I try to believe the best about people. I really do. But then, you go and spill coffee on the floor in the row behind me, and since it's stadium-style seating, the downward grade of the floor helps it find its way to my personal belongings. I try to believe you're not all cowardly, insecure, privileged douchebags, but then not only does the coffee-spiller not say anything but no one at all says anything to me about it, not even giving me the chance to pick up my bag and save the things inside from being ruined.
"You should feel lucky," you think, "that it didn't soak into your iPod, your phone, your wallet, coin purse and headphones, and only ruined one book instead of two. Your notes were spared, and isn't that the most important thing? Besides, now the smell of coffee will permeate your bag for years to come. And look, the girl in front of you has a Louis Vuitton, so it's probably best this way."
Thanks, fellow students, for letting my bag, my book and a jacket I've had for 12 years get soaked through with coffee. You now number among the many hundreds of reasons why I will never assume that anyone is ever going to be nice to me.
All my best,
Monday, September 17, 2007
Day Six
Registration this morning. Despite fears to the contrary, I got into all my classes (with the help of a signature from a professor). One on fiction in North, Central and South America, one on Goethe and one on interpretive theory. I can't wait for Monday.
The people in my program are as I expected. I've found a few people who seem like potential friends, but for the most part, the students are overly sure of themselves and think they know everything already. The first paper we wrote demonstrated pretty clearly that they don't. Some people have even started skipping class already, which I understand where undergrads are concerned, but really? Paying $35,000 to skip class?
At any rate, I love it already, and I think this year is going to be really challenging. Which I need.
The people in my program are as I expected. I've found a few people who seem like potential friends, but for the most part, the students are overly sure of themselves and think they know everything already. The first paper we wrote demonstrated pretty clearly that they don't. Some people have even started skipping class already, which I understand where undergrads are concerned, but really? Paying $35,000 to skip class?
At any rate, I love it already, and I think this year is going to be really challenging. Which I need.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Te Quiero
Just now, in the alley outside my building, a hispanic guy pulled up in his white Suburban, left the lights on, got out (minus a shirt) and blasted a Mexican love song, hoping that the woman on the fourth floor of the building across the street (that was the only apartment with the lights on) would come out and embrace his naked, sweaty torso.
He left the music going for about three minutes and, before the song was over, turned it down out of apparent embarrassment and resorted to honking the horn and shaking the chainlink gate to the complex. After about 60 seconds of walking back and forth from the horn to the gate, he finally got in his car, turned on the ignition and squealing his tires, gave up.
Oh wait, he's back...
...........................................................
This time, he put his flashers on, left the music off, honked the horn for about 15 seconds, walked once around the Suburban, then drove off. Don't give in, lady!
He left the music going for about three minutes and, before the song was over, turned it down out of apparent embarrassment and resorted to honking the horn and shaking the chainlink gate to the complex. After about 60 seconds of walking back and forth from the horn to the gate, he finally got in his car, turned on the ignition and squealing his tires, gave up.
Oh wait, he's back...
...........................................................
This time, he put his flashers on, left the music off, honked the horn for about 15 seconds, walked once around the Suburban, then drove off. Don't give in, lady!
Year of the Dog
Molly Shannon starts this movie as an incredibly likable, lovable person. She's a people-pleaser, a pencil-pusher's assistant buying donuts out of her own pocket for the office staff. As a sister and aunt, she's generous and thoughtful even in the face of her brother's and sister-in-law's overprotective, neurotic behavior towards their children. She's alone and without real love and of course, she's a dog lover. Her dog really is very sweet.
What she clearly wants more than anything is a real relationship with a real person. Her brother has a life and family of his own and her best friend at work is occupied with keeping her soon-to-be-fiance in line. Incidentally, her brother's wife, played by Laura Dern, is great, constantly talking out of the side of her mouth, quietly, so as not to be understood by children, even when none are present. She and her husband play a great modern couple, preoccupied with being modern parents with typical modern needs.
This film is full of people I would normally look down on: a boss whose life seems to be composed of nothing more than his conviction of his own self-worth and consequent undervaluation by his managers, a best friend completely clueless about real love and relationships who is making the most obvious mistakes and the happy couple who seems oblivious to anything but the lice in their daughter's hair and the red stains - surely put there by the Benadryl with which their nanny is doping their infant son - on their nanny's shirt.
I love the first 20 minutes of this movie. Molly Shannon plays a character unlike any she's played before, with no quirks, no twitchy movements of the body or mouth, no wild enunciation or nervousness. But she quickly goes down a path of blind fanaticism and activism brought on by a truly traumatic event. At first, I found myself trying to identify with her need to plunge into something bigger than herself, to wallow in her grief and feelings of helplessness. After a while, though, it became more and more apparent that her new-found passion for activism wasn't filling the need she had in the first place.
