Night Shyamalan has curly hair--so I mean… of course it’s a no-contest decision that I *love* him, right?
What hangs in the balance is The Lady in the Water (TLITW), his latest movie, that the critics claim to hate and audiences seem to like.
I like it lots.
But then my willing suspension of disbelief is virtually superhuman and improbabilities and plot holes don’t bother me. Much.
When we saw the movie this weekend, Big A set up a parallel snarktrack in my left ear, making me giggle quite a few times, which I would then try to neutralize, a little too late, by telling him sternly that it wasn’t funny. There is plenty to snark about--Shyamalan sets up an entire mythology--a generally difficult task given that the purported events are neither in the hazy hobbited past or in a galaxy far, far away but rather in a contemporary Philadelphia apartment complex. Plus the entire running time of the movie is an hour and a half; establishing a mythology takes lots more time. George Lucas took decades; Tolkien took a lifetime. True, E.T. did a great job in an hour and a half, but then it had superficial trappings of science and zero gigantic flying eagles to baffle us.
But back to the simplistic TLITW. Shyamalan professes that the movie has its origins in a story he made up for his kids--I’ll buy that. There is an innocence and affection about the tale, an earnest conviction in the goodwill of humans, a distancing of evil to television news (footage of the war loops endlessly on the tube) and night-fears; siblinghood is elevated to a powerful influence, and cooperation rules.
The clearly multi-ethnic, but simultaneously ethnically ambiguous, community that is the apartment complex in which TLITW entirely takes place must work together save Story--a nymph from an alternative world--often putting the lives of its members in danger and on nothing but the word of a waifish, half-clad girl. This is the sort of blind, narrative-saving faith that Shyamalan seems to expect from his viewers. But TLITW is not quite Peter Pan, where we can discharge our responsibilities as audience by clapping as if we believe in fairies. Plus, really, blind faith is something no liberal should demand--after all it is superstitious faith in divinely revealed narratives that is the cause of much of the world’s troubles.
To offset what may seem a authorial demand, so often the events on screen seem a collective exercise in creativity and commitment. Saving Story is a process deeply connected to the way in which the story is saved from nothingness by being reconstituted through a Korean bedtime tale, a child reading a cabinet-full of cereal boxes, a cabal of potheads. The story is pieced together, put together by means of trial and fatal error. The implied metacinematic element --the tagline, after all, is “Time is running out for a happy ending”--is pronounced especially in the fate of the character of Mr. Farber, the movie-critic, but the strong suggestion is that the world’s welfare depends on individuals who choose to work towards a collectivist good.
So that’s the warm-fuzzy/nebulous-fuzzy message--that we’re all connected purposefully: the possibility that a writer severely blocked will meet a mystic nymph and then miraculously go on to write a book that years after his death will sit on a shelf in a kitchen in the Midwest and that a young child who reads it will be inspired to become a brilliant orator and the leader of change in the United States.
Possible?
Hell, Yeah. If we’re willing to believe this account of a Welsh lad listening to 60’s pop on the BBC being influenced by the pre WWII Italian thinker Gramsci to the extent that he names his rock band after one of Gramsci’s books--Scritti Politti--and goes from Madonna-ish and Michael Jackson-like pop arrangements to Reggae and Kraftwerk collaborations and despite dabbling in Derrida, begins to focus on the non ironic, life-affirming power of love; sure.
But back again to TLITW. It’s not a scary movie--I was startled a couple of times (but then my mom’s arrival in a room can startle me--much to her distress) and honestly, the scariest bit was recognizing the once gorgeous Sarita Chowdhury.
And I’m not interested in quibbling about whether the Lady (btw, Bryce Dallas Howard‘s flawlessly planed face is magical in the extreme) is really a girl or is in the water or out of it or flying on an eagle, or if Shyamalan is an arrogant, pretentious, film-school egotist or not. Ummm, did i mention that he has curly hair?
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Reality Strikes
Dead Lebanese civilians: The pictures are horrifying; the text angry.
The request, however, is for cessation not retaliation.
(Thanks to Clodette M. for the link. Sending you good thoughts, Clo Baby.)
