Trivia Trumps Truth

I re-watched Being John Malkovich recently and was struck by, or perhaps imagined, some concepts I hadn’t noticed on previous viewings. I'm thinking out loud and going all over the place here, but I might actually get somewhere along the way. Let's see! For those uninitiated, a portal has been found in Malkovich's head which enables people to see what he sees, feel what he feels, for fifteen minutes at a time. Craig and Maxine, a woman he lusts over who falls for his wife Lotte, decide to make a buck off access to the portal.

I caught the Heloise and Abelard connection at the first run through. The entire film hinges on difficult connections between people in love, requited or the unrequited variety – very bad for the skin. Passion can drive a guy to do things he might not do otherwise: like have sex with an underage student, the daughter of a powerful man who will have you castrated for the transgression, or perhaps he'll tie up his wife and leave her in a cage while he dons a disguise to boff her lover.

And Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard is thrown in there as JM studies some lines. It fits beautifully with the futility of the people finding meaning or hope in stuff. It’s just stuff and it all goes away. Nothing is permanent. You can’t save the cherry orchard no matter how you slice it. And poor Craig. The only way he can save Maxine's life is to give up the only means he has to attract her, and she still barely pays any attention to him. He sacrifices his money and career to save her, well he thinks he's saving her anyway, and she ditches him at the side of the highway. That's life.

But this time round I picked up on a few themes I’m seeing in various other places all of a sudden. The first: the affirmation of ordinary life. A man slips into JM’s body for fifteen minutes as he’s ordering bath towels, trying to finagle more washclothes for fewer bathmats, and the interior peeping tom calls the experience amazing! We're engrossed with the trivial details of lives, no longer looking deeper for anything more meaningful; sometimes bath towels are enough to hit the mark. And love - our experiences with family and friends are at the top of the hierarchy of the trivial. But as much as we find meaning in the mundane, is there a bigger meaning out there that we're neglecting? Are we missing the forest for the trees?

And the self-fulfillment of the characters is a force that works against their family life. The original couple can't be happy together and find personal fulfillment. It's either one or the other.

I recently re-read a bit of Charles Taylor: "Nature draws us because it is in some way attuned to our feelings, so that it can reflect and intensify those we already feel or else awaken those which are dormant. Nature is like a great keyboard on which our highest sentiments are played out. We turn to it, as we might turn to music, to evoke and strengthen the best in us."

And I remember thinking at the time that this provocation also might explain our love of pets. And I thought of this watching Cameron Diaz insist on sleeping with Elijah, the chimp, when he's feeling out-of-sorts. Even Elijah is navel-gazing in the film, spending time in intensive psychotherapy. We've shifted from a philosophical exploration of human nature to a psychological fixation with my nature - or my pet's nature even.

Which brings me round to The Zoo Story. I'm wavering between our love of animals bringing us to a different level of being, evoking and strengthening and all that jazz, and our adoration of the little things being a pathetic stepping stone towards a real relationship with people. You gotta connect with something. Having a loving spouse and children has come to be seen "as a crucial part of what makes life worthy and significant." Lotte has a menagerie, but just really wants a baby. Is the connection with animals or nature in and of itself necessary and significant, or merely a tool towards the family as meaning-conferring?

Arguments against subjective relativism have been popping up around me. In an article in the most recent issue of The CCPA Monitor, Ed Finn voices his concerns about the decline of collectivity in "Triumph of individualism a defeat for society as a whole." And there it was again in Mark Kingwell's The World We Want; he also wants us to work on a "project of universal justice." Okay - I know these aren't astounding ideas, but it's weird that it keeps coming to mind over and over this week. It's like an I Heart Huckabees coincidence or something. Kingwell and Finn see the need to dismantle special interest groups in order to focus on the community as a whole.

Kingwell throws in the caveat that he is a straight white male and all. But insists, "I still believe a language of individualism can be politically useful if, but only if, its limits are constantly acknowledged and any tendency to eliminate otherness or difference is ruthlessly resisted. What must equally be resisted, however, is the celebration of particularity at the expense of larger political goals, the sort of self-regard that closes off all rational challenges by pointing out that the challenger is not a member of the particular group in question."

Can we access any collective ideas when we're all immersed in trivial details of our ordinary lives? We've lost interest in the bigger stuff. Well, perhaps it's more likely that most of us never had any interest in the first place. That was the path of the elites, while the peasants worried about the mundane. But now the few interested in Truth are shut away in ivory towers or cheap basement apartments, and the people that make the headlines are those who know how to make a fashion statement or craft a sound-bite.

If we're all created equal, if we all have equal value, then nothing's special. But it feels arrogant to suggest a few people are actually right, and the rest are really wrong. Everyone's voice must be heard, must count as we develop policy.