I don't know that we're supposed to feel happy for Shannon in the end, pursuing the cause she has embraced, but I definitely don't. She has become yet another person on whom it's easy to look down, for becoming single-minded in her approach to life, in abandoning truly meaningful avenues of expression for superficial activism that seems for a while to fill a void. Instead, I became happy for the other people in her life who, though from the outside they appear to be shallow and full of meaningless stock phrases and attitudes with which to confront life, have true depth of feeling behind their facades.
Everyone has to find some way to deal with their lives, and if you work at a boring office job, you learn to put on the happy-office-person face and pretend to be upset by office politics and made wildly happy by small percentage raises. If you're a parent living in a suburb, you put on the face that signals ultimate concern over the mental health of your child and general interest in the lives of the normal people around you. But that doesn't mean you give up actual feeling underneath it all, and that you can't show real care and emotion when it matters most.
I don't recommend Year of the Dog because it starts feeling a little unbelievable after a while, but Molly Shannon really puts in a great performance and gives a glimpse into the heart of someone who feels unable to take hold of her life and make it what she wants it to be.
What she clearly wants more than anything is a real relationship with a real person. Her brother has a life and family of his own and her best friend at work is occupied with keeping her soon-to-be-fiance in line. Incidentally, her brother's wife, played by Laura Dern, is great, constantly talking out of the side of her mouth, quietly, so as not to be understood by children, even when none are present. She and her husband play a great modern couple, preoccupied with being modern parents with typical modern needs.
This film is full of people I would normally look down on: a boss whose life seems to be composed of nothing more than his conviction of his own self-worth and consequent undervaluation by his managers, a best friend completely clueless about real love and relationships who is making the most obvious mistakes and the happy couple who seems oblivious to anything but the lice in their daughter's hair and the red stains - surely put there by the Benadryl with which their nanny is doping their infant son - on their nanny's shirt.
I love the first 20 minutes of this movie. Molly Shannon plays a character unlike any she's played before, with no quirks, no twitchy movements of the body or mouth, no wild enunciation or nervousness. But she quickly goes down a path of blind fanaticism and activism brought on by a truly traumatic event. At first, I found myself trying to identify with her need to plunge into something bigger than herself, to wallow in her grief and feelings of helplessness. After a while, though, it became more and more apparent that her new-found passion for activism wasn't filling the need she had in the first place.
I don't know that we're supposed to feel happy for Shannon in the end, pursuing the cause she has embraced, but I definitely don't. She has become yet another person on whom it's easy to look down, for becoming single-minded in her approach to life, in abandoning truly meaningful avenues of expression for superficial activism that seems for a while to fill a void. Instead, I became happy for the other people in her life who, though from the outside they appear to be shallow and full of meaningless stock phrases and attitudes with which to confront life, have true depth of feeling behind their facades.
Everyone has to find some way to deal with their lives, and if you work at a boring office job, you learn to put on the happy-office-person face and pretend to be upset by office politics and made wildly happy by small percentage raises. If you're a parent living in a suburb, you put on the face that signals ultimate concern over the mental health of your child and general interest in the lives of the normal people around you. But that doesn't mean you give up actual feeling underneath it all, and that you can't show real care and emotion when it matters most.
I don't recommend Year of the Dog because it starts feeling a little unbelievable after a while, but Molly Shannon really puts in a great performance and gives a glimpse into the heart of someone who feels unable to take hold of her life and make it what she wants it to be.
Freud
So now I live in Chicago. I'm not quite settled in, but I'm getting there. It's hard to become attached to a neighborhood where I don't know anyone and don't really have anything specific to do (and also having happened to encounter only rude or unhelpful people), so I've spent most of my days inside my apartment, reading Freud in preparation for my upcoming academic year, which is too bad, since the weather is so great and I only have one more week before classes start.
If I had come straight from undergraduate school (and hadn't had my experience overseas or any revelations about science or truth; in short, if I were still an evangelical Christian), I think I would have literally gone home before classes even started after reading Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. What I can't imagine is that this program is full of over a hundred other people who aren't offended by Freud's openness about sexuality, but I hope in this case that the unimaginable is true.
Freud was never even mentioned at my undergraduate university, let alone made an author worthy of study or consideration, and while I'm not yet convinced he is worthy of too much study, I'm at least grateful to become acquainted with his work. His ideas have obviously become an integral part of our culture, and it's nice to know the foundations on which so many people are working. Also, I like the idea of psychoanalytic criticism of literature, I think it's fun and interesting, but since I've also started to believe that the ways in which we behave are arbitrary and unnecessary, if biologically and causally determined, it's hard to take such criticism too seriously.