The request, however, is for cessation not retaliation.
(Thanks to Clodette M. for the link. Sending you good thoughts, Clo Baby.)
THE BOY IN TEXAS
Jumps in my bed
lounges on my chest
Just talks so much
He twists in my head
While i try to catch some rest
i miss him, his touch
lounges on my chest
Just talks so much
He twists in my head
While i try to catch some rest
i miss him, his touch
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
ODIUM
In the middle
of nowhere
ambiguity always
knows the way
from fight to light
to night and then
silence again
of nowhere
ambiguity always
knows the way
from fight to light
to night and then
silence again
Friday, July 21, 2006
War Begins*
Today, on the Beeb (via NPR), I heard the mayor of a small Lebanese town say that though the population of his city had swollen by thirty percent since the start of the bombings, they have been able to manage by using local resources--such as school buildings emptied ’cos of summer vacation--and NGOs, but that the government has been slow to respond and that they have received no offers of assistance from the international community. No offers. I’m pretty sure that he stressed the word “no.”
I’m trying to imagine what that must be like to be bombed, to lose one’s home, to have to bundle up the children and what papers and provisions you can muster and forget about your job or your vacation plans or your daily gossip with the person across the street or the dish you planned to cook and just set off into the unknown with zero idea about forthcoming sanctuary or safety… or your next meal or potable water. And then no one even says sorry or offers a token of sociability.
It’s difficult to believe that people are doing it to other people.
I’m not qualified to make peace in the middle-east. But I’ve had this recurring dream since my age was in the single digits that someone would go out and mobilize peace just by the earnest, transparent simplicity of their appeal--like my man Gandhi could. It hasn’t happened so far.
I'm thinking about it again, and it’s really difficult to believe that real live people are doing it to other people. And that no one says sorry. For fuck’s sake, we expect an apology if someone so much as grazes us at the supermarket.
Perhaps that sounds naïve, perhaps that sounds like I have no idea.
Perhaps explaining it to me taxes your patience--like it did Dhivya’s when she was fifteen and writing an “O” level essay about the “reasons why” the nazis wanted to exterminate Jews. It’s because the number of Jews in the professional classes was out of proportion with their number in the general populace, she told me. It’s because they were rich and successful and it made ordinary Germans angry and jealous. I’m familiar with anger, with jealousy--it was the cognitive jump to extermination that escaped me. It was weeks later that I understood Dhivya’s insistence that anger and jealousy (A) could lead to the desire to exterminate (B). The A to B progression had been gone over, over and over again by her Sri Lankan grandmother (kind, progressive, politically well connected) who had to flee from Sinhala mobs in the 1980s.
So perhaps, since i have no personal experience of war or serious conflict, i’m talking out of my… let’s say--nether regions. But i do know that CNN’s reportage is cheerfully biased--with token articles in the vein of why can't we all just get along without any authentic analysis. So, i’d like to help put Counterpunch’s articles on record. See Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault and Israel, the US, and the New Orientalism .
Also, this interesting documentary on the Western media’s partisanship and a video by hip-hop Palestinian group DAM.
______________________________________________
*with a "W" as AliG would say.
I’m trying to imagine what that must be like to be bombed, to lose one’s home, to have to bundle up the children and what papers and provisions you can muster and forget about your job or your vacation plans or your daily gossip with the person across the street or the dish you planned to cook and just set off into the unknown with zero idea about forthcoming sanctuary or safety… or your next meal or potable water. And then no one even says sorry or offers a token of sociability.
It’s difficult to believe that people are doing it to other people.
I’m not qualified to make peace in the middle-east. But I’ve had this recurring dream since my age was in the single digits that someone would go out and mobilize peace just by the earnest, transparent simplicity of their appeal--like my man Gandhi could. It hasn’t happened so far.
I'm thinking about it again, and it’s really difficult to believe that real live people are doing it to other people. And that no one says sorry. For fuck’s sake, we expect an apology if someone so much as grazes us at the supermarket.
Perhaps that sounds naïve, perhaps that sounds like I have no idea.