And I thought of all that during the film, watching these people, so self-absorbed, and so miserable, suffering through their lives with each other. They desire, and often get what they desire, but it still leaves them mostly miserable. Craig warns his wife near the beginning to stop thinking that there's one thing that will make her happy. This time it's a sex-change operation that she's consulting an allergist about. But of course Craig doesn't heed his own advise and gets sucked into the delusion that Maxine is the one thing that can finally make him happy.

And yet the film is so enjoyable to watch that I can watch it over and over again. It's a something I can connect to. It awakens dormant feelings and ideas that swirl around begging to be organized - somehow.

Very Bad Things

I just finished reading an excellent book, The World We Want by Mark Kingwell. Near the end, he's talking about morality and how to live, and he brings up three films to illustrate immorality: Reservoir Dogs, Go, and Very Bad Things. I loved the first two movies, but hadn't seen the third yet. Then I spied it on a reduced shelf at the grocery store and watched it with eager anticipation.

Yuck.

Ok, there were some laughs here and there near the beginning. But it was so distasteful I was left shaking my head through most of it. And let me remind you, I like The Three Stooges and South Park and American Pie, and Grandma's Boy, and Harold and Kumar and many other moronic, sophomoric films. I do not have a pretentious, politically correct sense of humour. I love a good laugh at someone else's expense. But this was horrid. Roger Ebert agrees. But his review focuses on parts that didn't stand out as most offensive. What really got me was the ending. Maybe he's not allowed to comment on the end of film because it gives too much away. But I can. Spoilers to follow.

The movie follows five guys who go to Vegas a week before the wedding of one of the guys. One of them accidentally kills a stripper, and they decide to bury her in the desert. Then a security guard has to be killed too. One guy starts losing it, and his brother accidentally kills him. Then one of the guys, Christian Slater (whom I loved in True Romance), the rational one of the bunch at first, starts killing off the rest of the guys and a wife who might know too much. Now this is a plot that I typically enjoy watching. But it sucked. The wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn (I remember her as the wife in The Firm), was good. I was sorry she got killed off. Then her kids get left to be cared for by the soon-to-be married couple.

Here's the part I just can't get over. At the end, the guy gets married, more stuff happens, then he and a guy his new wife hates both survive a car crash. They're both left in wheelchairs. One of the children they are guardians to is disabled. The disabled kid keeps falling over. The new husband falls over in his wheelchair. And the other guy keeps spinning around in circles in his wheelchair. Cameron Diaz, the new wife, watches all this, mouth agape, and runs out screaming to writhe in the street between the closing credits. What. The...?

Steve Martin can fall over in a wheelchair and I'll laugh my head off. But there was nothing funny in this scene. It was disturbing to me that it was presented as a joke. And it all makes me wonder precisely what the difference is. Siskel and Ebert suggest the characters just weren't developed enough for us to laugh at them. That might be it. We feel badly for the husband. He just wanted to get married, and all this happened to him. He wasn't bad enough for such a tragic ending to be funny. And if we hated Cameron Diaz's character, maybe we'd laugh at her freak-out. But we barely got to know her.

And what I wonder more, is what's Mark Kingwell doing even mentioning the piece of crap in his brilliant book?

Always read the reviews first, kids.

Interpretations

I typically lean towards the side that insists authorial intent is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter what the artist was trying to say; what matters is what the viewer gets from the artwork. In fact, I think authorial intent is often a red herring distracting us in our quest for some Truth in this world.

When I'm looking at any piece of art, I don't research it to be able to appreciate it. If it speaks to me, and says something important to me, then I'm taking away something important. I recently re-watched American Beauty. When that movie first came out, I saw it twice in a row. I'm at the age to really get what Lester and Carolyn are going through, and I've always been the kinda weird girl you might grow to like after a while, never the perfect one everyone's lusting after.

But it was the larger messages that compelled me to spend another $7 for the late show: wake up and pay attention to all the beauty in the world, follow your own path with integrity, remember that death is just around the corner, and don't get sucked into the routine assembly line that is the average automaton's life. It's all the same message really. But even as I type this I can hear someone out there about to comment, "No, you've missed the real message of the film." My response: "La-la-la, I can't hear you." I'm captivated by the film because of what it's saying to me, not because of what the author meant for me to get from it.

And really, since art (poetry, paintings, music, film, etc.) can be interpreted by so many in different ways, isn't it sheer arrogance to suggest your interpretation is most accurate? Because even if you've read books about the piece of work, or met the artist directly, I'm not convinced it increases the validity of of the interpretation. Because I also question how thoroughly artists see the layers of meaning in their own works. There might be an intention to communicate a message, but other issues and ideas, our stuff, can sneak into what we create beyond our cognizance. So it remains possible for a viewer to get to a clearer understanding of the art than the artist. And the accuracy of the interpretation becomes unknowable, relative, personal wherein it only really matters what the piece says to you. And each viewpoint should be considered, contemplated, no matter how wrong it seems.

