Century Fille

Updating the hard-boiled detective drama in Castle and Bones; the modern Nancy Drew; urbanite grit & much, much more

2009-11-14T18:26:00.026-05:00

It’s widely accepted that Moonlighting broke fairly new ground with its combination of mystery-solving, witty dialogue, and sexual tension between Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shephard) and David Addison (Bruce Willis). It’s also widely understood that Moonlighting’s ratings dived during the fourth season, leading to its cancellation.

Why? Commonly, it’s thought that it’s because it fulfilled the tension between the characters in the third season. Its’ contemporary Remington Steele didn’t fare that much better, dragging into a fifth and final season. But that’s not the only reason these series let their viewers down – it’s because both series relied too heavily on romantic tension as a foundational plot device.

Neither show was terribly kind to the women: Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) was forced to take on nameless, man-without-a-past, bad-boy Remington Steele (Pierce Brosnan) for the need to have a male partner in her detective business and Hayes was an ex-model, embezzled by her ex-accountant, and with debts to pay. Hayes needed Addison to resurrect one of her failing investments, Blue Moon Detective Agency, as well as to have a purpose in life post-modeling career. Needed. That’s the key word.

Navigating the “will they or won’t they” dynamic is tricky territory. I don’t think detective/crime-drama television series have come back this way since the 1980s. That is, until now: Castle (Andrew Marlowe) and Bones (Hart Hanson). Both series are finding very clever ways to sustain the dynamic, but more importantly to give it real progression.

Why are these two series succeeding where the predecessors failed? The story-telling is far better – with Castle often moving deftly like a Dashiell Hammett mystery and Bones ooing us and awing us with the details of forensic science and technology. It’s almost sci-fi, Stargate geeky. Each episode is equal parts National Geographic and psychological thriller.

However, ultimately, the success comes down to strong, in-depth lead characters as the core, engaging sub-plots, and fleshed out secondary characters . . . who can be foils, but not caricatures. Bones should be commended, next to Battlestar Galactica, for having one of the most racially diverse (and stunning) set of female characters.

Bones and Castle have as leads – strong, beautiful, intelligent, capable, women who do not need their male partners. The interdisciplinary partnership, however, enhances the overall ability to more effectively solve cases. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is a brilliant forensic anthropologist teamed up with confident, intuitive FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) is a hard-boiled, tough, probably Ivy League-educated, NYPD homicide detective in league with insightful writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion).

I’m reminded of the best elements of the great noirs of the 1940s with Humphrey Boghart and Lauren Bacall (who were as equal to each other as one could be then). Castle and Bones succeed in part because yes – they are sustaining our curiosity on whether or not the two leads will get together. But only in part.

The dynamic is tricky because if it happens too soon, the viewers lose interest. If the producers wait too long, there is the danger the show will get canceled, or that the viewers will become frustrated and lose interest. My friend Stina asks the question – why have co-worker romantic tension at all? Yes, why have it indeed?

Well, because the dialogue, when executed well, is just marvelous. In Bones and Castle, not only is it intelligent in and of itself, the topic at hand is also intellectual. But a series that relies heavily on sexual tension between two characters, no matter the genre or content of the dialogue, will always fail. (A series that relies only on sexual tension between several pairs of characters is a soap opera - *cough* Grey’s Anatomy.) It may be fun, but it lacks substance.

Whatever happens in Bones, I will be satisfied knowing that Brennan and Booth have came this far – they have transformed each others’ lives. This is not just about witty dialogue and tension – it’s about a genuine friendship and a partnership – a true emotional bond with serious ramifications. Like relationships in my favorite novels, like Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock. Like a Miyazaki film, it sends shivers up your spine. Television rarely enters this territory.

As for Castle, the relationship between Castle and Beckett is so far, more playful. It’s always fun to see her cut him down in her Lauren Bacall/Katherine Hepburn sort of way and to see him catch her off guard. That said, the comic relief is mixed in with some very dark tones of murder cases as well as a sub-plot involving Beckett’s past. I think Castle explores the personal dynamics between those involved around the victim with excellent skill.

Castle is also a fantastic and clever example of life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating… – and I’ve totally lost track. Moonlighting may have been a spoof of detective series. But Castle takes the best elements – breaking the fourth wall, extremely witty dialogue, and maintains the edge and grit of a real mystery.

Castle is a boyish, playboy, popular mystery writer, who is brought in by the NYPD to help solve a string of murders that mirror those in his novels. In the process, he meets his new inspiration (Beckett) and works out an arrangement (much to her chagrin) to shadow her as research for his new book. That book is actually on our bookshelves. Additionally, the show takes us outside of the homicide lounge and into Castle’s life, which includes his eccentric mother and charming teenage daughter. Castle brings the best elements of comedy sitcoms into a drama . . .which even a lot of non-detective dramas do badly.

It’s Beckett who remains the mystery – to Castle, and to the viewers. Not to mention she’s totally gorgeous with her dark brown hair and enormous green, heavy-lashed eyes, and legs to die for. And jackets to die for – I haven’t seen such great outerwear since Audrey Hepburn’s coats in Charade.

Once you develop great characters, not to say that the story writes itself; but, the viewers are far less likely to be disappointed by what or what does not happen between the leads. One tends to accept it and respects it as the choice of the characters. That my friends, makes a great detective yarn, a great romance, and simply, a great story that keeps me watching week after week. I haven’t had this much fun since reading Nancy Drew novels as a younger girl. And both Castle and Bones make me want to believe that an epic partnership could in fact potentially be real.

Sari Special

2009-10-28T23:56:00.005-04:00

I love silk: chiffon, crepe, organza, china, georgette – you name it, I love it. Silk is an odd fabric, almost too delicate for normal handling, sensitive to rain, snow and heat, food elements, dry cleaning, other fabrics, nails, jewelry, and even its own embroidery. And yet, there’s no other fabric that’s quite as elegant or luxurious for a skirt, blouse, dress, scarf or shawl.

It’s natural that I’d love a sari. However, it was only last New Year’s that I would learn how to wrap or tie it on my own. I had just returned from an overdue visit to India, where I had selected several saris. Like language and cooking, it took lessons, from my mother. There are many ways to drape a sari depending on the region. I won't attempt to list all of them - I leave that to French cultural anthropologist Chantal Boulanger.

I myself am familiar with only two styles, which I have nicknamed “namba” (Tamil for “ours”), the predominant style in the South as well across the subcontinent, and the other mainly worn in the north, “Gujarati” since the first time I had seen it draped that way was amongst my counterparts of Gujarati origin.

There’s only a minor difference between the two: in the South, the “pallu” or the end is draped across the body then over the left shoulder, creating a streamlined fall at the back. And in the North, it is draped over the right shoulder, fanned out across the body, with a pretty, hanging J-shape at the back. The latter style is better suited for saris with extreme embroidery or beadwork. I have worn those the other way, but my left shoulder generally suffers for it. In both styles, the pleats for the skirt part are tucked into the petticoat at the waist.

I don’t find tying a sari very easy or intuitive at all. The first time I attempted it independently, it took multiple tries. I was sweating by the time I’d got into reasonable shape. I still had problems safety pinning the pallu to the blouse.

Furthermore, not all saris are created equally. For georgette silk, the pleats are easier to manage, the pallu is more watery (this is where I’ve had the most success). Saris with a lot of beadwork and embroidery on chiffon can be tricky because of the need to manage a light fabric while the ends keep getting weighed down. Chiffon with less beadwork can be equally as tricky to handle. Heavy silks are well...heavy.

The great part is when the silk gets caught in its own beads and you’re struggling to disentangle it all. Although, it's even better when figuring out exactly what to do with the slack, since sari tying involves much estimation: of height, pallu length, number of pleats for the “falls” as my mom calls them – probably not the technical term for the pleated skirt part which fans out like flower petals from waist to ankle. What part should one adjust? If there’s not too much slack, usually you can hide it— which is what I do!

The success to tying a sari is all about controlling the pleats with your thumb and index or middle finger. It’s actually tortuous pain. In the Southern style, the pallu is the easier part, particularly as there is a great deal of versatility in how you can drape it – it can be partially pleated, fully pleated and pinned, or left loose for a more informal, sexier look.

But perhaps, versatility is the watchword overall – a sari is an extremely versatile garment. And you never really know what and how works for you and the fabric until you yourself try it out. So, do what I did to supplement my lessons: watch these YouTube videos.

You may ask: why even bother? How often do I wear a sari – 5 or 6 times a year at best? It’s October and my 2009 tally will likely conclude at 4. Am I holding onto culture unnecessarily? No. Culture comes and culture goes, but I wear a sari for one predominant reason: because it makes me feel beautiful.

The quest for true, hypoallergenic makeup

2009-10-11T23:56:00.008-04:00

Now that I’ve dead-ended in my quest for boots in the United States to fit skinny calves (Paris, Tokyo, and Geneva or custom-ordering are probably my best bets), I’m on to my quest for truly hypoallergenic makeup.

I’m allergic to most makeup. If I’m not allergic to it right away, then I will develop an allergy to it. I inherit this from my mother, who has for her entire life, worn very little make up besides Revlon powder, eye liner (kohl is normal for Indian women), and nail polish (yes, this is counted as makeup). Except my mom in her youth looked like a 60s model, bearing an uncanny resemblance to both Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick. I have no such luck.

Face:
Powder is usually not a problem – I find Neutrogena, Loreal’s mineral line, and even Revlon if I’m in a bind, to be more than adequate. Same with blush and bronzers – but I stick to Body Shop. I don’t use liquid foundation; it makes me feel like I’m not breathing.

Lips:
In most cases, I can’t do cream-based lipsticks. My lips are too dry and cream lipsticks dry my lips out. I tend to use gloss, stains, and in most cases, Vaseline. Chapstick is like Tylenol for me: pretty much, useless.

Eyes:

Eye shadow:
I have rabid allergies to most eye shadows. Revlon’s mineral shadows, Physician’s Formula, and Almay make my eyes itch. Estée Lauder and Lancome produce morning-after puffy eyes, even after removal the prior night. Clinique was okay for all of 6 months. Mac worked for a year. As of today, I’ve not made a firm decision to discontinue usage of Mac. It’s better than most, and I’m partial to their color Velvet, a wine/burgundy which is a nice alternative to brown and black for a smoky eye and which a makeup artist used on me the one time I modeled designer bridal gowns. Body Shop is the best and has caused me no problems so far: smooth application, great colors, no allergies.

Eye liner:
It’s not that I’m actually allergic to any liners, but I have great difficulty removing it once applied. And when I can’t remove it, then it causes irritation. My mom applies it on the inside of her under eye lid, which I have always been far too squeamish to do. My hands shake too much for proper use of liquid liner.

Mascara:
Ah, and now the apex of makeup troubles. I cannot do 99 percent of mascara. And yet, I love it. Maybelline Great Lash is terrific in theory and only $5 for the bottle. But, like cheap wine, I pay for it in the morning. Neutrogena is actually hypoallergenic; however, it’s so ineffective, I may as well not wear mascara. I went the medium-price route, trying Body Shop, which was good till it made my eyes itch and subsequently balloon. Though I have to note, while it seems illogical, the tube I bought in Johannesburg a few years ago was good; the one I bought in the U.S. was not. Could the formulas be different? My brief foray into Clinique mascara was horrific.

Wandering through duty-free at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I shelled out 22 Euros for Dior Show. Which I absolutely loved for the dramatic look, but I developed mild allergies to that as well (and yes, I throw out mascara after 3 months when opened, as one is supposed to do). I would try Dior again since it’s been the best results-for-allergy trade-off so far. Today, I talked to a Mac makeup specialist; however, she directed me to Lancome’s Definicils. So I paid yet another $24 for hope. You ask why?!

Anyone who has seen me within handshaking distance would observe that my eyelashes are almost unparalleled in their thickness, length, and blackness. If Michael Jackson was Janet Jackson’s only comparison for dancing, my younger brother is my only comparison for lashes. In fact, I had a debacle with Cambridge Eye Doctors over the summer, when I chose a frame with a saddle bridge. My lashes hit the lens, and since they couldn’t adjust the frame to prevent it, I had to have an entirely new frame made. I can only get the distance with a nose bridge. Similarly, when I look in a microscope or telescope, all I see are lashes. It’s stupid when important bacteria and Saturn’s rings are being obscured by your own lashes. So why mascara?

Oh, but isn’t that the point? I melt when I see photos and clips of Aishwarya Rai or Audrey Hepburn with tremendously long and luxurious lashes. I don’t think one can ever have lashes that are too long or too thick. Infiniti is the limit.

The question of color:
While the makeup industry has come a long way from the days of when Iman, as the only black model on the runway in the 70s, could not find a foundation to match her skin tone, and while there are lines that cater specifically to women of color (like Iman’s own makeup, most of which I love and am not allergic to), good options for colors are not always in the mainstream brands. Clinique offers dismal choices. Mac and Body Shop are good, along with Revlon. A lot of colors aren’t formulated in ways that work. If not all pinks are created equal, they don’t apply equally either.

Lessons learned:
Upon advice from my mother, I stopped using makeup altogether for a week and found that my face was fresher, less lined, and less stressed out than before. So after putting you the reader through all that, I’ve decided to drop most makeup. Black and white film actresses used Vaseline for a dewy, glossy look. I tried it. It works. It’s also safe. Perhaps Vaseline, lip gloss, and a little powder, is all I need most of the time. Besides, as Scarlett O’Hara and Cleopatra have shown the world, beauty is 90 percent attitude.

And dark nail polish, of course.

Exploring South Asian identity politics & the art of the short story

2009-09-29T13:58:00.011-04:00

Jhumpha Lahiri has a remarkable ability to charm the socks off her high-brow reviewers. "Lahiri is 'wow,'" says Caleb Crain for The New York Times, on Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies. Colleague Michiko Kakutani calls The Namesake "a debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft."

I’ve tried to like Lahiri’s writing. I really have. I found Interpreter of Maladies to be beautifully written, but thematically tepid. I read a few pages of The Namesake and became irate with her generalizations of Americans and Indians. I perused a few stories in Unaccustomed Earth and nearly threw the collection out the window. Ah, the art of the short story! The exposition of identity politics!

I became so fed up with Lahiri’s focus on identity that I vowed to write short stories where identity politics were incidental and irrelevant to the story. In trying to mask the politics of identity, I think I missed the point. As recent events and conversations have revealed to me, identity politics are heated and salient as ever. It’s that Lahiri presents them in clichés, platitudes, and obsessions with infidelity and apathy. She also writes about a very tiny subset of Indians – first and second generation wealthy, Bengalis who have studied and/or live in the one mile radius of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I lived in Cambridge for two years – this profile isn’t even me.

Where are the other Indians? East Asians? Jewish people? Other Bostonians? (Oh wait, I forget that people in Cambridge hardly ever cross the Charles River). Young professionals outside the medical field? Almost nowhere to be found – it’s like they don’t even exist, exposing both the limitations of Lahiri’s personal experience and imagination. Lahiri’s angst isn’t the issue – her characterization of it is outdated. A friend of mine remarked to me, “You know where Americans are stuck? Mississippi Masala. People still ask me if my life is like that.” Let me remind readers that this Mira Nair film was released almost two decades ago. Identity politics and culture is mutable and ever-evolving.

Admittedly, Lahiri has a fine flair for expressing tragedy. However, her characters are recycled and under-developed. I keep thinking to myself “Thank gods, I am not these people.” Her protagonists are passive and lukewarm, and her command of suspense incredibly poor. Her stories give me so little hope. There is no triumph after struggle.

In many ways, film and comedy are well-ahead of the curve over literature. Nair's films have always been visionary. Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002) is a film about South Asian identity politics; however, it’s also about the challenges young people face whenever they want to do something different. Harold and Kumar (Danny Leiner, 2004) is ground-breaking, because it’s really a story about two smart guys being total idiots. The cultural elements -- the pressure on Kumar (Kal Penn) to get into medical school and the need for Harold (John Cho) to stand up against his manipulative, fraternity-boy co-workers -- are presented through comedy. Comedian Russell Peters makes fun of Indian stereotypes and makes us laugh.

Short stories are difficult to write. An author has about 2500-5000 words to place point of view strategically, develop major and minor characters, frame the setting, spin the plot, and reveal the themes – in other words, to make the point. In my opinion, there are very few genuinely good short story writers: William Faulkner, Flannery ‘O Connor, Angela Carter, Edgar Allen Poe (who arguably invented the genre in English literature), and Anita Nair. Now there’s a South Asian writer you should read, along with Chitra Banerjee Divakuruni, who addresses domestic violence in her work. All the writers I mentioned incorporate the weird and gothic, strong elements of suspense, and/or even magical realism.

Why shouldn’t I write a collection of short stories focused on identity politics that is salient to my generation? Suddenly, the inspiration for stories and themes was all around me: pan-Asian identities; the relationships between first and second-generation South Asian peers; similarities in the immigrant story across cultures; where exoticism can turn out to be perceived as a liability for image-creation rather than an asset; the apparent success of Jewish-Indian romances; the paradoxical experience of being a third-culture kid; racial profiling; vulnerabilities in the workplace, where being young and a woman is equally problematic; and how class differences, of even the minutest kind, are often far more dividing than cultural ones or color lines.

Electing President Obama, who is white, black, second-generation, and a third-culture kid, is just a first-step; we as Americans still have a long, long way to go. The unfortunate fact is that humans are 99 percent similar to each other. Unlike Lahiri, who is obsessed with cross-cultural differences, I'm obsessed with cross-cultural parallels. The more I travel, the more I see that we are more similar than we are different. But we focus on the one percent that’s different: the one percent that causes all the conflicts, the one percent that is the reason for rich, cultural diversity in the world. “Identity politics are a whole lot more complex than they need to be,” I said to my friend with a deep sigh.

True lack of prejudice and worldliness is a necessary, two-way dream. To understand curiosities, one has to be curious. To be accepted, one has to accept. To globalize, one needs to be globalized as well. The real question is can we all get over ourselves in order to genuinely eliminate racial and cultural discrimination? I will not give up on the possibility.

A powerful short story of identity politics would be one which they are the undercurrent of the story and not the story itself. One in which the multiple layers of identity draw us together just as much as they pull us apart. The themes can (and perhaps should) be universal in nature. After all, as Lord Alfred Tennyson said, there are no new stories, only new ways of expressing them.

Addendum: Bride and Prejudice

2009-07-27T21:43:00.007-04:00

Part Two of Rejection Served Up Three Different Ways.

When I first wrote that entry and discussed Liz Bennett's declining Mr. Darcy's affections, I had thought that there wasn’t an equivalent scene in Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004). There is a parallel; it just occurs much later in the narrative development than the other versions I've analyzed. This film oscillates between scenes of extreme hilarity and scenes of extreme awkwardness (funny for the wrong reasons); however, the rejection scene isn’t too bad.

Lizzy here, who is named Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) and Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) have just gotten over their mutual pride and prejudice and have started falling for each other. They walk into Lalita's best friend Chandra's wedding together only to run into Darcy’s mother. She’s opposed to Darcy’s liaison with Lalita not on account of the fact that she’s Indian (misunderstandings of that nature between Darcy and Lalita occurred at the beginning of the film, but they’d been gotten over by this point), but because Lalita’s family is far less wealthy. Darcy’s girlfriend, which it should be noted Lalita didn’t know he had, is also present. Lalita has also just discovered that it was Darcy who discouraged Balraj (Naveen Andrews) from proposing to Lalita's sister Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) and is primarily devastated by this knowledge.

Given these immediate circumstances, the rejection scene takes on an extra poignancy and understandably, Lalita is angry. Rai is not an amazing actress, but Henderson isn’t a superb actor either, so their combined ingenuity makes the scene feel very natural. Instead of going off into a long, frustrated speech, Lalita’s brevity of response to Darcy’s confession of love is quite refreshing. She says, cool as cucumber, “Only you could say that you love me and insult me at the same time.” Lalita handles the scene with maturity and level-headedness that is distinctive from the other Lizzy’s.

The rejection scene actually starts at 2:30, but I provide the entire clip for context. Chadha was sharply tongue-in-cheek in including Ann’s mispronunciation of Lalita’s name. A similar circumstance has happened to me on a few occasions too. Except for me, it’s been “Evita… like Don’t cry for me Argentina?” My reaction: [. . .] followed by awkward laugh.

There’s also something very definitively Indian about Rai’s posture, tone, and manner in which she handles the scene. I’m not sure I can explain this properly -- perhaps some mix of keeping anger under wraps, wanting to save face, and just needing to leave an embarrassing situation -- except to say that I probably would have reacted the same way.

Lalita has more agency in this scene than the other Lizzy Bennet’s. She’s the one who walks away. The dramatic vocals that begin at 4:32 are quite typical of a Bollywood/Indian film. Lalita’s exit in the sheer white sari is also well done – although it’s not clear exactly where she’s going.

On Chennai: my retrospective

2009-07-18T23:30:00.004-04:00

In December 2008, I returned to Chennai, India for the first time in 12 years. The minute I felt the thick humidity and sandy dust even in the midst of cool winter, it was like coming home.

But a decade changes any place. Lattice Bridge Road, the main road off the street where I had lived in Thiruvanmiyur, was nearly unrecognizable. If you asked me to give directions to my favorite bookstore Odyssey, which still existed, I could no longer do it. The roads were overflowing with cars, traffic was exponentially worse, and once plentiful bicycles were few and far between. I used to bike to nearby destinations every now and then just for fun – I’d never risk it now.

I think the most startling changes were the ascending of tall glass tower buildings, the kind you see in technology parks, which were almost all call centers, the disappearance of slums (I think they were just hidden or pushed out), and the profusion of cell phones – everyone, rich and poor, seemed to have one. At least at the urban level, there appeared to be some breaking of inter-generational cycles of poverty.

