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April 22, 2008

Watering the Planet on Earth Day

In recognition of Earth Day (I started to write, "In celebration of Earth Day," but it doesn't seem right to "celebrate" Earth Day when we're doing such a shitty job of caring for the planet), I'm providing links to a website where you can check your water footprint, which I learned about thanks to this news story.

No one with a brain will be surprised to be told that the US has the largest water footprint in the world--we use more of all the other resources in the world, so why should water be any different? But what makes me crazy is the amount of water we waste in the most careless and irresponsible of ways.

For instance, the movie Michael Clayton is a case in point. Now, I loved this movie; I thought it was just about perfect in terms of its storytelling, and although I wondered for the first 90 minutes why Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for her performance given how little screen time she had, in the last 15 minutes I totally figured it out. But I was really annoyed at all the water just left running in this movie.

For instance, while Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is waiting to hear the results of a very unpleasant job she's just ordered done, she sits in a stall in some bathroom, and leaves the water running full blast in a sink.... because? Because it masks the sound of her sweating? It makes no sense. People can sit in bathroom stalls and avoid detection easily enough if they want to; why did she need to run the water? Or when Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkerson) wants to make it seem like he's still in his hotel room, he just leaves the shower running--and I bet the hot as well as cold water was on. But why? He could have just turned on the television.

I don't understand Americans' propensity for letting things we actually need simply run down the drain.

When I went to Matthew's Belgian wedding last April, I initially had trouble figuring out how to work the lights in the various hotel rooms I stayed in. Turns out that the lights don't work unless you put your room key in a slot by the door. In other words, you can't go off and leave all the lights on in your room unless you don't care whether or not you get back in. Seems very sensible to me.

Posted by Holly at 11:17 AM | Comments (2)

February 26, 2008

Hey, Leader Dude!

Not only willing but happy, as ever, to be months if not years behind the times in terms of my entertainment consumption, I recently watched Downfall, the 2004 movie about HItler's last days in his bunker. I found it really compelling and can understand perfectly why I was anxious to see it when it was released in US theaters three or four years ago, though I also don't feel it hurt me to watch a bunch of other things first.

One thing that made it so outstanding was the performance by Bruno Ganz, the actor who played Hitler--it was scary and horrifying and convincing, and compelling for precisely those reasons. (IMDb's bio for Ganz, by the way, states that he is the first German actor ever to portray Hitler, which seemed unlikely to me, so I googled the question, "What actors have portrayed Hitler?" and got a slew of hits, including a page listing someone's idea of the top ten onscreen Hitlers and a list of all actors who have played Hitler--turns out a number are German. But I'm still sort of marveling that I could find an answer to that question so quickly. Isn't the internet amazing?)

Anyway, one of the things that struck me was the way everyone called Hitler "Mein Fuehrer" (which, I learned also via the internet, means "My Leader"). Not once did anyone call him "Herr Hitler" or "Herr Fuerher," analogous after all to "Mr. President," a way of addressing a leader that makes more sense in German than in English: in German you actually say things like "Herr Doktor" or "Herr Professor" or whatever; but in English we don't say "Mr. Doctor" or "Mr. Professor" or any such thing except "Mr. President." No; it was always "Mein Fuehrer," except for a few times when kids or women called him "Uncle Hitler." Even his mistress called him "Mein Fuehrer."

Can you imagine? Can you imagine calling your political leader "My leader"? I mean, it's one thing to say, "I'm going to write to my senator," or "I'm so glad Rick Santorum is no longer my senator!" But that's different; I referred to Rick Santorum as "my senator" not because I embraced his occupation of that position, but to differentiate him from the 98 senators from other states, and to remind myself that I had to do my part to make sure Rick Santorum STOPPED being my senator.

I think recent events show that the United States is capable of electing and following really shitty leaders who then dupe us, quite easily, into embracing (at least aspect of) totalitarian government, betraying human rights, waging ill-conceived wars of aggression and sacrificing some of our most cherished freedoms. But I can't imagine us ever revering those leaders enough to call them, to their faces, as a sign of veneration and loyalty, "My President" or "My Vice-President." (god forbid!) Why, even in that horrible nightmare I had about dating W, I don't think I ever called him anything--not George, not Mr. President, not Mr. Bush, not Darling, and not even more appropriate titles like "You Fucking Asshole" and "Mr. Evil Incarnate."

And then there's the whole salute thing, the whole "Heil, Mein Fuehrer," the way Hitler liked to be greeted. Can you imagine? The movie is based partly on a memoir by Traudl Junge, who was Hitler's youngest secretary at the time he committed suicide. Can you imagine greeting your boss by raising your arm in a stiff salute and saying, "Hail, My Leader"?

I don't think Americans are capable of that. Having recently watched No End in Sight, and being able to remember the way my family and most of my Mormon friends supported Bush and the Iraq war in 2003, I know we can be responsible, through our leaders, for a lot of short-sighted, ill-conceived, selfish and evil things. But I think one of our saving graces--perhaps our only saving grace--is that we have a certain skepticism, not only of our leaders, but of veneration of leaders, that makes us unable to treat them with that much unquestioning loyalty, and eventually we do what we can to get rid of the bastards--even if we let them cause a hell of a lot of damage during their tenure in office.

I try to imagine some American saying, "Hail, My Leader" to the president and I can envision only two scenarios. The first is something like a scene from The West Wing where some White Staffer says, "Good Morning, Mr. President," but there's no salute. The other thing I come up with is some skateboarder waving at Barack Obama and saying, "Hey, Leader Dude!"

And frankly, that gives me hope.

Posted by Holly at 2:57 PM | Comments (2)

February 11, 2008

Finally, I Finish "The War"

My habit of watching stuff on TV months after everyone else has seen it continues.... I just finished watching Ken Burns’ documentary on World War II, aptly titled The War.

I am quite glad I waited to watch this, as I had time to gather opinions from others who watched it as it was televised, particularly from my friends who, like me, are very interested in military history. They said pretty much the same thing: “It was good, but not great. I thought I would LOVE it, and I didn’t. I only liked it."

So I sat down to watch it with lowered expectations, and because I expected less, I was pleased and surprised when I ended up liking it A LOT--maybe I didn't LOVE it, but it was close.

There were a few moments where I got to feel smart, because I knew what was coming: I am interested in the Battle of the Bulge--the name just arouses curiosity, and it began on my birthday--so I knew what was going on when the narrator mentioned that German troops started moving into the Ardennes in December 1944. (Though I admit I never made it through all of Band of Brothers--just found it too tedious and didn’t care for some of the actors.) I thought I knew the significance of the USS Indianapolis, since I had read all about its sinking, and the horrible blunders that led to about 900 men, originally hopeful of rescue, bobbing along for days in shark-infested water without food, potable water or lifeboats. (The reason the grisly old shark hunter in Jaws hated the animals so much was that he was a survivor of the Indianapolis, which is often called "the worst naval disaster in US history," though more men died on the USS Arizona--I guess it's that whole fighting off sharks thing, which could have been avoided had anyone paid attention to the fact that the Indianapolis didn't show up at dock when it was supposed to, that makes it worse.) I did not know, however, that when it was torpedoed and sunk, it was returning from delivering the first atomic bomb to Tinian.

One thing I really liked about the series was its use of Eugene Sledge, whose memoir With the Old Breed is one of my favorite books and has been called by a number of military historians “One of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war” (Paul Fussell) and “one of the most important accounts of war that I have ever read” (John Keegan). I teach it often and students find it profoundly moving and almost life-changing--you read it and you realize how much you don’t know, how much you’ll never know, how much separates combat veterans from those of us who either merely read about such things or simply don’t want to know. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Here’s one of the passages we often refer to in classes, about the fighting on Okinawa:

The mud was knee deep in some places, probably deeper in others if one dared venture there. For several feet around every corpse, maggots crawled about in the muck and then were washed away by the runoff of the rain. There wasn’t a tree or bush left. All was open country. Shells had torn up the turf so completely that ground cover was nonexistent. The rain poured down on us as evening approached. The scene was nothing but mud; shell fire, flooded craters with the silent, pathetic, rotting occupants; knocked-out tanks and amtracs; and discarded equipment--utter desolation.

The stench of death was overpowering. The only way I could bear the monstrous horror of it all was to look upward from the earthly reality surrounding us, watch the leaden gray clouds go skudding over, and repeat over and over to myself that the situation was unreal--just a nightmare--and that I would soon awake and find myself somewhere else. But the ever-present smell of death saturated my nostrils. It was there with every breath I took.

I existed from moment to moment, sometimes thinking death would have been preferable. We were in the depths of the abyss, the ultimate horror of war. During the fighting around the Umurbrogal Pocket on Peliliu, I had been depressed by the wastage of human lives. But in the mud and driving rain before Shuri, we were surrounded by maggots and decay. Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.

.... We didn’t talk about such things. They were too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans. The conditions taxed the toughest I knew almost to the point of screaming. Nor do authors normally write about such vileness; unless they have seen it with their own eyes, it is too preposterous to think that men could actually live and fight for days and nights on end under such terrible conditions and not be driven insane. But I saw much it there on Okinawa and to me the war was insanity.

I was also struck to see Paul Fussell lose his composure and tear up. Fussell is an old acquaintance of mine; at least, that’s how I think of him. I first encountered him in an undergraduate creative writing class on poetic forms, via his first book, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (which is still in print 40 years after its original publication). But it was his book about World War I, The Great War and Modern Memory, that made me a fan of his analyses of the literature and actual events of modern warfare. In print, Fussell comes across as unsentimental and cynical--or, in his terms, “a pissed-off infantryman.” He is notorious for a very provocative essay called “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” I put that essay in a special place when I discuss his work, preferring to focus on the other ways in which he has “given the Second World War a uniformly bad press, rejecting all attempts to depict it as a sensibly proceeding or to mitigate its cruelty and swinishness” (Fussell, “My War”). If you watch many documentaries about war, you see him all the time, and the voice of that pissed-off infantry man is so strong, and he’s so stoic in most of his appearances, that it was shocking to me to see him begin to cry.