It's frustrating when people don't get what we're saying. There's some cases where people are just completely missing the mark, not actually taking in a significant part of what we're putting out there. They're not interesting to me. But there are other cases where people see what we've done and see more than what we intended to say. And that's very exciting - even when I vehemently disagree with them.

I've been thinking about this lately with respect to people as art: art in progress or performance art or fluid expressionism, whatever. We intend to communicate a message about who we are, but it's often lost. I'm often misinterpreted. Could it be the case that the viewer is, in this case, seeing a clearer version of me than I'm able to get to? Sometimes. But more often, like the first case above, they just completely miss it. And the question becomes when to clarify.

If people get something from their perspective of me that adds to their life, something they really appreciate, but it's really not me at all that they're seeing, it seems best to leave it alone. I don't explain, but hope people will re-evaluate their original explanation of how I am through repeated exposure. But sometimes the construction is oppositional to the intention. Then it seems wise to intervene with clarification.

If I paint a rape scene, my rape scene, as a means to come to terms with a trauma, hoping to communicate the devastation and pain it causes, someone could misinterpret it as a glorification of rape, a promotion of power over others. "Look how happy he looks doing this to her..." Interpretation is most affected by where your lens is focused which is precisely what the audience brings to the aesthetic experience. It's the individual viewer's addition to the pot luck, and some dishes are tastier than others.

Years ago my own mother insisted that my frugal nature ("You just hoard your money - live a little!") was the real reason I wouldn't buy a car. She couldn't grasp that I despise the mass consumption transportation devices. I can walk everywhere I need to go. A car merely gives me the ability to carry lots of purchases from a store to home. Who needs that? A car symbolizes freedom and fun to her. Not owning one means I must be trapped and miserable. That perception coloured her interpretation of me until she died. For this she pitied me a little, like some of my students pity me when they see me walking home from the grocery store dragging a cart behind me "like a homeless person."

We can't be understood in the way we understand ourselves, even by people close to us, because of what they're bringing to the table, particularly the connotations our iconography has for them. We're often liked or disliked for who people think we are, which doesn't seem fair at all. But who has time or the interest to explain and re-explain especially when many, like me, won't agree that's what we're like at all. In exterior artwork, it doesn't matter to me at all what the artist was intending to say, but the interior? Does our self-knowledge necessarily trump all other explanations, or does each interpretation, like in art, have the potential to be more in focus that the artist's deliberate conception?

Creating a Home

After seeing Into the Wild, a friend of mine was annoyed at the suggestion that it's somehow better to live in the wild. His position was that all animals create homes of some sort, nests, burrows, etc. Our homes just happen to be made of concrete and bricks, and they last a lot longer. So what's the big deal about nature and wilderness!

I thought he had a good point, except the permanence of our homes is a pivotal difference not to be shrugged off. We don't build our nests, we move into them ready-made. I know some animals do that, benefiting from someone else's efforts, but maybe we're not the kind of animal that is made for that. I wonder if we there's something to the experience of crafting a home, and of foraging for food for ourselves, and if we have some deep inner loss that we don't live closer to the ground, that we don't live an authentic life but a suburban existence, that we couldn't survive without a grocery store down the street, without someone else catching food for us. That groups of people build our homes and communities and grow or kill our food seems to infantize us. All animals get kicked out of the nest and have to fend for themselves - except us. We've lost that adult stage of growth and creation of food, home and self. We're too well taken care of in my part of the world.

I really related to the Alex/Chris character in the film (and book, which I read cover-to-cover the day after watching the movie). I often feel that my home is a cage, and I really belong in the woods. I've always been drawn to forests. But it could just be my personal nature that craves do-it-myself experiences. Maybe it's not generic human nature at all. Maybe I'm just a little odd.

A Feminist Critique of Superbad (You Heard Me)

I was reading some ideas from bell hooks on positive male role models in mass media. She was listing examples of characters who made a good attempt at escaping patriarchal roles over the course of a film. She listed Life as a House and Good Will Hunting as examples of this paradigm shift.

That's all well and good, except I hate those movies. I found them both to be sappy, contrived, boring, tear-jerky crap. "It's not your fault...It's not your fault...It's not your fault...It's not your fault..." I get it already! Ya, I know it was his technique, but his technique made me start reading the paper as I watched the movie.

But you know what movie I really like - enough to see multiple times with different people even? Superbad. Call me low-brow or juvenile, but I love this movie. BUT is it a good feminist film? Let's take a look! (Spoilers galore, but that won't really affect your viewing pleasure - really.)