I lived in this chaotic metropolis for three years in the mid 90s. Even then it was a bustling city of four million (the population has since doubled), a drastic contrast from the manicured spaces of suburbia I had inhabited in Georgia. At the time there, the uphill battle had been proving I was American, whereas, in India, I couldn't downplay my U.S. nationality if I tried.

I went to a school that was run by Christians, so we had a daily assembly which ended with the singing of a hymn. I even had a hymn book – in fact, you were thrown out of line if you didn’t have it in your pocket. We were otherwise totally secular and multireligious. The student body was almost evenly split between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, so we got out for all of the holidays. And instead of snow days, we had rain days during monsoon season, as the streets were sometimes so flooded that I dreamed of kayaking down them.

We had school from 8 a.m. to 1:40 p.m., with only a 15 minute break in-between. I was picked up by our driver and at home by 2 p.m. I would have lunch, breathe, change, and would be out the door again by 3:15 p.m. in order to make it to my 4 p.m. French class downtown at the Alliance Française. The journey took me 45 minutes. It takes well over an hour now. My peers in French class were mostly college kids – sometimes they took me out for ice cream after class. There were of course no cell phones, so I would ask the administrative office for a favor and call home hastily to let my mother know I would be late. I was 12 and 13 years old. Our poor driver was also my ad-hoc chaperon.

In many ways, my social life was far more vibrant and free than the one I had before, and more than the one that would follow later in high school. I had an unprecedented level of mobility. With my school friends, I was always going to houses, lunches, and dinners and parties in malls, recreational clubs, and restaurants in the city centre. I was quite aware I was moving in high circles compared to people living in abject poverty around me. This troubled me – in fact, I think the knowledge of this disparity pervaded so much into my conscious, I would later gravitate towards work in international development.

Even then, I placed a high premium on my freedom and independence. I had a bicycle, a purple Huffy mountain bike, which looked ridiculously out of place on the streets of Chennai, where bicycles were colored neutrally and built for speed and transport, high and with thin wheels. But the bike served me well across the uneven roads. Amidst great protest and total lack of understanding as to why I’d used it for transport when I had access to an air-conditioned car, I would bike to stores, to my math tutor’s house for classes, and on occasion to a friend’s house.

I would bike to vegetable markets and convenience stores to fetch groceries for my mother if no one else was around, picking up a bar of Nestle Crunch or Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut as my prize. Consumer choice was somewhat limited. I think toothpaste choice was generally confined to Colgate. At a time when quality baked goods were rare, I would run all over town to find the best cakes. Though, as the years went by, the presence of international products increased. It was the beginning of trade liberalization, market reforms, and deregulation of television and radio. Now you can get anything and everything you want. No need to smuggle Head & Shoulders shampoo and VCRs through customs, as we used to do.

Could I live here again? Of course. Chennai is modern, yet as my friend who I met with whom I had not seen in 12 years noted, it has managed to maintain its “rustic” quality in comparison to Mumbai. I was sitting outside at a café on Arundel Beach Road in Besant Nagar with her, chatting as we used to chat, enjoying a strawberry milkshake, and I felt completely in place. The only thing that truly bothered me was that with the traffic and lack of sidewalks, the main roads were not very safe to walk on anymore. I nearly got run over by a few auto rickshaws. I hesitated to come back for a decade, and I could take it no longer. I will never let another 12 years pass. My heart currently resides in Atlanta; I left a huge chunk of it in London and go back regularly; but I also think I left a part of it in Chennai.

On Layers

2009-06-23T21:29:00.008-04:00

Layers can reveal complexity, like peeling away the layers of an onion. Layers can be protective, such as piling on clothes in sub-zero Boston weather. Layers can also be oppressive, like flakes of honey-drenched baklava, adding suffocating, cloying density.

I’m a second-generation American woman of Indian heritage. I am a woman, I am American, I am Indian, I am a Southerner, and I am an Anglophile. I am twice post-colonial. I do not consider any of these elements as being in contradiction with each other. Though the navigation can be complex, these “layers” have provided me with multiple lenses to view the world and tremendous opportunities to engage with it. Yet, there are other layers. I write of the things that are expected of us from family, friends, and society as we get older.

They say it’s the little things that you push you over the edge. I have traveled from Tangiers, Morocco to Algeciras, Spain at 2 a.m. on a cargo ship, was abandoned at the Dar es Salaam airport and had to find my way into town on a dead Sunday early morning, navigated sprawling Mexico City in local taxis knowing little Spanish, and nearly missed a ferry off Gorée Island, which would have stranded me in Dakar. I’m only a semi-reluctant adventuress; it takes a lot more than a few wrong turns to rattle me.

Earlier this month, I went to go see Monet’s “Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. I barely made the exit from the highway. The 14th Street detour took me around in a circle. I ran several red lights, made a series of wrong turns, pulled to the side of 16th street with cars honking at me, and blocked the middle of the intersection of Peachtree and Tenth. A half-hour after I took the exit, I drove into the Promenade parking garage and burst into tears.

I think this ordeal finally brought out all of my uncertainties over the future. In just a short while, I will be out of a job, will not have an apartment, and my next geographical destination is as yet, undetermined. In the long term, I am expected to have a job that takes me into positions of leadership and influence, to be financially self sufficient, and to be married and have children (I have my doubts on both of these last counts). Though it is not expected, I also want to support my parents financially and morally in their old age.

When did life become so hard? When did hard work and solid qualifications not always pay off? I went to two pretty good schools and am wrapping up a job with a decent academic institution. Where is the clearing? Am I just being whiny? Or am I just losing hope and fast? If so, why? After all, I’m not an HIV-positive mother in Uganda barely able to make ends meet or a GM worker who has recently lost a job.

In a conversation with poetblue, she indicated that in college, there were far fewer expectations. We were expected to show up in class (if even that), impress key professors, and get good grades. However, as we move into the post-graduate and working world, there are many more actors and factors monitoring our progress and holding us accountable to our success. Suddenly, in a cultural universal, our parents who had left us in a collegial cocoon, want to see us “settled” in all senses of the word.

As Kate Bush writes mockingly in her song “Suspended in Gaffa”:
That girl in the mirror
Between you and me
She don't stand a chance of getting anywhere at all.

The mirror often laughs at me, chanting, trying to make me believe that some vital element lacks.

But wait just a second. I’ve been through more than this. The friend who introduced this concept of “layers” to me, herself lost her mother to cancer a few years ago. I know not a small number of friends and acquaintances who have lost parents. Life has thrown me a few curve balls too. When I moved to India as an adolescent, my pursuit of perfection precipitated a self-esteem dive. I became anorexic, lost just about half of my body weight, reached the point of serotonin-induced complacency, and nearly became a statistic. That took a few years and a great deal of resilience and persistence to get over. I haven’t developed a reputation for being as tough as nails without reason.

As Stevie Nicks has often noted of her cocaine addiction, there was no sudden epiphany. It just gradually occurred to me that I wanted to continue living. Moving back to the U.S. was no piece of cake either. Once an expat, always an expat. I found strength (and continue to do so) in my writing. I used to think that I cheated the Universe, and that it’s been trying to catch up to me since. I’ve stopped believing that, and I’ve started thinking maybe I was brought back from the brink for a reason, or many reasons.

Sometimes, I’m tempted to believe that I’d have more peace of mind and a greater sense of security if I took on fewer layers. There’s definitely a tradeoff. A fluid identity comes with a certain rootlessness, but I wouldn’t trade in my chameleon-like self for anything else. My refusal to identify myself as one thing and my choices has given me what I sought in the first place: independence and agency. As we face greater responsibility in multiple spheres, I’m not sure if there’s a benchmark for being “settled” or having fewer expectations. Maybe as my mom says in the cadence of the Eagles song, “Take it easy. Life is so. . . long.” To which I respond impatiently, “No, it’s not! That’s why I don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do.” Right, time-out.

On the issue of parents, they can only be a guide. Our friends can be supportive mirrors. Mentors can see the light in us and light our way. And society... to hell with society. Maybe not quite, but it was trying to live up to its conventions which led me into darkness before. There’s only one person whose expectations I need to live up to: mine. That girl in the mirror is my worst enemy and my closest ally. I’ll never be perfect, but I now know that’s ok. The adventure has just started. There are many more paths yet to travel. I recently told a friend that I can’t do everything; that I have to cut something.

“I think you should cut flossing,” he replied. Indeed. That’s about the only thing I plan to concede.

How do you sit on the dock of the bay?

2009-05-05T19:41:00.004-04:00

Try It

So very blind in your beliefs
Idealizing American Dreams
Focused upon those golden seeds
so much that you just cannot see

Oh, sighing "hard work does not pay"
You blame yourself, "I'm so below the grade"
So you go back to the beginning
Rewriting all the lines for some better story

Try, it, oh, try, it
Try and visualize a different way of living
Try, it, hey, hey
Not all has to have the spouse, the kids, and a mansion.

You've got your Faith when you are down
And if you don't, you're stuck in doubt
But with best friends you'll come around
To understand that life is about
using the hand you're given
Not everyone must cross the same goal line
So when you feel luck has dried out
Remember having everything is not for everybody

Try, it, oh, try, it
Try and visualize a different way of thinking
Try, it, hey, hey
Not all has to want the spouse, the kids, the glory.

Perhaps now you just can't believe
That traditional scenes are not the only things
To have with your time on earth
Being famous, giving birth
Aren't for all human beings
So when you fail
At anything
And you're thinking that you
can't do any better
Hold on a second 'cause
You don't need to want like everyone else.

--yiqi Cinco de Mayo 2009 6:43 pm

The above quasi-parody (of this song) was inspired by a conversation I had with a good friend. In light of the economic state of the nation and other factors, a significant amount of chaos has filled her life in recent months. Not knowing where one will live, work, or call home is nothing new for a lot of people. For my friend, a nomad at heart, it has become as familiar as the creases in her favorite pair of jeans.

Her day job has required her to cross time-zones at the drop of a stencil, going from hemisphere to hemisphere more times in the last year than I have gone globe-trotting in my entire twenty-eight years of existence. The physical and mental fatigue that has been building as a result of this travel has left my friend on the lower end of life's highs and lows. Nevermind when your puppy gets hit by a car, when your favorite TV show gets canceled and will not be on DVD any time soon, or when your preferred postman takes a new route, physiological exhaustion pulls the spirit into depths of despair and despondency with greater efficacy than even that which hurts more.

Being on the move, having the stamina to move around geographically and intellectually has taken a toll on her. In conversations over the weeks, I threw out the images of an anchor, a captain, a lighthouse, and a boat. I emphasized the image of the "anchor," as something that she can always go back to...something or someone that will always be there. No matter how crazy life gets, the anchor will be there.

Today, she remarked, "somewhere along the line, I forgot I was an artist--I forgot to engage it. I think that's my anchor. It has to be, because I have to take the anchor with me wherever I go. I'm reading this book about Elizabethan pirates and their boats sank all the time. Stable boat = permanence, but maybe my "stability" lies in the anchor. You can anchor anywhere with any boat".

I expanded upon her comment.

Most people spend their lives getting the anchor, the boat, and learning how to be an adequate captain to a first mate. Even when they realize they can't have it all, they don't realize that the boat can be interchangeable. The boat is school, work, community activities, etc; it is assumed to be the most stable, the first priority, and should be the most long-lasting. First mates can come and go, captains can come and go, but a boat is forever.

But no--a boat is not forever, not necessarily and not for everyone.

The components of the American dream, the conventional aspirations, doesn't have to be for everyone.

My question has always been...well, why couldn't these people just realize it? But life wouldn't be as exciting, would it? if everyone walked around knowing the value, functionality or the quirks of the cards they are dealt?

American values, American traditions promote the desire to be someone great, to do something amazing, and even if you aren't rich, you can leave behind a legacy and change the world. Marrying, having children, traveling, and so on and so forth...you list enough items and you get the spectrum of needs to conventions to luxuries.

So the anchor is actually not whatever floats your boat, but rather whatever keeps you from capsizing. Having a good anchor and being a self-sufficient captain...is crucial. Yes, a first mate would help, a lighthouse would too, but if you can't have both, you could have one. If you have neither first mate nor lighthouse, you'd need a line up of destinations and a stable boat. If you have no particular destination in mind, your boat could be the foundation of your existence, or an implement, a tool.

Living and surviving are about not capsizing in the water or getting swept into sea if you're still on dry land. Society teaches us that we should want it all, and why not, right? But if we can't have it all, we would make do, right? We'd learn how to get on with what we do and do not have. Some people realize this before they're old enough to enjoy lower auto insurance rates. For others, though, it's a lifelong lesson.

The sooner you realize the following, the mission of not capsizing becomes less burdensome:

A. You can't necessarily have it all (nor must you want it all).
B. Whichever pieces you have is as much about where you are (in life) as it is what kind of captain you are.
C. Chance, fate, happenstance, etc. contribute
D. Identify your anchor and know what kind of captain you are.
E. You don't have to be a different kind of captain in order to sail the high seas. If you want to be and work at it, and find positive results, then great. If not, perhaps you need to find another boat (or distribute the weight across your boat in a more efficient manner), a better anchor, or a lighthouse.

I am my friend's lighthouse. She is my anchor. My other good friend is the beach. I hopscotch between water and land. I don't want to "go anywhere," so i don't need a "boat." Actually, I do have a boat, but it's on land. It's like a museum piece, an artifact of a past life.

I ask you, who or what is your anchor? Do you have a lighthouse? What kind of boat do you have?

Unseen forces, your dogs, your favorite sports teams, your grandparents....there is no right or wrong answer.

Bollocks to the Patriarchy but Romance can be unconventional

2008-11-21T10:03:00.005-05:00

Twilight tulips iridescence.

I have not read the books nor seen the film yet (will do so on the morrow). I love Kristen Stewart, so I won't be in the cinematic experience for quality or life-shattering wisdoms. Speaking of which, I absolutely adore Pete Vonder Haar's review of the film.

I have to give a couple of excerpts some attention. Pete remarks:

With his yearning eyes and tortured past, Edward is the romantic ideal for most 13-year old girls (and some boys): he’s androgynously gorgeous, has a dope ride, and doesn’t want to do anything but talk about your feelings and snuggle. It would appear that in addition to robbing his brood of their need for blood, Carlisle also removed their balls.

Indeed. The Byronesque Brooder is the object of many an adolescent girl's lust and adoration.

This quaint fantasy of the boy putting the brakes on would never fly in a traditional romance, hence the “vampire” angle, and the first half of the movie is devoted almost exclusively to the pair’s budding courtship. Unfortunately, this translates into scene after scene of Bella and Edward gazing longingly at each other – in the forest, up a tree, beside the cold and lonely sea – before any real tension develops.

Not everyone wants a traditional romance. Aside from the debate surrounding the efficacy of the abstinence-only approach to sex and sexuality education, why must all hormonally driven youths become sexually active? Is there still nothing equally or more satisfying to do when two people really like each other?

Furthermore, only in films do sparks between two individuals lead to the expression of that attraction a montage or two after sparks are depicted (or by the end of the film if a romantic comedy is involved). In real life, some people only have eye contact, smiles, and silently acknowledged mutual attraction (intellectual, emotional, physical, all of the above, or some other combination) because neither person wants to make a move...out of fear or paranoia or, in the words of Andrew Marvell, a bond that is "the conjunction of the mind but the opposition of the stars".

They're taken already.

The message is clear: don’t inconvenience that handsome boy who was so gallant in resisting your base urges by also straying beyond the boundaries of domestic complacency.

In other words: a female can have a male who profoundly loves her and will not impose his pro-creative instincts on her but if, and only if, she effectively erases her own sense of self and exists only for his well-being.

Oui ou non.

Definitely, bollocks to the patriarchy.

The oft maligned elegant lady of post-jazz: Sade Adu

2008-10-26T22:07:00.005-04:00

By most people's categorization standards, Sade Adu's music is "easy listening" or "lounge jazz" (a kinder way of saying "elevator music"). The lyrics, "coast to coast/LA to Chicago/west of Maine," from arguably her most well-known song "Smooth Operator" invokes an intercontinental tone can comes off as goofy to American listeners. Her music is oft maligned for being schmaltzy and vacuous. For all the nay-sayers, I advise they listen more closely.

Sade’s music has an excellent sense of rhythm, often makes use of Latin beats including bossa nova and African grooves, and is intelligent and sexy. Lyrically, she has a way of diving very deep into your soul with lines like:

"If you were mine, I wouldn't want to go to heaven" (“Cherish the Day”)
“I’d wash the sand off the shore. Give you the world if it was mine.” (“Paradise”)
"I'll give you my love, I'll give you everything I feel inside...surrender your love to me." (“Give it Up”)
“My love is wider than Victoria Lake. My love is taller than the Empire State.”
(“Is it a Crime”)

Who says the best “love poetry” is written by men? I listen to those lyrics and just sigh – would that I could feel that way about a man, is the thought that comes to mind. I often wish that more women be that direct and courageous about the intensity of desire. In that respect, on the lyrical front, I can compare her to Stevie Nicks.

In concert, she’s surprisingly dynamic. With her smooth complexion, high forehead, and eyes that stare right into you, her stage presence is charismatic. She is only 5’7; however she looks incredibly tall. People with long legs, long necks, and long arms get away with murder when it concerns height. She is no dancer, nor is her music really danceable, but she moves well with it, feels it as it is her own, and even barefoot, is amazingly elegant.

Sade’s sense of style is impeccable. It’s at once evocative of old screen legends such as Katharine Hepburn (for the more male elements), Audrey Hepburn (for the un-fussed simplicity in color and form), and Lauren Bacall (for the film noir-ish mise-en-scene), but at the same time deceptive. She wears black trousers and high-necked, long-sleeved turtlenecks with the back completely open or kimono-like dresses, but with slits high up the leg. I think it’s very reflective of the sense of mystery mixed with sex just below the surface. It’s very clever – it’s about covering it all up so that the skin you do show has that much more effect. And at 49, she looks beyond amazing.

Sade was in a genre of her own in the 1980s – next to Duran Duran, U2, and Madonna, no one compared. Indeed, Sade owes a lot to her predecessors – Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Stevie Wonder, and even Diana Ross and Astrud Gilberto just to name a few. I think however she deserves major credit for writing a form of jazz that is lyrically lovely, only marginally in tune with the 80s and 90s, and allusive of the 1940s. It’s completely anachronistic, yet totally irresistible.

An underrated little gem: Stevie Nicks' Street Angel

2008-10-17T10:26:00.004-04:00

Don't judge an album by the artist's life at the time of its production.

Stevie Nicks' 1994 release Street Angel was dismissed by the majority of critics as being insipid and stale. I listened to it for the first time over 10 years ago on cassette, and perhaps I was over-influenced by the comments. I found myself at Cheapo Records in Central Square, Cambridge the other evening, looking for used CDs while waiting for my take-away dinner at the Indian restaurant next door. At $3.99, I had to buy a copy, as it's the only Stevie studio album I don't own.

Of course, quality of sound differs greatly on a CD opposed to cassettes (does anyone even own a tape recorder anymore?). The CD possesses high-quality production values that are superior in fact to Rock a Little (1983) and even to Wild Heart (1983) – though not superior to the songs.

Overall, these are beautifully written songs from the catchy pop sound of "Blue Denim" to the poignant "Greta" (alluding to the screen goddess) and the wistful "Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind." Even her cover of the Bob Dylan classic "Just Like a Woman" is well done. If ever there was a woman with the voice to cover a Dylan song, it is Stevie. The take-it or leave-it attitude and open-road feeling of "Kick It" is very satisfying. In fact the only sub-par song on the record is "Jane," her tribute to anthropologist Jane Goodall. Something about the line "the forgotten chimpanzee" makes me cringe, even if the song was well-intended (sorry, Stevie). Most surprisingly, the songs are contemporary for mid 90s popular music, along the lines of Natalie Merchant. Admittedly, her voice was *not* in the best of conditions, but I do love the gravely, lived-in sound, and where she is unable to hold the verse on her own, her long-time back-up singers Sharon Celani, Lori Nicks, and Sara Fleetwood, more than adequately support her vocals.

In retrospect, it almost appears that the reviewers dismissed Street Angel on account of the personal troubles in Stevie's life – she was at the time, overweight and fighting a drug addiction. Her voice was not in the best condition. They seemed to have thrown the record out with the woman, as it were. Street Angel showcases a calmer Stevie and a thoughtful songwriter with excellent rhythm (as always) and exceptional musicality.

A Barrel of Laughs as we Tip Our Team

2008-08-22T11:38:00.003-04:00

Random stops along the information super driveway.

Numero Un:

Forget the right to die, try the right to refuse medication on for size.

Numero Deux:

A newfound respect for the suit.

Numero Trois:

Admit it. You would care if they were all gone. You would be sad.

Numero Quatre:

Does your baby count as a living creature?

Numero Cinque:

Brother, can you spare a ride?

Numero Six:

Preventive measures or 'I'll deal with it later'.

Numero Sept:

So much to do, so few ideas or time.

You're not fully clean unless...

2008-07-27T22:36:00.000-04:00

I was reading Dr. Sanjay Gupta's blog post memorializing Michael DeBakey, a surgeon Dr. Gupta called a "medical legend." One of the comments from a medical student says that Dr. DeBakey said in a Q&A session many years ago that his biggest regret was wasting too much time. How anyone considered a pioneer in their field can think they have wasted too much time speaks of either tremendous arrogance or almost saintly humility. In Dr. DeBakey's case, who credits his mother's sewing instructions as the key to his success as a surgeon, I'm willing to bet it was the latter.

