole story... but there's so much we didn't know! And now, I guess, I'm glad I know more.
Admittedly, there were a couple of moments during which I winced at Natalie's glibness. She's caught on camera, after all, calling our dumb fuck of a president, well, a dumb fuck. It's a response to his saying they shouldn't get their feeling hurt if people don't want to play their music anymore (himself notably glib regarding the obvious financial hit they and Sony and all the rest of their backers took). But she looked right at the camera to say it! But then I suppose that makes me a bigger chickenshit than she is... I can't say that I wouldn't have been a little cowed by the outcry that followed those 12 fateful words ("we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas").
But then, there was an undeniably sexy-comic moment in which the three girls were talking about having to get up in the middle of the night to deal with babies. Natalie confesses she offered her husband $1000 to tend to their noisy child. An then Martie said something to the effect that blowjobs are more effective currency in her house... No doubt! Still, there's no denying they're hot girls!
Now, my tiny musical commentary, for the record: It was the screeching vocals of "Twist and Shout", not "Give Peace a Chance," that cemented John's position Marjorie's Favorite Beatle long ago. And the first time I heard "Lullaby" off the Chicks' rebuttal album, Taking the Long Way, I'm pretty sure my heart stopped a little bit. In fact, I've been listening to that song obsessively all day as I've been conjuring this blogpost in my head. It's really just such a lovely, tender foil to the fury that rages forth out of most of the rest of the album.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Jinxes of another nature
In the swollen seasons, you only ever break your own heart.
This is why the pangs of the baby are all long-forgotten.
You may never fully harness that which repeatedly unbridles itself;
that, needless to see, is the desire of a woman, as opposed to the desire for her.
After all, the horses of the occasion are left to fend the rapids.
Neither foalers nor mounts, they.
Let this be the punch to your gullet that I intend.
And a loose scarf eeled out the car window: that, too.
I find it humbling that I’m the same dumb fool-for-love I was 10 years ago.
Some babies are born and born and born and born.
This season swells.
We ain’t found bedrock yet.
It seems the only way I can keep my lines in blogger is to make things tiny. Sorry!
This is why the pangs of the baby are all long-forgotten.
You may never fully harness that which repeatedly unbridles itself;
that, needless to see, is the desire of a woman, as opposed to the desire for her.
After all, the horses of the occasion are left to fend the rapids.
Neither foalers nor mounts, they.
Let this be the punch to your gullet that I intend.
And a loose scarf eeled out the car window: that, too.
I find it humbling that I’m the same dumb fool-for-love I was 10 years ago.
Some babies are born and born and born and born.
This season swells.
We ain’t found bedrock yet.
It seems the only way I can keep my lines in blogger is to make things tiny. Sorry!
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Relishing the expletive
If you hold up your middle finger, and hold the two adjacent fingers at half-mast, it means the same thing as "Fuck You!" because it vaguely resembles a penis and two balls. And in this way, an ordinary hand becomes something obscene. And maybe this tiny gesture then begs the question (or doesn't, depending) as to how four letters, in the sequence F-U-C-K, became something similarly obscene. And so, armed with this very question, so set out the makers of a little documentary called F*CK.
And while this documentary seems well-intentioned, I suppose I liked it more because it left me thinking about all the things it didn't cover adequately than because it's really that last word on the curse word. Among moments of note, though, were Pat Boone offering a deeply insightful (read: racist) analysis of so-called foul language in hip-hop culture and some conservative talking head (I can't remember his name) claiming that artists produce BETTER art when stringent social rules are imposed upon them (i.e., by rule-imposers like the FCC, the Nazis... you know, all those prescient, halo-wearing political entities so well-known for spreading the good news of innovation and broken ground amongst the creatively inclined). Those two had me standing on my sofa, shouting "WHAT???!!!" Oh, and there was a creepy thin-lipped woman, with eyebrows to match, claiming that it's so much more fun to do it than to say it, so then, why say it at all? Curious logic, methinks... me also thinks thinking about her doing it is icky. Let me dramatize what a conversation between me and this woman might sound like (here I take a page from Damon who likes to blog in script form sometimes):
A play in 9 lines
Dramatis personae:
Marjorie (to be played by Little Orphan Annie wearing a leather corset, fetish boots and bearing a riding crop in her left hand)
Creepy Thin-Lipped Lady (to be played by a pterodactyl with an Aqua-Netted bob)
Marjorie: So, I gather you think the f-word is uncouth.
Lady: Yeah.
Marjorie: Do go on.
Lady: If the f-word denotes sexual congress, wouldn't you say it's a lot more fun to do it than to say it?
Marjorie: Sure.
Lady: So then why say it at all?
Marjorie: (sarcastically) Uuuummmmm.... because we like to use these things called words to describe our world and our actions? Because we humanfolk like to name things? Didn't god tell us that was one of our jobs way back in Genesis?
