Victim (an old film, a real life)

If you have ever wondered how fastidious I am on following through on recommendations people have made to me, rest assured it is uncannily abnormal. I just watched a film, Victim, that my Victorian lit professor recommended to our class almost two years ago. Released in 1961, this film was willing to talk about homosexuality at a time where it often went unspoken. (Can you imagine that a married man might actually be gay? Duh! If these people had it figured out in 1961, why can’t we seem to remember that today?)

I’ve watched several documentaries about gays in early cinema and Hollywood, but I can’t consciously recall if Victim was ever one referenced in the documentaries. Of course, the documentaries mention about how there may have been an occasional gay man as a waiter or dancer in a film, but it wasn’t until the later part of the century that movies began to feature gays and lesbians as actually subject members – and its wasn’t until a decade or so after this that gay films weren’t about fear, disease, or self-hatred.

This movie opens up with one of the “victims” being chased throughout London. He attempts to reach out to his former lovers and his current one, only to no avail. The film starts with his suicide. He was stealing money to help protect his current lover in order to pay off blackmailers. The other “victim” is a barrister played by Dirk Bogarde who does an awesome job in this film. The scene when his wife confronts him about his homosexuality and he admits his love for his murdered lover is AMAZING! This film really needs to be shown to contemporary society.

It is just so interesting to see a historical portrait of what it may have been like to be gay in the 1950s or 1960s. I can just barely imagine what it must have been like to hide who you truly were because if anyone found out you could go to jail. It's horrifying. And in light of today's national debate on marriage, I think this film might be an interesting way to discuss topics like equality, homosexuality, and bigotry.

Disturbing Movies

I just watched two of the most disturbing movies made in the last decade.

The first was my first film by Werner Herzog that I have ever seen—Grizzly Man. It was a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a naturist? who lived in the Alaskan wilderness during the summers to protect the grizzlies from hunters and poachers. He had been going up there for 12-13 years and was bringing a camera up for the past couple years. I don’t really know what to say about it except that it was really good. It was riveting, and I pretty much kept my eyes on the screen the whole time, even for the scenes in which they talked about Timothy’s death. He was killed by the very animals he swore an oath to protect. His final moment on Earth were recorded on film, however, the lens cap was not removed and only audio remained. Perhaps this was the most haunting moment, the bit held back. The coroner and Herzog at one point narrate the events of the audio recording, lasting a little over six minutes. And while it is perhaps a bit morbid of me, I was dying to know the whole time. Documentaries are all about informing, and yet, this film shows how so much of Timothy’s own video is scripted and rehearsed and how fiction treads on the grounds of fact. The censoring of his final moments, while probably for the best, still haunts me.

Another quite interesting bit to the film was the fact that Timothy hid from the cameras one truth about his trip—that he was not alone in the Alaskan wilderness but that his girlfriend Amy was up there with him. She only appears on camera two times – in which her face is well hidden – and a final third from around the final moments where Timothy seems to be forcing her into the video. And a cursory fourth time in which she is holding the camera but never seen. I haven’t quite figured out what the importance of her being removed from the film is exactly. However, it just makes me think about V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness (who would imagine I would reference Naipaul in any way in later life). But Pat’s absence from Naipaul’s text seems very much like Amy’s absence from Timothy’s videos. Interesting thoughts, I just don’t know if I want to pursue them.



The other film which shocked my system yesterday was Gus van Sant’s Elephant. Wow! Need I say more, perhaps so since I am pretty sure this film has not gotten as much press, notice, or recognition as many other great films released in recent years. The movie is about the day at a high school in which a school shooting is about to occur. Being an educator of some kind, I know that schools are not the temples of knowledge we make them out to be, high school especially in which so many kids are bullied and transformed by their hormones. There is so little that actually happens in the film, and yet it is so completely rich. Can we blame violence on video games? The juxtaposition of the video games character holding a gun and the two boys shooting up the school is obviously set up to suggest some connection. And yet, I wonder what is going on with the plethora of minor characters. And even more creepy, it remains so unclear to me the two boys’ motivation for actually killing everyone – that is probably what most scares people I think: that there is no motivation for violence. I don’t really know what else to say about the movie except that I think you should watch it. Here’s a trailer:

Tony Kushner on Liberal Arts Education

Taft-Kaufmann, Jill. "A TPQ Interview with Tony Kushner." Text and Performance Quarterly 24.1 (January 2004): 41-42.

Jill Taft-Kaufmann: I would be curious as to why you say that and what sort of an education you prize as a way to keep yourself a vital citizen, a vital human, and, of course, a professional, too.

