Twenty-seven dresses

There is a certain type of woman who considers sacrifice to be a type of savings bond. Each sacrifice goes into an account, and one day the saintly woman who has sacrificed so much will be able to "cash in" and buy...what exactly? Well, my guess is that these women aren't sure....good karma? Brownie points? Wings? Halos?

If the world is a buffet, these women are the waitresses. It doesn't matter that a buffet does not require waitresses—these women aren't here to provide, they are here to please.

In the movie “27 Dresses”, Jane pleases. Jane ensures the happiness of those around her. She does so through relieving her friends and loved ones from as much responsibility as possible, freeing everyone but herself from general obligation. Jane is Responsible. Jane makes it possible for Everyone Else to Be Happy. Jane says YES to EVERYTHING. If it weren't for the fact that Jane fights with her love interest in the film, Jane would be very annoying.

As the central protagonist in "27 Dresses", pleasing Jane has found the perfect outlet for her quiet desperation to sustain the happiness of those around her. Weddings. As the perfect bridesmaid, she can coordinate, regulate, accommodate, and finally observe a day of perfect love and bliss--and get some credit for helping to "make it happen".

“This is your day”, Jane tells each of her bride friends. Jane does all she can to make the day perfect for the bride, from wearing an awful bridesmaid gown to caulking a fountain to holding a the bride's dress while she urinates.

Of course, Jane has a personal narrative to justify her "need" to self-sacrifice. Jane explains to the cinematic audience that she feels obligated to impersonate her beloved mother, who died when she was a child. The early death of a parent allows a child to idealize that parent, and Jane wants to be as heavenly as the ideal that she holds of her mother. So Jane acts as a stand-in angel for anyone in need, most notably her “orphaned” baby sister Tess.

But Jane is not as self-less as she seems. In the film's opening, Jane compares helping a bride on her “special day” to Picasso's painting or Mozart's composition. Jane works to sustain her reputation as a reliable, dependable, beloved bridesmaid and best friend. She likes the praise she gets from being the perfect sidekick, the saint that will sacrifice her time, money and effort to bring a few moments of bliss to a friend, neighbor, or family member. For Jane, self-sacrifice is an art form, a master-piece that increases in value the longer that it goes unnoticed. Self-sacrifice is more than a simple savings bond that will one day bring her accolades, halos, brownie points, and good karma.

Most importantly, and despite hard evidence to the contrary, Jane believes in karma. She believes that as long as she does all she can to ensure a perfect wedding for each and every one of her friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, she can hope to earn her own perfect wedding. In her mind, Jane has already planned her “special day”. Secretly, Jane looks forward to a wedding with her perfect dress, the dress worn by her mother, and her perfect groom, her millionaire boss (on whom she has a secret crush), at the perfect place, the boathouse in Central Park, where her parents were married.

Then Jane's perfect guy falls in love with her self-centered little sister.

Jane watches as her sister gets the guy, the wedding dress, and even the boathouse. She forces a saintly smile as she gives up the future that she's secretly planned, the future for which she's consistently sacrificed, and the future which, she feels, she has more than earned. Inside her head, Jane is screaming in anger and frustration. It's as if the bouquet that she's carefully positioned herself to catch has instead been laid in the lap of her careless and spoiled sister.

The plot twist is then that Jane must rearrange her expectations. With a little help from some cynical friends, she must realize that the future is something that she must make for herself, not something that she is awarded by others.

I like this romantic comedy. It is simple, but the characters (rather, caricatures) are real enough. The main character, Jane, is a woman who martyrs herself regularly. In the course of her cinematic story, she realizes that no one really appreciates a saint. It may be nice (and cost-efficient) to have a friend or an assistant who never says no and who is always willing to sacrifice her time and effort for the health and happiness of her colleagues and random acquaintances. But this person, this martyr-saint-friend-assistant is usually rewarded with more demands rather than less.

In the movie, Jane has to realize that she has to make what she wants possible and stop waiting for people to reward her constant sacrifices. It's a lesson that a lot of Janes out there could probably learn.