Lady: But why does it have to be such a bad word?
Marjorie: Uh, lady? You're the one who named it "bad," not me. See what I'm saying about the naming thing? Dammit. Can you quit flapping those skin-wing things around so much? It's distracting. (Marjorie flails riding crop at the pterodactyl)
Curtain
So that was fun. Anyway, some of the issues that are really at the heart of the matter of why the f-bomb is, indeed, incendiary were really glossed over in this film. Por ejemplo, Drew Carey briefly mentions the fact that part of why the f-word is taboo at all is because it was part of the diction of a lower class and therefore not acceptable vocabulary for anyone who aimed to keep his/her nose pointing way too high to catch even a whiff of the masses. But it's an ever so brief off-hand comment... and I really think this relativity between class strata is pretty central to the issue.
Beyond that, the trajectory of this movie barely glanced off the idea that the word "fuck" is only deemed obscene on arbitrary contrivances. In fact, it was one of the stuffed-shirt Republicans who even used the word "arbitrary," but he did not seem to possess the critical tools to adequately discuss the sign-signifier relationship. But after all, that is what's at stake, right? I mean the combination of the four letters F, U, C, and K is not inherently prurient. The aural effect of pronouncing them together isn't either. This is really already an overly hashed-out argument of semiotics, here, but really... I just find it so baffling that so many folks, both historically (the movie talks a lot about Lenny Bruce going to jail for "word crimes") and presently, get so up in arms about a dinky little WORD!!! And one to which we are all complicit in ascribing its meaning!
Now, don't get me wrong. A person such as myself, who trades in the currency of language, would be foolish to denounce the notion that words have power. But I'd also be foolish if I didn't acknowledge the fact that something as temporal as a word would be useless if we all didn't agree to imbue it with such power... thus shifting the onus of meaning from the speaker to the listener, right?
And I guess there's not really much room in a pop-culture documentary to discuss why it's okay to talk to our doctors about our vaginae (spell-check tells me this is the proper way to pluralize this word. Who knew?) and penises but not our cunts and cocks (oh, Connotation, oh what a heavy burden you bear!). But it is a movie that tries to provide an accessible in-road into the world of socio-linguistic semantics and that's kinda noble, I guess. True, it suckers us (me) in via use of a blatant appeal to the titillation sensors in our (my) brains-- I mean, you can't really say the word "fuck" without having ears perk, for an assortment of different reasons (all cursorily covered in the movie)-- but you gotta capture attention while the sun shines, right? After all, one of the repeated heedings uttered in the movie is that we're just all too inured to profanity these days. I mean, following that argument, the word "coitus" is gonna fall right out of the OED and the only word we'll ever need to know will be endless iterations of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck... fuck...fuck.
Damn. That's kinda sexy.
And while this documentary seems well-intentioned, I suppose I liked it more because it left me thinking about all the things it didn't cover adequately than because it's really that last word on the curse word. Among moments of note, though, were Pat Boone offering a deeply insightful (read: racist) analysis of so-called foul language in hip-hop culture and some conservative talking head (I can't remember his name) claiming that artists produce BETTER art when stringent social rules are imposed upon them (i.e., by rule-imposers like the FCC, the Nazis... you know, all those prescient, halo-wearing political entities so well-known for spreading the good news of innovation and broken ground amongst the creatively inclined). Those two had me standing on my sofa, shouting "WHAT???!!!" Oh, and there was a creepy thin-lipped woman, with eyebrows to match, claiming that it's so much more fun to do it than to say it, so then, why say it at all? Curious logic, methinks... me also thinks thinking about her doing it is icky. Let me dramatize what a conversation between me and this woman might sound like (here I take a page from Damon who likes to blog in script form sometimes):
A play in 9 lines
Dramatis personae:
Marjorie (to be played by Little Orphan Annie wearing a leather corset, fetish boots and bearing a riding crop in her left hand)
Creepy Thin-Lipped Lady (to be played by a pterodactyl with an Aqua-Netted bob)
Marjorie: So, I gather you think the f-word is uncouth.
Lady: Yeah.
Marjorie: Do go on.
Lady: If the f-word denotes sexual congress, wouldn't you say it's a lot more fun to do it than to say it?
Marjorie: Sure.
Lady: So then why say it at all?
Marjorie: (sarcastically) Uuuummmmm.... because we like to use these things called words to describe our world and our actions? Because we humanfolk like to name things? Didn't god tell us that was one of our jobs way back in Genesis?
Lady: But why does it have to be such a bad word?