One other thing I liked about the series was that it serves as a good antidote to an attitude I have encountered a time or two in my classes: the sense that the real war was fought in Europe, that the only war that mattered was the one against the Nazis. A student in my class actually said once, when we read Sledge, “It’s good to learn about the war in the Pacific, because you just don’t hear much about it. It’s pretty obvious that it really wasn’t that important.”

“I’d have to disagree with that,” I said. “After all, World War Two started and ended for us in the Pacific.”

“World War Two started in Europe; everyone knows that,” he said.

“We didn’t enter the war until Pearl Harbor, remember?” I said. “The Japanese attacked us, and then we declared war on both Japan and Germany. Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, but we didn’t enter the war until December 1941.”

“Well, at the time, people weren’t as concerned about the war with the Japanese,” he insisted.

“Yes, they were,” I said. “My dad was nine when the war started, and he was obsessed with Guadalcanal. My mother was four when the war started, and she had nightmares about the Japs coming to get her. Plus we rounded up all people of Japanese descent and put them in internment camps, remember? We didn’t do anything to people of German or Italian descent, even though those countries were our enemies too. And don’t forget who we dropped the atom bombs on.” But he just wouldn’t budge. To him, the war in the Pacific didn’t have the veneer of nobility conferred after the fighting by the liberation of the inmate of the Nazi death camps--the full horror of which American politicians, military planners and the press downplayed, even after the Russians, who found them first, issued reports on them--so it wouldn’t matter as much to history, and couldn’t have mattered as much while it was going on.

Anyway. I found the series worth my time. I was moved and informed by it, and I hope that if you haven’t seen it, you’ll take the time to watch it.

Posted by Holly at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2007

Movies About Men, For Women

In his comment to my entry about why I like the sex scene in Latter Days, MohoHawaii noted that he “always thought that there should be a larger market for romance stories that cross the gender divide. The straight female audience is largely untapped as consumers of male-male love stories. This is a potentially huge market, since there are 10 to 20 times as many straight women as there are gay men.”

For whatever reason, I’ve been an enthusiastic part of that market since even before I officially reached adulthood. One of my very first entries on this blog was about my movie-watching habits in the 1980s. I decided as a college freshman that I’d see pretty much any movie back for a “revival” (which was important back in the days before you could easily rent or buy a copy of a movie, making revival houses unnecessary) or anything that was a “classic.” This decision was facilitated by the fact that UA’s student union had a HUGE movie theater in it, and it showed only second-run movies or revivals, for a mere buck-fifty. As I’ve mentioned, the first movie I went to see there was A Clockwork Orange, which I walked out of; the second movie I went to see was La Cage aux Folles, which I loved and my roommate hated.

I made a habit of dragging roommates to movies I really wanted to see, which is how, as a junior, I persuaded my 17-year-old sister (yes, I roomed with my sister--I actually roomed with all three of my sisters at one point or another) to see both Risky Business (had that dreadful R-rating, though in the early 80s ratings weren’t quite such a big deal in the church) and Another Country, which was rated a mere PG but was all about homosexuality at some British public school.

I’m not sure how many teenage Mormon females would be so enthusiastic about a mannered art film exploring the difficulties of conducting a gay love affair at boys' boarding school, difficulties exacerbated because one boy had just hung himself after being caught en flagrante by a headmaster. But my sister and I LOVED it. And really, it’s not so very remarkable that we loved it, because it was an interesting script and beautifully cast, emphasis on beautiful: it featured the very young Colin Firth, Rupert Everett and Cary Elwes in their earliest starring roles.

I’ve talked to gay men who shrug when I mention that movie and say, “Oh, it was OK.” I watched it a few years ago when it came out on dvd; it wasn’t as good as I remembered, but I still liked it. And I think I liked it for one of the reasons I liked Latter Days, and that’s the fact that women were not depicted as adversaries in that movie.

Of course, in Another Country, women are not really depicted at all: they don’t really exist. Rupert Everett’s character has a mother we see once or twice; Colin Firth’s character has a girlfriend we never see. But for the most part, women are irrelevant in that movie.

Compare that to something like Maurice, where women are cast in role of adversary or impediment, not very intelligent or worthy ones, either; rather, they are the temptation or social crutch one character succumbs to, leaving the other broken-hearted and alone with his unspeakable, unshakable desires.

Or think of Last Exit to Brooklyn, in which a gay character comes home and crawls into bed. His wife wakes and begins to kiss and caress him, attempting to initiate sex. Furious at having to deny himself what he really wants and engage in sex he doesn’t enjoy, the man makes the sex absolutely brutal, so vicious and violent that by the time he rolls off his wife, she’s wounded and weeping.

Or think of Total Eclipse, a fairly crappy movie hardly anyone saw, where Paul Verlaine is unwilling to commit to a relationship with Arthur Rimbaud (Leo DiCaprio), because “he loves his wife’s body.” But loving his wife’s body doesn’t stop him from becoming so annoyed at the way she’s intellectually inferior to his male lover on the side that he sets her hair on fire.

Or think of Sordid Lives, which has some really lackluster performances (the lead, for example) but some really great ones--it’s how I became a Beth Grant fan. OK, a lot of the female characters in that movie are very sympathetic. But there’s also the dreadful female psychiatrist who’s trying to make Brother Boy straight by forcing him to look at her genitals.

Or think of Wilde, or of Oscar Wilde’s life. Wilde liked his wife, Constance; he felt fondness and affection for her, and doted on her when she was first pregnant. But she didn’t provide the kind of companionship he really wanted. After Wilde meets Robbie Ross, Constance becomes a mere bit player in his life. After Wilde meets Bosie, she’s essentially written out of the action. Wilde’s actions destroy both himself AND his wife, but foremost in his concerns is always Bosie, the person he was in love with, not the person he married.

Or think of Angels in America, and the way Harper is a not-that-bright, not-that-appealing (not-that-believable), depressed, neurotic hindrance that Joe must escape in order to become a more authentic person.

I could go on and on. And the point is not to say that there’s anything necessarily wrong with these movies, because I believe they’re depicting real phenomena. I have no problem believing, for instance, that in England during the time surrounding the Great War, for a gay man who fell in love at university, it was really upsetting, confusing and humiliating when the guy you were in love with--and who claimed to love you back--spurned you in order to marry a woman, which is the story in Maurice. I managed to enjoy the movie perfectly well, even though women were depicted primarily as adversaries as obstacles; it’s just that Maurice is by no means my favorite Merchant Ivory film or favorite Forster novel. (That would be A Room with a View, on both counts.)

Then compare all these movies--one in which women are irrelevant, a bunch in which women are the nasty plot complication--to Latter Days, where women are friends, roommates, mentors, mothers (and not nearly as nasty as the patriarchs), co-workers and even employers, but never discarded spouses or lovers.

Think of it in terms of my all-time favorite gay/transgendered movie: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The only woman Hedwig has to reject is herself, the person Hansel became in order to please the first husband. After Tommy encounters Hedwig’s angry inch and freaks out, then tries to make it all better by saying, “But I love you,” Hedwig replies, angry and hurt, “Then love the front of me.” It means something very different when an unhappily/incompletely transgendered biological man says that to another man than if a straight woman says it to a gay man.

In Emily Pearson’s essay "Irreconcilable Differences," about her mixed orientation marriage, she notes that watching the play about their marriage by her ex-husband, Steve Fales, felt like “being dismembered by an ice pick.” She also writes about reading a review of the play in which the reviewer noted that

As important as his relationship with his wife is to his story--and as much as his desire to respect her privacy may be commendable--it’s disconcerting how completely she disappears from his ‘Confessions’ between courtship and divorce.”

I was floored. The reviewer had, in one sentence, summed up my entire marriage. I had completely disappeared between our courtship and divorce. Just as my mother, and every other straight woman I knew who had married a gay man, had completely disappeared between courtship and divorce.

I recognize the need for gay men to tell the truth of their stories. I applaud the effort. But I cannot applaud the perpetuation of stories in which the plot is designed from the get-go for women to be adversaries, impediments, that which must be abandoned in order for the man’s real story to unfold. And that is what happens when we act like mixed-orientation marriages are examples of brave, courageous, admirable choices on the part of the men who pursue them. They’re not. They might be understandable choices, and some gay men might make a better go of it than others. I'm not saying they should be forbidden or punished. (From what I've seen, in most cases, the marriage itself and the dreadful aftermath are usually punishment enough.) But they’re not something we should admire--they’re not, in other words, something we should make “politically correct.”*

So I think that’s one reason I like Latter Days more than any gay Mormon man I’ve ever met likes it: it doesn’t denigrate women or women's sexuality. It doesn’t treat straight women as maddening manacles or millstones preventing the main characters’ happiness, or as unfortunate but unavoidable casualties along the course of the main characters’ voyages of discovery. It doesn’t even turn women into irrelevancies the main characters need not worry about. It treats them as people, entitled to respect and esteem, and invested in very real and respectable ways in the main characters’ well-being.

So if someone wants to tap into the potential audience straight women could be for romances about gay men, I think all of that is important to keep in mind.

*That, by the way, is Ben Christensen’s current way of trying to defend the whole business of mixed-orientation marriages: he marvels that his critics somehow missed the fact that he asked, "Why then is it not politically correct for a gay man to venture into what is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that’s what he chooses to do?"

I didn't miss the question; I spent 7000 words explaining why it's not politically correct, but I'll provide the short answer here: because most marriages between gay men and straight women privilege male well-being at the cost of female well-being. I also noted, "Christensen demands not only the continued right of gay men to marry straight women, but approbation and approval for doing so, and he has received even that." He's not brave enough to do what he wants regardless of what other people think of him; he wants everyone to approve him, and he becomes petulant when they don't.