Twilight

The American culture worships youth, beauty, and deadly force. Is it any wonder our newest romantic hero is a vampire?

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series has released a film version of the first book. The purpose of this first film is to introduce the series’ central relationship: Buffy and Angel…er, sorry, Bella and Edward.

Bella and Edward’s relationship in the movie spans every over-told teen romance. The two travel from Romeo and Juliet to Pride and Prejudice to Buffy and Angel/Angelus. The movie is a rollercoaster of painful teenage angst and hormonal highs. Is every teenage relationship so manic-depressive?

Bella is Buffy sans the paranormal powers. She is every high school heroine: smart, popular and skinny with perfect skin. Her parents are loving but not overly involved in her life. She drives her own truck and has multicultural middle class friends.

Edward Cullens is a modern James Dean. Complete with leather jacket and sporty car, Edward is swift, sexy, lethal and obsessed with the beautiful Bella. Like the haughty Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, he hangs back from the common crowd and is regularly rude to Bella. Also like Mr. Darcy, Edward is incredibly rich and powerful, and he is mortified by his uncontrollable attraction to the mere mortal Bella.

But Bella, of course, understands Edward, even as he struggles to understand himself. Despite being almost 100 years old, Edward is a relatively normal teenage boy. He is over-sexed with a terrible taste for bloodshed.

In the tradition of teen romance and gender stereotypes everywhere, Bella can arouse and curb Edward’s lust for blood and…other things. She civilizes him while evoking passions that are far from civilized. Bella is charmingly naïve about her effect on Edward. She truly “loves” him and seeks only to keep him close. When Bella becomes a pawn in a violent vampiric game, Edward is both her savoir and the cause of her eternal entrapment in the underworld of the undead. The scene is set for movies two, three, four, five…the undead provide an unlimited cinematic franchise.

I actually liked this film. A barely restrained demon lover…lust, blood, violence, eternal youth and beauty…this is a movie that proves sex sells. Or rather, the constant suggestion of sex.

The author of the book, Stephanie Meyers, graduated with a major in writing from Brigham Young University, a strict Mormon college located in the mild-mannered Midwest. After Twilight and television hits like Big Love, Weeds, and Desperate Housewives, one begins to wonder if middle America’s notorious sexual repression might be worth the rather exciting fantasies that are rendered by its literary and cinematic residents.

I am a fan of pop aka “bubblegum” culture. Unlike “high art”, which is often hyperbolic and didactic, pop art like Twilight is spontaneous and honest in its mass appeal. High art is usually ahead of or behind the times. High art tells us something that we will realize only after we mature as a society, or it reminds us of a historical cultural flaw. Pop culture is current. It is a modern reflection of what we want now, rather than a discourse about how we should be.

And who doesn’t want to be young, beautiful, powerful, and in mutual lust?

Babylon A.D.

Babylon AD is a hasty US interpretation of a complicated French novel.

The last sentence makes further comment unnecessary.

But for fun, let’s go on. Vin Diesel plays a cynical mercenary, Toorop, living in an Eastern Europe conjured up by a mind that did not predict a thawing of the Cold War. Hobbes could not write a bleaker picture of human survival—life in Europe and Asia is short, brutish, and painful. The common masses fall into one of three categories: mercenaries that kill for a living, terrorists that kill for a cause, or those “lucky” enough to survive in the resulting chaos.

Ruthless dictators, insane scientists crazy with technological power, or the saintly and sadistic leaders of fundamental religious orders rule the more nuanced elite of the world. The dictators and the scientists are men. The religious rulers are women. A prominent and peaceful religious order is the Neolytes, not to be confused with the more promiscuous neophytes. Toorop has been offered entry to the one national oasis of modern peace and diplomacy; his old home turf the United States.

One wonders if this is where the American movie first begins to diverge from the French novel.