In my career, I doubt I'll be saving any lives, but I am highly likely to be wasting quite a bit of time. There's the 10 minutes I waste every day listening to Ann Curry gush uncontrollably every morning while I wait for my local news and weather; the hour I spend tooling around on the Interwebs every evening, looking for nothing in particular; and the untold weekend days where I can't seem to get up before 11, then lay in bed for two hours reading trashy books, only to finally get washed, quaffed, dressed and ready to meet the world by 4pm.

Did I do the laundry? Nope..but I still have some clean undergarments so I guess it can wait until next week. Did I go through the mail? Nope, but the stack on the kitchen table hasn't fallen over yet, so it can wait another few days. Did I exercise? Nope. Woke up too late and then ate too late, and who wants to go to the gym on a Saturday night??

Of course, the amount of wasted time in my life is nothing compared to the useless junk taking up space in my brain. There is a scene in Jim Henson's iconic film Labyrinth where Sarah is dreaming about searching for her brother and finds herself in a junkyard. An old woman tries to distract Sarah by offering the girl all of her favorite toys from childhood. Eventually, Sarah remembers what she has come for and yells something to the effect of "I want my baby brother!" (Sorry guys, no youtube luck, though I tried).

This scene haunted me as a child, and even still gives me the heebie jeebies as an adult. In a way, I wonder if my mind isn't a big junkyard, filled more with advertising slogans than literary passages, juicy celebrity gossip instead of complex philosophical concepts.

For example, the other day, I noticed a frozen food lunch my boss was eating. It was Thai peanut chicken or something, in a "zesty" sauce. I thought to myself, "Zesty--that's a word for green things like, cilantro, pesto.... and Zest soap."

I actually spent a few minutes wondering why "zest" the name for the soap means something like enjoying or relishing an experience; but the simple addition of a "y" to the end of the word evokes images of Latin food. Certainly "zesty" wasn't the right world for things with peanuts in it, and although the mango flavored Zest was a tremendous failure, I still stand by my belief that it would have worked if they had kept the soap green.

All this, and I could have been contemplating a solution to our country's current economic difficulties, or learning a new word like "piquant."

Maybe, I simply don't have the mental stamina for such intense intellectual musings. Or perhaps I can blame it all on Corporate America.

DeBakey didn't grow up with television and failblog. He didn't grow up in a world where every waking moment was a bombardment of marketing strategies aimed at convincing you consciously or subliminally to become another lemming.

I can't help it if I grab the Sunny D from the fridge and think to myself, "It's not OJ or the purple stuff." The jingle just eeks out of me, perhaps like a maestro finds himself humming the Moonlight Sonata when driving at night.

What I'm really arguing is that the consumerist culture that pushes Prada and iPhones on my generation and American Girl Bistros and Guitar Hero on the one after me is making us dumber. Certainly, others have wondered the same thing.

So, my brain, which has infinitely less capacity than the late Dr. DeBakey's has no chance against all the catchy slogans and sitcom theme songs that have been engineered, focus-grouped, and triple-tested to stick in the deep nether regions of my consciousness--and the equation for finding the area of a circle and the definition of a gerund are not. And that urban legend that we use only 10 percent of our brains during the day? Untrue. So much for the possibility of finding an alien technology that could help me remember my shopping list.

And this blog? Has it been a waste of intellectual energy and time? You tell me.

In between the dark and the light: memory before time

2008-07-14T20:59:00.002-04:00

While listening to Pandora radio recently, a lovely Heart song called “There’s the Girl” came up. It’s not on the greatest hits compilation I own; however, I subsequently recalled hearing it occasionally on the radio as a little girl. All of this brought to mind something I’m calling musical memory. Not memory of playing a piano piece learned per se (I guess, which is muscle memory too), but more one’s unconscious memory of a song – or set of songs.

Almost always, I can trace back the time or era of my life in which I was first aware of a musical artist I like. I remember listening to Michael Jackson when I was 3 or 4 years old (this, the Challenger disaster, and the time I saw through my bedroom window, a flock of hundreds of birds carpeting our lawn in Yonkers, New York in a migratory pit stop, make up some of my very first, if not truly first memories).

I remember first paying attention to The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground – all mostly off my radar until I was in my teens and going through my enjoyment of all classic rock. Those were the days when I wouldn’t turn off the radio when Led Zeppelin came on (sorry, I like them, I do- they just give me a headache a lot of the time.)

I never had this moment with the Eagles. It’s not that I especially love them. I don’t adore them unconditionally the way I do Fleetwood Mac, whose songs sometimes rip out of my heart, throw it on the floor, and then proceed to step on it. I don’t appreciate them the way I do the tunes of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – romantic and gritty at the same time. Nothing to hold par with the brilliance of the “oh, my my/oh hell, yes” refrain in “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” I don’t connect with their lyrics or orchestration the way I do with the raw, elemental power of Kate Bush which makes me want to spin and spin until I collapse. I even like hip Japanese pop artist Namie Amuro much more.

Yet, every time I listen to an Eagles song, it’s like coming home. There’s never a conscious “Oh, I heard this first when I was 5 years old” or “I started liking them when I was 10.” It’s like there was never a time when these songs weren’t in my memory. I always knew of them. No, no, I do not go into a trance like Elaine’s date does in Seinfeld when listening to “Desperado.” It’s just a simple, yes I know this song and have always known this song – there is no time I was not familiar with the ritualistic, drum intro of “Witchy Woman,” the waltz beat of the country-laden “Take it to the Limit,” or the depressed bass-line underpinning the bluesy “One of These Nights.” These songs need no explanation – they are just there, part of my unconscious.

For many years, I vaguely wondered about this effect and suffered my dad playing their Greatest Hits compilation all the time and attempting to sing. Until one day, my mother said very blithely in Tamil, “Oh, not this again. Your dad played this record all the time in the house when I first came to the country.” It is to be noted in 1980, when my mother moved to New York, the Eagles had already split up. And suddenly, it made sense to me.

Though I know that the fetus can listen to music while in the womb, I don’t know if it’s even possible to have a memory of something experienced before you were born – but if that is possible, then this it. Sartre would say that essence does not precede existence, but for whatever it is worth, this is my memory before time.

Bringing Up Baby

2008-07-06T16:37:00.010-04:00

I have noticed that just as heroes, cowards, and religious zealots are made in a foxhole, every man's mettle and faith is tested when he is asked to hold a baby. Perhaps it is good that none of us remember being crowd-surfed for kisses. After all, I am sure we have all been exposed to our fair share of danger at the hands of smelly or frightening relatives who have no children and referred to us as "it"--largely in the context of: "it needs to be changed," "it spit up on me," or "it started crying, you'd better take it back."

Perhaps older generations have more excuses. Propriety demanded our grandfathers and great-grandfathers shun any and all knowledge on pregnancy and childbirth--an ignorance that would put today's six-year-olds to shame.

While American men are not nearly as blissfully unaware as their forefathers, thanks, in part, to tasteful and educational movies like "Junior" and "Knocked Up", the single, sub-30, male relative of a new arrival may have no better idea how to hold a baby than how to make a quiche.

Baby-holding pre-dates the wheel and fire--but single guys still haven't gotten it right. Was it a deeply rooted fear of a tiny wailing thing that sent the men off to hunt wolly mammoths instead of indulging in berry picking? I mean, what man doesn't relish every opportunity to sit near a food source and eat?

Truly, little has changed since the homo sapiens walked the earth. Men from pre-history to the apocalypse still try to smash something that doesn't work and they fall into three main categories when they are asked to hold a child for the first time:

The 007: This man is too suave. He's never picked up a child in his life but he's suddenly asking burping and feeding like a pro--showing his mad skillz off to any hot chick who will watch. You hate this man. He would never be unruffled at 3am with the third feeding of the night or ever get his shirt stained with applesauce reflux.

The Hail Mary: This guy thinks it's fun to throw a baby up in the air 12 feet and catch him/her one-handed. If you voice any concern, you're likely to be told he's "got 'em" and to "quit being so protective...you'll never raise an first-round pick Falcon that way!"

The W uss: He won't buy tampons at the store or even want to be in the same room as a breast pump. If you give him a baby, he'll hold it at arms' length and be quick to pawn it off on someone else. For him, babies are a contaminant, oozing out "commitment" germs wherever they touch or grab.

While 007 has his game on, you may be doing your cousin Sandy a favor by giving the baby something that smells particularly bad when it comes out the other way.

As for Hail Mary, you can rescue your child by asking him to explain the Falcons third-quarter play the other night (assuming this is football season, feel free to use basketball, or baseball alternatives as necessary). Put an appopriately innocent expression on your face and take the baby from him once he starts talking. Hail Mary won't notice the baby's gone becaus he'll be too busy gesturing with his hands about how so-and-so rushed center and Joe Bob fumbled at the 10 yard line...or whatever.

Finally for Wuss, the easiest option is to go out for the night and leave the baby in his care. Pretend like you had understood he'd agreed to babysit, not just come visit. He'll call around 9:30 and beg you to come home, during which time you are free to request any favor you actually need.

Product Differentiation

2008-07-06T15:11:00.004-04:00

In the world of retail and commerce, originality, quality, and appeal of merchandise must be carefully formulated and executed so that potential customers and patrons do not feel alienated, confused, belittled, discriminated against or unimpressed. Depending on the product or service offered, price can influence the degree of the public's enthusiasm.

Thriving in clothing or restaurant businesses, for instance, requires an adherence to already established standards and products on the content level, but to exceed everyone else in content quality and presentation (using better materials and ingredients, maintaining a healthy relationship with employees, hiring quick-thinking staff). A white blouse might be a white blouse no matter how you cut it, but it must look good and fit properly. Similarly, a hamburger may be two buns and a beef patty no matter how you bite into it, but it needs to taste a certain way. Business persons who want to re-invent the wheel are certainly free to do so, but unless quality and appeal outweigh potential confusion, the only response they'll get is "don't fix what isn't broken."

A hamburger with baguette bread? Hmmm....I know it's served this way in a few dining establishments, but if you re-think the bun but don't re-think the beef, you're probably going to get fewer repeat customers.

It dawned on me today that as much as human beings yearn for acceptance and a sense of belonging in a larger group, the desire to be unique is strong enough to alienate the audience. The thought actually originated with thinking about goals and dreams I've tossed to the wayside due to the sheer impracticality of retaining them. Specifically, to seek and acquire the kinds of emotional bonds I've craved for a long time.

America was founded on principles of self-agency and individuality, among others. Reclining beneath the "life liberty, and pursuit of happiness" tenet is the notion that being better than everyone else (or sometimes just different in a rewarding way) is preferable to being just like everyone else. Dance to the bass line of your own groove; snack to the percentage of your own sodium needs; read to the themes and plotlines of your own preferences. In terms of self-expression, being different (unique) is commendable and frequently refreshing. With respect to human interaction, however, being unique has a tendency to get lost in transmission.*

I pride myself on being different--to the extent that I must risk coming across as disarming or plain weird. While I wouldn't necessarily alter my behavior or favorite conversational topics just to increase the chances I can reclaim those discarded dreams, I understand now that the reason I've failed on every mission is that I am unique rather than above average. Someone who is unique might be the best in the time zone, but this person is also unpredictable intellectually, emotionally, and behaviorally.** Someone who is above average will be the best in the room (and even zip code) and is much more predictable. By no means is this kind of predictability steeped in convention or monotony. Someone who is above average can be every bit as original and new as the unique. The difference is that the unique person functions along a separate source of motive and intent as well as modus operandi. The above average person exhibits the same motive and intent as the average, but his/her modus operandi can differ.

For people trying to make connections, originality, quality, and appeal are less daunting when you know what is likely to be behind the curtain. How many people are willing to venture towards the unknown?

*Excepting cases where your deviations from societal norms are shared by enough (analog or digital) people such that you don't feel completely alone.

**I realize that a unique person can become predictable given enough time. If you spend enough energy and time with such an individual, you can better comprehend them and anticipate how they will react to a number of situations.

Rio Reiterated

2008-07-01T22:26:00.003-04:00

It opens like a steel knife slicing and segues into an entrancing cacophony of sounds that is disorienting and provoking. I think I’ve got it figured it out, but listening to Duran Duran’s “Rio” is always like I’ve never heard it before. In fact, I’ve heard it many times, but I’m forever amazed at how it sounds *different* every time I hear it.

Sometimes I choose to pay attention to the bass line that underpins the song. Other times, I concentrate on the pulsing drum beat. In some instances, I focus on the waterfall-like, flittering melody of synthesizer. A lot of the time, it is Simon Le Bon's beautiful voice with its almost piano-flat, oblique intonations, that captures my attention. And other times, it’s the grating, electric guitar, which grounds the song into a tangible reality. Interspersed with all this are bird-like sounds in the background, a saxophone interlude bridging the song, and the sound of a woman’s laughter, sharp and ringing, almost mocking.

The tone of the song begins with a cool indifference, “cherry ice cream/I suppose it’s very nice.” It builds a driving energy and then cascades. By the time you’ve reached the end, you feel a little more reckless, ready to dive in, to take a risk, because “luck is on your side or something.”

“Rio” proves to be as simultaneously satisfying and as frustrating as the elusive, titular woman of the song. You think you’ve found it, only to have it escape from your grasp . . .

“Who is Rio anyways?” asked a male friend of mine once. “That’s what I want to know.”

I just shrugged & smiled.

Farewell, My Column Scribe and the Price of Aggression

2008-06-16T20:03:00.002-04:00

Sydney Pollack.

Jim McKay.

And now Stan Winston.

Gone.

<~>

I was looking through an old email account and found the following saved as a draft. I don't remember where I was going to post it, so I'm putting it here:

So many filmmakers make "war" films about the futility of war. Do politicians ever listen? No.

No matter how passionately filmmakers or other artists voice their "war is good for nobody" mentality, there's always going to be war. Still, some people say that accepting "theres always going to be war" doesn't help.

What I liked about Taegukgi (Kang Je-Gyu, 2004) is the idea that maybe people shouldn't be soldiers of ideologies if it's not just about defending your country. I think what the director was really trying to say was "civil war should not be..."

One of the making-of featurettes mentionedhow disconcerting and sad it was that your enemy spoke the same language as you...and before the US and the Soviet Union made their tension "official," the fight between capitalism and socialism was happening in Korea.

So then I thought, 'But hey, we had the civil war....there were families broken up. What about the Revolutionary War....families were broken up there too." Whenever there's a conflict of interests between humans, it always gets ugly.

The theme song of Taegukgi: "Oori" (We). Performed by BoA.

On Clubbing

2008-06-15T23:41:00.008-04:00

There isn't always safety in numbers because you could be stuck with a lousy set of numbers. As I've realized recently, one can be surrounded by people and still feel alone. Among the places where a person can feel this sort of isolation (a waiting room, a classroom on the first day of school, a subway car), a nightclub heightens it like no other place.

Thus, I don't like clubbing or even going 'out' to dance. I don't believe I ever have.

There have been moments where I've enjoyed it— most memorably, an evening out with close friends when I went to Atlanta sushi-bar-turned-night-club Aiko, where I was wearing was wearing sky-high stilettos for the very first time. Earlier in the spring, I found myself at a popular Boston club non-elegantly called the Liquor Store. I dressed to emulate Audrey Hepburn— it's not important why– in a black shift dress, pumps, and a black wide-brimmed hat. Several college-aged boys walked by me and lifted the brim of the hat to get a better look at me, which I found most vexing. A once-over was all they wanted.

Environments that aren't conducive to conversation don't make sense to me. For this reason, I end up feeling intensely alone in a club, because I'm enveloped by people that don't invite communication. Simultaneously, I’m unable to talk to my own friends. It’s like being under the sea and breathing silently, talking and drawing in water instead.

I find it unsettling to dance in clubs. Club dancing, like courting, is a mating ritual. If the dancing doesn't involve hip-hop (where it's more about self-expression), then you're left feeling very self-aware of your body's weight and motion. Any other kind of dancing (choreographed or not) is about so much more than a "come hither." If I'm going to be dancing, I desire structure and rhythm (as I unconsciously desire it in poetry), which is probably why I loved ballroom when I had lessons in college.

To me, any non-choreographed dancing is the most fun and fulfilling when it's simply about one's reactions to music with a good bass-line, a certain tempo, and occurs amongst people who don't care if you can't 'carry a tune' with your body. Think dormitory parties celebrating birthdays, All Hollow Eves, New Year's, and themed parties. I was around a lot of people (some I knew and some I didn't) and never felt alone. Parties at our own apartment enabled my friend & I to pull capers like sneaking in “West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys, regardless of the theme or music.*

In these settings, it doesn't even matter if the music isn't even good for dancing. The party itself isn't always the most anticipated part of the evening. What I've always enjoyed most about the process is the lead-up-- getting dressed, going over to a friends’ places, chatting, having a little bit to eat and drink, the drive over, and perhaps mostly, Waffle House afterward (this is a Southern thing). Or more recently, the few minutes I shared with a friend while sitting on a bench at the Boylston T-stop waiting for a friend of his to arrive. We had a chat filled with non-sequiturs as usual, and I was at ease.

Clubbing is banal, freestyle dancing isn't always enjoyable. Could you concur? Can you see what I see in this observation?

Century Fille's own YiQi C. has noted that when someone like me makes this kind of realization, a waiting audience sees nothing but logic and sense in it. In contrast, when she make such claims --and then proceeds to say that 90 percent of what social people find fun (like amusement parks and mini-golfing) she finds completely not fun— she is cast as the brooding gothic even though she’s not decked out in emo gear. She says it must have to do with the differing vibes we give off. She is perceived as a party pooper, whereas I appear the wise one who has stumbled upon the truth that bumping & grinding on a dance floor (for the sake of being seen and not to spend time with friends per se) isn't fun. I say it has to do with my higher tolerance for and adaptability to sub-optimal environments. However, this also comes with my lower ability for discerning the sub-optimal situation in the first place.

It's not only that I do not like clubbing, I find it a colossal waste of my time. I'd rather be out for drinks and dinner. Or just dinner. Or coffee. Or at a quieter lounge. Or shopping. Or at home with a good book or an academic journal. Not to suggest I can't be enticed out to an 80s night every now and then— it’s just very unfortunate during my last opportunity to do so, I decided to take a nap before going out, watched some of the mind-blowing Battlestar Galactica mid-season finale, fell asleep during it, and then managed to somehow make it through Doctor Who to catch up again with my favorite colonials & cylons at the midnight hour.**

* No matter how loud you turn up the volume on this song, it is impossible to dance to.
**I’m an Anglophile, sensitive to British humor, and I don’t get Doctor Who.

In the Head : Outside the Body

2008-06-01T22:21:00.004-04:00

Some may beg to differ, but thought does not equal action.

Something I scooped from the internet:

Orientation is not Behavior

Orientation is who/what gender one is attracted to. This applies to both sexual and romantic orientation. Who you are attracted to does not necessarily determine how you act towards those individuals. Personally, I do not believe that orientation is a choice. However, I do believe that one's orientation CAN change multiple times over the course of one's life, though it does not HAVE to change.

Behavior is how you act towards people, in romantic and sexual contexts. One is more likely to pursue an individual that one is attracted to, but there are countless other factors that will determine couplings/intimate relationships (some examples of these other factors; familial pressure, societal norm, religious law and custom, fear of rejection, holding another value in higher priority to sexual behavior or preference). Personally, I believe that behavior is entirely within one's own control, and that no-one else is to be held accountable for romantic or sexual behavior (with the exception of situations involving coercion or force). I believe that one's behavior CAN change multiple times over
the course of one's life, though it does not HAVE to change.

One's orientation does not determine behavior, though it will most likely influence it.

Homosexuals and bisexuals in the past have had to deny their orientation in their behavior due to societal norms. They have had to behave as heterosexuals in order to avoid persecution. This does not mean that they are not bi/homosexual, just that they do not display bi/homosexual behavior. If their behavior changes, it does not mean they have 'become gay'; it simply means that they have chosen a certain way to act in certain situations.

Sexuals do not always follow a sexual life style. Taking religious dedication as an example, many people take vows of celibacy. This does not mean that they become asexual, or that they are no longer sexual; it simply means that they have chosen a certain way to act in certain situations.

Asexuals do not always follow a celibate life style. Many asexuals enjoy sex for it's own sake, or for the sense of connection that it enables with their partner. This does not mean that they are not asexual; it simply means that they have chosen a certain way to act in certain situations.

I have no problems with any romantic or sexual practices or traditions, as long as all participants are fully informed individuals enabled with fully-functioning faculties to make critical decisions about personal well-being, and have fully consented to all activities under no duress, coercion, or force.

I believe no one has the right to criticize another's orientation or behavior, with the exception of ensuring that all parties are involved consensually. Past that altruistic concern, no one has the right to judge another's orientation or behavior.

There is no right or wrong orientation or behavior (save for non-consensual activities), and every factor changes with every individual.

We love who we love.

source: Boards at Aven.

There is That

2008-05-02T10:35:00.002-04:00

I'm not surprised that Atlanta made the list. For anyone who isn't familiar with GA's capital city, here are a few points to consider:

1. It takes just about 20 minutes to go anywhere in Atlanta--unless you're going fewer than 3.75 miles. Without traffic, it could take about 12 minutes to go anywhere that's fewer than 10 miles from your starting point.

2. Unmarried couples or unmarried singles may have a shorter commute...as they wouldn't necessarily be living in the best school districts, which might put them at least thirty-minutes away from their place of employment.

3. Houses in the suburbs are less expensive than those closer to town. Thus, a longer commute.

4. Just as any amount of precipitation puts some drivers into a state of torpor, any kind of visually distracting stimuli at the side of the road will compel some motorists to cruise and gaze. What would've been a seventeen-minute drive could easily turn into a twenty-five minute trip.