On his blog, he recently asked if I or other like me would "accuse a woman expressing her right to marry another woman of having an overblown sense of entitlement? No; Holly has said as much. Why then the double standard? Why are some choices more politically correct than others?"

Jesus Christ, why are some people so much poorer at clear reasoning than others?

Some choices are more politically correct than others because some choices are more beneficial to society and individuals, while others are more harmful. Most mixed-orientation marriages are dreadful failures that bring misery and heartache to those involved, including spouses and the children these marriages produce.

Gee? Why wouldn't society offer such marriages its most enthusiastic endorsement? Well, you can only note that for a really long time, the Mormon church did.

That, Ben, is why your choice is less "politically correct" than others. Ain't no double standard there--just the simple awareness that it is unethical for society to promote choices in which the cost of one person's happiness/ comfort/ convenience/ pleasure come at the cost of someone else's suffering. Your marriage might be one of the few exceptions--you and FoxyJ might live your entire lives pleased as punch with your arrangement--but for most people who end up in them, marriages like yours are unnecessary, unmitigated disasters. Because most people in and out of such marriages can see that, they find your defense of mixed-orientation marriages--not just mixed marriages themselves, but your entire defense of them--not only politically incorrect, but naive, foolish and pitiable. Is that really so hard to see?

So Ben, there's no double standard in the fact that people like me are ardent supporters of the right to marry for two people who are fervently in love and who have a clear understanding of what they're offering each other in a marriage, regardless of gender, but aren't so big on the idea of sexually naive dudes blind to their own privilege saying, "I want what everyone else has, just because. Why doesn't everyone approve of me when I do whatever I want?"

You might as well argue that there should be no double-standard about drinking: if it’s OK for adults to drink, why isn’t it OK for 14-year-olds to drink? If it’s OK for a 30-year-old guy to drink four whiskey and sodas during a Friday night at a bar with his friends, why isn’t it politically correct for a 30-year-old pregnant woman to drink three cosmos that same Friday night? Why the double standard? Gee, could it have something to do with the fact that one course of action is far more likely to cause harm than another?

But since someone probably will argue that there should be no law prohibiting teenagers from buying alcohol, or else argue that all drinking should be politically incorrect, let me illustrate the problems with Ben's logic in another example involving marriage. In some states a 16-year-old can marry provided s/he has parental consent; in other states, second cousins can marry. So why shouldn't it be politically correct to marry your 16-year-old second cousin if that's what you choose to do? Why is that any different from marrying your 21-year-old fourth-cousin-once-removed, especially if she's not done with college? She's still younger than average, and you're still related. So why the double standard?

In other words, Ben, just get over the fact that people don't always approve of what you do, and live your live according to your own convictions and preferences, or else make choices that will more easily win you respect.

Posted by Holly at 8:18 PM | Comments (6)

December 19, 2007

Maybe It Really Was Two Minutes In Heaven

Episode 18 of VM, which I discussed yesterday, opens with Veronica making out with Deputy Leo (whose reappearance near the end of season 3 is a much needed bright spot) before her front door. He wonders why he’s never been invited in and wants, he says, “to get a really good, long look at your bedroom ceiling.”

“Wow! College girls must be easy,” she replies.

The focus of the scene is the talking, not the kissing. There’s no dramatic music, nothing unusual in the camera shot. You understand, from everything in the scene itself, that these two people like each other, but you also understand that Leo likes Veronica a lot more than she likes him. I thought Deputy Leo was a great character and was sorry Veronica wasn’t nicer to him. But the show doesn’t intend for them to have incredible chemistry, and they don’t. The show does intend for Veronica and Duncan to have incredible chemistry, and they still don’t.

The show intends for Veronica and Logan to have incredible chemistry, and they do. And it makes sense that they do. Because as they work together on things like finding out who stole the money at the poker game, what’s going on with the various witnesses who claim to have seen Lynn Echolls jump off the bridge or ride away in a van, who is using the credit cards of Logan’s supposedly dead mother, they come to see one another’s virtues and vulnerabilities.

The kiss signifies something complicated and wonderful: they’ve discovered they have an emotional connection. As they acknowledge this emotional connection, it allows for an embodied attraction. (I use that slightly odd phrase because I think it covers more than calling the attraction merely “physical,” as opposed to some other sort, like “emotional” or “intellectual.” Emotions and thoughts are not just emotional and intellectual, they are embodied, and can cause physiological changes, including alterations in blood pressure, pulse, expression, posture, digestion, etc; and embodiment includes things like the way we carry ourselves, what our voices sound like, and how we adorn or decorate our bodies.) Admitting and acting on that attraction allows their emotional connection to deepen. And lust is part of every aspect of the embodied attraction and connection.

These people want each other, and the kiss makes it clear. OK, it’s a pretty tame kiss in a lot of ways: it’s just a first kiss, and just first base, and they’re juniors in high school, and while Veronica isn’t a virgin in that she was roofied and raped while unconscious, she’s never had consensual sex she remembers, so she could be considered a kind of psychological virgin. But there are little things, aside from the camera work and soundtrack, that show how passionate this kiss is. One gesture I particularly love is when Logan slides his hand down to the small of Veronica’s back and stops there for a moment: he knows that according to the protocol of a first date, his hand can’t venture any farther down, but it then allows him to slide his hand back up along her spine--not too far up, mind you--but this time, his hand is under her shirt. The kiss continues a moment longer, before they break apart and stare at each other, alarmed, excited and confused. There’s an awkward disengagement from the embrace, then Veronica goes to her car and shrugs at Logan before she gets in and drives away. Days later, after an inconsequential conversation about something else, Veronica will think to herself, “All right-y, Logan. We’ll just skip over the two minutes in heaven we had. You want to pretend it never happened? No argument here. My lips, for all intents and purposes, are sealed,” but there’s virtually no talking involved in this kiss. And it wasn’t two minutes in heaven: it was closer to a minute.

I acknowledged Monday that I could watch a fairly explicit, completely naked sex scene I enjoyed and admired, and still not get worked up, because the sex wasn’t about me. Whereas this kiss I’ve just described is, as I’ve already acknowledged, pretty tame. And yet, as I imagine my account of the details make clear, watching it is a complete turn-on. This is because the kiss replicates both my experience and my fantasies in really lovely ways. The kiss is a nice, accurate representation of what I have been taught to consider the early stages of how you act when you want to deepen not feelings of friendship, nor admiration or respect or esteem (though I think things develop more nicely when you feel all those things), but feelings of lust. And I have found, that just as turned out to be the case with Veronica and Logan, lust can make you feel more kindness, affection, respect and tenderness for the person with whom you explore it.

I grew up being told, flat-out, “Lust is evil.” We had countless lessons on it in every venue the church could provide. Lust is evil. Love is pure and virtuous, and completely unconnected to lust, which is evil. Lust is an evil feeling, and the actions that proceed from it are, from start to finish, evil. Never mind that, more than just about any other branch of Christianity, Mormonism is obsessed with sex, scorning and condemning celibacy as abnormal and insisting everyone get married, while the big whoop-de-doo reward of Mormon heaven is that you get to have sex for all eternity, which you wouldn’t find much of a prize if you didn’t have an active enough libido to experience lust to some degree and with some frequency. In Mormon culture and doctrine, you get married, you have sex, but somehow, you’re supposed to do it without feeling lust, feeling only this other, pure desire for children or SOMETHING that is divorced from anything erotic or bodily--again, ironic, since Mormons claim to love bodies, and insist that God has a body.

I don’t believe lust is evil, any more than hunger or illness or being incredibly, incredibly cold, or even buoyant good health, all of which can also prompt people to commit evil acts. (I think people get up to mischief sometimes when they’re feeling REALLY good.) I believe that the Mormon church’s vilification of lust is evil, and one more reason that Utah is the most depressed state in the nation.

All right. I have to run off to meet a student now and I’m going to be late. But I’m still moving towards my final point, and I promise to get there eventually. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Holly at 1:45 PM | Comments (3)

December 18, 2007

The Lead-Up to Two Minutes In Heaven

Warning! This entry contains spoilers! If you A) haven’t seen seasons I or III of Veronica Mars and B) intend to watch them some day and C) are upset by spoilers (I’m not), then read at your own risk.

If you look at the calendar on my blog, it shows that I took a full week off from blogging, Sunday December 9 through Saturday December 15. I completely missed National Blog Posting Every Day Month or whatever November is called; I was traveling and away from home for over half the month, and much of the time I was gone I didn’t have reliable internet access, so there was just no way I could have done that gig.

I decided, however, that I’d compensate by posting every single day for a week or ten days in December, and I thought December 5 through 15 would be ideal as those days (even though that’s actually 11 days). But I got distracted on December 8, and what distracted me was a sweater I started last spring and really want to finish before 2008 rolls around, and Veronica Mars.

Several weeks ago I got this coupon from Borders offering me 40% of an dvd boxed set. It occurred to me that I had never gotten around to watching Season III of Veronica Mars, and while I’d heard it sucked, I wanted to see the magnitude of suckage for myself. So I bought the boxed set, took it home, forgot about it for a while, and then decided what the hell, I should watch it. (Especially since I had this sweater I wanted to finish up, and I like to knit while I watch tv and vice versa. It’s a good way to make tv time productive, and to keep me from getting bored with rows of stockinette stitch.)

And the season sucked. It really, really sucked. The over-arching story lines providing continuity from episode to episode sucked; the plots of individual episodes often sucked; the character development sucked. OK, there were plenty of great performances: from the first moments of the show I really enjoyed seeing both Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni on screen, and I especially liked them together. But great performances can’t compensate for a crappy script.