To re-enter his old home, Toorop must deliver two neolyte sisters safely to New York. The more important sister is a brilliant and tortured beauty, a virgin pregnant with unknown potential. Sister personifies goodness and light. Need her the impact of her multifaceted charms on the jaded Toorop be predicted?

No, and, according to the moviemakers, neither must it be explained. As soon as Toorop picks up the ladies, the film spirals into a complicated montage of violence, interspersed with moments of the Toorop team bonding. There is some vague hinting at international conspiracies, one wonders how many, and from what countries? The only clear country seems to be New York, or maybe it’s the United States?

Back to the guns and the guts and the desperate refugees.

The film has a French director, but decidedly USA editing, acting, and marketing appeal.

Throughout our mutual history, the French and the Americans have studied the same philosophers and political theories with entirely different results. Both nations hail Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Benjamin Franklin. Both nations staged mass rebellions against monarchies and religions. And both nations mock the other for screwing it up.

I think in this particular interpretation, the French may have the upper hand.

The Station Agent

Sometimes, we get tired of people.

We get tired of their looks, their comments, and their impractical demands on our time and energy. We crave isolation. We treat people with an obvious distaste and irritation. We’re not impolite—that would only encourage people to notice us. Instead, we are discrete in our distance, withdrawing through refusing to interact with others more than is absolutely necessary.
In “The Station Agent”, Finbar McBride is constantly tired of people.

Fin, a dwarf, is a lightning-rod for the worst kind of attention from people. Either he is completely overlooked by the oblivious “normal-sized” adults, or he is gaped at in awe or amusement. As a result, Fin is generally tired of people. He avoids them when he can and ignores them when he can’t. He travels by foot over empty rail-road tracks and reads through his meals. He offers others’ inquiries nothing more than a pointed yes or no. He works hidden in the back room of a train hobby store in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Fin’s profession and his passion are trains. His favorite train is the Zephyr. The Zephyr is the train on which travelers “Discover America”, riding through sweeping Mid-Western Mountain passes. After an odd inheritance in “The Station Agent”, Fin himself is a zephyr, a small breeze blowing into Newfoundland, New Jersey.

Fin, through his general uniqueness, acts as a muted alarm clock in the sleepy town. He wakes some of Newfoundland’s more miserable inhabitants out of their self-induced self-pity. At the same time, because the town is small, Fin “fits”. After the initial shock of his size, he becomes, if not dull, then common. He no longer attracts onlookers at the convenience store or shouts at the library. He is quickly absorbed by Newfoundland, no longer noticed just for his physical stature.
Fin is not the only one in Newfoundland who finds people and their short-sighted perceptions exhausting. Olivia Harris escaped to the town to hide from her old life in Princeton. Olivia was the wealthy, well-educated and doting mother of a little boy. Her son died in an unexpected accident. Olivia is tired of people. She’s tired of sympathy that offers no relief, and sorrow that is never-ending.

Olivia and Fin get their daily café con leche from the local hot dog stand on wheels, “Gorgeous Franks”. Joe, the vendor, moved from Manhattan to look after his ailing father and the family business. Neither is doing very well. Joe is tired not of people but of the place in which his people have put him—in the middle of nowhere, alone, and bored. Joe never gets tired of people because, 6 foot giant that he is, Joe tends to overlook what others might term common courtesy and decorum. Joe, stereotypically Cuban, has little sense of distance or “space”. We’re all in this together, he figures, might as well enjoy it—together.

Largely through the efforts of Joe, the three become companions. Eventually, they become friends. Olivia and Fin learn from Joe that loneliness, while sometimes a relief, is not as much fun as being alone together. Joe learns to value silence even when surrounded by people.
Trains, Fin observes, once connected the United States of America. They were an interactive form of travel that brought together individuals from across the country, if only for a short time. In the modern era of America, in which most households have more cars than drivers, train travel is a relic of a more communicative country.

Station agents acted as the human spikes of the railroad industry. They met the trains, organized the passengers, handled the luggage and linked the travelers to the towns through which they traveled.