5. Mishmash of drivers going too slowly with those going too quickly creates a less than optimal dynamic.

6. School buses--dare I even suggest it--that pick up a horde of children on the street in front of apartment complexes (rather than just inside the complex).

Audrey Loren March

2008-04-08T11:13:00.003-04:00

Sophia Loren will be the Star of the Month in June TCM. As I was formatting images of her for the June Memory Game, I thought to myself, Sophia Loren is like the voluptuous version of Audrey Hepburn," which gave way to, she and Jane March look somewhat alike too, which produced (click the image for the complete view):

Janet: What you’ve done for us lately

2008-03-09T20:18:00.005-04:00

It was Janet Jackson’s appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live (Feb. 29) which for me signaled the existence of her new album, Discipline. Her charming, unaffected demeanor caught my attention, and I went out and bought the CD the next day.

I love Janet Jackson. I always have. While she’s never really surpassed the quality of her 1989 Rhythm Nation, a brilliant concept album which is also a lot of fun and resulted in an unparalleled seven top 5 hits, she’s done extremely well. She’s had nine consecutive albums debuting in the top three on the Billboard charts. It’s unfortunate that most recently, she’s better known for her 2004 Super Bowl wardrobe snafu while performing with Michael Jackson wannabe Justin Timberlake during the half time show, rather than for her music. While 2006’s 20 Y.O (the title in part a nod to 20 years since the release of Control in 1986) is pleasant for a rainy day or a 16-hour flight, it is sometimes bland.

Released on Feb. 26, Discipline entered the charts at #1. At 41, she proves to all the amateur pop starlets that she still reigns in her status as a pop cultural icon. And unlike Madonna, who has constantly reinvented herself (for better and for worse), all Janet has had to do is be herself. And she looks fantastic. The collaboration with her long-time boyfriend, music producer Jermaine Dupri, is successful. Overall, Discipline is a sexy, racy, dirty, and gritty album (mind you, with zero profanity). It’s better not to pay too close attention to the lyrics, because if you’re sensitive like me, you’ll just be gasping every few seconds.

It opens with the charging, industrial-sounding “Feedback” and by the end of it you’re also thinking “yeah, that’s sexy, sexy, sexy.” It’s followed immediately by the uplifting, light “Luv,” perfect for a spring day. The danceable “Rock With U” (phonetically the same title as brother Michael’s 1979 hit from Off the Wall) is somewhere between Duran Duran and Kylie Minogue. “2Nite” has a pop flair that makes me want to listen to it repeatedly. “The 1” with Missy Elliot shows us how effortlessly relevant Janet remains.

Janet continues the tradition of formatting her album with “interludes,” which are primarily spoken. While rarely reviewed, this element is one of my favorite aspects of a Janet album. She began doing it with Rhythm Nation, in which they are extremely effective in keeping the album cohesive and tying together what I see are basically the 3 sections of it – the socially conscious section, the lighthearted dance/pop section, and the ballad section. There’s nothing quite as brilliant as the 4-second “Get the point? Good, let’s dance” (which Michael lip-synched for his on-stage performance of “Dangerous”) on Discipline, but the club-setting “Bathroom Break” and the meant-to-be-provocative “The Meaning” keep the listener’s interest piqued.

The verdict is that Janet still has it. To be honest, she’s kind of up there in a league of her own compared to anyone else out there today. She has nothing to prove but proves it anyways. And listening to her music is always a delightful escapade : )

As a dancer, she pretty much has no comparison besides her own brother. For your pleasure, along with a Good Morning America performance of "Feedback," I include a little old school Janet, the “Rhythm Nation” video. I enjoy few dance sequences more - possibly only the video for Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.”

And the Golden Statuette Goes to...

2008-02-25T08:01:00.003-05:00

Last night was the 80th Annual Academy Awards; I am so happy that Tilda Swinton won for Best Supporting Actress, Javier Bardem for Best Supporting Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor, and No Country For Old Men for Best Director and Best Picture.

Read more about the ceremony here.

Click here for photos.

Poster Progeny 1

2008-02-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

Congo + Stomp the Yard = No Country For Old Men

+

~

=

Pix creds: Amazon.com and google image search

Statistics are sexy

2008-01-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

Of course, you probably didn’t think so the last time you had to calculate the probability of picking a red marble out of a basket, run an SPSS regression, or assemble a meta-analysis study of different data sets. Yet, I’ll admit there’s very little that’s sexier than someone objectively good-looking who has an exceedingly strong command of what he or she is talking about, imparting statistical information in front of some spiffy slides or charts. I become thoroughly absorbed, the rest of the world seems to fall away, and my mouth would be ever so slightly open.

In the case of CNN election coverage, it would be in front of some very high-tech LCD or plasma screens, and the reporter in question is chief national correspondent John King. Gasp! Not Anderson Cooper? As much as I loved the silver-haired, blue-eyed anchor, he doesn’t have the same grasp on politics . . . not by a long shot. It is King whose thinking and analyses are shrewd, nuanced, and impassioned.

I’ve enjoyed CNN election coverage thus far. It’s really quite entertaining to see seasoned reporters get worked up about Iowa and New Hampshire, some of the most sparsely populated states in the Union. It’s been engaging to watch them make judgments, backtrack on it, and try to explain where their thinking went wrong (as in the case of New Hampshire). It’s more to appease their shortcomings than for the benefit of viewers.

In the morass of these reporters, anchors, and pundits, there is a beacon of light that is King. He’s done his research. He places the emerging results from the primaries in historical context. He takes the time to explain things properly and thoroughly to the viewer. He delves into the complexity of the predictors of voting outcomes. Sometimes, he gets a little too excited and speaks a little too quickly, but I find this rather charming, as he is usually really quite sedate and level-headed. And wow, is he really good at using that complicated technology CNN has provided him.

Click here to see him in action.

Picture credits: CNN

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...

2008-01-03T22:46:00.000-05:00

so expressed by William Congreve in his play "The Mourning Bride."

I was browsing Amazon.com when I came across this book written by University of Vermont professor Hilary Neroni. It's called The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, And Violence In Contemporary American Cinema.

While debating if I should get this book, I did some searching and came across and interview and a book review. The interview is really neat; I'm xeroxing most of it:

INTERview: Hilary Neroni
The author of The Violent Woman discusses film and fur

By Amanda Waite
Article published June 23, 2005

Hilary Neroni, professor of film and television studies, met with the view on June 17 to discuss her new book, The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (SUNY Press), which explores the recent emergence of violent female characters in mainstream productions. Previously confined to particular genres and historical situations, the violent woman can now be found across genres in contemporary film. The trend began with the release of Thelma and Louise, the 1991 film about two women who run from the law after killing a man who tries to rape one of them. The film sparked a public debate about violent women — a reaction, Neroni says, that mirrors the hysterical public response to real female murderers like Lizzie Borden and Susan Smith. In her book, Neroni explores the disruptive quality of the violent woman, paying particular attention to how the narrative of the film itself is affected by the presence of these traumatic characters.

What is it about violent women in film that inspires you to study the phenomenon?

I think that the reason I was drawn to talking about the violent woman is because she’s an extreme of the strong woman. You could do a similar study of strong, dramatic, women characters in film, but I think that the physicality of violence makes a nice extreme example that shines a very bright light on all these machinations of the ideological workings of masculinity and femininity and how very strongly ideology and Hollywood needs (masculinity and femininity) to be complimentary… Also, I was very fascinated how historically, until this moment, the violent woman had been confined to particular genres and was linked to historical moments of crisis and tension between genders that have been very well documented by theorists and historians, like after World War II or during and after the suffragette movement in the teens.

In your book, you discuss violent women as traumatic and show how films depicting violent women frequently attempt to heal that trauma by forcing women back into more familiar gender roles or by splitting the woman’s violence from her femininity. What do you think this reveals about the status of women in society today?

I tend to look at Hollywood films as the workings of contemporary ideology. There are trends going on socially, and Hollywood is reacting to those trends. Because it’s mainstream and it’s part of ideology, it at times works to contain those trends. But sometimes, by accident or not, it ends up celebrating a trend. I think that it’s not always a one-to-one indication of exactly what’s going on, but it’s an interesting indication of tension and angst. These days, it would be hard to imagine an action film in which a woman doesn’t do something to help the hero, whereas in the 80s, even the first Terminator film, it was very common to have the woman just along; she’s not someone who would help out. Today, I think every audience member starts to be frustrated if a woman is just hanging out — if someone’s in trouble and there’s a gun lying there and she doesn’t pick it up. It’s interesting to see how our expectations have changed. I think film is an important place to look at in terms of what’s happening in society. Gender roles are changing, and the movies are dealing with it in their own way.

Your book offers analyses of the violent female characters in Thelma and Louise, The Long Kiss Goodnight, G.I. Jane, Courage Under Fire and Tomorrow Never Dies, among other films. Are there any films that have been released since you sent the book to press that you would have liked to have written about?

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith just came out, and that would have been a great one to talk about…and then there’s Kill Bill, which I have in a couple of footnotes in the book, but I would have liked to talk about that further. Million Dollar Baby, which I was kind of mad at. Three quarters of the way through the film — one of the only mainstream, big blockbuster films with a woman boxer in it — she becomes a complete quadriplegic! You’ve got to be kidding me! Those films would have been fun to talk about, but that’s one of the things about a book like this one when it’s on a topic that clearly keeps going; the films keep going.

It must be rewarding to see that your work is still relevant…

I just keep waiting for mainstream Hollywood to prove me wrong! But it doesn’t.

Moving from the specific to the general, why do you think it is important to study film?

We walk around in our day, and everything presents on a screen. Our computer screens, our iPods, our telephones often, and then we watch television or go see a movie. Our days are so drenched in screens, so I think it’s essential for students to study film and television and be able to analyze video games and internet and film and television as texts and be analytical about the way in which ideology and society is working within these texts rather than just consuming them as entertainment. I think it’s the essential thing to study. It’s our contemporary existence.

Source: UVM publication

To read a book review, click here.

Originally posted at Sthemingway.

Notes from a new era Duranie

2007-12-26T23:39:00.000-05:00

It’s not "Rio." Nothing ever will be. I think the sooner the Duran Duran fan—avid or casual—gets over this simple truth of life, the better. And the closer one can get to judging Red Carpet Massacre, the band’s 13th studio album, for its own merits. From my casual perusal of reviews online, much was expected. Rumors abounded that guitarist Andy Taylor left the project because of the band’s decision to go with Nate “Danja” Hills and prominent hip-hop figure Timbaland as key co-producers.

To some extent, I can’t say I blame Andy. The tracks produced by Timbaland—-the tepid “Nite Runner,” which never takes off the ground, and the initially catchy but subsequently annoying “Skin Divers” (all fine until Timbaland opens his mouth)--are the weakest songs on the album. Unlike much of the population in my age group, I don’t understand what is so great about Timbaland. His productions are manufactured and their sound doesn’t last. Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” grates on my nerves after repeated listens and “Sexy Back” is the worst track on an otherwise brilliant Futuresex/Lovesounds by Justin Timberlake.

Oh, but the reviews of Red Carpet Massacre were scathing. I don’t want to get into addressing them in detail, but they ranged from calling the music boring and ineffective to criticizing the band of being sleazy and side-men in their own show. Most brutally, more than one reviewer implied that it wasn’t a Duran Duran record. I could take it no longer. I had to defend the boys. Or at least find out for myself if the music was worth defending.

It is. Overall, it’s a superior production to 2005’s Astronaut. The title track “Red Carpet Massacre” rocks respectably, with more drums than I’ve heard in a Duran Duran song. The Timberlake/Duran Duran collaboration proves to be more successful. By far the strongest track on the album is the melodic “Falling Down.” I made the mistake of listening to this song first by watching the ridiculously decadent video, reminiscent of “Girls on Film” and little more than an excuse to be with pretty model girls (yes, I think it was inappropriate for Simon Le Bon, a 49-year old father of 3 teenage girls, to be doing this video). Duran Duran is forever guilty of exoticizing and sexualizing all women. It took several listens for me to realize “Falling Down” is on league with “Ordinary World” and quite possibly the best song Le Bon has written since then.

Simon--with a voice like liquid sex—sounds as amazing as ever, exactly as he did 25 years ago. I used to attribute a lot of Duran Duran’s creative success to Le Bon and creepy keyboardist Nick Rhodes (Nick is sleazy—that much I’ll admit). I still do. However, I think Le Bon is kind of the in-house poet. He writes all the lyrics and sings all the songs. I think Rhodes has always been the brains behind the band. And I don’t think he would have let anything go that he didn’t approve of, despite handing over the production of many of the songs to outsiders. Everything on the record retains the sound of Duran Duran. Some of it is quite reminiscent of The Wedding Album, Notorious, and hinting at the cold landscapes of “So Red the Rose”(produced under the name Arcadia due to legal issues around the Duran Duran name at the time), and even “Rio.”

Let’s face it. “Rio” was a unique convergence of youth, sexual frustration, and a specific period in musical history. Duran Duran was a quintet of cerebral, artsy, geeky guys, who essentially brought disco into the 1980s. “Rio” unfolds in gorgeous narrative fashion, chronicling desperate encounters with cold, distant, and dismissive women—chase, capture, and ultimate rejection. Duran Duran made this record while still in their early 20s. “Rio” sky-rocketed them into fame. What do you do after that? There is nothing they have to prove to the world. The frustration that drove those early songs was gone. Le Bon successfully courted supermodel Yasmin Parvaneh (one of my favorite women aesthetically speaking), marrying her when she was barely 21 and he barely 27—and they are nearing a quarter-century of marital bliss.

Red Carpet Massacre is a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the way in which celebrities of today self-destruct, with the bottom line message being that they really have no excuse. Duran Duran has been singing about fame since Seven and the Ragged Tiger, a sexy record about drive and ambition, climbing to the top and wanting more. Duran Duran survived their fame with considerable grace relative to their massive success, and for that, I think they have every right for making this social commentary of decadence and moral decline.

I think the essential problem for me is this—when Duran Duran came out onto the scene, they were fresh and innovative, taking music that was on their heels and propelling it into future—giving us a sound unlike anything we’d ever heard before. I want to hear something entirely new again. But that’s really too much to expect from a band that’s already left an indelible mark on the world of music.

I’ve given up on expecting a “Rio” for my generation from anyone. It’s very possible that rock/pop/hip-hop is nearing the fringe end of an era—what lies next is the question . . .

Because I really don’t want you to watch the video for “Falling Down,” satisfy yourself with this:

It’s just as ridiculous, but I can forgive it for being the 80s . . .

Rejection Served Up Three Different Ways

2007-12-19T16:54:00.001-05:00

Jane Austen’s use of free indirect speech in her novels often allows the reader a certain amount of flexibility in imagining dialogue, tone, and delivery. This effect differs from a play because our imaginations of what is being said and how will vary considerably.

There is a scene in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth Bennett rejects Mr. Darcy’s initial proposal of marriage. It’s simultaneously serious and hilarious.

Filmmakers have portrayed this scene in a number of ways. Three analyzed here are the adaptations starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson (Robert Leonard, 1940), the BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (Simon Langton, 1995), and the most recent one with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (Joe Wright, 2005).

In the oldest of the three versions, Laurence Olivier’s acting is stiff and wooden. His movements are the epitome of awkwardness. His delivery in the particular scene is flowery and his tone is pleading, but he displays the attitude of a man who’s quite sure he’s going to get what he wants eventually. Garson’s delivery comes off as being forced, and her demeanour is altogether too distant and aloof. The chemistry between the two is also quite lacking. The scene is romantic in its own way (no doubt due only to Olivier’s dashing good looks), but completely outdated for modern audiences and I daresay, outdated even for the Regency era. What lacks here is the humor and wit in Austen’s own writing. It’s definitely funny, but for the wrong reasons.

The costumes are also all wrong. Greer Garson looks like a Southern belle. What happened to the empire-waist gowns?

Secondly, there is the BBC version, considered by many fans to be the definitive one and the truest to Austen’s novel. As a television miniseries, the pace is slower, which works well for the dialogue. It allows a more concerted and episodic movement of events. The downfall is that it looks very much like a miniseries. The costumes are also extremely light-colored. I am not sure if this is historically accurate for country wear of the era, but it is definitely difficult on the eyes and at times, looks like a commercial for Tide with Bleach.

The scene is masterful. Both Ehle and Firth do such a marvelous job. Out of our three Darcy’s, Firth really does appear to understand his character the best. The (sexual) frustration and angst on his side is right on point. The nuances of his emotional restraint are quite remarkable. Firth is an underrated actor. Most importantly, the scene is really funny. If you’re not in tears of laughter by the end of it, then you’re not watching it properly. Firth has an exceedingly good grasp of the language and Ehle’s eye movements are perfect.

The most recent version, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen takes the most liberty with this scene. The director takes the scene out of a stuffy parlor room into the verdant outdoors. The power of it relies on the periphery of what’s going on & the body language rather than the actual words. Neither Knightley nor Macfadyen do the words justice, delivering them in a very rushed manner, almost as if they can’t wait to finish and just get out of the rain. It’s the most cinematic of the three and the most serious. Darcy’s anger is quite palpable. The use of rain is surprisingly not clichéd.

This scene is very tense—Darcy and Elizabeth are all out fighting with each other. It’s a real conversation, not a pre-meditated delivery of speeches. It’s the only version of the scene among these three where it’s about her as much as it is about him. They’re about to kiss at the end, and he decides against it. Or rather, propriety would have forbidden it.

The costumes look like clothes one can live and move in.

However Lizzy Bennett may have rejected Darcy the first time around, I guess the important thing is, she accepts him the second time around . . . but that’s much less interesting.

A few laps, lay-ups, and complete passes and I'm Done

2007-12-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

Adam Duerson contemplates the current status of the sports movie in the December 17, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Asking whether or not "the perceived need to appeal to women--and overseas markets [has] doomed the sports flick," Duerson begins his piece, "Endangered Species," by remarking that "Will Ferrell! On Figure skates! For better or worse...is how sports movies in the year 2007 will be remembered" (26).

After providing some box office numbers, he wonders, "where are the Hoosiers and the Raging Bulls?" and then adds, "the reality is that it's not nearly as easy to make a sports movie as it used to be. With movie attendance in the U.S. dropping, the new Hollywood business model relies more heavily on foreign receipts."
The problem with this method is that according to Mark Ciardi, "there's no foreign [earning] on sports movies" overseas.

In addition to how unenthusiastic other countries are for American sports movies, Duerson argues that "there's the prevailing notion in Hollywood that women choose which movies couples see together but that only men are drawn to sports films." Duerson gets veteran sports film marketing man Jeff Freedman to comment on the situation, which is basically that a sports film can only be made if the sport is secondary to thematic and other narrative elements. In other words, "the first thing a studio decides...is to say it's a love story, or a father-son story."

He includes an unnamed Hollywood marketing professional's observation that "if somebody wanted to make Raging Bull today, I don't know that it could happen" because "it's too dark." Duerson's article then implicitly criticizes Hollywood's multiplex complex as a limitation to the production and wider distribution of sports films that possess artistic qualities on par with dramas and action films. To get funding or a distribution deal, filmmakers are "plugging away with the same old sports comedy-drama-romance hybrids." He then cites the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro and George Clooney's period comedy Leatherheads as 2008's sports film offerings.

Duerson closes his thoughts by pointing out that independent sports cinema may inspire the critics and are received well at film festivals, but distributors aren't convinced the general public will buy it.

As a one-page article, Duerson understandably doesn't have the space to delve deeper into the issues and examples he brings up as indicating the steady decline of the sports film. I'm going to attempt to contextualize or offer some more points to ponder. Duerson's three concerns are profits, audience, and distribution. Ultimately, though, it's one issue: money. Whether or not a movie is to be made depends on how much money it could make. Hollywood is a business and has always operated along the paradigm of telling stories the audience will purchase (with or without encouragement from the studios). Artistic innovations and creating the impression or building the mythology that making movies (and any art form for that matter) privileges the art above else is realistically speaking wishful thinking.

The example of Raging Bull as a sports film of quality and not just a guilty pleasure (entertainment) needs a bit more background explanation. Kevin J. Hayes articulates in the introduction of Cambridge Film Handbooks' edition on the film that "superlatives abound whenever people talk about Raging Bull. Not only is it an exemplary cinematic work, it is also a cultural icon representing a rich cross section of themes, issues, and characters that reflect American culture in ways that typical Hollywood films do not" (1). Wouldn't you say that the bulk of commercial, mainstream American films today don't come close in this respect? Hayes later adds, "Raging Bull owes an important debt to the heritage of the boxing film genre" and boxing itself (10).

Culturally, Scorsese's film was conceived in an atmosphere that allowed it to be brought into the world. Its examination of masculinity, violence, and the notion of loss isn't what would keep a studio head or a distribution company today from a greenlight. Instead, it's about the way the entertainment industry has changed post-highspeed internet and DVD. The idea of diversification of markets isn't new to advertisers. Merchandising of characters in films and books aren't limited to the movies and the publishing industry. Dialogue and images from a film can be found in all consumer markets (ahem, George Lucas). Cross-stitching the music with the movie industry isn't new either. Elvis. Frank Sinatra. Louis Armstrong. Barbara Streisand.

The difference now is that the internet is a new medium through which music, moving images, and literature can circulate. The behaviors and the tendencies (and preferences) of the buying public (which is primarily teenagers) is devastatingly significant in determining how to make the most amount of money (over a short or long period of time). If the sports film (as a drama) today can't narratively or thematically be similar to those of earlier generations for reasons of economy rather than artistry, it's happening across the board. Outside independent cinema, studios have little motivation to make movies--they want to make franchises (that include video game tie-ins).