And OK, there was still plenty of witty, intelligent, sparkling dialogue, but if I wanted to watch something with lively banter but ludicrous, unbelievable plots driven awkwardly along by stupid contrivances and the most inane inexplicable choices on the parts of the main characters, I would have made it through more than four episodes of The Golden Girls--or wait, was it Gilmore Girls? I swear I can hardly tell those two shows apart: they both feature some excessively close (to the point of being kind of grossly claustrophobic) relationship between a mother and daughter living in some insular, retiring (retirement?) community; they both have characters who are obsessed with sex and money in very cliched, banal ways; and they both require you to suspend entirely not only your disbelief but your rational wits and any knowledge you might have about human beings actually behave--though one about the old ladies sharing an apartment isn’t quite so bad on that front as the one about the 30-something single mom in New England.

But I digress.

So, VM3 sucked, and one of the worst things about it was who Veronica was with when the season ended. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t with Logan, it’s that Piz, the replacement boyfriend, was SO BORING that he made Duncan (who was so boring that he was kicked off the show as a way to placate the show’s fans, because they quite rightly HATED Duncan) seem like Fourth of July fireworks. Someone in casting or production of that show has a thing for bland boys.... I was trying to figure out who Piz would be in the Buffyverse. He wouldn’t be Riley, because Riley is at least hot, and Marc Blucas could convincingly deliver a comedic line like, “You’re in the thrall of the dark lord!” from the “Buffy vs. Dracula” episode. (I have a beef with Riley haters. I think there’s a reason Marc Blucas is the only one from the show, aside from SMG, to garner many roles in feature films, and the reason has to do with the fact that he’s talented, tall, attractive and affable.) He certainly wouldn’t be Xander, the romantic underdog, because although Xander is discussed as this kind of hapless schlub, he’s really funny, pretty insightful, and quite attractive too. Piz wouldn’t even be disposable love interests Scott Hope or Parker Abrams. Instead, he’d be Graham, Riley’s emotionless and forgettable sidekick in the Initiative.

And there are other reasons why it sucked, which I may develop into a paper someday, because they have to do with the ways teenagers do and don’t interact with adults, which is part of what I analyze in teen tv. But I won’t discuss that here. Instead, I’ll tell you that I kept watching it, a bit compulsively, wondering how it could possibly get worse, only to find out. Suffice it to say, that it sucked so bad, that I had to mitigate the nasty feeling of needing a shower it left me with, and the best way I could think of to do that was to watch Season 1 yet again.

And VM1 is still fabulous. That first season is so vastly superior to virtually all other television I’ve ever seen that I can forgive the crappy follow-ups. I especially like the Logan story--but then, who doesn’t?

Of course I HATED Logan Echolls the first few episodes--couldn’t understand why the show was subjecting me to this vile, vile character. At the end of the sixth episode, he walks into a closet full of belts and selects one, tests its strength. I thought, “Great! He’s going to hang himself! I will no longer have to watch this dreadful person fuck up everyone else’s life!” But turns out he was just choosing the belt his father would beat the crap out of him with, and that it was someone else in the Echolls family would who commit suicide.

But then you realize what a thorough asshole his dad his, and there’s the whole thing with his mother’s suicide, Logan’s conviction that she’s not really dead and his request that Veronica help him track her down because he needs to know she’s all right. By the time he realizes that his mother really did kill herself and collapses, heartbroken and sobbing, into Veronica’s arms, I wasn’t sure I liked this character, but I at least felt compassion for him and saw him as complex and human.

And then, there’s Episode 18, “Weapons of Class Destruction,” where Logan, all knight-in-puka-shells-ish, comes to rescue Veronica when the creepy camo-wearing, fertilizer-buying weirdo gets in her car and instructs her to drive to the Camelot Motel, all of which Logan overhears because she was on the phone with him when the guy got in the car. He punches the guy really hard in the face several times, and, upon discovering that the guy is an undercover FBI agent, still refuses to trust him, delivering the memorable line, "Dream on, Jump Street. I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

A few moments later, Veronica walks out of the motel room after talking to the FBI dude. Logan leans against the wall, asks “Are you OK?” She murmurs “Mm-hmm,” then kisses him quickly on the lips to say thanks before shaking her head and walking away--because after all, until a few weeks earlier, she LOATHED this guy so much she could barely stand to be near him.

And Logan grabs her arm, pulls her around to face him, and the two of them make out on the balcony of this seedy hotel while the music swells and the camera pulls away and circles around them in this sweeping romantic gesture. The very first time I saw it and half the times I’ve seen it since then, I stood up and clapped and shrieked in delight, because it was really sexy and completely unexpected and absolutely earned and ever so, ever so RIGHT. (Yes, the scene plays on all sorts of stereotypes and predictable fantasies. It's still a surprise, and it still works.)

Now, believe it or not, the point I want to make about this wonderful heterosexual kiss is related to what I wrote yesterday about a really moving gay sex scene. But once again I’ve already written a lot, and I don’t want this entry to be so long no one takes the time to read it in any detail. (I know what blog-readers sometimes do with really long entries, because I’m a blog reader myself and I occasionally do it too: we skim.) So you’ll have to check back again later for the continuation of this argument.

Posted by Holly at 10:37 AM | Comments (4)

December 17, 2007

Latter Gay Gaze

My friend Troy hates the movie Latter Days--just hates it. A year or two ago at Sunstone when he and I were hanging out, I mentioned that I liked it; he countered that he despised it. “What do you think is so bad?” I asked.

“You mean, besides the script, the plot, the acting and the direction?” he replied.

I didn’t respond, except to shrug. Yes, the movie has problems. There are elements of the script that really bug me. There are elements to the plot I find predictable and cliched. There are performances I find really weak.

But I still like it. I liked it enough to buy a copy for myself and to give a copy as a gift to someone else. I liked it well enough to listen to the commentary.

One major reason I like it is that as far as I’m concerned, it’s about the only movie I’ve ever seen to get a mission right--I would argue it gives a more accurate depiction of a mission even than God’s Army, which I found thoroughly annoying and lame. (Don’t ask me why, because I don’t remember much about it aside from the fact that they make the new guy lug his suitcase around while they go tracting, which I’m fairly certain would never happen; that the main character goes back to BYU, dates and MARRIES his English TA while she's still his teacher (a BYU alum can correct me if I'm wrong, but I rather suspect the administration wouldn't be cool with that) and that the movie ends with her bringing him a cup of tea and sitting down at his feet to adore him; and that Richard Dutcher, who was about 40, plays a missionary of about 30 who dies quietly in his sleep from an inoperable brain tumor with no suffering or puking his guts out or whatever, so much so that no one even knows he's sick. I hate on principle all movies where people die quietly in their sleep from inoperable brain tumors. Anyway, aside from all that, I found the movie so vacuous and forgettable that I can’t remember what happened, and so can’t really tell you why I hated it in detail, though I think the reasons I’ve already listed constitute solid ground.)

But back to Latter Days. I like it for moments. There’s a moment where one elder grabs another and says, “I’m going to hit you, elder, and it’s going to hurt.” Pretty much. I liked it for Steve Sandvoss, the guy who plays the gay missionary--he has a sweetness and a decency I found both sympathetic and genuine, and it reminded me of the elders I liked best on my mission--some were really good young men.

But the thing I like best about it is the sex scene.

It’s not just that both actors are young, hot and well-muscled, so that the viewer is treated to some really nice views of beautiful male asses. It’s that the actors go for it. There’s a moment (one of those moments I like it for) when, after a hurried disrobing, they embrace and then positively fling themselves together onto the bed. It’s passionate, hot, and tender.

And after the sex, the guys sit naked on the bed and stroke each other and talk. The experienced guy in the equation says to the recently deflowered, soon-to-be-excommunicated elder, “I thought you’d be more reticent.” (Which is another reason I like it--reticent is a good word that people are reticent about using.) Rebecca, whom I try not to resent for deleting her entire blog, once wrote an entry about how watching these two guys make sweet love somehow brought tears to her eyes. I feel the same way.

I don’t always like sex scenes. A lot of them feel contrived, staged and manipulative (which isn’t surprising, since they are) and if I’m not emotionally invested in the relationship between the characters, I don’t really care about seeing them get it on. That’s one main reason I don’t care much for porn: aside from a sort of anthropological or informational interest--oh, so that’s how this industry works; that’s what the audience for this stuff expects; huh, I hadn’t known that particular activity was really part of the repertoire--I often find it fairly boring, which isn’t surprising since for the most part it’s designed to be emotionally vacuous.

But I love this sex scene. I could watch it over and over and not feel bored or dirty or cheap--or, for that matter, particularly aroused, since it’s a sex scene that has no room for me or any woman. I can’t imagine what I’d do in that scene; it sparks no fantasy; and so it doesn’t turn me on. (And I know all that because I did just watch it over and over, with the commentary on and off, so that I'd be accurate when I discussed it now.)

I remember reading a Dan Savage (whose most recent book is reviewed here) column in which someone asked him why straight men were turned on by lesbian porn, but straight women weren’t turned on by gay male porn, since in both cases what was depicted were scenes in which same-sex participants found ways to pleasure one another. He reasoned that in lesbian porn, men could always assume that they’d be welcome, and certainly there would be plenty of orifices into which a penis could be inserted, which, after all, is still what most people in our heteronormative world consider “sex.” Whereas in gay male sex, there are already accommodating orifices for any penis present, so any additional orifice is superfluous, and women therefore have a harder time creating a fantasy in which they’d be welcomed into the scene.

Savage’s argument about the possible welcomeness of a penis in a lesbian relationship is supported in part by this passage from Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King, about the early stages of her first lesbian love affair:

Taking turns making love to each other satisfied our need to experience total aggression and total passivity with no fear of settling permanently into either condition. It’s something heterosexual lovers would like to do but can’t. I always felt silly whenever I got on top of Ralph, but when Bres’s thighs were locked in the vise of my elbows, I really was in charge; yet when we changed places and she did the doing, I could let down my guard and wallow in the submission without worrying that she would get “the wrong idea.”

