Eccentric Flower:201003/Why You Are All Wrong
From Eccentric Flower
Why You Are All Wrong
A Drama In Three Acts
I have come to believe that, some days, the vital social function that Twitter provides is for my need to have an argument. Usually the argument is because I put out some crabby statement and people line up to tell me that I am wrong. Sometimes I am not wrong. The worse my mood is on any given day, the less wrong I am. When I am pleasant and sunny, I am wrong about a great many things. When I am crabby, look out.
Today you are all wrong.
(If you're not familiar with the format, each line was a single post; the @handle shows who the remark is addressed to; lines here which begin with someone else's handle are someone else's words, addressed to me. I have italicized those to help you pick them out.)
Too Young For Words
This is important. I keep getting accused of cynical skew on this matter, but I feel that I am being merely and perfectly accurate. We'll leave the world of print media out of this - I will accept that there is flow in and out of the book world, and that occasionally a young human does pick up a book and find it good, and thus another joins the flock.
However, in the electronic world - and in particular the world of electronic virtual environments, anywhere from chat rooms to games - long-form reading, coherent writing, grammar, et cetera are all not just the exceptions to the rule, they actually seem to be considered detrimental by a whole generation of computer kids. Being able to read more than a sentence at a time is regarded as a disadvantage. It slows you down.
Writing is even more painful to discuss. I have been spending a lot of time in the Onverse forums. I would quote the average appalling post, but I use the same handle there as other places and I don't want to humiliate anyone who might come read this. Suffice to say that structure there is so bad that sometimes I have had legitimate difficulty figuring out what they meant to say. Not all of these posters are 12 years old (and I wouldn't consider that a valid excuse anyway). Some of them are adults. Some of them are guides, official "helpers" whose purpose is to assist new players. These are the people running the place. Even the three developers, who are presumably grownups and are pretty sane, very smart people, often don't bother with good syntax in their posts. It's not considered something that is important to do.
Not only does this break my heart, as someone for whom words are first and foremost, but it also has ramifications for anyone who wants to write things for a living. Last time I moaned about this, you all just thought I was being self-denigrating about my writing, and you skipped it. But I'm quite serious. Not only is digital reading Mostly Dead*, but so is digital writing. Really, how are you going to hold someone's attention for a few thousand words, let alone a real chunk of prose, when they don't see the point of any text consisting of more than a sentence or two?
I think that if there's going to be successful electronic storytelling in the future it's going to be even more heavily visual than it is now. And that's where comes this thirst for a visual collaborator. Because I stand by my claim: While it's true that I do not promote my stories, I believe that if the illustrated-format version of "The Vanishing Girl" suddenly came into existence, and I posted the pages on Flickr with an equal lack of promotion, I would come back a week later to find those pages had had hundreds of viewers in my absence. I would bet cash on it.
Maybe not much cash.
* Mind you, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead usually the only thing you can do is go through their clothes and look for loose change.
West Side Thuggery
I love musicals. I love them even more when they're slightly cheesy. I love singing songs from musicals, often in inappropriate places. Anyone who loves musicals eventually has to come to grips with the fact that there are a whole lot of people who absolutely can't stand them, and that the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots.
I don't mind being attacked for my taste in musicals. I don't even mind being attacked for my taste in musicals by other people who like musicals. But I continue to be baffled by one particular musical: I am constantly surprised by the level of love for "West Side Story" and the force with which I am pilloried by people when I mention that I don't like it.
While I have watched "West Side Story" in its entirety in aggregate, I have never watched it start to finish. That is, I have watched every scene of the show at least once, but I have never managed to make it all the way through in one go. And while I can't remember what has prompted me to turn off the television after fifteen or twenty minutes each and every time it's happened, I remember the first time clearly; the one that set the tone for all the others, as it were. I was watching a group of men in dance pants, all clearly trying to look at least ten years younger than they actually were, doing the sort of ridiculous "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" moves that only happen in theatrical choreography because they have been thrown out of all other forms of dance for conduct unbecoming. And then, suddenly, the penny dropped. This is supposed to be a gang war. They are dancing a turf battle. These people are playing juvenile delinquents.
I seem to recall, or maybe my brain invented it, that at some point in this show there is a choreographed knife fight. Read that again. DANCING A KNIFE FIGHT. If this does not repel you then you are not examining the context closely enough.