First let's use the Mo Movie Measure as a guide: the movie has to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something other than a man. Well, two girls speak in the background about how to get booze for a party. That might fit. But that misses the spirit of the rules I think. It's disheartening how many films focus on men with nary a woman in sight except as dates. This movie really doesn't help that cause. However, I don't think bell hook's choices fit either. Some movies focus on guys' experiences together, and that's okay. Unfortunately, I also tend to wince at many female-focus films (Steel Magnolias immediately comes to mind). There are good ones out there that fit the criteria, but that's a different post.

So if we've accepted that the movie is focused on guys, what else determines the feminism factor? One criterion that is important is the extent to which the main character develops away from traditional patriarchal roles, and I think the character of Seth does a pretty good job of this over the course of the film in many ways, eventually becoming a model of male feminism in action, sort of.

The big lesson Seth learns is that women are human beings, not just toys that work best well-lubricated with alcohol. He's a pig for most of the movie, working all the angles to get laid, but comes to some semblance of an epiphany after myriad comments from Evan and finally a good talking to by Jules, the object of his objectification.

But even along the way, as a pig, Seth is pretty enlightened. His description to Evan of his hoped-for sexual encounter with Jules is all about him, "going down on her for a couple of hours...she'll go out with that!" His sexual desire is not centered on his orgasm, but on his ability to give pleasure. From friends' comments on the one-night stand circuit, it seems he'd be above and beyond.

At the end, after getting dissed by Jules, Seth gets teary. Jules notices, and he tries to hide it, but he actually pulls off crying in public. He isn't made to look pathetic or passive or wimpy. He's a guy's guy who's getting a bit emotional. A feminist man should be able to act in ways typically ascribed to women and not be made to appear any less of a man for it. Cool.

Together Seth and Evan's relationship illustrates a profound ability to express their feelings, like when Evan laments, "Just imagine if girls weren't weirded out by our boners and stuff, and just wanted to see them. That's the world I one day want to live in." And later they make the bold move to say the "L" word to one another in drunken snuggliness. Then, after a stereotypically awkward morning after, they even elect to continue hanging out together despite their disturbing memories of the previous night's admissions.

Finally, Seth and Evan have a couple of run ins with angry drunken idiots and corrupt cops. Both times, their choice of action is to run like hell. I admire this choice. In too many movies, the plot is driven by a revenge motive after a humiliation or threat. This movie doesn't go there, but ignores the bullies completely, avoids the violence instead of adding to it. There's no shame in walking away from a fight - really quickly - and we cheer them on.

Evan doesn't cut it as a good feminist role-model on his own however. He's moral and means well when he wants to stay to help out Fogell, or when he makes sure to have nice lube for her pleasure, but he's so passive he gets dragged into doing the wrong thing: deserting Fogell despite his quiet objections. This is sensitive nice guy pseudo-feminism. Feminism takes courage to act rightly, not just meekly suggesting what's right. Even when he defends Becca he's more whiney than insistent. However, he does get kudos for his Jimmy-Stewart-in-Philadelphia-Story "there are rules about that kinda thing" later on when he stops a very drunk Becca from having sex with him even though he's dying for it.

Now, the whole premise of the film is that these guys are desperate for sex and go out of their way for even a glimpse of body parts (a jog-by to see a new breast reduction). Some will toss the film for that alone, refusing to see such sexist trash. But how is it sexist to want to get laid? I question the notion that sexual desire is anti-feminist. Sex is a powerfully pleasurable thing we don't need to stop enjoying in order to promote a message of equity, in order to stop rape and assault, in order to be heard. It's amazing that we're made such that what one person wants to do to another because it turns them on, actually turns the other on too! That kind of symbiosis is to be celebrated, dammit. So I certainly don't fault guys for hoping to be a part of it all.

My only concern with Seth and Evan, based on their longing look back after their final parting in the film, is that I fear the ten-year sequel will look like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. One of them will have a frustrated wife who has to listen to old stories of her husband holding hands with a teammate across the beds the night before a big game. Can they actually connect with the women they long for, or just with one another? Only time will tell.

Canadian Content

I saw three movies lately that are all Canadian-ish. So, I'll be like the CBC and play up the Canadian content. (Very few spoilers - a bit in the very last sentence.)

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to try to be a good man and how to discern what that really means. Men don't have much in the way of really positive role models. To what extent can a guy successfully tease less, yell less, shove and kick less, without a strong alternative offered that doesn't come across as wimpy? Then I saw this beautiful film, Lars and the Real Girl. Don't avoid it because it's about a guy who dates a blow-up doll; I promise they don't have sex (she's religious).