I had to admit I missed being fucked. Bres, who had slept with a man out of curiosity, said she liked it, too. We did our best with what we had but finger-fucking is inadequate even when you do it with someone you love. There is another problem for two women unless both of you are nail-biters, and neither of us was. Bres enjoyed it more than I did because she did not associate it with dates and fraternity boys, but every time she went inside me I could hear Faysie babbling, “I mean, it’s okay because we’re pinned!”

We had a few wistful discussions about getting a dildo but they were not sold openly then. Undoubtedly they were covertly available if you knew where to look, but we didn’t, and in any case, no Mississippi resident would have had the strength to embark on the search. Considering what we had to go through to buy hooch, God only knows what buying a dildo would have involved.

As for other foreign objects, we never used them.

Candles melt/ Carrots are tough/ Bottles can hurt you/ Might as well muff.

But countering the male fantasy of the “Hey, all these chicks would want me!” scenario, King also offers this insight, gleaned after her lesbian love affair ends and she goes back to heterosexual sex for a while:

After the third fuck, while drinking my fifth boiler-maker, I started crying. Most people are not in a position to realize it, but there is nothing sadder than being with one sex when you want to be with the other. I wanted Bres, but I wanted femaleness also. The sight of this naked man filled me with tearing pain; his hairy chest, his curveless trunk with no discernable waistline and the navel up so high, the tight flat nothingness of his buttocks, seemed like a mutation of the species.

Now, I really am going somewhere with this; I didn’t just set myself the academic exercise of analyzing a couple depictions of gay sex. But I have written enough for today, so you’ll have to come back later to read the rest of what I’m getting at.

Posted by Holly at 11:11 AM | Comments (6)

October 9, 2007

Lousy Ticket Sales the Fault of Female Actors

OK, I know lately I've been relying heavily on the "here's a link to something upsetting we should all pay attention to" form of blogging, but the fact of the matter is, here's a link to something upsetting we should all pay attention to. Turns out that Warner Bros is going to stop making movies with women in the lead, because two recent vehicles for big-name stars (The Brave One, with Jodie Foster, and The Invasion, with Nicole Kidman), didn't earn much at the box office.

I admit I didn't see either movie, and don't plan to, but it wasn't because I don't like movies with women in them; it's because both movies looked to me like the scripts sucked.

Did I just make this up out of nothing, or did Erin Brockovich do pretty well at the box office? Chicago? Chocolat? Most every Austen adaptation, whether I liked it or not?

This points to a problem that has been noted with regards to reading audiences: women will read books about men, but men won't read books about women, so books about men are emphasized, even though women make up a larger share of book buyers and readers than men do. Apparently the same applies to movies, and now women will have to even fewer movies about women to watch. They'll just have to settle for more movies about men, because some men won't see movies about women--or even make them.

Thank the powers that be, once again, for the likes of Joss Whedon, L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll. And I for one shall boycott all Warner Bros films, even on Netflix--I'm just not going to support that shit.

Posted by Holly at 12:29 PM | Comments (5)

September 18, 2007

Peanut Butter Is OK, I Guess

Tomatoes, potatoes, cocoa beans and chilies are among the food plants indigenous to the Americas that have been thoroughly appropriated by other parts of the world, to the point where they seem integral to certain nations’ cuisine or history: think of Italian food with tomato sauce. Think of Belgium without chocolate. Think of Ireland with a potato blight and crushing famine. Think of Indian food without the searing hot bite of a really potent chili pepper or two.

Peanuts, not so much. Plenty of the world has never taken to peanuts or peanut butter or any number of peanut-flavored things. As Chanson notes, the French find peanut butter pretty damn vile, and as I remember from my time in the UK a couple of decades ago, the British didn’t much care for it either.

The Chinese and their neighbors, however, managed to dig peanuts and their by-products and do some pretty great things with them, as anyone who has enjoyed spring rolls or noodles with peanut sauce will know. I prefer peanuts in savory food to any sort of peanut-y dessert.

Frankly the thing I like best about peanut butter is its history. In elementary school I read this fabulous biography of George Washington Carver, explaining how he convinced all these farmers to plant soil-enriching peanuts instead of just soil-depleting cotton as part of his crop rotation program. Once the peanuts were harvested, the farmers came to George and said, “OK, what do we do with these peanuts? ‘Cause there’s no demand for them at all.”

And George looked at them for a moment, then said, “I’ll be right back,” went into his lab and invented about 50 million uses for peanuts, one of which was peanut butter. (Does anyone besides me still have very fond memories of hearing Eddie Murphy describe how “George Washington Carver died penniless and insane, still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut” as part of a "Black History Minute" on Saturday Night Live?)

Anyway.... I’m not nuts about peanuts. They’re OK, but I prefer other nuts, real nuts. (Peanuts, after all, are actually legumes, as you probably learned in fifth grade.) Pecans are my favorite nuts for baking--I like them in cookies and pies and cakes and streusel or whatever. There are pecan trees all over my hometown of Thatcher, Arizona--the church I went to as a child was in the midst of a pecan grove--and I would regularly pick a pecan off the ground, crack it and eat the fresh nut meat.... No nut tastes as good to me as a fresh pecan I’ve just cracked. I like walnuts and macadamia nuts for cooking too. I also enjoy roasted and salted almonds, cashews and pistachios. (I especially like cracking pistachios and sucking all the salt off the shell.) If all the other, better nuts are gone from the nut mix, I’ll eat Brazil nuts. I don’t like hazelnuts for some reasons.

I didn’t really like peanut butter when I was little because it tasted too peanut-y and the texture was weird and it wasn’t sweet enough, so my mother’s solution was to mix it with honey, which made it pretty damn good. I really liked spreading that mixture on saltines. Yum! Honey’s much better with peanut butter than jam.

And in general I like it even less now that I’m grown. Nine times out of ten, I’ll pass up any sweet that is peanut or peanut-butter flavored, but there’s always that tenth time....

OK, this is still running long, and I have more to say before I get around to sharing the cookie recipe. But I promise, I’ll post it soon.

Posted by Holly at 11:20 AM | Comments (4)

June 30, 2007

We Will Mock You

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in... a really long time. I have been assured that it's still on, and I guess I know that since every so often some new comedian shows up in some movie and I read in various news sources that this person got his/her start on SNL.

Most people in North America over the age of 11 or so have a favorite SNL skit, and most people over the age of 25 have a favorite cast. I am old enough to have watched the original cast and I know those very early episodes are classics and everything, but they're not the ones I remember most fondly. (Except for the skit about the floor wax that is also a dessert topping.) No, my favorite cast was the one about 1988, with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Jon Lovitz, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, etc--you know, the era that brought us "Wayne's World," "The Church Lady"and "Sprockets."

One of my favorite skits--indeed, one of the skits most beloved by my entire family--featured guest star John Malkovich as Lord Edmund, a nobleman who accuses even the crescent moon in the day sky of mocking him. He is shown a very faithful and respectful portrait of himself, and erupts in rage because he thinks the artist mocks him with a "grotesque caricature." "You mock me!" he says to the painter. "You mock me, and I will not be mocked!"

And while all this is going on, his servants, played by Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, are prancing behind him, mimicking his facial expressions and gestures, and saying, in a nasal falsetto, "You mock! You mock me! You mock me, and I will not be mocked!"

I haven't managed to convey the brilliance of this skit, I know, but trust me: it's pretty fuckin' funny.

It feels cheap to mock the cast of We Will Rock You, because after all, the biggest problems with the production, namely, the plot, the characterization and the script, aren't their fault. But it's hard to resist, because the plot, the characterization and the script heap contempt and scorn on boy bands and girl bands and any band that didn't start out rehearsing original songs in someone's garage. The show mocks musical performers who 1) perform someone else's lyrics and/or music and 2) have to audition to get a role or part in a band and 3) are chosen for their looks and dance moves as much as for their ability to sing, while their ability to play a musical instrument is largely moot and 4) are given opportunity to perform as part of a larger scheme to earn money for backers and producers who do not perform as part of this group and 5) are dressed, presented and coiffed to be seem slightly edgy, but really are marketed to a mainstream audience.

In other words, the show mocks its own performers; the performers deliver lines that mock the type of performers they are. But somehow, you're not supposed to notice or care about this irony.

So anyway, as I was driving back across the border to my home (which was fine except for the driving and the crossing the border part), I couldn't resist tweaking a Queen song or two, just as had been done in the show, in order to critique the show.

Let me first establish a rhythm. It goes like this:

Thump thump BOOM
thump thump BOOM

(and now I will add a few simple lyrics, directed to the lead of the production Dale and I saw:)

Buddy, you're a short guy, French guy
singing on the stage, gonna take on the world some day
Makeup's smudged on your face
You big disgrace
Shaking your ass all over the place
Listen!
We will, we will
MOCK YOU
We're singing
We will, we will
MOCK YOU
Everybody!
We will, we will
MOCK YOU

Oh shit!

(Brief but impressive guitar solo. This next part is dedicated to the surviving members of Queen.)

We paid our fees
We stood in line
We balked at each sentence
We cringed at most rhymes
For bad mistakes
littered acts one and two
Non-sequiturs teemed
and the chorus, it screamed
till your inane pastiche was through!
And the beat was going on and on and on and on
You have become whores, my friends
and you'll keep on selling out til the end
You are complete whores
You are complete whores
No time for scruples
‘cause you are complete whores
in the music world.