The film seems to suggest that we are all someone’s station agent, a post that requires maintenance and respect. Our friends may think that they are tired of people and want to pass through unnoticed and unmolested. But a good station agent still meets them, if only to check that his friend is okay.

I just love D!rt

Truth is a bitch.

Lucy Spiller is the harbinger of the hell that is Reality, at least Reality when exposed to the derision of the public. Lucy is the editor of D!rtNow magazine, the celebrity tell-all tabloid that writes the images that rule Los Angeles.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, the “power of judgment rests on potential agreement with others”. The public agrees with D!rtNow, making Lucy the Queen of Judgement. If Truth is a matter of perception, then D!rtNow is the only perception that matters to the public. Thus D!rtNow equals truth, or the only truth that matters.

Lucy uses her power to topple action heroes for their hidden homosexuality, expose drug-addicted divas and make celebrities out of murder victims. For Lucy, the story is what’s important, what matters, and what sells. She has no patience for understanding or personal concern. D!rtNow deals in stereotypes and sensationalism.

That’s why the magazine is so successful.

D!rt is about more than just the magazine, however. The magazine’s success is about more than profit—its about power. And D!rt is about more than the sad state of celebrity in Hollywood, its about characters.

Lucy is the centre of the series, the epicenter of D!rtNow’s drive and dedication. Lucy is not a craven psycho-harpy. She’s the Hillary Clinton of the tabloids—broadly misunderstood and unwisely underestimated. She learned the LA gossip game before anyone quite realized she’d been allowed to play. Lucy is not out for revenge; she’s out for to keep her magazine on top. If that means giving up a few false ideals, well, at least she’s not afraid to separate fact from fiction.

In her blind allegiance to her job, Lucy’s sole softspot is for her schizophrenic and brilliant photographer, Don Konkey. Don can see truth easily; it’s reality he has trouble with. His photographs never fail to flaunt the facts that others try to hide. That’s why Lucy loves him. But Don can’t trust his own eyesight. He sees dead people and chats with imaginary friends. Just as Lucy uses Don to get at the truth, Don uses Lucy to “get” reality.

Lucy is played by the tiny, tightly wound and muscle bound Courtney Cox. Cox is the perfect opposite to the softer, sweeter Willa, a novice in the gossip game. Willa is learning fast, though, and she is fast-changing from a beauty to another bitch. From Lucy, Willa learns to use the secret self-indulgences of others to negotiate for more lucrative personal information. The more private the dirt, the more public the story. But Willa hasn’t quite killed the conscience that Lucy abandoned long ago (as a socially-constructed cover-up for the Truth). Willa is vulnerable because she can’t quite give up her attachment to a positive public opinion.

Rather like Lucy’s lover and celebrity gossip leak, Holt. Holt is THE leading man in Hollywood. Lucy put him there, and he is attracted to both her power and her complete indifference to private pain made public. Holt is a modern Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. He is a man of Great Power attracted to both the Dark Side and the Light. With Lucy, he can have both.

In a Hollywood that made scandal synonymous with success, Lucy is a fictional Bonnie Fuller. Fuller is known for upping the sales statistics for such prestigious rags as UsWeekly. She showcases sex because sex sells. The state of the literary market is not her concern—Lucy plays it as it lays. With the same grim gumption exhibited by power players like the surprisingly successful Sarah Palin, Lucy isn’t out to “heal the world”.

She’s out to shape it.




More D!rt

Kingdom Come-Religion and Rituals

Kingdome Come is a comedy about relationships, rituals, and religion.

When Bud Slocomb dies, it is without an outpouring of pain and sorrow. He was, in the words of his patient and Christian—in the Old Testament sense—wife, “mean and surly”. No one liked Brother Bud; he practiced a hard kind of discipline with his family that eluded his own behavior. Brother Bud was a drunk, a delinquent father, a poor neighbor, and a nasty brother. His death leaves his family confused and irritated. Bud’s funeral comes to be seen by his family members as a means of achieving the closure that Bud’s life and death refused them.