Now, I've never studied Freud and I'm extremely unsure of my scholarly ability, but what seems clear is that while his ideas may in many cases be helpful in describing the effects of modern culture on individual sexuality (and overall behavior), they don't do anything to answer the questions of whether things are this way of necessity; whether they are this way across all cultures, classes and races; or whether this is better or worse than other ways of behaving (as far as either individual happiness or the advancement of culture and society). Am I wrong, or does that seem to be the central problem? (Totally ignoring the fact that he had no empirical evidence or basis for his theories about the sexuality of children or women or that his focus on male genetalia as opposed to female seems to be a serious oversight.)
What I'm also troubled by is the pairing of these Freud books with Romeo & Juliet and The Canterbury Tales for my class. Sure, I do think there's something to analyzing these works in light of Freud's theories of psychological and sexual development, but I feel like it comes short of saying anything very important. It seems like it would be as helpful as analyzing literary texts in light of Christianity; that is to say, completely unhelpful and irrelevant for actually trying to get at a real understanding of something.
Help me figure this out.
If I had come straight from undergraduate school (and hadn't had my experience overseas or any revelations about science or truth; in short, if I were still an evangelical Christian), I think I would have literally gone home before classes even started after reading Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. What I can't imagine is that this program is full of over a hundred other people who aren't offended by Freud's openness about sexuality, but I hope in this case that the unimaginable is true.
Freud was never even mentioned at my undergraduate university, let alone made an author worthy of study or consideration, and while I'm not yet convinced he is worthy of too much study, I'm at least grateful to become acquainted with his work. His ideas have obviously become an integral part of our culture, and it's nice to know the foundations on which so many people are working. Also, I like the idea of psychoanalytic criticism of literature, I think it's fun and interesting, but since I've also started to believe that the ways in which we behave are arbitrary and unnecessary, if biologically and causally determined, it's hard to take such criticism too seriously.
Now, I've never studied Freud and I'm extremely unsure of my scholarly ability, but what seems clear is that while his ideas may in many cases be helpful in describing the effects of modern culture on individual sexuality (and overall behavior), they don't do anything to answer the questions of whether things are this way of necessity; whether they are this way across all cultures, classes and races; or whether this is better or worse than other ways of behaving (as far as either individual happiness or the advancement of culture and society). Am I wrong, or does that seem to be the central problem? (Totally ignoring the fact that he had no empirical evidence or basis for his theories about the sexuality of children or women or that his focus on male genetalia as opposed to female seems to be a serious oversight.)
What I'm also troubled by is the pairing of these Freud books with Romeo & Juliet and The Canterbury Tales for my class. Sure, I do think there's something to analyzing these works in light of Freud's theories of psychological and sexual development, but I feel like it comes short of saying anything very important. It seems like it would be as helpful as analyzing literary texts in light of Christianity; that is to say, completely unhelpful and irrelevant for actually trying to get at a real understanding of something.
Help me figure this out.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Secretary
I recently wrote this to a friend of mine who saw my ranking of five stars out of five for the movie Secretary. She was surprised that I liked the movie because she felt it was an apologetic for abuse and dysfunction. I'm not sure that my response will convince her to like the movie, but I really think she has it wrong. I'd like to take more time to edit and flesh this out, but I've got better things to do. Finally.
Among other things I've done in the past several months, I took the time to watch Secretary again, which is one of my favorite movies. It's just so funny, and both Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader do such a great job with their characters. I was surprised by your reaction to the movie, especially by the idea that the movie is about abuse or even tries to promote it. Basically, I see the film as the story of two people who feel unloved and unlovable finding that their faults and needs don't have to be their downfall.
Lee Holloway turned to cutting herself as a means to deal with feelings of alienation caused by lack of attention from her alcoholic father and her abused mother, as well as by the suspicion that she's just not quite normal compared to her sister or people she knew in high school. What Lee Holloway lacks in herself and those around her (especially her father), she gains in Mr. Grey. Among other things, Mr. Grey instructs her (in carefully setting humane mouse traps, taking care with her appearance and mannerisms and answering the phone with confidence), guides her (in setting aside shyness in order to interact with others more successfully and in understanding the motivation behind cutting herself, thereby making it unnecessary) and demonstrates genuine, specific tenderness (albeit towards his orchids). As long as Lee can't supply her own self-esteem or confidence, Mr. Grey supplies it from without. His behavior towards her is straightforward, authoritarian and, yes, sadistic and domineering. However, because of Lee's longstanding confusion of pain with pleasure and because of her felt need to be controlled, Mr. Grey's behavior couldn't be called abuse.