And, if you want originality in content and form, you might not find it in a movie theatre. You might have to turn to Youtube or an art gallery.

I don't think it's that unfortunate that studio heads have to view sports films as not being sports films. Thematically, they're about more than whatever sport is involved. These films are about relationships between people, self-discovery, and hope, or, in other cases, defeat. Instead of employing the motif or metaphor of a soldier or an artist, these movies elect the athlete.

Adam Duerson, if you're reading this entry, when I make my football movie, it should be a sign of better things to come. Mine won't be a sports romantic comedy.

I'm cognitively wiped out right now. I'll revisit this post again.

I Have No Desire to Be Kissed By You or Anyone Else

2007-12-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) spoke those words to Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) seconds after he kissed her in the bookstore where she worked in Stanley Donen's 1957 musical Funny Face. He replied with, "Don't be silly. Everybody wants to be kissed--even philosophers."

Shortly after he leaves the store, she sings "How Long Has This Been Going On?"

Jo muses, "I was taught that I ought not expose my inner senses. Had no plan for a man, I was full of self-defenses. Now I feel that I really must face the consequences. My philosophic search, has left me in a lurch. I must find why my mind is behaving like a dancer. What's the clue to pursue for I have to have the answer? I could cry salty tears, where have I been all these years? How long has this been going on?"

In other words, Jo's intellectual pursuits have somehow side-tracked her interest in or perception of physical intimacy. For the normative audience, for people who subscribe to the dominant fiction (house, wife, two kids, half a dog), which is the majority of society, wanting to be kissed, held, caressed, and deflowered is about as natural as breathing and as expected as the aspirations to change the world. True, not everyone believes in marriage or has any conscious aim to find a spouse (even own a house, have the kids, or half a dog), but most of these people still crave that kiss, touch, and passion--love as expressed through physical intimacy (or in some cases physical intimacy without any emotional investment).

Nonetheless, there are individuals living amongst the normative-loving citizens who desire one but not the other or neither. They still want emotional closeness but have no interest in the joining of two bodies such that reproduction might occur if precautions are not taken. Or, they crave neither emotional nor physical bonding. Solitary creatures to the core.

Preferring to be alone isn't a problem. It's not that uncommon (observations across various discussion boards across the internet), but it goes against the dominant fiction. Loners tend to be romanticized in narratives that involve mysterious, tall, dark, and handsome strangers or the gunfighter heroes of the Old West.

Sociologically speaking, it makes sense that society's members agree upon what is right and what is wrong. A concept of courtesy, consideration, and that stealing and killing is wrong (and illegal) is designed to provide structure and monitor human behavior. Believing that certain kinds of killing is more acceptable than others (due to context or parties involved) is fine. We have to support this view, otherwise killing in self-defense would mean absolutely nothing in a court of law (not to mention what occurs during war times and sting operations).

Anyone who strays too far from the acceptable philosophical and intellectual areas surrounding the act and consequence of causing or contributing another person's death, in other words they might actually kill for sport, is deemed "abnormal." Something surely is wrong with an individual who would want and choose to kill someone else for fun. These people need to be stopped.

Not wanting to feel someone from the inside should be the last item on society's "To Do" list. Unfortunately, the human species (and thus society) survives solely because of sex, dating, and intellectually speaking, marriage. Society is able to replicate its norms and mores not simply because they're passed down orally or graphically (or unconsciously), but also because of the recreation of certain stories. Boy doesn't exclusively meet girl (or in the non-heteronormative version, boy/girl doesn't exclusively meet boy/girl) in the romantic comedy. They meet in action films, dark comedies, film noir, action, mystery-suspense, and horror/thriller. Love subplots don't always have to end in or be about sex, but they frequently are--because more characters in films already have friends. Or, if they don't, they have some kind of friend surrogate (co-worker, law enforcement partner, boss, teacher, religious leader). They either search for or stumble upon what they don't have. Conventional society determines this lack must be someone to have kids with--even if nobody wants kids.

Aside from any ideological, neurological, or psychologically motivated differences that would lead to committing crimes, people who think and behave differently have always had to deal with the same kind of questions and criticisms (Galileo). There's a pretty big range of what is considered normal and abnormal and for some reason, little to no desire to copulate or express affection through physical intimacy is the weirdest of them all.

Funny Face is my favorite musical. Despite its indication that emotional and physical connection trumps an intellectual one, the message is still that a real connection trumps a fake one. That Jo Stockton suddenly becomes aware of physical sensations is ostensibly incidental and operates primarily to complement the plot.

World AIDS Day

2007-12-01T13:31:00.001-05:00

On World AIDS Day, today, please take a moment to remember the people living and those that have been lost to the most devastating plague of our time.

In case you were wondering, here are the latest stats.

As we near an election season, please consider candidates who are promising to respond to the global and domestic HIV/AIDS crisis in their first term. You can read more about individual candidates proposals and policy positions here.

And you can read what a coalition of AIDS groups thinks is the necessary US response here.

Chris D: Over to Home You Crashed I Breakdown Again All Now

2007-11-01T15:34:00.000-04:00

Aside from the network television I still watch (Numbers, CSI: New York, and football), I've pretty much stepped back from segments of American pop-culture. Specifically, American music. Ever since I was introduced to Korean pop music in 1998, I stopped listening to (new) American tunes. I still kept up with artists I liked, but over the years since then, I've grown increasingly "unaware" of the Top 40s artists.

I did watch a few seasons of American Idol and randomly watched it in its later manifestations. Chris Daughtry's face (and skull) I noticed once while channel surfing.

With the exception of a few youtube videos, though, I hadn't watched enough of him to remember his voice. And then last night on Criminal Minds, this song played near the end of the episode ("About Face") that melodically and somewhat vocally reminded me of Dishwalla, one of my favorite bands of the 90s. After some investigating, I discovered that the song is "Home" by (Chris) Daughtry. I looked up more youtube videos and decided to get it today.

Here's the song:

Arguably, the entire album is derivative but effectively radio-friendly, but it consists of exactly the kinds of melodies that I like in slowish rock tunes. There's a haunting and sad--but not otherworldly--quality. See below:

Originally posted atSthemingway.

Working through Widescreen: David Bordwell on Cinemascope

2007-10-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

David Bordwell's observations and arguments on filmmaking have danced across, spun into, and consumed the brains of cinephiles and just about every university student who has taken a class on film theory or history.

He spoke at Emory University, my alma mater, today. Excluding the students who had to or were strongly encouraged (extra credit) to attend his lecture, I wouldn't be surprised if at least half of the remaining audience members were there as a fan or at least an intellectual admirer of his work.

I reviewed his book The Way Hollywood Tells It this past spring for my historiography seminar and had read most of The Classical Hollywood Cinema for the same class.

I bought Bordwell's book Figures Traced in Light after the talk today, and I got him to autograph it and draw me a tropical fruit blossom.

John Orr reviewed it for Senses of Cinema, which you can find here.

David Bordwell is a very engaging speaker; and I daresay I'm more inclined to believe or agree with his views if he were to tell them to me rather than if I were to read those thoughts.

The lecture he gave was on Cinemascope and the ways in which Hollywood filmmakers of the 1950s had to negotiate filming and telling stories as effectively as possible and with new technology. His presentation included a wealth of screen captures that illuminated and bolstered his analysis. Bordwell noticed three primary methods that Hollywood directors dealt with having to make movies with cameras fitted with widescreen lenses and that would be seen in theatres with modified projectors.

A: Direct in rows, fill horizontal space.

B: Choreograph actors' movements such that depth-of-field and diagonal lines would complement whatever narrative and thematic priorities a particular shot or scene demanded.

C: Design the shot or scene anticipating a cropping out of significant vertical space (the areas at the top and bottom of the screen). Close-ups of faces would probably not be too flattering in this case.

Now when I (re)watch American films from the 1950s, I'm going to pay closer attention to where the actors are standing and how they move through space and which of the aforementioned techniques is implemented. In fact, I'm going to have to watch Knute Rockne, All American and Jim Thorpe, All American again and consider how the actors and football game-play are filmed vis-a-vis the absence of widescreen.

David Bordwell definitely has the look of a scholar, though not exclusively of film. He could pass for an anthropologist, an economist, a physicist, and even a criminologist. For a glimpse, click here, scroll all the way down, and look left.

pix creds: amazon.com

Originally posted at Sthemingway.

So If More Women Ruled the World....

2007-09-28T17:53:00.001-04:00

would history be less likely to repeat itself? Or would nothing get done because heads of state would be to busy advising and reminding each other, "remember the last time this happened?"

Fresh from Yahoo News.

Why Women Worry So Much

Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com Fri Sep 28, 12:15 PM ET

Scientists have known that on the whole, females of all ages tend to worry more and have more intense worries than males. Women also tend to perceive more risk in situations and grow more anxious than men.

Now we know why.

Women are more likely than men to believe that past experiences accurately forecast the future, according to two new studies.

The research, involving both 3- to 6-year-olds and adults of both genders, tested the extent to which participants' thought that worry can be caused by thinking that a bad event that happened in the past could happen again in the future. (This skill, in its simplest form, is critical to social understanding as it is important to making decisions and assessing risk.)

Females, both children and adults, were more likely to use uncertainty to explain the character's reaction, that is, they tended to explain the reaction in terms of events that might happen versus those that will happen, the researcher reported. They also tended, more than males, to predict that the characters who encountered the new character who looked similar to the wrongdoer would feel worried because they thought the new character would also do them harm.

The studies, detailed in the Sept./Oct. issue of the journal Child Development, also found that children increasingly made these kinds of past-to-future connections as they got older, which yields insight into their cognitive development*.

"These results are significant because they reveal that knowledge about the impact of past-to-future thinking on emotions and behaviors develops during the preschool years," said study author Kristin Lagattuta of the University of California, Davis.

*bolded for emphasis. This result must be important to criminologists and theorizing why some people break the law and others don't. No wonder some individuals grow up thinking all women are evil and others believe all men are evil.

!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^

Original study: Why Women Worry So Much.

The Dark Side of Social Networking

2007-09-22T19:18:00.000-04:00

So everyone has heard about the risk people take on the Internet. From female bloggers being threatened, to children being approached by pedophiles, to people encouraging the desperate to commit suicide for their own sick pleasure; what people do in the digital world may very well be more depraved than the one outside our computers.

Throughout history there have always been the dark, horrific corners of human existence, where atrocities are committed in underground circles that would shame our very existence. Then again, we should also be appalled at the things we have done in broad daylight in front of crowds of gleeful onlookers (lynchings, executions, stoning, genocidal mass murders, to name a few...).

But for the average Internet user who checks their email daily, visits a favorite site or two, or peruses eBay, the online world seems no more threatening than a trip to the mall or a conversation with a friend.

But what if the site you were using to share pictures of your birthday party or to look up old high school crushes was deciding what content it felt was appropriate or deserved removal.

"Fine," you'd say. "Seems pretty standard to me. I don't want to see porno or skeezy people on Facebook."

If only that were true. A blogger I know recently wrote about how Facebook banned a woman who had posted a picture of herself breastfeeding her child. Meanwhile, the site continues to allow anti-Islam, antisemitic, and other hate groups, not to mention (thank you DW) more than 350 pro-anorexia groups.

And of course, the "Facebook spokesperson" didn't have any justification for the organization's actions, other than pointing to the fact that the pictures violated the site's Terms of Use.

I can think of any number of dystopian novels that have warned us of the very threat sites like Facebook present to their users.

We are offered a safe, enjoyable environment to pass the time, at the expense of our values. I would rather Facebook did no monitoring at all then focus on "pornography" and allow hate groups to flourish.

You might say freedom of speech and differing opinions, no matter how distasteful, must be respected--that Facebook cannot be held accountable and should not judge others for their views. But Facebook's own terms of use require they enforce some kind of site moderation. And its not what our Constitution views as freedom of speech, its what Facebook does:

A user cannot "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.” [emphasis added]

So Facebook doesn't mind hating people, but it sure as hell doesn't like the idea of a woman breastfeeding. What balderdash. I rarely use that word, but I think it fits.

But only if you are breastfeeding....

Gracie: You Wish I Was Born a Boy, Don't You?

2007-09-21T02:04:00.000-04:00

Gracie (David Guggenheim, 2007) played in theatres in Atlanta, GA for less than a month. I was going to watch it then but didn’t get around to it.

Well, it’s now available to rent at Blockbuster and to buy at your favorite neighborhood mega-entertainment store or online retailer.

Loosely drawn from the childhoods of actors Andrew Shue and Elizabeth Shue, Gracie combines the models of sports inspirational and coming-of-age to tell the story of a young girl (Carly Schroeder) who finds a way to convince “society” to let her do what she loves the most in the whole world: play futbol.

Andrew Shue explains in the making-of featurette that for the past ten years, he has wanted to make an underdog movie about futbol. I believe the director adds that the film was originally supposed to focus on a father-son relationship but eventually became one about a father and a daughter. Having just lost their oldest son (who was a naturally gifted futbol player) to a collision with a drunk driver, Lindsay (Elizabeth Shue) and Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney) try the best that they can to raise the rest of their kids: Mike (Hunter Schroeder), Daniel (Trevor Heins), and Gracie.

As the film reveals, this endeavor consists primarily of Gracie wanting her father to coach and train her so that she can play futbol for the varsity boys’ team in the next school year and help them defeat Kingston, the school that her brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer) played against in the beginning of the film–the last game he would ever play. Gracie’s dad isn’t very keen on the idea. Initially, his less than lukewarm support is due to the gender excuse–girls aren’t tough enough, girls shouldn’t have to risk injury. Over time, however, the hesitation is fueled by his own doubt in her ability and belief in herself. Thematically speaking (within the sports-inspirational framework), Gracie aims to express its protagonist’s psychological journey from sulking teenager to futbol player.

Overall, despite the metaphorical purpose futbol serves (sports provide structure and an outlet for frustration), Guggenheim’s film is less of a sports film and more of a coming-of-age film. You could take the futbol out and replace it with singing, painting, writing, musical instrument-playing, horseback riding, or even chess, and whatever that activity might be would still function in the same way narratively and thematically.

After all, there are only two futbol games (one at the beginning and one at the end), two proper practices (tryouts for the varsity team and a drill session for the junior varsity team), and half a dozen or so sequences where Gracie practices by herself, with her dad, or with other characters (with or without the presence of a ball). Moreover, at least forty-five minutes of the ninety-five minute-long film address Gracie’s inner struggles. The person that meant the most to her is dead, her own father might as well wish that she was born a guy, and social pressures of being an alluring teenage girl just get in the way of a meaningful existence, which may not even be attainable anymore.

The futbol element, though, is necessary because the film’s 1978 setting compels the inclusion of certain culturally revolutionizing events and mentalities. Gracie might not enunciate explicitly the words “women’s liberation,” there are discussions, dialogue pieces that confront the issue of whether or not a female is physically and mentally capable of participating in rough (boy) sports. More importantly, though, is the spotlight on Title IX. On the one hand, its place within the narrative and the performance of the particular scene comes off as slightly “convenient” or, if I felt like being mean, a wee bit corny. On the other hand, its appearance in the film makes absolute sense and is essential. I also have to point out that she spends the night in her brother's room (the second night after she and her family learn of his death), and she wakes up determined to play futbol. I'm very glad the director didn't feel the need to have Gracie cut her hair short.

The futbol also allows Gracie to sort out a conflict with one of the varsity players in a considerably satisfying way. It might be indirect payback, but it’s dual-layered. I don’t want to say more about it–you should just watch the film.

All right, now on to the aesthetics of filmed futbol. Some of these thoughts are from one of my LJ entries. I haven’t watched much televised futbol, but I did watch a couple of the World Cup games from June 2006, including the match between South Korea and France. As the game progressed, I started thinking about its aesthetic and functional differences with other team sports. I tend to get bored with futbol, which it doesnt make sense because I like hockey. As I’ve probably articulated before, hockey and futbol are basically the same game–they just have different uniforms and gear.

Compared to football, futbol is more fast-paced. The ball is constantly moving, but so few goals are ever scored, and it commonly takes a long time for numbers to go on the score board. After fifteen minutes of game-play, a football team could get 21 points (three touchdowns and one field goal), while a futbol team might scored 1 point (one goal). With football, although the action of the game-play lasts a few seconds to a couple minutes, and repeats for four quarters, something about it is easier for me to enjoy.

Futbol doesn’t excite me as much or make me happy because it’s ideologically, it’s more blatantly maximum effort, minimum results. The players are running back and forth, blocking and kicking…and after thirty minutes of game-play, there may not have been any goals scored. I realize that two quarters of football can go by without anyone making a touchdown or a field goal; and even if no interceptions or fifty yard+ drives are made, the aesthetics of the game-play still make me smile. Should I thank the TV network’s production staff for that feeling?

Probably.
Advertizers must prefer football because there are more places for commercials. ^0^

When I was watching the South Korea vs. France game, I observed that most of the game-play was filmed from a high-angle, long shot perspective, probably because any other angle or shot scale would undermine the speed at which the players were running. Televised instant slow-motion replays were incorporated less frequently. When they were employed so that the commentator could discuss the previous sequence (whether or not a goal was made or if a deflected ball should be counted as a goal given where it was deflected), the instant replay footage itself wasn’t necessarily so great because the cameramen didn’t capture it from an optimal angle.

The two games in Gracie were filmed on a field that didn’t have any line markings aside from the boundaries of the playing stage itself and the area in front of the goal posts/nets. I don’t recall there being any high–angle points-of-view other than a couple of crane shots from behind and over the goal nets. Theoretically, then, it’s possible or arguable that editing a futbol sequence is less headache-inducing than a football sequence, assuming that each editor has sufficient, equal amounts of coverage (wider shots where the entire field is visible, medium shots of players’ in motion, close-ups of feet, hands, and faces). Match-on-action cuts would be just as time-consuming and would require near obsessive-compulsive attention to detail, but as far as ordering a series of game-play, the futbol movie editor has got to be much less stressed than the football movie editor.

I won’t talk any more about the film’s plot trajectory, because I want you to see it for yourself, but I do want to present the following:

Lessons That Gracie Teaches:

1. Don’t ever discourage your daughter (or sister or girlfriend or niece) from participating in traditionally male athletic activities for fun or for sport. If she wants to try out for a school or the local town/county/state team, let her and support her. Otherwise, she could adopt the ways of the stereotypical, anti-authority male–and that’s no picnic. Worry about the intersection of athlete-and-trouble-maker when/if it happens.

2. Don’t ever tell a female she can’t do something just because she isn’t male. You’ve seen the films where a male is told he isn’t smart/fast/strong enough to accomplish something and what does he do? He does just about everything he can do prove his critics wrong. Imagine what a female who gives a flying frappuccino would do if she were told that it is solely her sex and gender that makes her inadequate. I wouldn’t want to be the one to have doubted her.

3. Expectations are placed equally on young men and women to behave a certain way (with each other or with society) and to develop interests in particular activities. As Lindsay Bowen tells Gracie near the end of the film, after having experienced another setback, something along the lines of “you can limit yourself if you want to, but don’t let other people do it for you.” On the flip side, don’t feel obliged to be like everyone else or what they assume you’ll be. Be what you want to be…..so long as no laws are broken in the process.

Doesn’t she almost look like a field goal kicker for a football team? The back cover of the DVD offers an even more convincing pose.

Notice how Gracie is sitting in the middle of the cheerleaders and the other futbol players.

Gracie rated PG-13 for brief sexual content.

The stunts crew consists of Jared Burke, Blaise Corrigan, Stephen Mann, and Anthony Vincent.

Dan Metcalfe is the futbol coordinator. Andrew Shue and Elizabeth Shue both grew up playing soccer, so they undoubtedly contribued to the futbol sequences.

For more information on Title IX, please visit its official site here.

pix cred: yahoo movies & amazon.com

Originally posted at Sitting Pugs.

A Sad Day for the Body Shop

2007-09-11T23:53:00.000-04:00

Body Shop founder Anita Roddick dies

By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 10, 10:16 PM ET

LONDON - Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, who used her international cosmetics chain to promote eco-friendly practices long before they were widely fashionable, died Monday night after suffering a major brain hemorrhage, her family said. She was 64.

Roddick, known as the "Queen of Green," was lauded around the world for trailblazing business practices that promoted environmentalism and other causes dear to her heart, from human rights to Third World debt relief.

"Businesses have the power to do good," Roddick wrote on the Web site of the company, which was bought by the French company L'Oreal Group last year for $1.14 billion.

The Body Shop opposed animal testing and tried to encourage Third World development by purchasing materials from small communities in poorer countries. It founded a human rights award and invested in a wind farm in Wales as part of its campaign to promote renewable energy.

"Before Body Shop you could only find cruelty-free products in hippie shops — now they are everywhere," said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vice president Dan Mathews, who worked with Roddick on campaigns in the 1980s, when Body Shop became a global brand.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Somewhere, there are people who aren't so happy that their niche has been commercialized, re-appropriated by corporations touting their intentions are for the greater good, the preservation of the flora and fauna of the planet...but in reality, it's all about making even more money. Because to sell a product, these companies must sell wardrobe styles, eating habits, and philosophical beliefs that capitalize on the proclivity for human beings to want to belong and be accepted by those who sit atop the throne of the cultural elite.

I realize that economic development and saving the Earth are not easy or simple tasks to undertake, and that more than a handful of groups are necessary for any kind of observable progress to be made (within our lifetime). Nonetheless, it isn't a cause for sustained celebration when something you called your own (or your community's own) is cloned or even taken from you because your own efforts are no longer (good) enough. Not to suggest that it's what happened with the Body Shop.