Posted by Holly at 11:11 AM | Comments (2)

June 7, 2007

I'm Not Lost

Since I don't have cable and my reception via antenna is so lousy I can't stand to watch my television unless the picture on it comes from a vcr or dvd player, I generally watch the tv shows I'm interested in a season behind. Lately I've been reading about the season 3 finale of Lost, and apparently there's still all this concern about the "others."

But why? Seriously, why? I'm currently about two-thirds finished with season 2 thanks to Netflix, and it's bleedin' obvious who the "others" are. I mean, you've got Gavin Park pretending to be some Korean doorman who doesn't speak English, and Holland Manners pretending to be the devoted husband of a saintly middle-aged black woman. So what if Holland was killed by Darla and Drusilla while locked in his own wine cellar? So what if Gavin was turned into a zombie by The Beast and eventually decapitated by Gunn? We all know how cunning those lawyers and conjurers at Wolfram and Hart are at bringing people back from the dead. I'm telling you, if the secret cabal of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart is powerful enough to have offices even on savage planets like Pylea in some alternate dimension, they're powerful enough to take over some savage island depicted on an alternate network.

I'm just waiting for the twist in season 4 where we find out all this to-doing about "the children" is a way to secure playmates for the preternaturally strong and wicked sextuplets Cordelia Chase (because she was the most fertile character in the entire Buffy-verse) conceived with Logan Echolls during Cordy's stint on Veronica Mars.

Mark my words.

Posted by Holly at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)

January 22, 2007

Made in Sheffield

Having discussed British television in my last two entries, I figured I might as well continue the trend by telling you about something else I watched recently thanks to Netflix: a documentary called Made in Sheffield about the music that developed there in the 70s and early 80s.

As I mentioned last week, one of the things I did while visiting my family was watch youtube videos with my siblings. I insisted that both my brother and sister show their children the video to the 1984 version of Do They Know It's Christmas? and tell them about its historical and musical significance, because as I mentioned in my Christmas meme, it's one of my very favorite Christmas songs.... Anyway, my brother and I wanted to figure out who one particular singer was, and in order to do that, we had to do some internet research.

Turns out the guy in question was Paul Weller of The Jam and Style Council.... I own CDs by each band but I didn't recognize him because he looks nothing like that now, hasn't looked like that for a very long time. Anyway, in the process of finding that out, I came across a reference to said documentary.

Now, Sheffield is a place I've actually been. I doubt it's much of a tourist destination but I spent a week visiting friends there in 1984. So before I read about this documentary, I knew that Sheffield had been a steel manufacturing town, and that it supposedly produced good flatware. I knew it was the home of Def Leppard, which I tried not to hold against the place, as well as the home of Heaven 17, a band I quite enjoy.

What I didn't know until I started reading about this documentary was that two of the members of Heaven 17 (Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh) were also founding members of the Human League. This horrified me because I HATE and have always HATED the Human League, ever since the first miserable moment when I heard that dreadful single "Don't You Want Me Baby." (No. I don't. Go away.) Nor did I know that another band I really love, ABC, was from Sheffield also.

So my personal connection to the place, my interest in discovering how founding members of a band I loathed could go on to found a band I loved, and my interest in learning more about the history of ABC, meant that I had to watch the thing.

Now, as I have mentioned, I don't love punk. I don't hate it--I can be perfectly happy when a song by the Clash or the Ramones comes on the radio, but I've never felt the need to buy their albums. I can admire things about the punk aesthetic, its democratic and anti-establishment spirit, but as far as deriving pleasure from sounds and rhythms, in general I still prefer the complexity they were reacting against--Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project and so forth.

This documentary gave me a new perspective on the whole issue. To paraphrase one music critic interviewed in the film, a lot of people of the time were inspired by the Clash and the Sex Pistols--to go out and buy guitars, learn three chords and imitate what was already being done. But in Sheffield, they were inspired to apply the attitude of punk to the electronic music by the likes of Kraftwerk and make stuff that was "weird."

Chris Watson, of Caberet Voltaire, talks about early performances by "The Cabs" (as all the hip people in the film called the band): he and his friends would record these strange sounds, then drive around town in a van listening to the recordings they made. Eventually they decided to share it with the people of Sheffield, so they opened the doors of the van, turned the volume up, and drove around very slowly. For them, it wasn't just about music, but about an approach to all the arts--visual, auditory and written.

I was surprised to learn that at one point (long before anyone in the US had ever heard of them), the Human League was actually a very interesting band. Phil Oakey, the iconically coiffed singer for the Human League, discussed the fact that he and his band mates "thought we were the punkiest band in Sheffield. You know we were laughing at the bands that learned to play guitars ‘cause they bothered to learn their three chords. We used one finger" to play a keyboard. He also talked about how he and the record company decided to expel the two guys who founded the band and replace them with two women chosen for their looks and their dance moves--the women had never even sung when they were asked to go on tour with the Human League--so that he could create "the next Abba." (Which is how it turned into the band I so despise.)

I was also intrigued to learn that the vocalist for ABC, Martin Fry, didn't start out as a musician--he published a fanzine and was asked by Stephen Singleton and Mark White to join Vice Versa in order to play some electronic something or other he had no experience with. But then one day Stephen and Mark heard Martin sing, realized he had a better voice than Mark, their current vocalist, and reshaped the band and its material to suit Martin. The result was ABC's first album, The Lexicon of Love, the very first album in my alphabetized CD collection and one of my top favorite albums of all time.

I dig electronic music--I have for a very long time--but I admit that one thing I always liked best about ABC and Heaven 17 was their use of instruments I really like: brass and saxophone and so forth. So it was fascinating to learn about their roots in this scene where a group of people who considered themselves "sonic terrorists" and who thought they "were killing off rock and roll" were exploring how to "make music without musical instruments."

The documentary itself is only 52 minutes long, but there are extra interviews that I of course watched. I recommend it all. If you've seen it, or if you watch it any time soon, I'd like to know what you think.

Posted by Holly at 5:47 PM | Comments (3)

January 21, 2007

To the Manor Born

As I discussed ever so long ago, I love Netflix, and I love it more as time goes by. Not only is it really convenient and easy, but whatever software they use for making recommendations is actually pretty good. Not only does it recommend popular, current stuff I might not have gotten around to adding to my queue without a little prodding, but it also manages to recommend older, more obscure stuff I might never have heard of any other way.

One such example is a television series I recently finished watching, To the Manor Born. It was recommended to me because I had just finished watching a bunch of British period pieces--the various renditions of the life of Elizabeth Tudor, the really fabulous adaptation of Bleak House. I read the blurb of TtMB: recent widow Audrey fforbes-Hamilton (played by Penelope Keith, and no, that is not a typo in fforbes) is forced to sell Grantleigh Manor, the estate where her family has lived for 400 years, when she discovers that her husband's death has left her bankrupt. The estate is purchased by one Mr. Richard De Vere (played by Peter Bowles), a dashing self-made millionaire (he runs a grocery store empire), social climber, and (gasp!) foreigner: although he can pass as English, the truth of the matter is that his parents were refugees who left Czechoslovakia at the beginning of World War II. Although she has to leave the manor, Audrey cannot leave her old way of life, despite the presence of a new landlord.

And I thought it sounded interesting enough and I ordered it.

But then it arrived and I saw on the dvd jacket that the series was made in 1979, and that put a different spin on things. I generally hate American tv from that time: Dallas, Love Boat, Laverne and Shirley--I can't watch that crap, and I didn't watch it when it was current--I hardly watched any prime-time television when I was in high school. And while the little British television I'd seen from that time occasionally seemed better written, the production values were often pretty dreadful.

I nearly returned the disk without watching it, but then I decided, what the hell, I might as well check it out. And I was surprised by two things: one, how much I actually enjoyed it, and two, that anyone could actually hold some of the attitudes Audrey regularly expressed. It was that whole sense of entitlement and privilege--the way she talked to her neighbors and servants! The references to the British class system and the "right" sort of people! It all seemed so outdated and antique. Of course I've read plenty of novels dealing with those very issues--but I can't think of a one of them set before the beginning of the Great War. And yet, I'm sure those attitudes still exist.... The whole thing was quite educational.

Despite the educational content, I wouldn't have kept watching if I hadn't been interested in all the characters, hadn't wanted to see what would happen next. But as I said, I actually enjoyed it--quite a lot, to be honest. I finished the last episode over the weekend. The entire series, which spanned three years, involves a mere 20 30-minute episodes. (And they really are 30 minutes long, not 22.) The fact that a season consists of only six or seven episodes might be one reason the writing was pretty good: they had time to get things right. And it also might be a reason why they didn't invest in better sets or more costumes--why lay out all that money when you won't be using something that many times?

So this is a really careful recommendation: if you like period pieces (it really does feel like one), if you're interested in the British class system, and if you like tv that is "unusual" by the standards of American network fare, watch this. It doesn't suck.

Posted by Holly at 8:54 AM | Comments (5)

December 7, 2006

My Take on the Movie Meme

I got this from Dale--he got it from someone else.

1. Popcorn or candy?

Neither. I don't really like the taste of movie popcorn and I hate paying exorbitant movie theater prices for movie candy. Sometimes I buy candy ahead of time, or make my own popcorn and smuggle it in.... but usually I just like to watch movies and save my calories for later.

2. Name a movie you've been meaning to see forever.

Run, Lola, Run. I've been told it's really good.... but in grad school I had a friend who was getting an MFA in film production and I would have to sit through student film shows featuring LOTS of movies where people just walk down halls for 20 minutes or wash their hands repeatedly or whatever, and I just don't relish the idea of watching a movie that consists primarily of scenes of a woman running.

3. You are given the power to recall one Oscar and give it to something else. What do you choose?

Oh, god, only one?!