Lee does her best to try conventional methods of finding love and happiness but meets with failure several times. She notes that Cosmo says that in order to get a guy to open up about his feelings, you should use a disarming joke, but when she tries this with Mr. Grey the advice falls flat. Her attempt to establish a relationship with Peter, a likely match, also meets with semi-unpredictable failure. On the face of it, Lee and Peter seem like a great pair, both having recently gone through nervous breakdowns leading to the realization that they are unlike others around them; both are young and good-looking and both are vulnerable, seeking direction and love. However, Peter's affection and love for Lee seem aimed in only a general direction, happening by pure chance to land on Lee. When they're flirting on their first date, Lee asks whether he's the kind of guy who washes his clothes right away or only when they're dirty, and he says, "I'm the kind of guy who wants to get married and have a kid." In stark contrast, Mr. Grey's affection is very specifically directed, as seen in his treatment of his orchids and in the humane release of the mice in his office. Lee is at a point in her life when the general love of those around her doesn't mean very much because she feels unlovable. In the middle of the movie, Lee says she starts to feel something unlock in Mr. Grey as he begins to learn more about Lee and the things she tries to hide. He loves her, specifically, because of who she is, and his advice and behavior are directed with the aim of making her life better.
At the same time, Mr. Grey sees his behavior as "bad," and being older, it seems likely that he's had enough encounters to reinforce the idea that he's not well, that his pleasure in pain is unacceptable and inappropriate and that he should resign himself to being alone. His insecurities and fear of rejection have led him to push everyone away (hence the constant need for a "Secretary" sign outside his office), afraid that once they know the real Mr. Grey they will be (rightly) disgusted and leave him. Everything Mr. Grey despises about himself, Lee shows that she loves, and vice versa.
I won't argue that it's not an apologetic for dysfunction. I think there is something wrong with the relationship between Mr. Grey and Lee, but not wrong morally, only wrong as compared to social norms. Sadism and masochism are not normal and are manifestations of feelings that could be dealt with in therapy or other ways, but that are in this case expressed sexually. The movie is trying to say that if that works for them - and it does - then let's wish them all the best. But we can still wish that they both deal with their underlying problems of self-worth and eventually stop feeling the need to inflict or receive pain.
Among other things I've done in the past several months, I took the time to watch Secretary again, which is one of my favorite movies. It's just so funny, and both Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader do such a great job with their characters. I was surprised by your reaction to the movie, especially by the idea that the movie is about abuse or even tries to promote it. Basically, I see the film as the story of two people who feel unloved and unlovable finding that their faults and needs don't have to be their downfall.
Lee Holloway turned to cutting herself as a means to deal with feelings of alienation caused by lack of attention from her alcoholic father and her abused mother, as well as by the suspicion that she's just not quite normal compared to her sister or people she knew in high school. What Lee Holloway lacks in herself and those around her (especially her father), she gains in Mr. Grey. Among other things, Mr. Grey instructs her (in carefully setting humane mouse traps, taking care with her appearance and mannerisms and answering the phone with confidence), guides her (in setting aside shyness in order to interact with others more successfully and in understanding the motivation behind cutting herself, thereby making it unnecessary) and demonstrates genuine, specific tenderness (albeit towards his orchids). As long as Lee can't supply her own self-esteem or confidence, Mr. Grey supplies it from without. His behavior towards her is straightforward, authoritarian and, yes, sadistic and domineering. However, because of Lee's longstanding confusion of pain with pleasure and because of her felt need to be controlled, Mr. Grey's behavior couldn't be called abuse.
Lee does her best to try conventional methods of finding love and happiness but meets with failure several times. She notes that Cosmo says that in order to get a guy to open up about his feelings, you should use a disarming joke, but when she tries this with Mr. Grey the advice falls flat. Her attempt to establish a relationship with Peter, a likely match, also meets with semi-unpredictable failure. On the face of it, Lee and Peter seem like a great pair, both having recently gone through nervous breakdowns leading to the realization that they are unlike others around them; both are young and good-looking and both are vulnerable, seeking direction and love. However, Peter's affection and love for Lee seem aimed in only a general direction, happening by pure chance to land on Lee. When they're flirting on their first date, Lee asks whether he's the kind of guy who washes his clothes right away or only when they're dirty, and he says, "I'm the kind of guy who wants to get married and have a kid." In stark contrast, Mr. Grey's affection is very specifically directed, as seen in his treatment of his orchids and in the humane release of the mice in his office. Lee is at a point in her life when the general love of those around her doesn't mean very much because she feels unlovable. In the middle of the movie, Lee says she starts to feel something unlock in Mr. Grey as he begins to learn more about Lee and the things she tries to hide. He loves her, specifically, because of who she is, and his advice and behavior are directed with the aim of making her life better.