Tony Kushner: I think I’m a real child of the Enlightenment, and I really believe in the liberal arts, and I believe in liberal arts education. I don’t think a fine arts education is a substitute for it. I feel that undergraduate theatre training is vocational education. I think it’s training for a career. And I think it’s great. If you’re an actor, if you really want to be a serious actor, you have to do a conservatory training program at some point. I don’t actually think I’ve ever met an eighteen-to-twenty-one-year-old who’s ready to do a conservatory training program, because conservatory training is, first of all, about stripping you of everything you thought you knew about acting. If you talk to anybody in a good conservatory program, you’ll hear that it’s a miserable experience, makes them fall apart. It’s like psychoanalysis for the first year. And in the old days, when you started psychoanalysis, you didn’t work. You just did psychoanalysis five days a week, because you were going to become dysfunctional for a while, and then you sort of put yourself back together. I think that acting training, in a sense, is like that. At any rate, I think there’s nothing you need to learn; it’s not like being a dancer. If you’re going to be a dancer or an oboe player, you have to start when you’re five or eight or ten, because you have to train your body to do this thing that it’s simply not biologically equipped to do. And that takes an incredibly long time. But there’s nothing in the theatre profession in acting, directing, playwriting, designing that requires you to train your body in that way at eighteen. What I do believe is that the genius of this system is that, at eighteen, you’re old enough and together enough and have enough energy so that when you become an old, desiccated wreck, which happens about five or six years later [laughter], you still have the energy of youth (and old people like me hate you for it), and you’ve got four years in which society will leave you alone, basically, to read. You’ll never have that time again. Ever, ever, ever. For most of us, that four years is an unbelievably important opportunity. If you don’t lay the groundwork to become a really educated person in those four years and have read the ridiculous amount that a good liberal arts education provides, as I’m sure you can find here—if you don’t get that in those four years—I worry that you won’t ever be able to get it again. Because you’ll never have those four years again, unless you do something extraordinary and drop out. But in this economy, there’s no safety net anymore, so it’s not something that anybody could necessarily advise that you do. That’s what freaks me out about it. I think it’s a replacement of liberal arts training with vocational training, because we all know what happens when there are too many students reading too many dangerous books. You have the sixties. You have the student revolution and the French Revolution. You have the 1848 revolution. Students are a dangerous political force. So, I believe there’s a sort of maligned political will. It may not be any one person’s decision, but I believe there is a political reason why the liberal arts education is more and more being replaced by training for jobs. And I don’t think you should necessarily, as an undergraduate, be training for a job. I don’t think you should know what you want to do yet.

Heigh Ho

My friend Sam posted this awesome video about Disney the other day which highlighted Disney's perpetual remaking of Snow White. The video was interesting, but what was really surprising was reading this blog about cartoon songs that labelled "Heigh Ho" as the best cartoon song. I don't know how I feel about that, or for that matter, how I feel about a number of the other songs that were ranked on the top ten. Certainly not ones that I would choose. Nonetheless, I am happy that the reinforcement of "off to work we go" is something that has bombarded me in the past two days. I have been extremely lazy yesterday and today (and I continue to be bad today because I have a party and a concert to go to in just a bit). All of this just to say, in a week from right now, I will be done. A Master. Have a Master's Degree. Done. Finito. Ah, the bliss. The next blog will come then, but until then, maybe you can contemplate this passage I just dissected for my MA Project.

“Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world’s waters, when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit of the generations, welcoming the new generation, and chafing against the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another’s infinity; he is conscious only of his own—flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time. He knows that he will survive at the end of things, and be gathered by Fate as a jewel from the slime, and be handed with admiration rounding the assembly of the god. ‘Men did produce this,” they will say, and saying, they will give men immortality.” (127)

It is from Forster's Howards End

Disgusted, Fucking Disgusted

Between research and writing in these awful days at the end of my Master's Degree, I go home to eat lunch, take a break, and watch some news. The first video on CNN was of the recent suicide of Jaheem Herrera, of the Atlanta area, an eleven year old boy who committed suicide after being taunted by bullies at school. I found out this is something that has happened earlier this month with a Massachusetts's boy. Both boys, taunted by bullies, were most traumatized by the word "gay." Jaheem's mother said that this label was the hardest for Jaheem to accept and what might have put him over the edge.

Here is the link to check out an ABC News video on Carl Walker-Hoover's suicide just earlier this month.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7328091

CNN hasn't released their video online yet, but it is something to check out.

Why are kids so mean? Some many people out there have been bullied in their lives, why haven't people done something to change this. Is it simple because childhood bullying just finds its way into adult social aggression?

And why is it that homosexuality and being called "gay" is something that is so hard? Stick and stone may break your bones, but words are somehow making these kids commit suicide. We need to better educate our children. This is a serious social problem.

For all of you out there with children, young relatives, or somehow related to school-age children, please educate them on the severe effects of bullying!

[Sorry I posted this before being finished, I am just so ANGRY right now!]

"For Eighty Cents" by Alessandro Morbelli

How fitting that one of my last times in office hours this semester, I would come across a painting called "For Eighty Cents" in my A Year in Art book. Although this wasn't necessarily a pittance in 1895, I understand that the back-breaking work portrayed in the painting was not that easy. And while I know that I am very fortunate to have a job, funding, and a pretty awesome career, I can't help but relate to these women in the painting. Work is hard, and I feel like I always have to bend over backwards to get the job done. Some amazing feat always needs to be accomplished, and I now know that my sense of hyperbole is overtaking me right now. So please feel free to disregard my analogies above.