(Ryan Gosling was born in London, Ontario, then grew up in Cornwall.)

The part of the film I want to download and play on a loop is when Gus, the older brother, is explaining to Lars how to know when you stop being a boy and actually start being a man:

"Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts.... Like, you know, like, you don't jerk people around, you know, and you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family, you know, and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways. That's all I can think of, you know - it sound like it's easy and for some reason it's not."

The best part of this speech is he says it all as he's making dinner, then continues after he excuses himself to do some laundry when he hears the dryer buzz. Being a man is not about being the most powerful, being waited on, being the one who can take on all others or the one who gets to call all the shots. It's about being strong and courageous enough to do what's right. That's really hard work, and it's not acknowledged enough when someone rises to the challenge. But it's also not about being perfect. It's about trying your damnedest to get it right once in a while.

The next movie had a fascinating depiction of a not-uncommon triangulation between mother, son, and husband. Ages ago I bought the movie Spider out of a bargain bin. Then the other night, by chance, I decided to give it a try. I had just made it through Eastern Promises, which is brutal but very good, and I needed something to take my mind off it before going to bed. It was a Cronenberg double-bill. Spider, the main character, just got released from an "insane asylum" to a half-way house. As he scribbles in his journals, the film flashes back to his childhood to when his problems first started. As he hit puberty, he started to see his mom as a sexual being, and his dad as the cause of the change, the one who turned this woman from a doting mother into a "slut," actually believing his dad killed his mother then brought home an impostor to live with them.  It's all very Freudian.

(David Cronenberg was born and raised in Toronto.)

It's necessary to see people in three dimensions. I don't believe we can love in part - that we can decide we'll love only the bits we like about a person and hate the rest. We have to love the annoying or disturbing parts too. We all get to a point when we see our parents as human beings separate from us. It can be a difficult step, and many never quite make it.

Being a mother often includes being nurturing, caring, warm and loving. Being a woman often includes being sexual and sensuous, even enjoying a bit of hedonistic excess. But can we be accepted and loved when we're not in our desired role?  That's the trick.

Finally, I saw Juno. What a delight. I actually think the soundtrack with songs by Kimya Dawson really made the film. It's got a fantastic female lead, and the love interest is a guy who's reserved but not passive. He actually shares his feelings without looking ridiculous, and he refuses to be stepped on. In a nutshell, girl meets boy, girl ditches boy, girl makes an effort to get boy back again. But what hit home for me was how she got him back.

(Both Canadian!)

Relationships can't always survive hanging on to a few initial expressions of affection: the poems and letters, home-made trinkets, or even a three-month-salary ring.  We sometimes need on-going reminders of acceptance and concern; we need gestures.

Not much beats a mailbox full of tic-tacs.

Adaptation

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."  (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

Love is only possible where people can be vulnerable with one another and trust that the other will be protective of the exposed areas.  Or is it?

Adaptation is one of my favourite film partly because I've had a thing for Nick Cage since seeing Wild at Heart and Moonstruck, but more importantly because of this one exchange between two twin brothers (or within one person as some suggest):

Charlie: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.

Donald: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.

Charlie: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was really sweet to you.

Donald: I remember that.

Charlie: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. It was like they were making fun of me. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.

Donald: I knew. I heard them.

Charlie: How come you looked so happy?

Donald: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.

Charlie: She thought you were pathetic.

Donald: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

Charlie: Thank you.

I'm not even entirely sure how to interpret that, but on a gut level, it offers a hopefulness that it's not so hard to love without expectations. But is it really possible to take pleasure from love for one who loathes us in return?

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!

Naked Apes Outta Control

We are too stupid to live.

It was just plain luck that a new movie came out, Sharkwater, AND the director/producer/cinematographer was going to be present for one night only to give a talk and answer questions. I could ask Rob Stewart questions all day long (and he’s from Ontario no less). I only got one in amidst a flurry of some really annoying questions that were clearly answered in the film. But he happily re-explained the film for everyone over and over. He's a hot environmentalist and a nice guy.

It’s a must-see movie. I recommend it over Shortbus even. But it’s not for the little ones. It’s got the kind of real-life violence I had to watch through the gaps between my fingers. Violence against sharks that is. And turtles and seals and other beautiful creatures of the ocean.

The survival of sharks means the survival of the whole food chain - and us. I can't explain it all here. Just go see the film already!

I knew that fishers (the gender-neutral term for fishermen?) tend to catch a lot of stuff they don’t want – I remember the anti-tuna years because too many dolphins were being caught in nets. But I love the analogy used in the movie after showing a 60-mile long stretch of bated hooks in the ocean. It’s like running a line of traps 60 miles long through the forest when you hope to catch, say, some deer (or perhaps a better analogy would be using these traps in the forest to catch cows and pigs). It would trap all sorts of unwanted animals – moose, rabbits, foxes, dogs, porcupines, bears, baby foxes (I love foxes), pregnant deer, etc. Thousands of animals would die a slow painful death, and be left there to rot.