May Mrs. Roddick rest in peace.

pic cred: Amazon.com

Riposi In Pace Maestro Pavarotti

2007-09-06T09:44:00.000-04:00

This morning my mom told me that famed Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti has died. He was one of those rare artists that had such a warm vibe about him. I don't think I ever saw a picture or video of him where he wasn't smiling. I don't know much about famous opera singers, but I have loved opera ever since I saw a performance of Puccini's La Boheme on PBS when I was 13. I think I also am rather sentimental about opera because my great-grandfather was a little known opera singer during Caruso's time, and they say, had Caruso's style not been so popular, my ancestor would have been famous.

Pavarotti was one of kind not only because of the sheer drama and power of his voice, but also because he was so charismatic and accessible outside of the opera world. A common criticism of opera in the United States is that it, like classical ballet, or the symphony, is an upper middle class entertainment, inaccessible to most of society due to high ticket prices, fancy dress codes, and in opera's case, whole stories in a foreign language.

There have been many recent attempts to "humanize" opera, if you want to call it that...like adding electronic subtitle screens above the stage, RENT, Elton John's revamp of Aida, or even having free outdoor showings of Metroplitan Opera performances via satellite feed.

Whether any of this will boost a new generation's interest or ticket sales I cannot say. But I can say that unlike Caruso, Callas, Sutherland, or even today's Bocelli, Pavarotti is a name the whole musical world knows. This may be because he was one of the first opera singers to branch out in a major way into collaborations with other non-opera or non-classical musicians.

Looking only on YouTube, I found Pavoratti singing with James Brown, Barry White, Queen, and U2 to name a few. It was Pavoratti's accessibility and willingness to participate in these kinds of musical endeavors (not to mention sing the 1990 World Cup theme) that opened the rest of the musical world to him and opera to the rest of the musical world.

And I give him credit (along with Sarah Brightman though she's not an opera singer) as the reason why Opera Babes, Il Divo, Charlotte Church, and other pop-opera acts have been even possible given the popularity of trash like "My Humps" and Clay Aiken ::shudder::.

I was quite shocked that Pavarotti had died, as all the press about him had said that although he was ill, he was remaining positive. His wife even seemed upbeat and sure about his recovery. Whether expected or no, he will be sorely missed for the international treasure that he was.

Riposi In Pace Maestro.

"Men Want Hot Women, Study Shows"

2007-09-04T17:33:00.001-04:00

According to a new study conducted in Germany, men go for good looks (you can find the article here).

The gist of this study is that men may say they want certain qualities in a partner, but when it all gets boiled down, they go for the attractive girls. While women are much pickier, they tend to go for guys with an attraction level equal to their perceived level of attraction. In conclusion, the woman's attractiveness affects both party's decision-making process.

To quote a friend: in other news "new study shows water is wet".

How is this news? How was this study even funded? How sheltered from the dating world do you have to be to not already intuitively know the above?

Our culture is abnormally obsessed with relationships. From the tabloids that spin random pictures of celebrities into drama-laden romances, to the plethora of dating sites; from speed-dating, to more expensive match-maker services; from magazines devoted to "brides", to the embittering national divide about gay marriage. Publishers and marketing wizards spend huge amounts of time, energy, and money on these topics and consumers are right there to scoop it all up. Check out the "Health" section of your local bookstore or library, and you will find a huge variety of self-help books devoted to attracting and keeping the "perfect mate." There are numerous articles written analyzing everything from how one's smell can affect attraction levels (pheromones), to how to use body language to send the right signals (shouldn't body language be subconscious and natural?). People are obsessed with not only their own love lives, but the love/sex lives of others (celebrities in particular).

And, we have another study and article focused on telling us that "looks matter."

I myself am not immune from this cultural obsession. I subscribe to a couple of dating sites (my Mom calls it a shopper's mentality - more on that in a minute). I've read Cosmo (10 ways to turn a man on!). I have a couple of dating books (What Men REALLY Want). I date. A lot--I've lost count of the number of first dates I've been on--and all in the search to find a good, lasting relationship. I am embarrassed to think of how much wasted time and energy I've invested in this search.

*~*~*~*~*

In our consumer-based society, we treat dating and love as something to "consume". We shop for it, in the same way that we would shop for clothes or a car. We do our research, try a variety on for size, and are always on the look-out for something better than what we have. We don't seem to be content or happy unless we have it, and even then, we're restless. We learn all we can about it, fascinated by those who seem to have it, and even more intrigued when it's lost. This mentality pushes us to spend millions if not billions of dollars on dates, books, magazines, websites, clothing, beauty products, etc. What a waste. And it never ends. There are always new books, new ways to make yourself more desirable, and more studies telling us what we (should) already know.

Enough is enough. When will you people just learn to RELAX? To get out there and live your life, and just let what happens, happen. Stop obsessing over every little detail of your own and others' love lives, and instead just have fun? If you find love - great! If you don't, at least you're still enjoying yourself. I don't necessarily believe in fate, but I do think that when you find the "right" fit, having your nails freshly done or wearing the imitation pheromone perfume or knowing that both men and women care about looks isn't going to change a thing. It's just going to click. You and him or her will simply work.

So please, stop feeding the machine that pumps out these ridiculous studies. Stop buying all of the books that will tell you things that you already know. Stop worrying about looking good for others, and simply look good for yourself. Stop shopping for a relationship. Have fun. Enjoy that wonder that is life. Love (and sex and maybe even marriage/children) will happen, but until it does - don't waste your time worrying and over-analyzing. What's the point? Don't wait for something to make you happy, be happy now.

Editor's Note: Shout hallelujah, Come on get happy.

Happy Endings

2007-08-21T20:59:00.000-04:00

The phrase "a happy ending" can mean very different things to women and men. For many women I know, a story has a happy ending if a guy and a girl end up together in a seemingly permanent relationship. And men, well, they call a "happy ending" a sexual favor given by a female masseuse after the massage-proper has been completed.

One could argue this is yet another example of how men and women's brains are dissilimar, or perhaps even how little girls and little boys are raised to conceptualize relationships and their world to different ends.

Everyone knows little girls are tucked in at night to stories of princes and princesses, of danger, and rescue, and maybe, if they're lucky, a little Dora the Explorer for good measure.

Peggy Ornstein wrote a fabulous article last year on the dilemma many parents of little girls face when confronted with the tsunamical princess culture in toy stores and children's media. Should perfectly confident, successful business women and feminist homemakers willingly expose their children to fairy tales written in the midst of a culture that considered women their husband's property?

True enough, the very same concept that tucks little girls in at night is an addiction practiced by adult women reading romance novels and watching their worn copies of Sleepless in Seattle--We are calmed, placated even, by the thought that all pretty ladies one day will have someone to take care of them.

Women needed happy endings, because for so many hundreds of years, to be tied to a man who cared about you and was able to provide for you was all that could be hoped for. And now, though a woman has a recognized right to express herself sexually however she chooses--though she has a right to a good education and a chance in the professional world--though she has a right to be completely financially and emotionally independent...chick lit is a major force in popular fiction.

And our daughters, perhaps better positioned than any Western women before them, to find a new happy ending for themselves, are felled by cartoons and cheap rayon dresses. It's possible all our efforts have been misdirected. Perhaps, we should be spending more time convincing our sons that a happy ending is being whisked away by a princess....

I have to go Now; Let Me Alone

2007-08-16T01:34:00.000-04:00

The Highly Sensitive Person.

Isn't the artist moody?
Isn't he a walking contradiction?
Embracing luscious colors and lights of the banquet hall
then reprimanding the renovators for all the racket.

What's wrong with that child?
Don't stand too close or she'll wail
and not other words would she speak
only cries when she's not well.

Perhaps they are "highly sensitive people" as Dr. Elaine Aaron would have call it.

I came across the title of her book The Highly Sensitive Person while I was making the rounds at my binary haunts.

Amazon.com summarizes the book as follows:

Are you an HSP? Are you easily overwhelmed by stimuli? Affected by other people's moods? Easily startled? Do you need to withdraw during busy times to a private, quiet place? Do you get nervous or shaky if someone is observing you or competing with you? HSP, shorthand for "highly sensitive person," describes 15 to 20 percent of the population. Being sensitive is a normal trait--nothing defective about it. But you may not realize that, because society rewards the outgoing personality and treats shyness and sensitivity as something to be overcome. According to author Elaine Aron (herself an HSP), sensitive people have the unusual ability to sense subtleties, spot or avoid errors, concentrate deeply, and delve deeply. This book helps HSPs to understand themselves and their sensitive trait and its impact on personal history, career, relationships, and inner life. The book offers advice for typical problems. For example, you learn strategies for coping with overarousal, overcoming social discomfort, being in love relationships, managing job challenges, and much more. The author covers a lot of material clearly, in an approachable style, using case studies, self-tests, and exercises to bring the information home. The book is essential for you if you are an HSP--you'll learn a lot about yourself. It's also useful for people in a relationship with an HSP. --Joan Price

It's somewhat ironic that so many people are opposed to the idea of labels and don't subscribe to the practice of categorizing human behavior or tendencies because they want to be themselves without putting a name to it. And yet, scholars from all disciplines make their careers by analyzing chaos, honing in on patterns, and coming up with ways to manage an enormous amount of information--by creating labels. A lot of students might not understand why they have to learn about things that are so "common sense" or "I know all this....." they don't always realize that the learning process involves the internalization of terminology that helps them organize all the things they "already knew." Once something has a name, it suddenly becomes easier to manage.

Could the "highly sensitive person" be a way of allowing the rest of society engage more sympathetically with people who might otherwise simply be called moody, eccentric, weird, or temperamental?

Edward Hopper's 1939 painting New York Movie

pic cred: google image search

Belinda Luscombe on (romantic) comedies

2007-08-12T00:34:00.000-04:00

I picked up the August 20, 2007 issue (Vol. 170 No. 8) of Time Magazine and read an educational and somewhat disheartening article about the future of the American romantic comedy.

Belinda Luscombe writes:

Love stories are old. They're universal. Nearly everyone has one. Which makes them nearly impossible to write well. This summer has brought us License to Wed, in which a couple is nearly driven apart by their wacky priest's marriage-prep course; I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, in which Adam Sandler pretends to marry his firefighter buddy for health-insurance reasons; No Reservations, in which two competitive chefs fall in love; and Becoming Jane, in which Jane Austen has to choose between love and proper behavior. Coming in September is Good Luck Chuck, in which every girl Chuck sleeps with goes on to marry the next guy she meets. All of them, except the Austen, are what's known in the romance-novel business as HEAs (happily-ever-afters), and none of them are remotely stirring, although Good Luck Chuck is spectacularly off-putting. "Romantic comedies are backbreaking to write because they have to be fresh," says Mike Newell, director of Four Weddings and a Funeral and the upcoming Love in the Time of Cholera. "I've yet to find another one which was surprising enough to do."

But it's not just familiarity that breeds contempt for love stories. It may be actually getting harder to get people to believe in them, acknowledges Richard Curtis, writer of such indelible romances as Four Weddings and Notting Hill, because our expectations have changed. "If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it's called searingly realistic, even though it's never happened in the history of mankind," he notes. "Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you're accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental."

Luscombe mentions cultural and social changes over the last half century that may have affected the standard perception of romance and human interaction, which in turn likely makes romantic comedies harder to market. She also brings up the film Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007) and remarks that it "is the purest iteration of the so-called bromance form yet. Two best friends, Seth and Evan, on the verge of graduating from high school, have to get booze, get over the fact that they're about to go their separate ways and get girls before the night is out."

At first, I thought, "Wow. Perhaps the (romantic) comedy formula is changing--no longer is it about heterosexual sexual love; maybe the next move is platonic love." But then, that kind of story could simply be a comedy or a drama. I also thought "bromance" was a pretty clever term....that is until I realized that Luscombe might be using a synonym for the "buddy film."

Luscombe briefly addresses the profit-driven facet of Hollywood that almost demands quality be sacrificed for novelty or an ingenious marketing campaign so that opening weekend draws the biggest crowds. She incorporates a reception studies point-of-view when pointing out that young men flock to the cinema in slightly higher numbers--and probably more frequently--than women. I know this article isn't (and isn't supposed to be) scientific in approach, but if there was an undertaking to investigate further whether or not the romantic comedy as a genre is truly dying or adapting to a new collective consciousness or if there simply hasn't been a really good script in a long while, more variables would have to be considered and controlled.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the public's cinema-going habits, I doubt that there could be a study scientific enough. We're talking about people's preferences in aesthetics, narrative, and ideology. However consistent some individuals' or demographics' behavior may be, there are too many "but's" in the question. Furthermore, to be more thorough, DVD rentals, purchases, and library lending patterns and tendencies would have to be examined too.

To read Belinda Luscombe's article in its entirety, please click here.

The Mean Gene

2007-08-07T23:55:00.000-04:00

Recently I was attending the wedding of two very close friends. After the joyful, and for me, slightly tearful ceremony, I joined the rest of the guests outside and was excitedly chatting the typical talk that comes with a marriage ceremony: how beautiful the bride looked, how happy the groom was, whether or not there would be food before dinner. I was wearing what my friends had deemed a “fairy dress—“ a sort of pink tulle dress that was light, airy and gave me a great deal of happiness. In other words, everything up to that point was perfect.

I then ran into an ex-colleague from my days in medical school, and after I gave him my obligatory hug—a half hug for the half-hearted since I already sensed a poor encounter—he asked me what I was doing with my life. I told him that I was beginning law school in the fall, and he said, “Oh, so you changed your mind again?” And he added behind it what the casual observer would call a snide little laugh, as if to make his comment appear as some fantastic joke.

That hit me with a jolt. “What do you mean?”
“Well, isn’t that why you left first year?”
“Yes, and then I came back…”
“And then you left again.”

At that point, I left the conversation. I felt his rudeness was extraordinary, and he deserved second class status. It was particularly striking that he—a student who had left his PhD program, worked as a lab technician for a number of years, and then returned to medical school at the age of 30—could be so judgmental of someone else’s choices. At twenty-five, I’m not exactly out with today’s trash. Now, of course he cannot be faulted for his ignorance of the circumstances surrounding my years in medical education. But he can be faulted as being someone who felt perfectly fine acting as an asshole.

Later on, I began to think about meanness. I like to think that I make an effort to be kind to everyone I meet. But I’m not perfect, and I know that I’ve been less than pleasant on more than one occasion. I began to wonder, is there some evolutionary explanation for cruelty?

It turns out there’s been some research on the issue by scientists as prominent as Frans de Waal. But there is very little that is black and white in terms of cruelty, or for that matter, in terms of any emotion. A seemingly unalterable social hierarchy can change with new developments in a community--one such example is when a non-dominant male chimp obtains meat, a highly valued commodity, leading to the normally dominant males to beg him for a share in the prize.

Many scientists also believe that cruelty requires a theory of mind—that is, an ability to empathize. A behavior cannot be cruel, or kind for that matter, if one is not aware of the implications of said behavior. This perhaps explains the release of endorphins, the hormones responsible for "highs," that so often accompanies a cruel act. After a hunt, for example, the smell of blood and the sight of suffering often triggers such a release. Frans De Waal describes a couple of examples that demonstrate the cruelty/empathy foil well: chimpanzees luring chickens with bread, only to poke and harm them with wire as compared to a bonobo’s attempt to help a fallen bird to fly by emulating the creature’s behavior. Cruelty and compassion, then, are yin and yang to each other.

So what about humans specifically? Humans are social creatures and have lived in groups for the entirety of their existence. While intra-group cruelty exists, it is perhaps more common to think of it as a survival tactic to be used by one group against another. Its place can still be seen worldwide, from the horrific— genocide, wars, and gang battles—to the seemingly banal—the playground, women’s society luncheons, and gangs in musicals. Pitting one group against another, picking on another’s vulnerabilities—these are all staples of both ancient and modern society.

I eventually related this information to my life by deciding that the person I described at the beginning of this essay must have felt that he had some highly prized commodity to wave over me—namely, his medical school education. This would throw off the typical social hierarchy of my innate superiority, though only temporarily, and he was able to behave cruelly and assume I wanted what he had. He could then deem himself as having an advantage over me and experience the pleasure that comes from the release of endorphins in the brain.

Of course, as humans, the trick is that we all have differing views of what’s valuable and what’s not, so the justification for his cruelty, as seen by me, was unfounded and made him look like a bit of a doofus. I think that for a person who only has a B.S. in biological anthropology, that’s a pretty good explanation. But then, if someone wants to pit their dominance over me at me, by all means, go ahead.

Editor's Note: To read more about Frans De Waal, please visit the following sites.

Emory University Bio

Frans De Waal at Amazon

Audio Interview

Short Time Magazine piece

Short piece from New Scientist

Good Night & three pennies

2007-07-31T22:18:00.000-04:00

Isn't there some adage about people dying in three's?

Freshly baked from CNN:

ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- Michelangelo Antonioni, one of Italy's most famous and influential filmmakers, has died at the age of 94, city officials in Rome say.

Considered the cinematic father of modern angst and alienation, Antonioni had a career spanning six decades which included the Oscar-nominated "Blow-Up" and the internationally acclaimed "L'Avventura" (The Adventure).

His death on Monday night followed that of Swedish film legend Ingmar Bergman, who died on Monday aged 89.

"With Antonioni, not only has one of the greatest living directors been lost, but also a master of the modern screen," said Rome mayor Walter Veltroni Tuesday. His office said it was making plans for Antonioni's body to lie in state on Wednesday.

Antonioni's deliberately slow-moving and oblique movies were not always crowd pleasers but films such as "L'Avventura" turned him into an icon for directors like Martin Scorsese, who has described him as a poet with a camera.

Antonioni was born in 1912 in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. He directed his first feature, "Cronaca di un amore" ("Story of a Love Affair"), in 1950 at the age of 38.

Over the next two decades Antonioni worked with some of the greatest names in post-war Italian cinema like Marcello Mastroianni but it was not until the 1960s that he emerged on the international stage.

Read the rest of the article, press here

a few pertinent youtube clips:

Trailer from Criterion Collection edition.

Amazing long take from the film Professione: Reporter (1975)

Relevant articles from Senses of Cinema.com

Biographical piece by James Brown

Essay on L'Avventura by Gregory Solman

Discussion of Blowup by Jonathan Dawson

Film studies programs the world over need to brace themselves.
Any director who became famous or received critical acclaim just before or just after the world wars are going to make headlines within the decade.

pic cred: google image search

Smooth Criminal and Funny Face club scene: the less obvious comparison

2007-07-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

It is fitting to discuss Fred Astaire when analyzing Michael Jackson's dancing style. However, a less obvious comparison may be Audrey Hepburn. Note that she too wears white socks with high-water, skinny black trousers and black penny loafers. The club scene in the film Funny Face (Stanely Donen, 1957) and Michael Jackson's video for the song "Smooth Criminal" are deserving of a close, comparative study. Jackson does at times move with the grace of a true ballerina.

Victimless crimes?

2007-07-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

I was searching "angry drivers" last night on youtube and came across this short clip:

Probation for throwing cup of ice into car
Judge decides against prison; woman was mad at driver she said cut her off

Updated: 3:26 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2007

STAFFORD, Va. - A woman convicted of a felony for throwing a cup of ice into a car that cut her off in traffic was sentenced to probation instead of prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Jessica Hall faced between two and five years in prison after she was convicted last month of maliciously throwing a missile — the cup of ice — into an occupied vehicle. No one was injured in the incident last summer.

Read rest of article here: MSNBC

I was wondering what people think about prosecuting victimless crimes. I'm not sure what the legal definition of the term is (if there is one), but is it absolutely necessary to bring charges against someone who might have intended to harm but in the end nobody is physically hurt?

Or, is it a waste of taxpayer's money to prosecute someone when their actions--however stupid, mean or technically illegal--has no immediate negative consequences to anyone?

For instance, you take a can of coke and you want to throw it at someone's face but you miss. Nobody is hurt and no property is damaged. Or, you catch your wife cheating on you and in a moment of rage, take a plate and throw it at her. You miss and it hits the wall and breaks. Nobody is hurt. The wall is not damaged--it was your own plate you broke.

Ultimately, what should ever be put on trial? The outcome of a person's actions or the motivation and intentions of that person's actions? (not counting what the prosecution needs to prove in order to charge someone with murder vs. manslaughter, eg. motive OR/AND intent)

Im not suggesting that I think unsuccessful crimes should be dismissed. But, it's a thought-provoking issue.

A person cannot be arrested or prosecuted for thinking about doing something illegal--but they can be for attempting and failing to complete the doing of something illegal.

Ironically, very few people are rewarded for wanting to do something good and trying to do something good but failing at doing something good. Eg. teachers who wont give students brownie points for effort.

I wonder why that is. No good deed goes unpunished. No points for trying (unless youre trying to do something wrong and mean and evil).

Jailhouse, Rocks...

2007-07-26T11:35:00.000-04:00

Inmates in the Phillipines doing a choreographed routine of Michael Jackson's Thriller....

Apparently they've also done Queen...I think this is a hugely innovative way to boost morale and channel energy for jails. Not that I'm an expert on rehabilitation, or anything.

You Stole My Face! or the world of celebrity twins

2007-07-15T02:23:00.000-04:00

Two examples of celebrity twins.

The first set: Mia Kirshner (The L-Word, The Black Dahlia, Exotica) and Amy Adams (JuneBug).

Mia Kirshner on the Craig Ferguson Show.

Amy Adams on the Craig Ferguson Show.

The second set: Elias Koteas (Exotica, The Thin Red Line, Shooter) and Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU, Oz, Runaway Bride).