I'm really tempted to take away the 1990 best picture Oscar for Dances with Wolves and deliver it over to any of the other four contenders--DwW is schlock to begin with, and anything that inflates Kevin Costner's ego is a source of genuine evil; whereas I think Whoopi Goldberg's performance in Ghost (for which she won best supporting actress that year) might have elevated that movie to best picture status.... then again, maybe not. Or I could correct a historical wrong and see that the marvelous Peter O'Toole won for any of the wonderful roles he was nominated for.... But if I gave him the Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia, that would mean depriving Gregory Peck of the Oscar he won in 1962 for his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and that would upset a lot of people; so perhaps I could do something about the 1964 Oscar for best actor, which went to Rex Harrison for playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady instead of to O'Toole for playing Henry II in Becket, except that I'm not sure that's such an injustice; but then, there's the other movie where O'Toole plays Henry II, The Lion in Winter, for which he was nominated but lost to Cliff Robertson in Charly.... what the hell was Charly and who has seen it? Oh.... it's an adaptation of Flowers for Algernon. Hmm.... that might be a wrong that truly needs righting.

In the end, however, I think I'd have to succumb to my hatred for that wretched mallrat Gwyneth Paltrow and deprive her of the Oscar she somehow won for Shakespeare in Love, and give it instead to the luminous Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth, which was, admittedly, so historically inaccurate that everyone involved should be ashamed. Nonetheless, Cate was really, really good at portraying one of my favorite historical figures of all time.

4. Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe.

Well, let's see.... I already own several versions of both Michelle Pfeiffer's and Halle Berry's Catwoman outfits from whichever Batman or Catwoman or Small Furry Mammal People movies they were in, and right now I'm lounging about in my Galadriel (Cate Blanchett's character in The Lord of the Rings, for those of you not cool enough to get the reference) outfit because it's just so stinkin' comfortable. As for when I want to make an impression, I never tire of dressing up in my version of the entire ensemble Scarlet O'Hara makes out of the green velvet curtains, though I've gotten a little bored with my Dorothy dress and my ruby slippers--I mean, who doesn't have a Dorothy outfit! Now that snow has arrived, my favorite outfit to wear to the grocery store is my Gandalf the Grey robe and cloak (I have a staff too, but it sticks too far out of the cart), though in summer, I prefer to buy my comestibles dressed as Barbara Bach in Caveman--for one thing, I get such good service at the meat counter that way! I admit I've always wanted some of those "shoes as hats" featured in Brazil, but those aren't an entire costume.... So I guess the new addition to my wardrobe will have to be the thigh-high boots and swingin' dress decorated not with fringe but with blond human hair (which is why it has such nice movement to it when she shimmies) that Hedwig wears at the end of "Wig in a Box."

5. Your favorite film franchise is....

Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I loved all three, though I did get a little tired of the way Elijah Wood would say, ever so earnestly, "Sam...." I went to midnight openings of the first two (I would have gone to a midnight opening of the third, but my life had complications), reread the books to prolong the pleasure, then bought each boxed DVD the day it came out. The books were really good, and the movies were good too: artistically refined, ethically complex, emotionally moving. I was really sad when there were no more to release.

6. Invite five living movie people over for dinner. Who are they? Why would you invite them? What do you feed them?

Do I have to? I don't know that I want to cook food for movie people. I'd rather just enjoy their work while I eat my dinner myself.

Well, if I must.... The first person I'd invite is Andrew Davies, the guy who writes the fabulous adaptations of all those British novels. I'd ask for tips on how he does it, and I'm sure his general conversation would be pretty damn enjoyable.

Next is a toss-up between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. I find Johnny Depp really attractive but I'm not sure he'd be good dinner company. I'd be willing to feed Angelina, though, and talk to her for an hour or two. I'd like to know about her humanitarian efforts, and find out if she's as beautiful in person as she is on screen. She could bring Brad, or she could not.

Next would be.... Ang Lee, I guess. I'd ask him about the beginning of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, where the Chinese woman is listening to what sounds to me like The Mormon Tabernacle Choir on headphones. Plus he's a cool guy from Taiwan, who directed an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, and made a luminously gorgeous movie set in the American West. Kind of combines a bunch of my interests there.

Speaking of Jane Austen novels.... I'd love to meet Emma Thompson. I'd ask her about adapting Jane Austen (she wrote the screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, which Ang Lee directed) and about appearing in the "University Challenge" episode of The Young Ones.

Rounding out the guest list would be... Sandra Bernhard! Of course! Why didn't I think of her sooner? My reasons for inviting her are explained here.

As for the menu-- inviting Sandra means that I'd have to serve ham and a hot canned fruit cocktail compote, and the drinks list would have to include Remy Martin with a water back. I'd make Mexican food, probably, and a chocolate cheesecake for dessert. (I'll have to post the recipe for that one soon.)

7. What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cellphones in the movie theater?

Watch this clip and find out.

8. Choose a male and a female bodyguard from a film.

Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones's Diary and Hedwig from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I mean, Mark Darcy made a pretty good show out of trying to beat the crap out of Daniel Cleaver (plus he offered to pay for all the damage afterwards!) and Hedwig was willing to use a broken beer bottle to gouge out the eyes of any female fan who got to close to Tommy Gnosis. But even more valuable than their skills at fighting dirty would be all the fun I'm pretty sure I'd have when physical violence to my person was not an imminent threat.

9. What's the scariest thing you've ever seen in a movie?

I recently watched Hearts and Minds, a 1972 documentary about US involvement in Vietnam. There's actual film--not a still, but rolling film--of that Viet Cong officer being executed with a bullet to the brain, so that you see him stand there one second, then crumple and fall while blood runs out of his head. That really freaked me out, as did the stock footage of the little naked girl, all her skin burned off by napalm, running down the road, or footage of a woman carrying a baby, another napalm victim, its skin hanging in tatters from its arms and legs. I had to stop the movie and become hysterical at those points....

That's the scariest thing I've seen recently, maybe ever, because it's all a real depiction of real suffering inflicted by my government. But as a distant second, terrifying images that live on in my memory despite my best efforts to forget, I would have to name all two hours of Shakespeare in Love. To start with, the movie stars the loathsome Gwyneth! The characterization is inconsistent, while the jokes are absolutely moronic (could they have milked that inane line about "Romeo and Bertha the Pirate's Daughter" or whatever it was for one more tired, lame laugh?) and the plot is full of holes so gaping and substantial you could have marched Elizabeth Tudor's entire entourage through any one of them. Yet people liked this shit! It actually won awards!

10. Your favorite genre (excluding "comedy" and "drama") is

Musicals. Duh.

11. You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year. How do you wield this power?

By writing several screenplays, hiring smart people to produce and direct them, and watching my new Hollywood career succeed beyond my wildest dreams.

12. If Jesus were to submit a synopsis of a documentary about life in America since 9/11, what would his p.o.v. be?

The frustrated, irate guy who says, "I'm outta here, but before I go, I want all you assholes to quit invoking my name when you go off and shoot people. And for christ's sake, quit asking for my help when all your war-mongering comes back and bites you in the ass."

13. Down in front, all you troublemakers.

I've already complained about adults who bring little kids to grown-up movies.

I tag anyone who's seen a movie in the past month, as well as anyone who hasn't blogged in a month.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (3)

November 5, 2006

A Little Love for Big Love

All the disks of season 1 of Big Love are somewhere in my Netflix queue, but I can't be bothered to move them closer to the top. First of all, I'm currently far too preoccupied with getting through season 2 of both Project Runway (which I'm rather obsessed with--if I had any skill in making patterns and such instead of just sewing them together, I'd be auditioning to get on) and Battlestar Galactica (which I respect and am intrigued by but find kind of tedious--the tone and tenor of each episode is too unvarying).

Plus I can't get all that excited about a watching a show that will require me to look at both Bill Paxton and Chloe Sevigny, two of my least favorite actors. I honestly don't understand why they are ever cast in anything. Shows with just one of them are bad enough, but I will really have to grit my teeth to make it through an entire season of something where the two of them share screen time. Chloe is so whiny, and has SUCH horrible posture: I want to slap her across the shoulder blades and scold, "Didn't your mother ever tell you how important it is to stand up straight?" As for Paxton, I find it a shame that he's not torn to pieces by aliens in every show he's in.

But I will watch Big Love some day, because I feel a commitment to seeing how Mormons are depicted in the mainstream media, yada yada yada. Then there's also the fact that one of the most interesting panels I attended at Sunstone was on Big Love, and two of the panelists were women who work on Mormon Focus, the pro-polygamy magazine that supposedly served as the inspiration for the series. These two women consider themselves "independent" polygamists, meaning that they are not affiliated with some fundamentalist group telling who to marry whom. And they LOVE the show.

These women, who were articulate, bright, educated and capable, if very conservatively dressed, love the show because they feel it portrays polygamists truthfully, sensitively, generously. It does a good job, they say, of depicting both the affection between the husband and the sister wives, as well as the strife than can occur. It also presents the polygamists as "normal" people who choose an alternative lifestyle.

Polygamy is seen by many people as extremely repressive for women--and I'm certain that in many forms (particularly the variety overseen by the likes of Warren Jeffs), it is extremely repressive. Nonetheless, the women in independent polygamist marriages are much more vocal and visible than the husbands, because the husbands can be prosecuted for bigamy and the women cannot. The women are vocal and visible in part because they are arguing for the decriminalization of polygamy between consenting adults (which I'll discuss further in a future post).

Neither woman on this panel, it should be mentioned, is actually in a polygamist marriage right now: one is a widow, and the other was a second wife, but not long after she joined the family, the first wife became unhappy with the arrangement and left. So these women are left in the position of espousing a lifestyle they cannot currently enjoy. It will come as a shock to learn, I'm sure, but it's not actually that easy to recruit "independent" women to "independent" polygamist marriages--independent women tend to want an independent husband of their own.