Despite Bud’s poor example, his sons seem to be, if not pillars in the community, functioning adults. Ray Bud, the new family patriarch, is a mechanic and a reformed alcoholic. He is the returned prodigal son. His wife, Lucille, is what Ray Bud’s long-suffering mother might have been if her husband had believed in reform. Lucille is a fixer, the small-town version of the Biblical Martha, a woman who has faith that with enough patience and forbearance, even her infertility will in time be resolved by God or modern medicine. Lucille harbors the harmonious fantasies of small town America that helped make Norman Rockwell famous. Because she is kind and helpful, members of Lucille’s family and community support these fantasies as long as Lucille is in the same room.

Then there is Ray Bud’s useless and extremely fertile little brother Junior and his wife, Charisse. This couple peaked in high school. They have since moved from expensive dreams to dreams that are simply costly and costing the whole family as Junior loses money in one ridiculous business scheme after another. Small towns are full of empty entrepreneurs that never quite admit defeat, and Junior is a perfect example of such a hopeful failure.

Throughout the funeral, Charisse beats Junior over the head with his most recent financial fiasco, the infamous “parking lot polishing” venture. However, her real rage stems from Junior’s extramarital affair with the local tramp. Junior, in a rare moment of honesty with himself and his brother, admits that his adultery arose more from his need to be seen as a successful “man” than from any lack of love for his long-suffering wife and family. Junior explains that his beloved Charisse has witnessed too many of his failures.

The last of the central Slocomb family members in the film include the deceased’s sister, the religious zealot Marguerite, and her aberrant youngest son, Royce, the one “still” not in the penitentiary. Marguerite fully expects Royce, whom she refers to as “demon spawn”, to join his big brother swiftly in jail. She constantly condemns Royce to a life of crime, despite her best efforts to cleanse him with a combination of maternal guilt and shrilly-preached Gospel.

It’s easy to understand Marguerite’s frustration; her brother, her oldest son, and her youngest son have lived lives in opposition to the Bible upon which she claims to base her own behavior. As the Slocombs come together to bury one of their more difficult family members, it becomes apparent that it was never a Biblical God holding the family together. Rather, a stubborn mixture of obligation and responsibility compel the antagonistic relatives to come together and bury their much-hated deceased. The only family member free of these burdensome emotions is the rich cousin Teddy Wayne, mentioned as the family’s sole financial success.

The conspicuously absent Teddy Wayne is represented by his coiffed and cared-for wife who admits that her marriage is a sham—neither she nor her husband are faithful to each other. It is his wealth that frees Teddy Wayne from familial obligations—he doesn’t need to love his wife and he doesn’t need to bury his uncle. He can afford to buy his way out of family obligation. The rest of the Slocombs are stuck struggling over which coffin to bury Bud in—the “Heavenly Express” or the “Celestial Send-up”.

This is a movie about a small-town America that is often ridiculed for its religion and ignored for its lack of cultural influence. This is not a movie about the One Who Escaped the small town, a theme that follows many movies exploring small-town America. It’s not about a Prometheus who brought the wisdom of the external world to the small-minded small town inhabitants. Nor is this a film about the wise small town bringing common sense and down-home wisdom to the wider world. (If it was, we would have met Teddy Wayne.)

This is a movie about a small town, a small community, and the community’s reaction to a death of a community member. It is a movie about relationships and rituals, neither of which are concluded with any kind of resolution.

The Slocomb family demonstrates that most rituals, from funerals to marriages, are predicated on a show of emotions that may not actually exist. These emotions, such as love, grief, and anger, may have happened, once, and they may make brief appearances during the rituals meant to honor them. But these are not permanent emotions anymore than there exist permanent highs from either Royce “demon spawn’s” drugs or Marguerite’s Gospel moments of glory. What is permanent, the Slocombs agree, are the relationships that make the periods of emotion possible.