Elias Koteas in Fallen (Gregory Hoblit, 1998)

Christopher Meloni talking about Law & Order: SVU

Come to think of it, they both look like Robert De Niro.

Originally posted at Sthemingway

pic creds: yahoo movies, google image search

From the archives: following up on Kate Bush

2007-07-09T21:11:00.000-04:00

This is reprinted from a post from my live journal, dating May 5, 2006

For some reason, alternative British musician Kate Bush reminds me of experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, not just as a result of a somewhat striking physical resemblance, but the from what I've seen of Deren's Meshes in the Afternoon (1943), thematical similarities as well. So it was that sthemingway's post with the story reminded me of Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929) and she brought up Maya Deren, and I remembered Kate Bush, and then I began to wonder what was up with her now. I check periodically every several months to see if there is any news from this brilliant, but very reclusive songstress. Much to my surprise, Kate had indeed recently released a new album, entitled Aerial, marking her first new musical foray in 12 years since The Red Shoes.

I love Kate Bush. I don't own all her albums, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because her songs can be patchy, but when she's good, she's absolutely brilliant. The Hounds of Love is one of my favourite records ever, probably second ONLY to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (this is understandable). The story goes that Bush was a protege of Pink Floyd's, in particular of David Gilmour, and that they helped bring her onto the British scene. Her U.S. commercial success was not so great and she goes unheard of here, minus some radioplay of "Running Up That Hill" in the 1980s and of "This Woman's Work" because it was on the soundtrack for that movie "She's Having a Baby." However, in London, I still hear the original version of "Wuthering Heights" and even "The Kick Inside" on the radio from time to time, and no doubt she ranks pretty high up there among 'best female musicians.' Sarah MacLachlan and Tori Amos owe quite a lot to her, as they have indicated.

I need a whole other post to talk about The Hounds of Love. It's a concept album; by then, concept albums weren't anything new. Pink Floyd themselves helped pioneer it with the just as brilliant, though not a favourite, The Dark Side of the Moon. However, what a concept album The Hounds of Love is. It's a 2-part album, with the second half a mystical journey through the mind of a woman who is drowning.

But back to Aerial. It's lovely and it's very soft. It's probably her best effort since The Hounds of Love and certainly her most thematically coherent. It's a thought piece on the cycles of life. While I loved individual songs on The Sensual World a lot more, that record was all over the place. No song on here is as good as that title track; however, as a whole, it's remarkable. Kate Bush's piano playing is rich & lovely to listen to among the sparse instrumental arrangements. My only hope is that Kate does not wait another 12 years to release a followup.

Cool Reads at Senses of Cinema

2007-07-08T04:22:00.000-04:00

I declared myself a film major at Emory University in the spring semester of my freshman year (2000). At this time, the Internet was not a reliable enough source for academic research unless A. the web site or page from which one gathered information was maintained by a credible person (professor, industry expert) or organization (a film school, a museum, a library, an official site, online news sources) or B. the professor had recommended it for consulting. Reception studies (the study of how a text is consumed, processed, and manipulated by critics and the general population; aka part of the content of MIT professor Henry Jenkins's book Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture) wasn't as widespread then as it is now.

By the time I started taking film classes in my sophomore year (2000-2001), I found myself having to use the net to research the Japanese anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. By the time I graduated from undergrad in 2003, professors were more willing to accept a "Works Cited" page consisting of credible online sources. While I was in Emory's graduate film studies program (2005-2007), online research was deemed integral to the process not only because the number of legitimate cites had increased, but also because the kinds of research done--cultural studies, interdisciplinary studies, reception studies--sometimes demanded the incorporation of these sources.

One of the online sources that I used many times during my undergrad and graduate careers was a place called Senses Of Cinema, an online journal maintained by academics of a variety of humanities fields. I was browsing the site today and came across two very interesting and well-written articles, one about digital video and film stock, the other about the film Blade Runner.

Of all the many discussion board entries, essays, and columns written about the former topic, this one by Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon of the University of Nebraska is the best. Here is a brief excerpt:

Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) on DVD, for example, 21st century viewers realize that they are watching (optimally) a 35mm negative transferred to digital memory and then downloaded to a DVD for home use, and that the final image they watch “copies” the filmic nature of the original image, but at the same time gives only the “impression” of its original source material. But given this a priori assumption, 21st century viewers quickly move past this empirical certainty to embrace this newly digitised image as the simulacrum of a 20th century medium. There is no sadness in this and no betrayal of the maker’s original intent; it is merely a translation from one image capture medium to another.

Certainly it can be argued that this is an oversimplification of a rather knotty problem; film comes with one set of values inherently present in the stock itself (a tendency towards warmth in colour for some film stocks, or towards cooler hues in others, as well as characteristics of grain, depth and definition which are unique to each individual film matrix), while the digital video image offers another entirely different set of characteristics, verging on a hyperreal glossiness that seems to shimmer on the screen. To achieve a reconsideration of the basic states of representationalism inherent in any comparison of these two mediums is a difficult task, calling into question more than a century of cinematic practice, and a host of assumptions shared by practitioners and viewers alike.

VCRs, along with a host of other factors, eventually killed drive-ins, making it possible to view a film at home with ease and convenience; DVDs wiped the VHS format out of existence a few years after their introduction. In the same fashion, second-run theatres were also killed off by the burgeoning DVD market, as the window between VHS and the theatrical release of a film and its appearance on DVD dwindled into nonexistence. And yet, as the public audience for 20th century cinema film becomes increasingly specialized and narrowly segmented, to the point that American Blockbuster stores no longer even bother with a token “classics” section – even such reliable standbys as Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) are ignored in most of the chain’s stores – for those who embrace the past a wider range of films has become available. Often these DVDs go out of print in a matter of months, so one must purchase them immediately upon their release, as fetish objects that also have a temporal existence of their own, and a thriving bootleg “industry” exists as well, making copies of all but the most fugitive films available to the private collector.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

I've fallen asleep every time I've watched Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). David C. Ryan's, assistant communications studies professor at the University of San Francisco, piece on the 25th anniversary edition, though, is remarkable. It has the best introductory paragraph ever. Yes, ever. Here is the introduction:

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner opened twenty-five years ago to scornful critics and a disappointed public confronted by a moody, violent and densely layered science fiction film governed by existential themes and Marxist tendencies. Most journalistic critics found the film’s tone aloof, its themes remote and its story too stark to digest. Although the film was valorised for its bold and rich production design and was praised as the cinematic phenomenon of technological artistry, Blade Runner was largely condemned and discarded as a curious and expensive debacle – full of powerful images yet plagued by inert intellectual rewards. Diverse American critics such as Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffmann complained that the hero’s humanism lacked depth and verve, and that the story is clouded by confusing themes. Scott, they said, was far too interested in developing style rather than content, more interested in detailing his sets than developing his script. These views were (and are) unsatisfying.

To read the rest of the piece, click here.

Because I like Senses of Cinema so much not only for research but also for enlightenment, I have included it as one of the links on the right side of the main page.

Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is also a fantastic film-related site that I read just for fun. I haven't had the opportunity to write an essay that would make use of the site. It is also located on the right.

Artists Separated at Face: Maya Deren & Kate Bush

2007-07-08T03:04:00.000-04:00

Dancer and experimental filmmaker Maya Deren's short film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)is probably the most widely screened example of avant-garde and experimental or feminist filmmaking. I first saw it when I took Introduction to Film Studies in 2000 and found it simultaneously mesmerizing and unsettling. I watched some more of her work when I took a female directors graduate seminar in 2005. After a few more viewings of Meshes of the Afternoon, I was still mesmerized but not nearly as unsettled.

Observe:

A Study in Choreography For Camera (1945) is really fascinating as well (and not the least bit unnerving).

Maya Deren was also a philosopher and film theorist.

Her films are often included in the curriculum for film classes and feminist theory classes, but I'm not sure about dance classes. A choreographer and filmmaker visited Emory in the spring of 2004 to give a talk about how video technology and choreography intersect. I attended the lecture to do research for my Operational Aesthetics paper on televised football. During the Q & A section, I asked if Maya Deren were making her films now, how would her work be received? The choreographer gave the audience a very brief bio about her "in case anyone wasn't familiar with her work." I wouldn't be surprised if more students out of Intro to Film or Psychoanalysis or Women's Studies knew her name and had seen Meshes of the Afternoon than students out of Dance Theory.

The title of this entry is so named because there is another female artist whose work I find absolutely intriguing and who could be Maya Deren's twin aesthetically and creatively. Her name is Kate Bush.

Observe:

Bjork might be more blatantly eccentric and surreal than Kate Bush, but I think there's an unmistakable Maya Deren presence in Kate Bush's music videos. I don't remember the first time I heard Kate's song "Running Up That Hill," but it was on a cassette tape a poet friend of mine sent to me years ago, and it sounded so familiar. There is a moment in my past that I cannot recall!

Musically and lyrically, some people would more readily cite a Tori Amos connection with the following song (a reverse connection that is, since Kate Bush was releasing music a decade before Tori). To me, though, the visuals make the song more Maya.
Observe:

Maya:

Kate:

If she feels so inclined, Ishtar might reprint an entry she wrote on Kate Bush in her personal blog.

Also posted at Sthemingway

pic creds: google image search

Love Road Basketball Glory

2007-07-05T03:15:00.000-04:00

I’ve always been more or less neutral towards basketball and futbol. Though both sports are momentum-driven and require their athletes to move with lightning speed pretty much all the time, I never took to either sport via telecasts.

March Madness comes and goes on TV without a glance from me; same thing with the NBA Finals. A friend of mine is a huge basketball fan and while I was working on my thesis, he would frankly insist that shooting hoops was superior to making touchdowns…conceptually and in actuality. Basketball, he argued, demands a lot more out of its players than football does its own. Excelling at the former sport utilizes a combination of intelligence, athletic ability, and talent that surpasses that of the latter.

I still love the gridiron game, but I have to admit that my appreciation for basketball has increased considerably after watching Love & Basketball (Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2000) and Glory Road (James Gartner, 2006).

I vaguely remember Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film being in the theatres. As it turns out, I was less familiar with its plot than I was with the film’s place in the year 2000. Prior to watching the film, I had not read up on what the film was about–I knew there was basketball and a romance subplot. I didn’t know that the lead female character would be playing ball too.

Written and directed by Prince-Bythewood, Love & Basketball follows Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) from childhood to early adulthood as they pursue their NBA dreams and grapple with the distractions and tensions commensurate with realizing their respective goals. The film is divided into four parts. It begins with Monica and Quincy as pre-teens (played by Kyla Pratt and Glenndon Chatman respectively), establishing how they first meet. She’s the new next-door neighbor and can play ball just as hard as he can.

The second, third, and fourth sections of the film focus on a different period of their lives. “Second Quarter” covers the 1988 basketball season at Crenshaw High School where Monica plays on the girls team and Quincy the boys. “Third Quarter” spans the 1988-1989 schoolyear at USC where Monica and Quincy also play basketball as freshmen. The “Fourth Quarter” looks at both characters’ lives in 1993; Monica has been playing for Spain for seven months and Quincy is recovering from a torn ACL injury he sustained while playing for the Lakers. The love component to the story manifests itself through Monica and Quincy as they realize that they mean more to each other than default friend.

In addition to developing the mutual attraction and affection between the two main characters, Prince-Bythewood’s film also uses this relationship to raise questions about gender roles and equality. Monica isn’t simply characterized as a tomboy or even slightly more athletic than her mother would like. She is feisty, temperamental, and a fighter. Quincy’s “personality” is less complex and functions more as a counterpart to Monica. In fact, as sports movies go, Love & Basketball virtually reverses the gender dynamics of its two primary student-athletes–at the very least, it assigns certain qualities typically associated with the (male) athlete to Monica rather than to Quincy.

For instance, the object of most sports films is to present a coming-of-age or redemption narrative by forcing its protagonist (an individual or a team) to learn the hard way how to succeed. Whoever is a bit too cocky, a bit too introverted, or a bit too unruly are all made to recognize and then relinquish or re-appropriate those characteristics. Along this journey, the protagonist must overcome obstacles and conflicts such as his own pride or fear as well as others’ critcisms.

Love & Basketball re-works this narrative pattern by offering cockiness and stubborness to Monica. She exhibits the attitude of an athlete who prioritizes the game above all else. Quincy, on the other hand, provides a contrast to that mentality by assuming somewhat of feminized position within their relationship. She is “better” at the game than he is; and while he still participates in archetypically male behavior (with female characters), the film is more interested in defining him in terms of or against his father, a former Clippers player (Dennis Haysbert) who proves to be a less than ideal role model. When the like-father-like-son mentality that Quincy had been carrying all his life suddenly fails to suffice, his insecurities become too much for him.

I would argue that Prince-Bythewood’s film is more about Monica and Quincy as individual basketball players one a thematic level. Furthermore, it is the way in which their lives play out on and off the court that builds and fuels the viewer’s concern. I’m not one to pull out the “F” word lightly, but I think it’s relevant here. From a narrative and ideological perspective, Love & Basketball can be considered a feminist film. That the film features a real high school (Crenshaw) that is known for its great girls and boys basketball teams and real USC women’s basketball players or that the story depicts Monica as more of the athlete (including being shouted at repeatedly by her USC coach) is just part of it.

I think the film has feminist undertones because it allows basketball to serve metaphorical purposes for Monica instead of Quincy. I don’t want to give away the last important scene in the film (or the film’s ending for that matter) because I really enjoyed Love & Basketball and highly recommend it. I will, however, say that the game means to Monica something that is usually associated with young males.

This film conveys the basketball-is-not-just-a-game message but through the eyes of a female. I’m sure some feminists would find it problematic that the film can’t tell this story without making Monica adopt a few male-athlete personality traits but I have no complaints. I don’t even mind the love thread–in the end, it works out better than I could have imagined. So go Netflix it or Blockbuster it today!

Originally posted at Sitting Pugs. To read about Glory Road, click here.

You Remind Me of Someone: Deleting Memories

2007-07-03T23:46:00.000-04:00

According to a Yahoo News article, "Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled."

Good idea or bad idea?

Good idea:

1. "Now I never have to remember that lousy date."
2. "I can finally forget I ever saw that piece of lard of a movie."
3. "I can forget that pathetic mess of potatoes and butter you call mashed potatoes."
4. "I can forget how bollocks freshman year was at college."
5. "We can break up and not have to remember the good times we had.

Bad idea:

1. "Danggit. I was there, Detective. I was at that restaurant! I was with a lousy date...but I don't remember anything about that night."
2. "Damnit...I've seen this movie already--and it still sucks."
3. "Ewww.. why you feedin' me this, fool?"
4. "Oh man, I think you lived down the hall. I think you were the only kid that didn't annoy the schittballs out of me. Damn. Wish I could remember more."
5. "Didn't we sleep together once? You smell familiar."

What if:
1. The memory-erasing drug only cancels out the information and stimuli your conscious mind processes. In other words, you may recall details of that night, for instance, what color car the suspect was driving or that he smelled like pizza and clam sauce, that do not directly relate to the memory of the lousy date.

2. You still remember that you saw it and thought it a waste of time and money--you remember this as a fact, but as far as the film itself...that is what you do not recall.

3. see #2.

4. see above.

5. see above.

This drug is bound to get into the wrong hands/be used for the wrong reasons. Think of all the crimes a person could get away with because eyewitness accounts would become even more unreliable or non-existent.

Megaman Music at the Kennedy

2007-07-03T18:14:00.000-04:00

I might as well admit it publicly--my boyfriend is an avid, practically obsessive video game music fan and he's slowly starting to convert me. After five years, god knows how many tracks of blips, bloops, midi-rips, and Megaman remixes, I'm starting to appreciate the fact that the soundtracks to games I enjoyed during my childhood are experiencing a renaissance under the hands of some very creative, very talented, and very professional musicians.

Everybody knows the classic Super Mario Bros theme a sort of ragtime/calypso homage with a 6/8 back beat to keep the player moving forward. Well, here is just one example of how the hands of artists are making a more than 20 year-old game come to life again for new and old audiences alike.

What's more, the music produced for video games today is also some pretty sophisticated stuff, capable, in many cases, of standing on its own outside of the context in which the games are played. I remember when, I think it was the Outrun game series, developed an option where you could listen to different music as you played. It was only maybe something more jazzy and something neutral, and something metal rock I think--all the same theme.

Flash forward a decade or so, and Grand Theft Auto had several different soundtracks in the form of discreet "radio stations" you could turn on in your car as you played. Each station had pretty extensive song lists and usually funny DJ and commercial segments. GTA was really seminal, in my mind, of breaking through stereotypes of what kind of background music a game had and for good reason, the general public began to sit up and take notice of just how much an elaborate soundtrack can add to the gaming experience.

But don't ask VGM officionados. They'll tell you that although the memorable tunes may have started with Mario and Zelda, the industry has always pushed the boundaries in what people have often thought of as disposable electronica. Their hard work and some intrepid fan loyalty has paid off. Today, masterworks like those in the later versions of the Final Fantasy series, Halo, or Myst, rival something Ennio Morricone or John Williams might write.

And as filmmakers and video game executives become more and more interdependent, I wouldn't be surprised if one day, after it's finally released, Halo, the movie, actually did get an Oscar nod for best score.

And so we come to me being backstage with some some of the most prominent American video game music composers, Jack Wall and Tommy Tallarico during the Video Games Live concert here at the Kennedy Center in our nation's capitol.

The sold-out, two day concert featured the National Symphony Orchestra playing orchestral versions or medleys of some of the most popular video games of all time. Audience members often come in costume for a contest that, at least when I was there, pitted a cardboard, duct-taped, red Tetris block against a blue-spandexed Megaman. Tetris won, and I was just grateful to have my eyesight preserved after Megaman did a few too many revealing poses.

Here's a sample. That's Jack Wall conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

During the concert, montages from the video game featured play in sync with the orchestra. This may not only be a good way to reference how the music augments the game playing experience, but also a fabulous way to promote the games, themselves, not to mention keep the highly ADD audience interested.

There are also segments where audience members are selected to come up and play Frogger or Space Invaders, two dinosaurs of the gaming world that are so kid friendly and simple they'd bring a smile to even the coldest censor's heart. It truly is a show for all ages that doesn't seem to forget its roots, although much of the music from games I didn't know (God of War, Medal of Honor, Advent Rising etc...) sounded very similar in format and style. Maybe it was that all of it was orchestral, maybe it was that the sound mixing was so bad.

It was often hard to distinguish the chorus, female soloist, or Tommy playing his electronic guitar for the finale from the orchestra and that was pretty frustrating. It sounded like a lot of good stuff was going on that just went over my head because of the acoustics.

Given you have Tetris blocks and Megamen running around, you can guess that the audience is usually really enthusiastic, which I think shook a few NSO member's nerves as they were trying to play. On the other hand, they all realised it was probably the first time they'd played to an audience of 2500 (each night!) in many years.

As I sat in the backstage area for the NSO, surrounded by autographed photos of illustrious musicians like Yo-Yo Ma, with the Nat's game blaring on the TV in the background, I spoke with some members of the strings section.

While one violinist was a little bit snobby about it, the other musicians seemed to enjoy playing the music and were pretty generous with their praise. You could tell many were truly enjoying themselves on stage as well. One bassist even started head-banging with Tommy during a piece.

It was at this point, that I realised that when I'm old and my children are going to concerts of music that's probably a-tonal to me, old folks homes and elementary school bands will probably be playing video game music, where they once may have played Superman and Love Story themes.

Let's face the facts. Hollywood is becoming less and less profitable, and films are being released as DVDs more and more quickly. Video games are also becoming an increasingly important component to a film's merchandising offering. Steven Spielberg already knows this and has been getting his feet wet with a few select video game projects, most notably Medal of Honor.

Socially, we're bowling alone on our Wiis, texting instead of calling, chatting on AIM instead of hanging out, and logging on to play video games with people all over the world from our living rooms. Who knows if a few years from now, our trend toward self-isolation and personalization of our electronic world will lead to the triumph of the "choose your own adventure" video game over that of the summer blockbusters.

And the music will be there, bigger, better and more influential then ever, thanks to fans/musicians/artists like these:

Yes House Follow Up: Jackie O, We Loved Her So

2007-07-02T02:41:00.000-04:00

Visual aids for Ishtar's post on sibling incest in film.

A clip from The House of Yes (Mark Waters, 1997).

A clip from the anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena (Kunihiko Ikuhara, 1997) based on the manga by Chiho Saito.

A clip from Angels & Insects (Philip Haas, 1995). Warning, graphic state of undress.

FYI:Based on certain scenes in the film, Eugenia (Patsy Kensit) is certainly willing to have sex with her husband and several times (at least thirty minutes into the film). I recommend this film for Kristin Scott Thomas's fantastic performance. Haas's film is based on A.S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia.

The Fashion Tightrope

2007-07-02T01:07:00.000-04:00

People who know me are well aware of my obsession with fashion. Although I believe I can appreciate every piece of clothing’s special artistry, from graphic tee-shirts to cocktail dresses, I read Vogue magazine with special interest, hoping as I flip the pages of couture that I will be afford to purchase one of those amazing pieces. I’m not an indiscriminate follower of fashion—I of course find certain trends ridiculous and for example, have never been comfortable with low-slung pants or the need to show one’s thong to others. But I try to keep with the times and think I manage to blend the best of my taste with the current.

