Howl and Narnia and Hopeful Despair

Howl is about the Allen Ginsberg's poem.  The film is about whether or not the poem is obscene and how to define good literature. It's an interesting question. The experts all spoke of form and style and word choice and theme - a formal art stance. I took art courses and aesthetic courses in university. In the art courses, everything hinged on formal theory. Everything. Either a piece of art fit, or it didn't. But in the philosophy courses on art, suddenly I learned about so many other ways to determine beauty that the world burst wide open for me. Howl speaks to me. And that is all that needs to be said.

The film is also about mental illness and difference. It's about our sense of reality vs. the social sense of reality. Is a psych doctor's reality necessarily right for us? So many bright minds go mad, become isolates, drink themselves dead. We're outside Plato's cave, frustrated that we can't communicate with the masses within. All those people with potential who've been mislead and distracted by the minutia of fashion and housework and gossip and reality TV and the weather.

I love the poem "Howl." I loved it as a teenager and still now. It gives me a similar feeling as when I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": a kind of hopeful despair. There's a deep sadness for the loss of potential, the crappiness of our lives which could be so rich and fulfilling - but won't be. Yet they excite me and entice me because of the connection I feel to the words and the authors and other lovers of the poems. Other people feel this pain, other people feel similarly off, therefore we are not as alone.

There's a status to the poems that make them fodder for teen angst, and I feel a bit ashamed that they still touch me. I feel like I should be over that already, that I should grow up and settle down. But there it is.  Whatever.

As for Narnia, if you can get over the Christian allusions, I like any story where the characters actually have character. It's an action movie, but they have to develop and overcome themselves. I'm a solid atheist, but there's a lot to be said for building character that I got from my churchly upbringing that is sorrily missing today. I don't think we need the church to bring it back; we merely need to believe it's necessary. Courage, sacrifice for others, kindness, patience, good works, love, forgiveness.... They got left behind when capitalism became the new false idol. "What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?" Now we worship getting something for nothing, speed, efficiency, power, revenge, and greed.

Funny that.

On Sequels

The first three Star Wars were amazing (from memories of grade 7 at least), then it should all have stopped there.

I'm still loving Harry Potter. For that one, I think a series of seven will be just fine, if the last two can do justice to the first five, that is. Well that's hoping the fifth lives up to its reviews.

And one of my favourite movies of all time was a sequel:  T2.

I loved the first Pirates of the Caribbean. I liked the second one despite the weak reviews. But the third one blows goats. It's an attempt at Man Ray meets Disney, and it fails miserably – unless you're on acid.

Beyond the little men in Depp's mind, the sexism bothered me. I was annoyed by the stereotypes perpetuated in the film.

First off, when Elizabeth is escorted in to see the gang-lord dude, only she is made to wear a tiny little robe. And then her own people, pirates in her crew, are under the floor boards sneaking a peak up her wazzoo. To me, it was positively creepy. My kids didn't give a hoot. They were oblivious to the opportunistic voyeurism of her "friends."

Then she gets to be the head honcho only because Depp deferred his vote to her. It seemed a strategic play on his part. But bottom line, she certainly didn't win by merit of any kind, but by a man's allowance. Not a great victory, that one.

But what's really bugging me today is Bambi II. My daughter begged for it, and the writers have merely re-written the entire Bambi story in a slightly different way and called it "new." And they did the same thing for Lion King II, which is entirely unwatchable.

But whenever I watch a money-making movie that's so clearly plagiarized and full of crap and/or portraying archaic gender norms, it gives me hope that one day I'll actually publish something.

Go me!

You Are What You Watch?

Some people think David Lynch films are misogynist. I agree that many of them certainly are. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Wild at Heart are especially bad. I believe they're sexist, BUT I also really love these films! In fact, on two separate occasions, I convinced friends to rent Wild at Heart to watch with me, and both times each friend was disturbed that I like the film so much. They couldn't understand how such a staunch feminist could enjoy watching a movie so full of slimy characters and scenarios. I think they started looking at me a little differently after that. In part it's just that, like many people, I'm just a contradictory being. But I'm not sure that's entirely it.

WARNING: Film details discussed and endings revealed!