The painting is quite pretty. I guess you could or may have noticed that I haven't exactly done an entry for each day about the paintings in my book. So o course, I only pick out the ones I like, and one of the things that I love about this painting is the color and reflections that Alessandro Morbelli paints into the canvas.

More Happenings

Okay, so I totally noticed that one of my old college friends (Melody) posted this on her Facebook wall, but I had to post it here too just in case some of my friends that aren't hers who didn't get a chance to see it could see it for the first time. Like her, I am probably way to excited about this, but as you probably know, one of the things I am totally interested in is Happenings. This random occurrence of art and performance being made. I hope you enjoy!



I know that there are some elements to a Happening that are controlled and practiced. Certainly these actors/dancers had to learn their parts. But the sheer joy of some of spectators is just so amazing, and the fact is that many people in the station were probably shocked at this. This rather mild, amusing Happening is one to share.

Sara Bareilles

In honor of my seeing Sara Bareilles in concert tonight (as part of TU's Spring Fest events), I thought I would write this short post about my favorite songs from her debut album, Little Voices. Of course, her first single, "Love Song," has made its way through a number of radio stations, TV shows, and movies. I'm sure it will be one of those enduring songs that will find its way into romantic comedies and angsty romances for the next couple of years. Nevertheless, I think a number of her other songs from Little Voices are much more interesting, and even though they don't get the play time of "Love Song," some of these songs are pretty great.

This video is of "Gravity" is sweet little ballad(?). It is a quite song about love, memory, and relationships. She says in the video that it is about her first real break-up.

This is the video for "Fairytale." On the CD, she sings just a tad bit more tempo. The lyrics for this song are just genius though I think.

Hope you enjoyed the videos!

Movie of the Month: Adventureland

Those of you that know my mantra--"I laughed, I cried, I lived"--for the post-movies reaction will probably not be surprised that I felt it last night when I saw Adventureland. The film was particularly apt for myself and my friend last night since we are both graduating in May and have summer jobs and plans for the fall but still find ourselves in this "existential" or rather mental confluence of emotions and desires. The film, by the director of Superbad, features James (Jesse Eisenberg) pursuing an unplanned summer job at Adventureland, an odd amusement park, in his home town of Pittsburgh. Needless to say, hijinks and romance ensue.

The reason I wanted to feature this as a movie of the month was more than just to draw your attention to. I see it continuing in a long tradition of films that sort of examine life in school and post-school. Of course, The Breakfast Club is an iconic film about high school and teenage life, and I would add that films like Fame and Center Stage offer similar versions for those artistically inclined. And of course, there are the gap movies about life in senior year and movements towards college like The Perfect Score and Can't Hardly Wait. Likewise, films like Real Genius might offer a sort of "life in college" view just like TV shows like Felicity and Greek attempt to show us different views of life.

My current stage of post-college, graduate school life, however, draws me towards films where academics and college graduates find themselves hurtled into the real world where things are so unsafe and unstable. My mind floats toward of film like Reality Bites, and I see Adventureland hovering into this genre of school angst, post-graduation anxiety about how life may or may not fit into the real world.

Anyways, I totally recommend the film, and I hope many people get a chance to see. It had the right percentage of comedy, drama/sadness, and intellectual push to make it a good movie. I was happy to see all of the actors in the film because they did such a good job. Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, who plays a girl at the park, have these brilliant expressions throughout the movie that convey these moments of desire and anguish. The film also had some great input by characters like Martin Starr, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Wigg, and Bill Hader. Not to mention that fact that since the show is set in 1987 there was some pretty awesome music. Rock me, Amadeus. Amadeus.

Racism

So, I have wanted to post something about race for a while but was having difficulty for the longest time to find something. Ever since the Louisville conference last year when I participated in a conversation about kids in Atlanta talking about post-race issues, I have been trying to wrap my head around this idea or possibility of being post-race. Needless to say, some of my recent Star Trek viewing has kind of helped with this. But even though Star Trek: The Original Series featured the first interracial kiss on television, it turns America's issues with race in the present and turns that into inter-species issues of the future.

Anyways, last week when I was being a lazy house sitter enjoying my free time in a new place, I did something quite blasphemous. I watched Good Morning America rather than my traditional Today Show. I was ultimately happy with the experience though when I came across this wonderful segment on young people's perception of race in which Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts recreated a question-and-answer session they had ten years ago. I hope you all get a chance to watch the video. I wasn't able to embed it in this post because of ABC's lending rights.

My initial reaction was very positive. However, at a second glance, I thought it was interesting that the kids mentioned famous black figures in sports and media. I wonder if part of that is because of their exposure to them. It would be kind of difficult for a 10 year old to epitomize Cornel West, right? But I am very pleased to see that some things are maybe changing. I am not foolish enough to claim this as the end of race issues as some of my former DV classmates were, but if these kids' responses are any indication of a changing future, I think the forthcoming decades will be an interesting few to live through.