Happens every day in the ocean.

Stewart told us it wasn’t the film he intended to make. He was going to make a pretty movie about the beauty of sharks. But he caught a ride to a Costa Rican island with a bunch of activists headed by Paul Watson, one of the founding members of Greenpeace. They all got charged after trying to stop a group of illegal shark-poachers, and the movie dramatically changed course.  Watson gave a perfect speech on the power of a small group of individuals to change the world.

Stewart says his next project will be creating a reality show with biologists and conservationists, and have them travel to different parts of the world with the challenge of affecting the environment in some way – and, at the same time, sleeping with each other and stabbing each other in the backs like any group of 15 people might do if kept in close quarters for long enough (he didn't say that last bit, but I could tell he was thinking it).

I can’t wait!

An Anti-Censorship Theme: Shortbus and Not Yet Rated

I'm a big fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, so my review of Shortbus is strongly biased, but I just loved it. That's about all I really have to say, but I'll drag it out to fill the space. It's starts with a woman, Sofia, having crazy wild sex with her husband. It turns out she's a sex therapist, so that seems to make sense. Actually it starts with a guy in a bathtub who needs couples' counselling, and he and his partner end up at Sofia's practice. But as she's helping this young couple, who are considering having an open relationship, it becomes clear that the therapist has never had an orgasm. This premise I find a bit questionable, but theorize that it's like all the people with emotional problems who end up getting psych degrees. The problem leads them to the interest in the subject, but the study of the subject doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Ya, I have psych degree. Shut-up.

The movie has us watching the evolution of Sofia and this couple and a variety of other assorted characters that pop up here and there. It made me all teary at the end. I loved the movie because I really loved some of the characters. Sofia was actually my least favourite, and I wished she was more of a minor player, except in her scenes with Severin who I want to hug forever. I want to go to the bar they all hang out in ... just to talk.

But what everyone's talking about is the fact that throughout the movie all the sex scenes are real. And the opening masturbating scene is quite an eye-full, so to speak. There are lots and lots of naked penises which we normally never see in a mainstream film.

The film's definitely not pornography, if that's what you're after. The sex scenes are about the characters getting off, not the audience. They were startlingly un-erotic, very real, and comical at times like real-life sex can be. I appreciated that by the end, the sex scenes were almost common place, just another important part of our lives.

But it made me think about Tom Cruise and JLo and other actors that tend to hook up with their co-stars from each film they make. I think our attitudes often follow our behaviours and not the other way around. I don't think we decide how we feel, then behave accordingly, but instead we typically behave a certain way, register it, and rationalize our attitudes after-the-fact (whether we want to believe it or not). We like to think we're rational and carefully deciding our course of actions, but we're really led by our guts or instincts or sentiment (as Hume would have it), and then convince ourselves we intended it all along.

Anyway, I've often thought about actors pretending to fall in love, kissing and simulating sex, saying incredibly written lines to one another time and again for weeks. Surely many actors are convinced of their feelings after playing the part with someone they have a bit of chemistry with. I mean, I sometimes develop a bond with someone at work after finishing a difficult project together. If kissing were involved, I'd likely be rotating partners with each project too.

But the people in Shortbus are actually having sex with each other. And, unlike many pornos, their lines are about developing close emotional bonds. Does that lead to more likelihood of hooking up or less? Does one keep more emotional distance the closer the pretend intimacy is, or is everything vested in the scene, guts and all? The film used several actors who were already in a relationship (James and Jamie), so that reduces the dilemma. But it makes me think.

As for This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it has great potential. It's a very informative doc about the film rating system that moves through the process of understanding the sneaky underhanded system for what it is. It builds up nicely with the filmmaker hiring a private investigator (who gives a beautiful speech during their stake-out), but the climax falls flat. Here's the big ending:

WARNING - SPOILER ALERT:

he finds out the names of the people on the rating board. It's a big secret, see, but he found those names. I needed something bigger after all the build-up. What a let down. But even though it just seemed to stop, there were still some very worthwhile memorable bits in the during part. Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) and Atom Egoyan really stood out for me. I'd recommend it for a rainy day with nothing else to do - unless you're a film buff. Then it's a must-see for educational purposes.

I also watched Crank. Don't make the same mistake. Just because Jason Statham was in Lock, Stock... and Snatch doesn't mean this isn't shite.

Unpopular Movie Reviews

I caught up on some movies I've been meaning to watch. Three in fact: Children of Men, Babel, and Night at the Museum.  And, I'm not sure why, but my opinion of these films isn't quite meshing with the real reviews they're getting. It could be, of course, that the paid reviewers don't know shite. You be the judge.