Perhaps explaining it to me taxes your patience--like it did Dhivya’s when she was fifteen and writing an “O” level essay about the “reasons why” the nazis wanted to exterminate Jews. It’s because the number of Jews in the professional classes was out of proportion with their number in the general populace, she told me. It’s because they were rich and successful and it made ordinary Germans angry and jealous. I’m familiar with anger, with jealousy--it was the cognitive jump to extermination that escaped me. It was weeks later that I understood Dhivya’s insistence that anger and jealousy (A) could lead to the desire to exterminate (B). The A to B progression had been gone over, over and over again by her Sri Lankan grandmother (kind, progressive, politically well connected) who had to flee from Sinhala mobs in the 1980s.
So perhaps, since i have no personal experience of war or serious conflict, i’m talking out of my… let’s say--nether regions. But i do know that CNN’s reportage is cheerfully biased--with token articles in the vein of why can't we all just get along without any authentic analysis. So, i’d like to help put Counterpunch’s articles on record. See Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault and Israel, the US, and the New Orientalism .
Also, this interesting documentary on the Western media’s partisanship and a video by hip-hop Palestinian group DAM.
______________________________________________
*with a "W" as AliG would say.
Me(n) and Science; (Wo)men in Science
I’m awful.
When people assume that I’m nothing but/just/always an airhead, I secretly enjoy their confusion when I tell them that actually, I’m a rather brainy graduate student. Sometimes, I wish I could step it up--truthfully--and tell them I have arcane scientific knowledge--that I’m a string theorist, say--and that’s about the only time I fancy being a scientist. In high school, confronted by the embarrassing bounty of my grades--even in subjects I had no love for, taught by teachers I had zero crushes on-- my guidance counsellor dutifully suggested med school. My mom and I started to giggle when we heard that--apart from the science thing, my tolerance for blood has always been somewhat ridiculously low.
So, unlike the boys in this house--Li’l A, who goes around labeling all his typical seven-year-old's projects “experiments” and Big A, whose favorite line these days is, “trust me, I’m a scientist”--I’ve never aspired to science. But I know bunches of women who do. And bunches more who’re forced to give up because being a woman and a scientist--even in this century--is a considerable battle. It is on their account that I bridle when someone pulls a Larry Summers. And it’s on their account that I’m thoroughly fascinated by the testimony of Ben Barres. Because Ben--he knows exactly how it feels to be a woman in the sciences.
He used to be one. Pre-transgendering, Ben Barres was Barbara Barres and you can read more about how he’s better regarded and more respected now that he’s a male scientist--here.
(Thanks to Susan Chacko for links.)
When people assume that I’m nothing but/just/always an airhead, I secretly enjoy their confusion when I tell them that actually, I’m a rather brainy graduate student. Sometimes, I wish I could step it up--truthfully--and tell them I have arcane scientific knowledge--that I’m a string theorist, say--and that’s about the only time I fancy being a scientist. In high school, confronted by the embarrassing bounty of my grades--even in subjects I had no love for, taught by teachers I had zero crushes on-- my guidance counsellor dutifully suggested med school. My mom and I started to giggle when we heard that--apart from the science thing, my tolerance for blood has always been somewhat ridiculously low.
So, unlike the boys in this house--Li’l A, who goes around labeling all his typical seven-year-old's projects “experiments” and Big A, whose favorite line these days is, “trust me, I’m a scientist”--I’ve never aspired to science. But I know bunches of women who do. And bunches more who’re forced to give up because being a woman and a scientist--even in this century--is a considerable battle. It is on their account that I bridle when someone pulls a Larry Summers. And it’s on their account that I’m thoroughly fascinated by the testimony of Ben Barres. Because Ben--he knows exactly how it feels to be a woman in the sciences.
He used to be one. Pre-transgendering, Ben Barres was Barbara Barres and you can read more about how he’s better regarded and more respected now that he’s a male scientist--here.
(Thanks to Susan Chacko for links.)
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all the things
I managed to do all the things today: I'm mostly packed (carry-on only for two weeks). Took Nu to see Sinners again per request. (My TH...