At the same time, Mr. Grey sees his behavior as "bad," and being older, it seems likely that he's had enough encounters to reinforce the idea that he's not well, that his pleasure in pain is unacceptable and inappropriate and that he should resign himself to being alone. His insecurities and fear of rejection have led him to push everyone away (hence the constant need for a "Secretary" sign outside his office), afraid that once they know the real Mr. Grey they will be (rightly) disgusted and leave him. Everything Mr. Grey despises about himself, Lee shows that she loves, and vice versa.
I won't argue that it's not an apologetic for dysfunction. I think there is something wrong with the relationship between Mr. Grey and Lee, but not wrong morally, only wrong as compared to social norms. Sadism and masochism are not normal and are manifestations of feelings that could be dealt with in therapy or other ways, but that are in this case expressed sexually. The movie is trying to say that if that works for them - and it does - then let's wish them all the best. But we can still wish that they both deal with their underlying problems of self-worth and eventually stop feeling the need to inflict or receive pain.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy
Part of what I love about movies is living vicariously through their characters. This might at least partially explain my love of bad sci-fi films, since I can never hope be the world's leading expert on ancient Egyptian languages who translates hieroglyphics on some stones and opens a portal to another planet. It might also explain my love of certain children's movies and bad romantic comedies, since no one can stay so happy and naive for so long. Sometimes it's important to experience what the characters feel, as in Schindler's List or House of Sand and Fog, precisely because you will never - you hope - experience the horror and injustice the characters face.
But of all the emotions I relish experiencing through film, the one I might love most is vengeance. It's dirty, it's bad and it's not nearly as fulfilling as pardon and redemption, but it is entirely satisfying while it's happening and it is so far from my own experience that I can only experience it through film (or literature). When characters experience unthinkable tragedy, their quests for revenge are all-consuming, enveloping not only those they seek to punish but themselves as well. They become single-minded to the point of insanity, obliterating everything that stands in their way, inevitably leading to complete self-destruction.
For my money, no films have pursued the concept of vengeance as fully or as graphically as Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy, comprised of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I started with Oldboy in November last year and ended with Lady Vengeance several weeks ago, watching character after character invite vengeance to destroy their lives. These movies are full of some of the most awful violence and some of the darkest humor I've ever seen, without exaggeration. (Is it funny when someone has just cut out his own tongue with a pair of scissors and then starts to sing a song? Maybe, maybe not...)
It's hard to see the problem with revenge when it's warranted, but the complication is in deciding who gets to make that call. In Park's trilogy, everyone does, from the evil to the innocent. So when one person does it you're cheering them on and when the other does you're horrified. This is the problem with vengeance: you can't make it universally okay because not every person will exact it for the right reasons and because it's really difficult to tell when you've gotten it. If your child is murdered, is it enough for the murderer to be murdered? If your kidney is stolen, is it enough to take the thief's kidney? What if he only has one?
But of all the emotions I relish experiencing through film, the one I might love most is vengeance. It's dirty, it's bad and it's not nearly as fulfilling as pardon and redemption, but it is entirely satisfying while it's happening and it is so far from my own experience that I can only experience it through film (or literature). When characters experience unthinkable tragedy, their quests for revenge are all-consuming, enveloping not only those they seek to punish but themselves as well. They become single-minded to the point of insanity, obliterating everything that stands in their way, inevitably leading to complete self-destruction.
For my money, no films have pursued the concept of vengeance as fully or as graphically as Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy, comprised of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I started with Oldboy in November last year and ended with Lady Vengeance several weeks ago, watching character after character invite vengeance to destroy their lives. These movies are full of some of the most awful violence and some of the darkest humor I've ever seen, without exaggeration. (Is it funny when someone has just cut out his own tongue with a pair of scissors and then starts to sing a song? Maybe, maybe not...)
It's hard to see the problem with revenge when it's warranted, but the complication is in deciding who gets to make that call. In Park's trilogy, everyone does, from the evil to the innocent. So when one person does it you're cheering them on and when the other does you're horrified. This is the problem with vengeance: you can't make it universally okay because not every person will exact it for the right reasons and because it's really difficult to tell when you've gotten it. If your child is murdered, is it enough for the murderer to be murdered? If your kidney is stolen, is it enough to take the thief's kidney? What if he only has one?
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