movies

I actually haven't seen that many movies over the past few weeks -- too much else going on. But Curtis's comments about Super Size Me , along with many conversations I had about it while I was on my trip, reminded me I wanted to write a few notes about it. My expectations were probably too high for the film -- you already know basically the whole thing before you go in there -- and it's been at least 15 years since I ate anything at a fast food restaurant, so I'm not really directly affected by the topic. My impression is that the film (like a lot of documentaries) is preaching to the choir anyway -- the people who probably should see this film aren't likely to. I enjoyed watching the physical, visible changes as he went through the experiment -- and his doctors' surprise at how rapidly his body fell apart. But a lot of the film was repetitive -- as well as somewhat mean-spirited and simplistic in its critique -- lots of unnecessary shots of obese people in bathing suits for "humor" -- implying that all obese people eat fast food all the time, which isn't actually the case. I'm all for critiqueing the fast food industry, the meat industry, the dairy industry -- but this film isn't quite smart enough to fully make those arguments. Read Fast Food Nation or John Robbins's May All be Fed.

I also recently saw Venus Boyz, a wonderful documentary that's just been released on DVD. It follows a number of drag king performers -- some performance scenes, though much of the film is more interested in interviews, and behind-the-scenes. Some are straight; some are lesbians; some identify as transgender; some refuse any gender or sexual identity. All are amazing, charismatic, fascinating artists who deconstruct and challenge most ideas about gender and sexuality. (I've seen Mo B. Dick perform live, and some others -- definitely worth seeing if you can -- loads of fun and simultaneously intellectually powerful.) Includes some coverage of Diane Torr's Drag King Workshops -- which I think also appeared in one of the early seasons of Sex in the City (I've seen only a few episodes but somehow got to see that one)-- very interesting to see how easy it is to change someone's gender appearance. And for many women it's really transformative to learn male gestures, etc -- because it's all about taking up space in the world. Del LaGrace Volcano gets lots of screen time -- I knew his photographs, but was really charmed and impressed by his interviews in this film. Smart, thought-provoking film -- and a good counterpoint to Paris is Burning.

Finally: The Day After Tomorrow. What's not to like, if you like B-style movies: heroic nerds, weather disaster, post-apocalyptic survival, and overstated themes? But seriously, it was really refreshing to see all the Hollywood spectacle marshalled in service of ideas I believe in about preserving the environment and the current administration's culpability. Who cares if it wasn't totally believable -- this is the opposite of Super Size Me, in that I imagine some people will see this who otherwise wouldn't be thinking very much about the planet. (And, as a print culture historian: how many other impassioned speeches about the importance of the Gutenberg Bible are there in film? or action films set in libraries? Thumbs up for that, even if they did have to burn a few books.)

INTJ redux

My Bloginality is INTJ. No big surprise there. But what is interesting is to glance through the comments column -- tons of blogging INTJs have taken the test on this site. There are definitely some Myers-Briggs types who like tests better than others. Based on my reading of blogs, my guess would be that there are many INTJs on the internet. (thinking about who has the patience, interest, time for this sort of thing.) There's no way to have a more scientific survey, I suppose, but it'd be interesting to know how that will change/is already changing for younger people -- for whom technology is harnessed in the service of social interaction rather than substituting for it... (phones, text messaging, dodgeball, friendster, etc). Using computers means something very different now than it did 20, 10, even 5 years ago.
On a semi-related point, I read an interesting piece in Wired on the plane about the online gaming industry focused not on gambling or multi-user roleplaying, but on plain vanilla things like checkers and hearts. I've always found those things incredibly addictive -- a quick game of reversi on yahoo (what was called Othello in the board game) is excellent for a 5 minute break during a long writing session. But apparently there are retired folks busy playing for 6-8 hours a day. That's where the internet is really changing the daily texture of ordinary people's lives. I've never had much patience for social critics who said the internet would be the death of social interaction -- and this shows how social connections actually grow with new technology. To be able to play a game of checkers any time, with someone anywhere across the globe -- that's cool (albeit in a subtle French Vanilla kind of way).

rental car radio

During my trip I was forced to listen to a lot of Midwestern radio -- the rental car had a CD player but now that I carry all my music on my iRiver, that was no help for me. So I spent a lot of time in Illinois and Indiana hitting the "seek" button.