Marjorie: Uh, lady? You're the one who named it "bad," not me. See what I'm saying about the naming thing? Dammit. Can you quit flapping those skin-wing things around so much? It's distracting. (Marjorie flails riding crop at the pterodactyl)
Curtain
So that was fun. Anyway, some of the issues that are really at the heart of the matter of why the f-bomb is, indeed, incendiary were really glossed over in this film. Por ejemplo, Drew Carey briefly mentions the fact that part of why the f-word is taboo at all is because it was part of the diction of a lower class and therefore not acceptable vocabulary for anyone who aimed to keep his/her nose pointing way too high to catch even a whiff of the masses. But it's an ever so brief off-hand comment... and I really think this relativity between class strata is pretty central to the issue.
Beyond that, the trajectory of this movie barely glanced off the idea that the word "fuck" is only deemed obscene on arbitrary contrivances. In fact, it was one of the stuffed-shirt Republicans who even used the word "arbitrary," but he did not seem to possess the critical tools to adequately discuss the sign-signifier relationship. But after all, that is what's at stake, right? I mean the combination of the four letters F, U, C, and K is not inherently prurient. The aural effect of pronouncing them together isn't either. This is really already an overly hashed-out argument of semiotics, here, but really... I just find it so baffling that so many folks, both historically (the movie talks a lot about Lenny Bruce going to jail for "word crimes") and presently, get so up in arms about a dinky little WORD!!! And one to which we are all complicit in ascribing its meaning!
Now, don't get me wrong. A person such as myself, who trades in the currency of language, would be foolish to denounce the notion that words have power. But I'd also be foolish if I didn't acknowledge the fact that something as temporal as a word would be useless if we all didn't agree to imbue it with such power... thus shifting the onus of meaning from the speaker to the listener, right?
And I guess there's not really much room in a pop-culture documentary to discuss why it's okay to talk to our doctors about our vaginae (spell-check tells me this is the proper way to pluralize this word. Who knew?) and penises but not our cunts and cocks (oh, Connotation, oh what a heavy burden you bear!). But it is a movie that tries to provide an accessible in-road into the world of socio-linguistic semantics and that's kinda noble, I guess. True, it suckers us (me) in via use of a blatant appeal to the titillation sensors in our (my) brains-- I mean, you can't really say the word "fuck" without having ears perk, for an assortment of different reasons (all cursorily covered in the movie)-- but you gotta capture attention while the sun shines, right? After all, one of the repeated heedings uttered in the movie is that we're just all too inured to profanity these days. I mean, following that argument, the word "coitus" is gonna fall right out of the OED and the only word we'll ever need to know will be endless iterations of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck... fuck...fuck.
Damn. That's kinda sexy.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
This just in
I just took an online poll. The results are as follows:
Do you have a positive or negative impression of Ann Coulter?
Negative: 58%
Postive: 31%
Neutral: 11%
In all seriousness? 31 percent of folks who took the online poll do not recognize the fact that the devil isn't too many branches up on Miss Coulter's family tree. And 11% have doubts about it! And that is some seriously sordid DNA. This is massively insane. Perhaps I'll start going around calling people who disagree with me "faggots." Let's just see how many hearts I can win! Oh, wait, I need some big blonde split ends to flip emphatically about... dammit all. So much for that plan.
Do you have a positive or negative impression of Ann Coulter?
Negative: 58%
Postive: 31%
Neutral: 11%
In all seriousness? 31 percent of folks who took the online poll do not recognize the fact that the devil isn't too many branches up on Miss Coulter's family tree. And 11% have doubts about it! And that is some seriously sordid DNA. This is massively insane. Perhaps I'll start going around calling people who disagree with me "faggots." Let's just see how many hearts I can win! Oh, wait, I need some big blonde split ends to flip emphatically about... dammit all. So much for that plan.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Irony-free love, not ironically free love
While I was in Honolulu last December for work, I spent most of my time off tooling around town with one of my colleagues, who is somewhere in the progression of her creative non-fiction MFA. There seemed to be two recurring themes in our conversations: whether or not irony was still a valid mode of communication, both in writing and in ordinary conversation... and the fact that she's rather ecstatically in love with a new-ish boyfriend. And then, this Saturday morning, I made coffee and then got back into bed to read Anna Moschovakis' incisive and remarkable book, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and I found the following excerpt from "The Blue Book" section, which I felt like conflated those two strands of conversation. And she's masterfully crafted it, as well. Enjoy!
Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them.
Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.
I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.
To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???
The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.
Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them.
Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.
I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.
To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???
The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A statue, a tower and... a romantic comedy?