So that's why I will, someday, watch all of Big Love, just like I watched Orgazmo. I've seen two episodes of BL already, courtesy of some friends with Tivo, and I admit I wasn't overwhelmed, one way or the other. It didn't irritate me the way Angels in America did or impress me with its rigorous accuracy the way the South Park episode on Joseph Smith did. When I try to remember it now, I remember mostly annoyance: I was annoyed by the way the youngest wife dressed--no one trying to pass as Mormon would wear such skimpy outfits--and by the fact that the characters mispronounce "temple recommend," putting the stress on the last syllable of "recommend," as if it's a verb, when Mormons stress the first syllable--stuff like that would be so easy to fix if they just had a Mormon as a consultant for the show! And I didn't find Bill Paxton a good fit for the role he plays: he lacks a certain... glossiness Mormon priesthood holders exude, so the fact that I hate him to begin with made his position in the show even more annoying. But I've been told by plenty of Mos and Post-Mos that overall the show is pretty good and gets enough things right that you can enjoy it quite thoroughly. So I'll watch it all, truly I will--when I get done with the stuff I really want to see.

Posted by Holly at 9:46 AM | Comments (6)

September 26, 2006

Crouching Horse-Horse-Tiger-Tiger Hidden Dragon

Since I've had a discussion of movies, I thought I'd continue the trend. Here's a review I wrote of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" when it came out.

One of the first things I learned to say when I began studying Chinese was mamahuhu, which means "horse-horse-tiger-tiger." It is an idiomatic expression denoting something which is an uncomfortable hybrid, neither successfully this or that, nor even a worthy combination of the two; it's often translated as "mediocre" or "so-so." One of the first things I heard about Ang Lee's new movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, was that Lee had described it as "Bruce Lee meets Jane Austen;" one of his assistants called it "Sense and Sensibility with sword fights."

I'm a big fan of Austen, and if there were anyone who could blend Bruce Lee and Austen successfully, it would be Ang Lee, whose first three movies were set (at least in part) in his native Taiwan; his fourth movie was Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I would have to say that I found this movie more horse-horse-tiger-tiger than tiger-tiger-dragon-dragon.

One big disappointment was the primary love story. "Jane Austen meets anything" must have at least one love story, and Crouching Tiger has several. The first involves Li Mu Bai (Chow Yung Fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), who have long been in love but never admitted it for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Shu Lien's fiance was killed in battle next to Li Mu Bai. But their passion, supposedly on the point of bursting forth after years of restraint, isn't portrayed successfully. Mu Bai displays far greater passion in his devotion to his sword the Green Destiny, or his attempts to woo Jen (Zhang Ziyi), who repeatedly steals the Green Destiny from him, into becoming his disciple. When Jen finally asks, "Is it the sword or me you really want?" I was glad the movie acknowledged the force of his attraction to her.

Jen is involved in the rest of the love stories, usually as the one who breaks a heart. The love affair I cared about most involved Jen and Lo, a bandit living in the western desert whom Jen pursues because he steals her comb. "I'm not big or tall, but I'm quick as the wind" he tells Jen, and he could add that he's charming, funny and fairly gentlemanly--Henry Tilney residing in a cave rather than Northanger Abbey. But Jen is no more faithful to him than she is to her house maid/martial arts instructor Jade Fox or to her adopted sister Shu Lien.

Aside from Jen, the characters seem to have motivations that are not only simple but simplistic. Jade Fox (Chen Pei Pei) seeks esoteric knowledge because she is bad and wants to be able to defy social convention and kill those who thwart her; Li Mu Bai is good because he follows the rules and wants to kill Jade Fox. Yu Shu Lien is good because she is patient, long-suffering and honors the memory of her dead fiance; Yu Jen is bad because she doesn't even honor her living fiance--well, that doesn't quite make her bad, but her willingness to steal, lie, and break promises isn't quite enough to make her bad, either. She gets to be not quite good or bad, but it seems that the main reason for that might simply be that she's young and pretty.

Other elements of the movie offer more rewards. Like the rest of Lee's work, Crouching Tiger is beautifully filmed, gorgeous to look at. The fight scenes are amazing, energetic and inspiring dances precisely choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, the expert responsible for designing the similarly remarkable acrobatics in The Matrix. It's rare that anyone die in these fights scenes--Jade Fox is the only character evil enough to actually kill someone else--so you can enjoy them for the athletic prowess (and flying ability) of the combatants. Virtually every fight involves Jen, who usually wins. Especially notable is her handiwork, footwork and swordplay as she takes on an entire tavernful of tough guys, one or two or six at a time, defeating them all, leaving them with broken bones or missing teeth but steady pulses.

I was told I'd love this movie, and I wanted to. After all, it's in Chinese, most of the main characters are women, it's up for Best Picture and it isn't Gladiator. But I didn't love it. I thought it was OK. I don't feel I wasted either the price of the ticket or the time required to see it, but I was disappointed. I could see the crouching--or maybe it was cowering?-- horse-horse-tiger-tiger, but the hidden dragon stayed far too hidden.

Posted by Holly at 8:01 AM | Comments (1)

September 24, 2006

Appropriately Instructive Movies about the Power of Art

A friend recently emailed me and asked me for suggestions for movies he might show in his composition course, which includes some essays on art--from what I know of the reader our composition department uses, I'm guessing Aristotle's Poetics and the like. He didn't ask me specifically for movies that are about the power of art--rather, he specified that he wanted movies "the artistic powers of which are slightly better than what the students are used to. Yet I don't want to bore them either."

But that didn't matter because I read the message wrong at first--it was first thing in the morning and I was tired--and spent a couple of hours trying to think up movies about the power of art which would please an audience of 18-year-olds.

Two of my favorite movies about the topic--actually, two of my favorite movies, period--are Babette's Feast (in Danish with English subtitles, rated G) and Cinema Paradiso (in Italian with English subtitles, and only a little bit sexy), and it is my unfortunate experience that 18-year-olds don't tend to love subtitles.

There are plenty of movies--particularly of a certain era--about the power of movies and performance: Singin' in the Rain, perhaps, or All About Eve, or Sunset Boulevard. SitR is also one of my favorite movies but I realize not everyone likes musicals (although I also realize that not liking musicals is both a character flaw and a moral failing). I adore All About Eve but some people dismiss it as a chick movie. Sunset Boulevard might be a good choice.... I let students make up missed quizzes and such by watching movies and they consistently remark that SB knocks them out, and they also like knowing where the line "I'm ready for my close-up" comes from.

Another really great movie about the power of movies All About My Mother but it's got that subtitle thing again. And it's really good, but it's a downer--it's one of the few Almodovar movies I really don't want to see again.

In the right mood I might argue that Strictly Ballroom is a movie about the power of art.... but it might also be a movie a fair number of them have seen, since its director, Baz Luhrmann, also directed that nasty business Moulin Rouge.

Then there are always biopics of artists, Frida and the like--there are dozens of those. I can't think of any good biopics of writers at the moment except for Wilde, and the focus of that is the destruction wrought in his life by Bosie. Though that does remind me of a very old black and white version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is about the power of art....

So anyway, I don't very often poll my readers, but I'm asking for your help. I realize I'm framing this question in a way my friend didn't, but I figure, why not illustrate more than one point with the film he shows? So if you can think of a good movie about the power of art--or if you can remember seeing a movie when you were 18 that really knocked you out--please share.

Posted by Holly at 6:46 PM | Comments (15)

September 4, 2006

Lizzy Tudor in Film

Recently I watched two different two-part versions of the life of Elizabeth Tudor. The first was the 2005 HBO mini-series Elizabeth I, starring Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons (both of whom I always like to watch), and the second was the 2005 Masterpiece Theatre mini-series The Virgin Queen, starring Anne-Marie Duff, a young Irish actress who was also in The Magdalene Sisters. Helen Mirren was WAY better. (I have every certainty that she deserved the Emmy she won for this role.) She is regal to begin with and the character as written for her was much wittier, wiser, more powerful. In the Duff version, there were scenes where the queen was mocked and ridiculed, and it was easily done because there was something ridiculous about her character, and something ridiculous about a 30-something woman playing a 60-something crone (and Duff's portrayal WAS a crone).

When I first moved to the town I live in now, I went to check out the public library and what it had to offer. A librarian tried really hard to sell me on their facilities for genealogical research. "I had a bunch of great aunts who traced the family way back," I said. "There's not much more to be done unless someone wants to go look at tombstones and read parish records in rural Germany or France."

"Oh," the librarian said, smiling. "Don't underestimate what we have to offer, especially now that libraries are link. You'd be surprised."

"No, you'd be surprised," I said. "Those great aunts of mine were hard-core Mormons."

The librarian lost her smile and nodded. She knew, as anyone who does genealogical research knows, that the Mormons are the most diligent and thorough genealogists in the world.

I mention this because it's one reason I have always had an interest in the British monarchy: those great aunts established that among my ancestors are Wicked King John (who signed the Magna Carta) and William the Conqueror (a.k.a. William the Bastard, Norman invader of England). It's not like I claimed an affinity for royalty or liked to imagine I could have been a princess; rather, I was fascinated to think of my ancestors living in drafty stone castles, galloping through dappled forest in hot pursuit of wild bore, begetting scores of illegitimate children and watching a guy in a hat with bells on it strum the lute. Starting in junior high I read about them a lot; among my royal ancestors, my favorite is Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter).

Elizabeth Tudor (who is neither my ancestor nor even my relative) is my favorite monarch and one of my favorite historical figures of all time, in large part because she was a fiery-tempered, strong-willed, intelligent spinster, and I have always claimed an affinity for those. I admit I could never understand how anyone could sympathize with that shallow milktoast Mary Queen of Scots, and my interest in Elizabeth made her mother, Anne Boleyn, sympathetic to me too. I was never a huge fan of Liz's father, Henry VIII--how could I be, given the way he treated his wives?--and I was always glad the Earl of Essex didn