The rituals provide a way to remember and appreciate the family and community members that make these relationships possible. Burying his father gives Ray Bud something to do while he works out how he feels about his father’s death. It gives his family something to do while they work out how they feel about death in general. Rituals help people to act in times when action seems impossible, and religion gives the Slocombs something to say when words are hard to find. God, whatever it may be to the different Slocomb family members, gives each one someone to talk to when they cannot speak to each other.

Ritual can be big, as with a funeral, or small, as with a prayer. It can be destructive, like Ray Bud’s alcoholism, or productive, as with Lucille’s desire to have a family with children. The relationships sustained by the Slocombs determine which rituals they will keep and which they will discard. Teddy Wayne discards his relationship with his wife and family; Ray Bud gives up liquor. One need only review the Biblical themes hidden in the comedy to determine which Slocomb is the richer—according to the relationships, rituals, and religion emphasized in this movie.

Hancock

“It s not a crime to be an asshole, but it’s counterproductive.”

Hancock opens with a car chase. The police and criminals wreak havoc on the highways outside Los Angeles. Hancock, the frustrated and lonely anti-hero played by Will Smith, awakes from a hang-over, curses a freckle-faced kid (who swears right back), and flies to save the day with a surly disregard for any of the individuals or public property involved. Criminals, crime fighters, and LA citizens are outraged by Hancock’s arrogance and attitude. Hancock is angry that the gunmen shattered his liquor bottle.

Cut to a boardroom where the corporate heads of a lucrative pharmaceutical or “health management” corporation are considering a new public relations strategy. Ray, a public relations professional with a conscience, played by the fresh-faced Jason Bateman, claims it would improve the corporate brand to donate needed medicine to the poor. Give away pharmaceuticals for free. The board members gape at each other in confusion.

The company leaders obviously don’t understand the concept of charitable contribution. Considering all the bad press out about “Big pharma”, the lawsuits, the litigation, and the cover-ups, the corporate lack of concern for the financially unfortunate health care consumer elicits ironic laughs from any movie audience familiar with American health care concerns. Ray leaves the corporate headquarters unemployed.

The movie’s spiral of scorn for others continues. Hancock saves Ray from an oncoming train. Once again, the save is sarcastic, costly and messy. Spectators complain that the superhero could easily have done better. Ray may be alive, but the train is wrecked, cars are totaled, and public is pissed at Hancock.

Everyone’s a critic, Hancock gripes, descending into vicious name-calling with his disapproving public. Ever the angelic optimist, Ray thanks Hancock for saving his life and chastises the critical crowd. Hancock, surprised that Ray has commended rather than criticized his work, enters into a relationship with Ray and his family. This relationship ultimately leads to Hancock’s attempted rehabilitation and reform as a superhero and as a role model.

The movie’s plot is initially easy to follow. Hancock’s problems stem from his isolation. If Hancock admits that he might want public appreciation, he’ll lose his inherent superiority over everybody else. Hancock is a superhero, and thus inherently superior to everybody else. He doesn’t “need” the public to admire him.

What Hancock wants is a different story. Ray, armed with his positive and pro-active PR readiness, is prepared to help Hancock realize what he wants (public love), but first he has to get Hancock to admit to his own need for positive feedback.

The political implications in the premise are perfect; Americans love the heroic vigilante who throws public opinion to the wolves. Do the Right Thing, and by the end of the movie everyone will love you. (They just have to crucify you first.)

If an individual is really independent, than s/he needs no one else to recognize or even respect that independence. Requiring recognition would undermine said independence. Better to be an antagonistic asshole so that everybody knows that you don’t need ‘em. Right, Hancock?

But no man is an island. Plus, Ray reasons, being an asshole is counterproductive. A little social decorum improves public perception and leads to broad appreciation for Hancock’s work. Hancock discovers that he likes to have people like him.

Then there’s the plot twist. Hancock’s isolation may have something to do with his strength. If he is vulnerable to such human foibles as emotions, such as admiration, appreciation, and love, he may be no more than human after all. And what use does the world have for another human? Wouldn’t the public prefer a superhero, even if he were a lonely old asshole? Wouldn't the world?