Because I made such a big deal about the Oscars a few posts ago, and now they came and went, I suppose I ought to make a comment about them. Except what a snoozefest. There were a few pretty dresses but nothing really and truly spectacular. And there was a lot of blonde pin-straight hair. *sigh* This is always sad news for the redhead w/ the crazy Jew hair. But there was little excitement in the whole event. I felt like both supporting actor awards were given to the wrong people and who cares about The Queen and I'm just not interested enough in mobsters or hambones like Nicholson (man, I just know some friend or other is gonna take me to task on that one...) to be all that interested in The Departed. Yes, it was nice to see Forest Whitaker win and it was even nicer to see Ryan Gosling appear to be legitimately happy that Whitaker won and he didn't. But all in all, it was a lackluster crop of films this year and a lackluster show. Al Gore and all. Oh, it was pretty cool that Marie Antoinette won for costumes, though. I mean, I wasn't in love with this movie by any means, but it's a movie about clothes so its clothes SHOULD win. And really, they were meticulously beautiful taffeta confections, now, weren't they?
And I saw Babel. I thought it was gonna be a lot like Crash and it was and it wasn't. The movie format of seemingly unrelated, yet really quite interrelated story-threads is SO done! When people first started making movies in this format, they were about deep connections between disparate people-- like Grand Canyon, maybe, which is probably in my top 5 of all-time favorite movies, by the way. But somewhere along the way, filmmakers started tying to use this format to talk about other stuff: everyone's a rascist deep down, for instance (a la Crash). Or how all the world's problems exist because we can't talk to each other, or more accurately, because we can't listen to each other, as in Babel. And while the format sometimes works if the format is the subject of the film, the format doesn't really work if there's some other message with which the filmmaker would like to beat us over the head. And this is why Babel feels so damn contrived. I mean, I watched parts of it through my fingers because the pain on the faces of the actors was so real, but the overarching story was anything BUT realistic. However, either of the two women who were nominated for supporting actress would have been a far more accurate choice than poor Jennifer Hudson- once that poor girl's American Idol cast-off gimick-glow fades out-- well, I don't know that anyone will continue to recognize her for excellence in acting.
And I also saw a little romantic comedy. Yep, that's right. You'll very very seldom catch me in front of a screen full o' chick flick, but there you have it. My excuse? It has David Duchovny in it. It's called Trust the Man. It also has a couple more of my favorites--Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore. And it's directing by Julianne Moore's husband, Bart Freundlich. And there's certainly nothing groundbreaking in it but it's a cute little peice about established couples falling back in love with each other. And that's kinda nice. And David Duchovny's character is a little obsessed with sex... in his typical deadpan sort of fashion. And good god.. the voiceovers he's been doing or the Pedigree dog food ads lately? The "I don't know how I got here but I know I'm a good dog" ones? The ones with the big sad puppy eyes peering out from behind chain link shelter/kennel doors? Sheesh! The man speaks to my soul. What can I say?
And I booked my plane tickets to come home for the Nashville Film Festival in April! I'm very excited. I'm hoping they'll have some stuff every bit as good as last year! Keep the light on for me, Nash Vegas!
And I saw Babel. I thought it was gonna be a lot like Crash and it was and it wasn't. The movie format of seemingly unrelated, yet really quite interrelated story-threads is SO done! When people first started making movies in this format, they were about deep connections between disparate people-- like Grand Canyon, maybe, which is probably in my top 5 of all-time favorite movies, by the way. But somewhere along the way, filmmakers started tying to use this format to talk about other stuff: everyone's a rascist deep down, for instance (a la Crash). Or how all the world's problems exist because we can't talk to each other, or more accurately, because we can't listen to each other, as in Babel. And while the format sometimes works if the format is the subject of the film, the format doesn't really work if there's some other message with which the filmmaker would like to beat us over the head. And this is why Babel feels so damn contrived. I mean, I watched parts of it through my fingers because the pain on the faces of the actors was so real, but the overarching story was anything BUT realistic. However, either of the two women who were nominated for supporting actress would have been a far more accurate choice than poor Jennifer Hudson- once that poor girl's American Idol cast-off gimick-glow fades out-- well, I don't know that anyone will continue to recognize her for excellence in acting.
And I also saw a little romantic comedy. Yep, that's right. You'll very very seldom catch me in front of a screen full o' chick flick, but there you have it. My excuse? It has David Duchovny in it. It's called Trust the Man. It also has a couple more of my favorites--Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore. And it's directing by Julianne Moore's husband, Bart Freundlich. And there's certainly nothing groundbreaking in it but it's a cute little peice about established couples falling back in love with each other. And that's kinda nice. And David Duchovny's character is a little obsessed with sex... in his typical deadpan sort of fashion. And good god.. the voiceovers he's been doing or the Pedigree dog food ads lately? The "I don't know how I got here but I know I'm a good dog" ones? The ones with the big sad puppy eyes peering out from behind chain link shelter/kennel doors? Sheesh! The man speaks to my soul. What can I say?
And I booked my plane tickets to come home for the Nashville Film Festival in April! I'm very excited. I'm hoping they'll have some stuff every bit as good as last year! Keep the light on for me, Nash Vegas!
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