Today's Christian pop music has become very skilled at the chameleon effect -- I'd hear something and think "ok, this is Sheryl Crow-ish" and listen for a minute before realizing it was about Jesus. And then there was Christian death metal music, standard guitar rock, etc. I have not yet heard Christian house music but I'm sure it's out there. (not that it'd be played on Midwestern radio -- I was astonished by the lack of any music with a decent beat).

There was a very weird timewarp effect. I kept hearing songs that I thought had long since fallen out of rotation. And these weren't retro stations, either. Among the memorable ones: "Ebony and Ivory," "Aqualung," and "Freebird." I am not kidding.

Unbelievable but true.

I'm really glad to be home.

reconnecting

after I got back from my travels late Thurs night, our DSL was out -- network circuit problems in our geographical area -- didn't get restored until this morning -- only now do I realize just how anxiety-provoking it was to be unconnected. Especially since during my visit to my mom's I could only get on for brief bits of time -- I haven't really read anything online for a week. Much catching up to do ...

random misc

I saw an ad two days ago for "extreme whitening" toothpaste, whose flavor was "empowermint." After that, where else can "X language" go?

Even post offices in small towns don't have appropriate signage. I guess the assumption is that if you're driving there, you already know where to turn. I keep winding up driving off the edge of town by mistake and having to loop back through what seems awfully countryish.

I've had to make some rules for my mom, which she keeps trying to circumvent. I've said that she cannot move with her:
(1) scrap paper
(2) broken items (dishes, vases, lamps)
(3) pieces of cardboard, string, or cloth that are not actually being used for packing.

Does that seem so unreasonable? I'm not even going to be here for the truly miscellaneous stuff...

This is my last day of packing my mom's house. Then tomorrow I get to go visit some old friends for two days. And then finally I get to go home. I'll be glad to be back with my family, my routine, my computer. Maybe my brain cells will reawaken.

in the middle of the country

I spent yesterday travelling -- I am visiting my mother in Midwest College Town for a few days of heavy lifting. I am here to pack up her house -- she is moving to a smaller place without stairs, which will be much easier for her to manage. But she has not moved in over 40 years. You cannot imagine how much stuff there is to weed out and pack up. And she's deeply attached to most of it.

a few notes from the drive from the airport (about 40 miles) -- visible from the highway were:
17 churches
5 church billboards
4 tanning salons
4 gun shops
1 Starbucks

Starbucks is a really new feature in this landscape -- I was really surprised to see it there.

life imitates fiction

Thanks to Curtis who pointed me to the article at Boing Boing (which I'm really going to have to start reading more regularly) about Pringles preparing to put advertisements on individual potato chips. I feel like I have read something like this in a novel by Gibson or Sterling. Certainly in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age , which I highly recommend for anyone interested in the fate of print culture, animated advertising crawls on every surface and holographically chases passerby in exactly the ways some people predict RFID tracking may do in the near future. I just can't remember whether the ads were so literally ingested. Talk about cultural interpellation.

It also seems especially weird that the first advertising planned for Pringles is for a Trivial Pursuit game. Which will probably subconsciously appeal to people -- if you eat the facts, then maybe you will learn them.

It might be interesting to go back to late 80s science fiction and see what was being suggested for the "future." Remember when disposable cameras first came out? All I could think about when I first saw them on display in Target was The Man Who Fell to Earth, a great Nicolas Roeg cult fave of my teenage years. David Bowie plays the alien who comes to Earth in search of a way to bring water back to his home planet. He's got more advanced technology than Earthlings, and leaks it out bit by bit to raise a fortune to try to build a spaceship that can take him back. One of the key things he introduces were disposable cameras. There's much more in the film -- including one of the most memorable scenes I know of involving contact lenses...