To try to understand what I like, I thought it best to explore what I don't like to figure out the difference. I stormed out of A History of Violence.  First there was the creepy scene in the coffee shop before the main character starts kicking ass. That felt real. That's how it starts. But the "sex scene" on the stairs really pissed me off. The husband starts assaulting his wife as she violently fights him off, but after he gets the upper hand, she starts liking it. They make up and everyone's happy again. It's the perpetuation of the rape myth that burns my butt, that is, the idea, often portrayed in films, that if you attack a woman, and hold firm even as she fights you, eventually she'll give in and melt in your "loving" arms. Don't believe it guys! She might give up the fight to save her own skin, but don't be surprised if you get a police officer at your door the next day.

What happens in Wild at Heart is no less violent, in fact it's much creepier, but it bothers me less for a few reasons. First of all, the film, like most of Lynch's films, has a dream-like quality. We know quickly that it's not a portrayal of reality as we know it. This film in particular carries a Wizard of Oz theme throughout. Because it's not played out as if these are real events we could rationally believe are happening somewhere, it's a safe scare for me. It goes along with my love of horror films and zombie movies. They scare me momentarily, but it's a fear that doesn't stay with me, or hit me deeply, because it's clearly not real.

Beyond the surreal nature of the film, I appreciated the realistic (ironically) depiction of rape and a very brief but poignant illustration of abortion. One almost-rape scene has Laura Dern being mauled by Willem Dafoe. She starts getting into it, then cries about it as soon as he leaves. I think that really happens sometimes, and it's rarely shown in movies. The portrayal is valuable in that it can open up ideas about the reality of the scenario. The body reacts even though the mind doesn't want it to, and it leaves the victim/survivor in an emotional mess afterwards. The other rape scene in the film involves Laura as a child of about 12 with her uncle. Her mom catches him exiting her bedroom, then the uncle soon dies in a mysterious car accident. We all know mom killed him. I take a vindictive, vicarious pleasure in the fact that her mom murdered her rapist, and a family member no less. To me, that sure beats the image of the woman eventually loving the abuse and the abuser body and soul. Even though I like the types of depictions he uses, I still think Lynch is a misogynist because he exploits the image of abused woman as sexually erotic. Blue Velvet is a better example of this. Yet these films are still entertaining to me.

And nothing beats Nick Cage crooning Elvis in the middle of a mosh pit.

On to comedy. I love Family Guy, most of the time. I love South Park too, and was very conscious the first time I saw it that if I had been with a group of people instead of alone, I would have restrained my laughter. But generally, that's more about toilet humour than sexism. Family Guy is blatantly racist and sexist. There's one episode in particular that's playing in my head, "Father, Husband, Brother?". In it Peter, the dad, finds out that he had a black relative, so he further explores his black roots. It's shockingly racist. A side-plot has Stewie, a toddler of sorts, tying up the head cheerleader at the local high school in order to take over the cheerleading team. At the end, the resident sex offender, Quagmire, finds the teenager tied up and is delighted at his luck. I found the ending of that one hard to watch, yet the rest of it didn't bother me at all! It's all about safe scares and which characters I identify with.

After 9/11, comedians took a long time feeling out when it would be okay to start making some jokes about the tragedy. I value comedy that helps us laugh at dire situations as a means to cope with them. But the tragedy has to be an arm's length away before we can laugh about it. In the episode above, I laughed at the slavery jokes. Of course slavery's not a joke, but it's just far enough away in time or place (but not both) that a parody of it might make me laugh. But I didn't laugh at that last scene. I identified with the teenager, tied up in a bathroom, with a very disturbed sexual predator standing over her. That's not far enough away from me for me to enjoy it as entertainment. That kind of stuff happens today, and close to home. I shudder to think, how close.

Peter, in Family Guy, reminds me a lot of Archie Bunker, another racist, sexist family man. There was a study done decades ago on the viewers of All in the Family. Researchers found that about half the people watching were laughing at Archie's views. They recognized the problem with his thinking and found it funny that he's still following faulty logic to come to ignorant conclusions about different races, ethnicities and women. But the other half of the viewers were laughing with Archie. They really believed his view of the world. They identified with him as sexist racists. And, they learned ideas and new pejorative terms from the show.

It's likely that similar viewers could be found watching Family Guy. A feminist can laugh at many of the opinions espoused on the show recognizing the problems inherent to the views. Since the jokes are so blatantly obvious, it's unlikely to indoctrinate intelligent people to question their socially conscious values. But I'm sure there are misogynists out there that think Quagmire is a really cool guy. (He does have a really great apartment.)

So, I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction for a feminist to love sexist films and shows. Our politics may not be directly reflected by our viewing choices, but by the way we think about what we're watching.

But maybe I'm just rationalizing.