On the surface, there seems to be nothing more to note about this interest of mine. So many women share it that it’s hardly remarkable. But a conversation that comes up repeatedly between a friend of mine and me deserves analysis. We’ve titled it the Tension of Fashion. It’s the strain between what we should wear in any given situation and what we really want to wear as individuals. This question has nothing to do with sexuality. We’re both fairly conservative in terms of dress; add to that the fact that we’re both thin and you see that sex appeal is something that’s in the eye of the beholder. The conversation has more to do with what appears appropriate to everyday folk and what appeals to our so-called heightened sensibilities.

I have a black spaghetti-strap dress in a post-modern shape—it curves out on both sides like a tulip and finishes with a series of pleats that fan out from the chest. When I purchased it, I imagined finding a decorated headband (the kind that goes across the forehead) and adding elbow-length gloves to finish the look. It is not a sexy dress. It is a fashion dress out of synch with regular life—even at a party. My mother thought it dreadful, and my brother took one look at it and asked what I had been thinking when I bought it. It garners no attention from men. But I like it tremendously. So does my friend who keeps up with fashion.

I also have a black halter dress, low cut with an open back, which I wore to an important fund-raising dinner. It’s a sexy dress; though nobody besides me noticed, my black bra showed through its open neckline. It’s not unusual in any sense. Of course I like it, but I know its function. And so when I wear it, I bring nothing to the table except a pair of modest heels and a little red lipstick. Anything else would look out of place. But at this dinner, I got ample compliments on the dress by both men and women. The speaker of the event even made a very subtle pass at me (so subtle that I didn't catch it until someone else pointed it out).

Clothing and fashion, whether “high” or “low,” plays an important role in our lives for better or worse. It sets a first impression. It affects how others judge us. A well-put together person is associated with a well-put together life. So it is inevitable that clothing also gives people an unfair first impression. A girl’s outfit is still blamed by society as an invitation for sex—indeed, who hasn’t heard of the “too sexy” outfit’s responsibility in violence against women? One rape survivor I knew could not wear spaghetti straps for years after the incident.

This is an extreme example, of course. The conundrum I speak of is not determining the rules of modesty, but of balancing individuality and accepted social norms. Every day, women (and men, too, of course) make choices about the clothes they wear. Do women feel compelled to dress a certain way at work because they feel they must to be taken seriously? More often than not, the decisions made are based on others’ perceptions of what is appropriate. Patients prefer physicians not to wear high heels or long earrings. So how would it look, for example, if a physician wore an up-to-the-minute knee-length bubble skirt to work? How appropriate is it for an attorney to wear skinny trousers and a long tailored jacket in the office? Are high-waisted slacks worn with suspenders appropriate in a boardroom? If modesty is the only relevant issue, and this base is covered, than why is it that following fashion continues to be considered a frivolous interest, though it plays such an enormous role in our day-to-day lives? Is it because of the emphasis on women in the industry?

Virginia Woolf once remarked that when a novel addresses war themes, for example, it is immediately deemed an important book. But if a book is to center on topics of interest to women, and here she mentions fashion as an example, it is disregarded and passed over for longevity. Come forward about a hundred years and things haven’t really changed. No one has actually made a connection between the quality of service administered and the fashion consciousness of a particular professional. That said, to judge someone’s commitment to their work or their intelligence simply based on the fact that they like interesting clothing is unfair and reeks a bit of misogyny. Great clothes—and I don’t just mean designer-made pieces, but anything that is well designed and original—require us to bring more of ourselves to the table creatively. They ask us to think outside the typical boundaries of life and break with routine—all those things that business consultants are constantly asking for in the corporate setting. This is no different. So walking the fashion tightrope is just another expression of one’s self and asks for the best from us daily. And anything that asks us for our best is a worthwhile endeavor.

Sibling Incest in Film (spotlight on The House of Yes)

2007-07-02T00:53:00.000-04:00

As I was looking into this concept, I was mildly surprised to find that it is not at all an uncommon theme in myth, literature, and cinema. Incest among siblings may be particularly relevant among fraternal twins of the opposite sex, where one could claim the bond is stronger. In Balinese culture, twins were forced to marry because of the assumption they had sex in the womb. Native American Mohave culture regards male-female twins as having been married in heaven (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twincest).

As incest is taboo in most cultures (though the definition varies), its’ revelation is always shocking and monstrous. It destabilizes social relations once it is no longer a secret. In the film Cruel Intentions, incest takes on a more sinister turn as it manifests a rivalry between two step-siblings (Ryan Philippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar). In Clueless, it is almost cute. In The Royal Tenebaums, Richie Tenebaum (Luke Wilson) is in love with his adopted sister Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow). We tentatively accept it in these cases, though finding it mildly scandalous, because of the lack of a blood relation.

Incest between siblings is also a fairly common concept in Japanese animation. In Revolutionary Girl Utena, members of an elite high school circle compete for possession of the mythical “Rose Bride.” In her incarnation as a high school student, the Rose Bride-- Anthy Himemiya-- engages in a semi-consensual incestuous relationship with her sexy, but dominating older brother Akio. He himself has a literally split personality, which expresses itself as two separate characters during the series. Anthy is torn between her long-standing duty to serve and to protect him and her unconventional love for her friend Utena.

The most well-known implication of an incestuous pairing is probably in Star Wars, where twins Luke and Leia develop a romantic attraction to each other prior to realizing that they are related. While there is definite sexual tension between them and even a kiss, it is replaced with filial affection once they both know the truth, and Leia herself becomes attracted to Han Solo before this fact is revealed, thereby conveniently avoiding tragedy.

In A.S. Byatt’s Angels and Insects, a Victorian naturalist marries the beautiful Eugenia of a rich family that has been his patron only to discover that she has been involved in a long-standing incestuous relationship with her brother which goes further than just incest, but also to inbreeding. All of her children are discovered to be those of her brother’s and Eugenia reveals that though she had tried and wanted to be normal and good, she was unable to put a stop to it.

Of course, all these examples invite the question—why? While incest implies a breakdown of normal, human relations at the most primal level, at the same time, it is primal in and of itself, and falls comfortably into Freud’s concept of the uncanny—“that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known and long familiar.” ("The Uncanny", p. 200). We are all attracted towards the familiar. Daphne du Maurier’s use of incest in her writing is related to the concept of “home” or the attraction towards that which is familiar, unconscious or not.

Perhaps the most compelling, clever, and layered use of it as a thematic device belongs to The House of Yes (Mark Waters, 1997), a film based on a play by Wendy MacLeod. The film adaptation is at once a gothic horror spoof, dark comedy, and historical reenactment—but mostly I feel that it operates with the precision of a Greek tragedy and the gut-wrenching emotional impact of Racine. The film stars Parker Posey as Jacqueline Pascal or “Jackie-O” and Josh Hamilton as Marty Pascal, reunited after an indeterminate period at Thanksgiving (during an unseasonable hurricane). Marty has brought home a fiancé, whom Jackie is meeting for the first time. During the course of the night, it is revealed that Marty and Jackie had been having sex with each other for a very long time. It probably began at age 14 with an Ides of March party in which they attended as John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis, as Posey's character relates, “in a pink Chanel suit, pillbox hat, and blood on my dress.” Posey, who herself has a twin brother twin in real life, owns the film. Her performance is visceral, frightening, and poignant.

On the day of the Ides of March party, the twins had invented a ritualistic game --a reenactment of the Kennedy assassination (in which Posey's character as Jackie Kennedy doubles as the killer), to enable them to break boundaries and to make love to each other (http://wendymacleod.com/plays/house_of_yes.shtml). Fraternal, opposite-sex twins are as close to each other as any man and woman can be. They are closer to each other than any friend or future significant other can be. That is somewhat tragic, because other women and men will always be sidelined (I’m not sure if I could be with a man who had a twin sister—I’d know I could not, nor would I want to, compete with that). This is of course not to say that all twins are incestuous because evidently the majority of them are not, but more to put the question out there: If they are already that close to each other, is sex between them really that shocking or unnatural? The twins’ mother tells Marty’s fiancé, “All I know for sure is that Marty and Jackie belong to each other.”

In the myth of Narcissus, our mythical Greek character is unable to come to terms with his own reflection, and drowns in it. Freud defines Narcissism as “unbounded self-love . . . which dominates the mind of the child and of the primitive man” (The Uncanny, p. 256). Jackie tells her twin, “Now you and I Marty, have a great deal in common: parents, DNA, bone structure.” Younger brother Anthony feigns being appalled by the revelation of their sexual liaison (though it’s clear that he himself always knew) and exclaims, “It’s like fucking a mirror!” In incestuous narcissism, according to Gail Finney, “erotic energy is transferred from the narcissistic individual to the object most like himself, his sibling.” (“Self-Reflexive Siblings: Incest as Narcissism in Tieck, Wagner, and Thomas Mann. The German Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, p. 243). Finney’s analysis concerns siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde in Richard Wagner’s “The Valkyrie,” in which the two find each other after a long period of separation. The attraction develops as they recognize the similarities in each other and they end up having sex. Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfreid, an iconic figure in Norse mythology. Finney writes, “Sieglinde realizes that only upon seeing Siegmund did she become fully conscious of herself. . . Siegmund is her mirror” (p. 247). In The House of Yes, Marty attempts to argue with his fiancé that sleeping with his sister is analogous to sleeping with himself.

Towards the end of the film, Jackie (in particular) and Marty both began to confuse the historical memory of Kennedy's death with their reenactment game, and with the departure of their own father 20 years ago on the same day. Jackie asks Marty to reenact the game with her one last time, promising to then restore him to the real of normalcy. The tragedy is that ultimately, Marty and Jackie’s relationship presents a crash of their world with the “normal” world and there is no room for reconciliation. Marty and Jackie are in love with each other and it’s not a love that can exist in the world outside of their own house. At the end, they are both aware of and confront and embrace this truth.

Sun sets over Evening

2007-07-01T03:21:00.001-04:00

As a fan of Claire Danes,

Patrick Wilson,

and Hungarian directors, I went into Evening (2007) with much enthusiasm. I left the theatre feeling anything but enthused. Based on Susan Minot's novel of the same name and directed by Lajos Koltai, Evening mixes reverie, different time periods, and gorgeous cinematography to tell the story of a dying woman's recollections of her past, specifically the wedding of her best friend decades ago.

The previews suggest that young Ann Grant (Claire Danes) and a Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson) character are responsible for the death of their friend Buddy (Hugh Dancy). The film certainly addresses this plot point....but doesn't delve into consequences of this event. I haven't read the book, so I don't know about its structure in terms of when and how the past and present collide or transition into the other, but the film is non-linear, going back and forth between the time periods as the narrative deems appropriate.

Amazon.com provides a tiny, tiny excerpt from the book as well as a scan of the back cover. Based on the book's plot synopsis, the film version altered character details and possibly the point-of-view of the story. Not POV in terms of narrator, but POV in the sense of how invested the audience is in what happens.

The past consists of the weekend of Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer) and Carl Ross's (Timothy Kiefer) wedding and the circumstances that lead to the death of Lila's younger brother Buddy. The present is comprised of Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) spending time with their mother (Vanessa Redgrave) on her death bed. The conversations that take place in the present cover topics such as whether Nina is happy, whether Nina is ever going to settle down, and why Nina is so curious about the people that her mother mentions during fits of half-sleep. The scenes of the past explain who these people are to the viewer. Constance and Nina never get these visuals. There's a brief segment where they are looking through their mother's old letters and cards, but there aren't any photographs that the viewer is aware they have seen. The viewer learns about what Ann Grant was like as a young woman, her daughters do not. Nina gets a healthy dose of life lessons--too bad she's not nearly as compelling. In fact, the past is a much more interesting place than the present; it's certainly more pleasing to the eye.

The cinematography, courtesy of Gyula Pados, is fantastic. He only has a dozen titles to his resume as a director of photography, but as Kontroll (Nimrod Antal, 2003) and Fateless (also directed by Lajos Koltai, 2005) demonstrate, Pados is more than qualified for the job. Furthermore, having worked with Koltai once before on Fateless, adapted from the novel by Hungarian novelist Imre Kertesz, he undoubtedly developed an awareness of the director's tendencies and modus operandi on the film set.

The past segments are strikingly reminiscent of Edward Hopper and Maxfield Parrish paintings.

Here's the film's poster. The film beginning credit sequence is similar to the color's here.

Edward Hopper's paintings.

by Maxfield Parrish.

Evening has so much going for it. A great cast, amazing visuals, and solid directing throughout. So why did I leave the film saying aloud to the parking lot, "I didn't like it." I probably need to read a longer passage from the novel to get a better understanding of the novel's structure and "mise-en-scene," but from the short excerpt provided by Amazon.com, it seems that Koltai has effectively captured the tone of the source. Observe:

A new lens passed over everything she saw, the shadows moved on the wall like skeletons handing things to each other. Her body was flung back over a thousand beds in a thousand other rooms. She was undergoing a revolution, she felt split open. In her mattress there beat the feather of a wild bird.

I found it very refreshing that the past and present didn't meld into one another via tracking or pan shot of an object or crossing a threshold. Narratively, the film's weakness had to do with what happened after Buddy dies. Aside from a lot of tears and a mother played by Glenn Close convulsing, the whole concept of guilt as an emotion or legal consequence never surfaces.

The film does, however, convey the notion of regret but not in any devastating kind of way. I guess it would've been too cliched if Nina's curiosity takes over the furthering of the plot (and subsequently the scenes of the past) by discovering specific letters and photographs of the relevant people; and thus she pieces together what happened that weekend that would cause her mother to hover over it while she's breaths away from death.

FYI: Susan Minot co-wrote the adapted screenplay with Michael Cunningham, who also wrote the novel on which The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002) was based. He also produced it. So whatever wrong with the adaptation is "hard to pin down."

Meryl Streep plays old Lila.

Barry Bostwick and Glenn Close as young Lila's parents.

Susan Minot's book:

Here's a funny story about this film. Evening and Nancy Drew are connected in at least three ways.
1 The film makes a direct reference to Nancy Drew in a dialogue piece.
2. Barry Bostwick is in both films.
3. Patrick Wilson was in Little Children with Jennifer Connelly, who was also in A Beautiful Mind. Ed Harris was in A Beautiful Mind as well as Step-mom, and so was Julia Roberts. Her niece is Emma Roberts, the star of Nancy Drew.
4. Claire Danes was in A Little Women with Susan Sarandon, who was also in Step-mom with Julia Roberts, whose niece is Emma Roberts, the title character in Nancy Drew.

The trailer of Evening

pic creds: google image search, yahoo movies, amazon.com

Originally posted at Sthemingway

A revised version of this review can be found at FilmThreat

Bravo Mrs. Mubarak

2007-06-30T16:40:00.000-04:00

I'll preface this by saying that under some situations, I'm no cultural relativist ....

Among many others who have campaigned for a ban on female genital mutilation, Mrs. Mubarak has taken a very couragous stand against the practice. Egyptian officials have now banned the procedure from taking place anywhere, leaving a loop-hole for certain, "exceptional" circumstances, although I can't imagine what kind of situation would require such a horrendous practice. Anyway, this is a HUGE step forward for the millions of future generations of Egyptian women who will no longer have to endure the atrocity committed against their mothers and grandmothers. According to recent statistics, approximately 90 percent of Egyptian women have been circumcized.

Spoken Exams?

2007-06-27T23:26:00.000-04:00

Good idea or bad idea. Just a clip I found on youtube.

Outbreak Follow-up: Nature Revenge?

2007-06-27T02:40:00.000-04:00

It's very likely that Outbreak was one of if not the first film to focus on an containing and dealing with an infectious disease on a global scale. A possible exception could be And the Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode, 1993), a TV movie aired on HBO--based on Robert Shilts's book--about a group of doctors that identified the HIV virus.

Wolfgang Petersen is also responsible for helming films such as Das Boot (1981), The Neverending Story (1984), In the Line of Fire (1993), Air Force One (1997), The Perfect Storm (2000), Troy (2004) and Poseidon (2006). What do we have here? A WWII film about a German U-boat, a fantasy, a political thriller, an action-thriller involving a hijacked plane, an action film on the high seas based on a true story, an epic, and a remake of Ronald Neame's 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure.

As David A. Cook explains in his book Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam 1970-1979, "the transformation of science fiction from B-genre into big-budget, special-effects laden spectacle was coincident with the rise of the disaster film, a closely related genre that originated in the 1970s and remains popular today. In disaster films, manmade systems failure or a force of nature, often monstrously perverted, threatens to destroy a group of characters brought together more or less by chance (as passengers on a jet or ocean liner, for example or vacationers at a resort), and while many of them die, a few prevail through their courge and resourcefulness" (251).

Outbreak possesses the same sense and scope of epic danger or peril as a disaster film, but can it be considered part of this genre under the guise of a nature-revenge disaster film? Think of all those films (of the 70s) where toxic waste has turned otherwise harmless fish, amphibians, and reptiles into swarms of killers.

If i were going to analyze Wolfgang Petersen's body of work in support of his being an auteur, I would probably try to make an argument that Outbreak does not lie outside the director's propensity for fear of impending doom that may or may not be inspired by real events. For instance, one could read Outbreak as a variation of the nature-revenge disaster film because it all "started" with a monkey that should never have been allowed to be illegally sold to a pet store in Califorina. Rather than the monkey ending up in a zoo and infecting other primates that then go on a killing rampage, the "revenge" is carried out through microscopic means from human to human (after the initial exposure from animal to human). Moral of the movie? None of this shipping cute animals from other countries to be pets in America. It's OK for zoos because they know how to take the proper precautions.

View the trailer of Outbreak:

A clip of And the Band Played On (I'm not sure if the Elton John song was in the original or not; I haven't found the trailer):

View image of Wolfgang Petersen:
http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2006/05/11/petersen.jpg

View this post with all the pictures that were supposed to be included but couldn't be because I can't figure out how to make pictures appear where the cursor rests--here:

Sthemingway

Outbreak: Ethical Questions for the Next Great Plague

2007-06-26T20:15:00.000-04:00

YiQi asked me to write something about Outbreak. You might have heard of it. The film takes place in Africa where a dreadful disease could be the next great plague of humankind. There are naughty little monkeys in it....and Dustin Hoffman. I haven't seen it in a while, but to be honest, movies like that always make me cringe beause 1) That kind of thing probably would never happen and dramatizations are always so sensationalistic, and 2) I'm terrified of the off-chance that it could.

The film, to my knowledge, was the first Hollywood attempt at discussing some tough issues related to national security and where the right for the healthy to survive supercedes that of the sick. Outbreak's timing was pretty important too... it came out about 6 years after the US had its own epidemic of Ebola, now known as Ebola Reston.

I was about 8 at the time, so I don't remember much about the mood of the nation or even how the media publicized the fact that the Ebola virus had been imported into the United States from the Phillipines via cynomolgus macaques and infected 12 people (thank you Tara's Ebola Site). The good news is that the version of Ebola the humans caught did not make them sick.

They say there are no atheists in fox holes and I tend to believe there are no atheist virologists. Say what you like, but the fact that the benign Ebola Reston and wicked Ebola Zaire are virtually indistinguishable under an electron microscope leads me to believe there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

But Ebola's, ahem, fatal flaw is that the virus is exceedingly good at what it does. Ebola replicates too quickly and kills too quickly to have any real staying power. So it comes out every once in a while, takes lives, and goes back into hiding. Even the unfortunate tourist to catch the disease on safari and bring it outside of its natural habitat to Europe or somewhere else in Africa, so far, have not assended to Patient Zero status. They are usually ushered into a cold hospital room, quarantined as much as possible, and most often die.

Let's not forget, while we're talking about this that there are real people faced with the resurgence of this dreadful disease every day. They have lost loved ones to one of the most horrible deaths I can imagine. It's easy to talk about things in such a detached way, living in an industrialized country, as I do, where a victim would have a chance in hell to survive given our excellent acute and infectious disease care.

But Outbreak, and many other films after it, have raised an uncomfortable question about how we, as Americans may be asked to deal with a dreadful plague that could happen at any moment. Now more than ever, as we share airplane rides with patients infected with XDR-TB, clean up cruise ships from norovirus, and pray our spinach is safe from cattle and pig waste, we are keenly aware we may one day need to decide what should be done if an epidemic is serious and pervasive enough to threaten our homeland security.

Most people, when faced with the terrifying threat of your entire body (cells, tissues, organs and all) hemorraghing in one final bloody death shudder--see Richard Preston's Hot Zone--would probably say "Lock them up, kill them! I don't care, just don't let them near me!!"

And if that person clutching at life is your neighbor, your best friend, or your spouse? What then?

Sadly, the United States learned an awful lesson about humanity with the 1918 flu epidemic. Partly becuase Americans had no information about the disease, thanks to gag orders on the press by President Wilson and partly because people were literally dropping dead in the street, many ill people died because their friends and family members literally abandoned them to dehydration and starvation among other things (Thank you John Barry).

Mary Mallon, doomed forever to be known as "Typhoid Mary" never understood why she was forced to spend most of her life exiled to an island and publicly shamed for the deaths of her employers. Living in the late 19th and early 20th century, when even the greatest scientists had a limited understanding of typhoid, Mary couldn't comprehend how she could carry a disease that made people sick if she wasn't ill herself. Perhaps if her legacy has taught us anything, it's that the same moral obligations and concerns we have about genocide and slavery apply to how we treat victims of disease.

Is humankind really worth saving if we don't value human life? Is one life or a town of a hundred people worth potentially 10,000 of lives? Is the quick and painless death of an innocent at the hands of a well-meaning government, truly in the best interest of the people?

And if we are ever damned enough to one day look at spreading cases on a map and compare numbers with our vaccine or drug stockpile, we will have to ask ourselves the real questions--the ones where statistics and numbers are no longer a useful tool for calculation. Whose lives should we value? Should we save the weakest first, the children and the elderly? Or should we save the ones who know how to turn the lights back on and protect the public?