naming

Somewhere, I know there are people whose entire job consists of appropriately naming things: products, streets, television shows, etc. Sometimes that seems like a fantasy career but other times I just have to wonder what they think they are doing. My yoga studio is in Wealthy Cultured Neighborhood, which is adjacent to Private University #1. Some of the people who live there are connected with Private University #1 (since their faculty make way more than those of us at Large Urban U) but others are the upper economic percentile of youngish professionals who are establishing families. It's maybe not as wealthy as some other neighborhoods in the city, but prides itself on the university atmosphere which is supposed to waft over the boulevards, infusing everything with cultural capital equivalent to the financial capital evidenced in the large houses and immaculate lawns. (In my neighborhood, most houses have 1 or more dogs, many of which are German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and Pit Bulls, often kept in the yard behind a fence to scare off intruders before they come too close. In Wealthy Cultured Neighborhood there are no fences, and no dogs visible. All you see are lawns and little signs that say "no dogs" with a slash through a picture of a pooping pooch. The security systems are silent, invisible, omnipresent.)

So, anyway, on the way to yoga I keep driving past a site of new home construction: a group of what they're calling "carriage houses" arranged around a central green space. Basically these are townhomes built over and around garages. What causes me to notice this particular site: it's going to be called Cheyne Walk. Now, Cheyne Walk, a street in the Chelsea neighborhood of London, is famous for many of its former residents -- but the one that comes first to my mind is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who lived at #16 for roughly ten years after his wife's death in 1862 -- ten years of incredible artistic productivity in both painting and poetry. Rossetti is one of the greatest poets and artists of the 19th century. He's also famous for an eccentric bohemian lifestyle: chloral addiction, numerous mistresses, exotic animals in the house, and much carousing. Hardly the sort of association you'd expect in Wealthy Cultured Neighborhood. So I have to wonder, do they have any idea who lived at Cheyne Walk? Or is it appealing just because it's a London street name?

absence

There's nothing like manual labor to remove all publishable thoughts from your brain. I've been reading blogs, but just couldn't come up with anything to add to the overwhelming amount of stuff out there.

Though it was satisfying to calculate that my gf and I purchased, hauled, carried, and installed close to 2,000 pounds of cement blocks over the weekend. Now the yard really should be escape-proof, even for terriers who like to dig.

create your own avatar

thanks to scribblingwoman for this link to online software to design your own avatar bit by bit. Creepy fun to look over pages of mouths, noses, etc...

zing in a glass

beverage of the day: green tea lemonade. (if you just soak the tea bags in cool water for a while you get a light, non-bitter tea -- then just add lemon juice and sugar)

question for the week

Last Thursday I talked to my colleague R. We both were up for tenure this year, and we both got it -- his case was more painful than mine, because he'd actually been up last year, but due to procedural mishandling by malevolent administrators, went up again this year. We both made it, which is great.

He asked me whether I'd been congratulated on this achievement. Pointing out what is an odd social failing in a department that actually is fairly civil (as English depts go). In some past years, the chair has announced tenurings at our last faculty meeting of the year; that didn't happen this year, I think as an oversight rather than deliberate snubbing. But in my dept people routinely manage to organize baby showers for faculty and staff; we can't manage a little reception, or even an email announcement, for people who've gotten tenure? (and don't even get me started on the heteronormativity of quasi-mandatory showers -- )

I'm not really concerned for myself personally, as I actually don't desire the limelight. To be fair, my chair said congratulations one on one to me when I told him I'd received the provost's letter (the final stage of decision-making at Large Urban U.). Those colleagues I'm close to already know I got tenure; the others might figure it out over the next few years. But I think it's significant in terms of what it says about academic professional/social culture. So my questions, for any readers who are associated with academic departments: does your dept mark tenure in any kind of way? or is it the great unspoken event? and why is that? no party because some people might have voted against the candidate? no party because we don't want to think about people who didn't make it? no party because there's the implicit (hypocritical) assumption that if you made it you should have and so it's not a big deal?

well, it is a big deal. So I'm just wondering if academic culture in other locations sustains rituals of some sort around this.

for once, poetry is in the news

The California State Supreme Court is in the process of deciding about a case in which a 15 year old boy was prosecuted by the state for writing a poem in which he described himself as "dangerous" and referred to a recent high school shooting. Teens these days have very few rights, it seems, and apparently the First Amendment doesn't cover them in California.