I rarely have the time to see a lot of movies. And it seems the number of films available is increasing exponentially. So I only go if a film gets at least three stars in the Globe and Mail. In fact, if Liam Lacey likes it, I'm guaranteed to like it. Up until now.

Spoilers below. Be warned.

(Although this view of winning films might not be something new. I must admit I was just like Elaine, from Seinfeld, watching The English Patient. Borrrring. I just couldn't connect to the characters in a meaningful way. Or when I read Life of Pi, which everyone raves about. I really liked the religious discussions in it, and the idea was interesting. And I loved the whole philosophy of interpretation and choice in narratives. But I could care less about the character. I had no emotional involvement with the book at all, so, as far as I'm concerned, it wasn't a great novel. His whole family died, and I didn't feel remotely sad for him. Eh, life's rough.)

Children of Men was acceptable. It kept me interested. I liked the feel of the movie, like an early 60s British film. And I loved the soundtrack. But it wasn't amazing or anything. It made me think of Escape from New York and Logan's Run, two other not-so-amazing movies. Just a guy and girl running from everyone, never sure who they can really trust. And, oh yeah, this time there's a baby that's a big deal to everyone in the world. I guess the premise of there being only one baby born after 18 years was too far-fetched for me to really get emotionally involved with. And everyone seemed so doomed from the get-go, that I didn't allow myself to get too attached anyway. I was ready to see them get picked off one by one.

Babel got a bunch of nominations for awards so it must be good. Apparently. But holy cow is it ever going to end? It felt like it was dragging on forever. And it was so bloody predictable. Of course they're the parents of the little kids. And of course the gun was from the guy the cops are looking for. Ya, ya, everybody's connected and we're all affecting one another all the time, blah blah blah. And isn't the jumping from one disparate plot to another to another just getting to be old hat by now?

I didn't care if the shot tourist survived or not. Whatever. The kids dying in the desert might suck, but I didn't know them that well. The boys playing with gun? Well, what did you expect, dad, giving the kids a gun and all? However, I was quite taken with the sexually-precocious girl. And I was outraged that we didn't get to see the final note she gave the cop. I really want to know what it says. I wonder if her dad was sexually abusing her at all, given her aggressive nature in that way. Or was it a suicide note? Out of the whole film, she was the only character I cared about at all. The rest were just in the way, annoying me, making me wait to see her scenario play out. Alone, that one girl's bit could have made an excellent short film. Altogether, not so good.

But, of course, because I'm regressing to a ten-year-old, I absolutely loved Night at the Museum. I was on the edge of my flipping seat, I kid you not, so concerned was I of the fate of these animals and tiny people. It's got that whole, "clap your hands if you believe so Tinkerbell can live" thing going on, which is okay and all. But more importantly, I've lived this job. I know what it is to be too cocky for my own good, and I know how it feels to have not read the instructions and to have to work from the seat of my pants. I do it every day! And, he keeps thinking and tries another new thing the next day, screwing up but still doing his best. That's what we do.

It falls apart a bit when he figures out exactly how to keep everything running smoothly. I prefer the idea that he'll keep having to think up new ways to make it all work. That resonates more with me. But then it might never really feel over. How can a Hollywood movie end if the problems aren't all solved to a fault?

Hate the Religion, Not the Religious

I have strong opinions on religion but rarely write about them because it’s all too clear to me. I often write to clarify my own ideas for myself, particularly issues in which I can easily understand all sides, issue like abortion and pornography. Because I understand the other points of view, it’s more important to me to delineate my own stance which is never entirely black or white, never on one side of the artificial split made between agreeing or disagreeing with a position. But with religion it is entirely one-sided for me.

I struggle to understand why people in this day and age still believe in God. I’m not saying that believers aren’t intelligent. I have very good friends, knowledgeable and wise, who have a strong faith. I’m just baffled by it all.

I’m also not saying there’s a problem with believing. As far as I can see, it’s beneficial to many to feel the love of God surrounding them. We all like the idea of being loved unconditionally (although God's love seems pretty conditional to me). It’s comforting to think we’ll all meet up with our loved ones in some glorious afterlife. But it’s just so fantastical.

I’m a recovering Catholic who couldn’t continue to believe tenets of a religion that are so dismissive (at best) to half the world. This site does a great job of listing many of the issues feminists have with the Bible. But it doesn’t begin to address problems with institutionalised religious organizations: the hierarchy, the abuses, the money grabs, not to mention the crusades and wars fought in God’s name. Why would anyone want to join this club of such dubious merit?