I'm no lawyer -- but as a literature teacher, I just have to point out what seems obvious. Many, if not most, teenagers feel alienated or confused or depressed some or most of the time. That's part of the transition to adulthood and separating from the root family. Art of all sorts and creative expression are really helpful for people (like teenagers) who feel things intensely. That's part of the reason why it's so important to 15-year-olds to find out who else listens to the music they do, etc.

Reading or writing dark poetry doesn't in my mind constitute in and of itself criminal intent. I know that school administrators are overworked and overcautious these days, but there's got to be some room for kids to express themselves. That's what helps prevent tragedies.

what's next? banning Sylvia Plath from school libraries?

sigh.

FC log #4

There are many unexpected & thrilling surprises in store for you!

Well, at least that sounds like a prediction. I'm just not exactly sure what counts as thrilling these days. (Although now as I type that, I realize I used the word "thrilled" in reference to some graphics software my department is going to get for me...and it was kind of unexpected that the higher-ups agreed I should get a new computer at the office (after six years! my current office machine doesn't even have a CD-R or DVD drive). So maybe my fortune just arrived a bit late, after I learned I'd get the upgrade.)

Mean Girls and the lesbian menace

I saw Mean Girls a couple of weeks ago, and have been meaning to write about it ever since. It was funny in places, smart in others, and generally enjoyable -- I'm always interested in the representation of schools in popular culture, and thought in many ways this one seemed right on target -- some aspects are of course very "now" -- the slang, the clothes -- but the basic issues of hierarchy and competition are pretty timeless and familiar.

We've been watching episodes of Freaks and Geeks lately, (Netflix has all the recently released DVDs) which I never saw when it was briefly on television, because I didn't own one at the time. It's an excellent show -- great writing, acting, even the camera work is exceptional in places. Much less glossy than Mean Girls, and with a different kind of emphasis -- what the lives of the non-popular, non-plastic kids are like. Much more familiar to me, certainly -- and to many viewers who've made this show into a kind of cult thing after it was yanked off the air midway through its first season.

I suspect the production team of Mean Girls learned a few things from F&G -- the mathlete jokes seemed like a kind of intertextual reference to me. And some other things I can't quite remember any longer. (I'd never even heard of mathletes until I started watching F&G -- my high school had three levels of cheerleaders (varsity, junior varsity, and wrestlerettes), but no teams for the academically inclined. I just figured it was that way everywhere.)

But there's another aspect of Mean Girls that's been kind of bothering me, and which few reviewers seem to even have noticed. When Cady, who's been home schooled and raised by anthropologist parents in Africa, arrives at a typical suburban high school, she has to learn to negotiate a new kind of power structure that she's never seen before. Lots of laughs and social critique ensue as she is introduced to the cliques, the spatial arrangement of the lunchroom, and the clothes of American teenagers. She's first befriended by Janis and Damian -- "outsiders" marked by their appearance -- she's kind of goth and pierced, and he's overweight and effeminate. His homosexuality is embraced and accepted by the film: he's lovingly called "too gay too function" by his pal Janis; when Cady repeats this phrase to the Plastics, the uber-popular clique she's infiltrated at Janis's urging, they turn it against him and she realizes that she's betrayed her friends. It's only one of many such betrayals that happen as Cady realizes that she's no longer observing the Plastics, but becoming one herself. So our outrage at her behavior defends Damian, and his gayness is never an issue.

But Janis, on the other hand, is rumored to be a lesbian -- something so terrible as to only be whispered, and which she tries to hide from Cady, who learns the story from Regina, the head of the Plastics. Everyone in school believes Janis to be a lesbian -- reinforcing her outcast status. The film never challenges this underlying assumption, that to be lesbian is to be outcast, unlovable, unspeakable even: the words dyke & lesbian hover around the edges of conversation, whispered and growing in power to insult. There's a longstanding feud between Janis and Regina, who had been friends in junior high school -- and as part of this feud, Regina has told everyone that Janis is a lesbian who was attracted to her; at Cady's lowest point, she too assumes Janis is "after her" and refuses to attend her art show. Over and over again, the film reinforces the idea that to be lesbian is the ultimate threat in a world where the competition to be a girl's best friend is the route to social success. Eventually, in order to make the Plastics the focus monsters of the film who have to be taken down a few notches (in violently black-humorous ways) it is implied that Regina simply made up the story of Janis's attraction to her in order to put her in social purgatory. In the symbolic language of the film, Janis is thus "redeemed" by the flirtatious advances of the stylin' Asian mathlete, and the anxieties about the power of close female friendships (which are given beautiful but dangerous form in the Plastics) are finally put to rest. The lovable effeminate chubby guy who sings at the talent show is the gay stereotype the film embraces; the gothic pierced artistic lesbian is so disruptive as to have to be erased as a lesbian at the film's end.

Tina Fey, who wrote the screenplay, when asked about Janis's turning out to be straight, said "I loved that part, because in high school everyone thought that I was a lesbian," and "So I wanted to show that that's not always the case." So she gets to get her own revenge on her high school experience (how sad that she still cares after all these years) and give us yet another representation of the monstrous lesbian in popular film. Especially in a film that wants to prove it's gay-friendly and multi-culturally aware this is really depressing.

The best teenaged lesbian character I've seen in a non-lesbian themed movie: the younger sister of the athlete candidate in Election.

I guess our canine companions aren't very pomo

From Curtis, a site with the most highfalutin' dog stuff you've ever seen. Some of it beautiful, little of it very practical (look at the dog beds) unless you've got a streamlined quasi-robotic pooch who doesn't chew, shed, or drool ... for instance, these feng shui dog toys -- which nicely capitalize on the new age trend -- but in a really backwards kind of way. I mean, it can't be good for the energy in your home to have chewed up toy lotuses and lucky carp lying around. Gracie would demolish those things in a minute.

But: feng shui in your living space does make a difference. Moving the furniture for better energy flow really does make you feel better. Try Karen Carter's Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life for a simple introduction.

water wrinkles

So during Bikram class yesterday I noticed that my fingers were pruning up like they do when you're in a bath, or washing dishes. Bikram yoga is a method popularized (and unfortunately copyrighted) by Bikram Choudhury: a series of 26 yoga postures done in a specially heated studio -- at least 105 degrees F and 60% humidity. Although I don't agree with his attempts to prosecute other teachers of hot yoga for copyright infringement, I have found this style of yoga to be especially beneficial for me personally. The heat helps your muscles relax so that you can make good progress in flexibility and in healing old injuries. It's been great for my oft-injured ankle, and helpful for shoulder strain brought on by too many hours at the computer.

So anyway I had to go find out why your fingers prune up. Basically, the outer keratin cells take on water and to compensate for their increased size your skin wrinkles. Who knew?

I guess it was pretty humid in class yesterday.

colonial musings

I only caught two episodes of Colonial House -- tonight being the last one -- I'm always interested in the culture shock these people must go through in readjusting to the 21st century -- unfortunately the show doesn't display very much of that. One of the nice touches in the episode I saw tonight was as they were preparing a big feast for the evaluators, they were setting out metal dishes on the table and were all preening in them, not having seen themselves in a mirror for almost 4 months (their usual dishes and utensils were made of wood). A useful reminder of how visual and literally self-reflective our world is...

current reading

I was called for jury duty yesterday, so I had the opportunity to do quite a bit of reading. I'm currently in the middle of Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, which has really grown on me. Here's a passage I especially liked:

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." (p217)

At its best, Eugenides's writing is lushly exuberant in this way. Through his hermaphrodite narrator in this novel, Eugenides gently complicates not just the obvious binary of gender, but all sorts of other categories used to describe, constrain, and contain us.

overheard

overheard at lunch a few days ago:

A young girl, maybe 4 or 5, sitting with her father at the table behind us.

girl: That ring is just like mommy's.
dad: I like that ring.
girl: It's pretty.
dad: Yes, I like the way it sounds.


Yup, they were talking about a cell phone ringtone - - it took me a little while to clue in. I wonder what her generation's view of technology will be like...so bound up with personal connections, from the beginning.