I understand maintaining a belief in God as an adult’s way of having an imaginary friend who is a composite of the ideal mother and father. It gives them unconditional love and support whenever they need it. It keeps them good under the threat of impending punishment if they misbehave (or at least threat of a loss of eternal rewards for some Christian denominations). In a nutshell, belief in God seems like a maladjustment to an emotional separation from the parents born from a fear of living a totally independent life with full responsibility for all one’s own thoughts and deeds.  But that's just me.

I have no issue with people who find it easier to cope with life through faith, who are soothed by the thought of God’s arms around them, but I do have issues with Christians who don’t behave anything like Jesus suggested they should. I have no patience with judgmental types who bark at me about my sinful life focusing on the letter of the law instead of the spirit. One film that really captures the perverted hold religion can have on a person is My Summer of Love. A man's relationship with his sister is destroyed through his new-found fundamental beliefs. I know people who are at risk of losing any real connection they might have had with much of their family because of strict views that don't allow for true compassion or warmth. I live a very loving, caring life, but much of what I do and say is not church sanctioned.

The idea that our existence is born out of a series of random chance events is terrifying for many people. We must have a purpose, right? Maybe we’re just here for the time being, and we can make what we want of it. But, some would argue that if we have no purpose, there's no point to it all. Why not just kill for fun and then off ourselves while we’re at it? Why bother being nice to others unless it’s a means to get to heavenly bliss? Can we be good without God? Does a lack of faith cause a lack of conscience?

I actually think that rejecting God can allow for a more sincere morality. We can be good without threat of punishment or loss of rewards. In fact, can we really call someone “good” who only acts kindly in hopes of eternal salvation? I’m much more inspired by those who do right for the sake of what’s right without expectation of fame, fortune, or spiritual longevity.

We can choose to be kind and loving simply because it’s the most intelligent way to live with a bunch of other people. I won’t steal from you or stab you in the back if you promise to treat me likewise. Hell, even if you steal from me, I’ll still refrain from stealing because harming others makes me feel bad. It’s my conscience, a bunch of neurons firing in a sea of hormones, not God, that dictates right and wrong for me. I’ll even go the extra mile to give you food or shelter or help if you need it. Sharing resources builds communities. Good acts are rewarding in their own right. Even the most selfish person will see the benefit of creating allies to help protect the fort against potential thieves or murderers. Don’t harm others, keep out of harm’s way, and try to help out when you can. Imagine if religiously zealous political leaders followed that moral code.

But in rejecting religion, I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s lots of good stuff in many biblical passages. To be Christian necessitates a belief in the big guy in the sky, and I can't go there; however I do strongly agree with most of what Jesus was saying. Jesus had a very egalitarian mindset. While his moral code isn’t specifically focused on feminism, it certainly goes hand in hand with the hope for equity between genders and the cessation of exploitation of human beings everywhere. I can still use the ideas that I like, the ones about loving forgiveness and such, and leave behind the homophobic sexist and racist crap. I appreciate much of the philosophy in the Gospels without buying that Jesus has any family ties to some self-absorbed micro-managing creator of the universe.

And without religion to guide me, I’m forced to become more introspective and to really think about my actions. I have to make my own guidebook and help my children do the same. The rituals of a church strengthen community ties. But my neighbourhood has on-going e-mail discussions and gatherings to develop a lovely supportive group for everyone within a few blocks. I have no intention of leaving the benefits of church participation behind.

I could posit several arguments against God’s existence, but faith is about belief not proof. However, one idea I’ve never seen addressed, I thought of while watching the film, Metropolis: If God is perfect, why did he change his tune so much between the old and new testaments? A perfect being can’t develop into something better over time or it wouldn’t have been perfect to begin with. Generally speaking, God made a dramatic shift from “an eye for an eye” to “turn the other cheek.” He got all soft and gooey: no more floods or using cruel means to test people’s faith, or sending back armies to kill all the women and children (except virginal girls to be taken as wives), or sanctioning ethnic cleansing, or prescribing a good stoning if you come across a sinner. He has a kid and suddenly he’s all about forgiveness and loving your neighbour; now you just get condemned to eternal damnation if you even think an unkind thought. Then in "Revelation" he starts really kicking ass again. Human beings evolve dramatically individually and historically, but can a perfect being flip-flop?

We can make this world a better place for all of humanity. We waste time waiting for God to help us, to give us a sign or send us another saviour. Since there is no afterlife, it’s more crucial to make heaven out of this mess of a planet we live on. We get one chance. One. This is it. Get busy.

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.

A Consolidation

I have a few blogs on different topics.  Likely the most common topic of my posts in every one of these blogs is films I've seen.  This blog is a place to put all those posts together where they might make more sense than mixed in with my views on politics, religion, and the environment.  Then again, maybe not.