If the gangs were grittier, if the material were handled with even the street-realism level of "Carmen," if they didn't fucking dance, it might not be objectionable. But it's sanitized. It's affluent white boys scripting a Fairy Tale of Gangland about people whom they'd run away from in fear for their lives, if they saw them approaching on a street.
Add this to the fact that I dislike "Romeo and Juliet," and if I see any version of it at all, it will be Shakespeare's, which at least has Mercutio and the Nurse to liven the tone a bit. In fact I dislike tragic romances, period. I like romances just fine but I want them to end with the best six words in English: "And they lived happily ever after." I dislike tragedies, unless they are tragedies like "Hamlet" or "Macbeth" where it's okay that everybody dies because they all deserve it.
I mean, let's consider "Hamlet," which I just watched four-fifths of again the other day (I tend to stop after Ophelia's death, which is when the contrived bits at the end start unwinding). I have infinite patience for "Hamlet," even though it's grim, because everyone gets what they deserve except poor Ophelia, who really did get a raw deal. The villains are villainous. Laertes is a prize ass. His father is the pompous windbag who taught him to be a prize ass. And Hamlet is a whiny, indecisive effete who talks too much. Kill 'em all and give Ophelia her own play.
Here is the core of my romanticism, what my inner 14-year-old girl wants and too seldom gets: I believe that virtue will be rewarded and all non-virtuous conditions will be punished according to their sin. I am, at core, a stanch moralist. And when the wrong people die for the wrong things, I get testy and walk out.
I have never walked out on the original "Romeo and Juliet," because Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and he knew how to keep an audience hooked, even through a overwrought, bathetic*, depressing play in which the two protagonists seem younger and dumber every year. But let's face it: Under all Shakespeare's efforts to keep it compelling, it's at core a play about what utter idiots young lovers are, and I was never in that oh I have given my heart to him forever and woe I must die school of high-school romance to begin with. Not when I was a 14-year-old, not now, not ever.
I will say this for "West Side Story": Its score was written by two men who had absolutely no idea how one was supposed to write music for a Broadway show, and it shows (in a good way). It does wholly unexpected and unique things both musically and lyrically. It is, in short, a damned sight easier to listen to than to watch.
* Bathetic. Containing bathos. Not a typo. Look it up.
Films of Hateful Men
As long as we're on the subject of things I don't want to see and don't understand how other people can want to see, let's cover the topic of Films About Men You Wouldn't Want To Have Dinner With.
I have never understood the appeal of Lloyd Dobler, Boy Stalker - and as far as I can tell, John Cusack has been playing variations on that twitchy role ever since then. It's what he does. Ebert says he thinks Cusack has never made a bad film. I suppose that's arguable. I could agree that Cusack has never made a bad film - but he has played many nigh-unwatchable characters in good films.
I was able to watch High Fidelity despite this. I don't think I will ever be able to sit through it again.* There is a famous story about a production of "A Doll's House" that was so poorly done that when Nora slammed the door, the audience applauded. I don't see how anyone can sit through High Fidelity and actually want Rob to get back together with Laura. I mean, is it not abundantly clear to everyone else that this man should not be allowed to have a successful relationship, and that, very possibly, he should be barred from interacting with other humans entirely?
I do not see the appeal of watching movies whose protagonists (usually male, but for once this is not a particularly gender-biased opinion of mine) behave so badly that you wouldn't want to be around them long enough to have a conversation over a beer, and yet we are expected to somehow be sympathetic to these characters, to root for them.
I see in this Boston Phoenix review of Greenberg that Peter Keough is similarly mystified:
And yet he gives the movie three stars (of four). What the fuck, Keough?
Are the people who succumb to films like these - nay, who outright admire them - giving in to some masochistic impulse I have somehow missed getting? Can the career of Wes Anderson be attributed to some sort of self-flagellatory mass psychosis? Because I'm really having a lot of trouble coming up with alternate explanations.
* The other watchable Cusack film alluded to above is Grosse Point Blank, which is so blackly humorous that I can actually watch it on a semi-annual basis, and not only contains Cusack's finest hour, but also Minnie Driver's.
The specific Hamlet referred to in this matter is the film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production last year, with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius/Ghost. It is well-staged, well-filmed, and well-acted, even if the older actors do tend to Show The Youngsters How It's Properly Done throughout. I recommend it. Nonelvis can surely point you to a source, but the question is whether it is available in Region 1 format at this time.
-- 21:30, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
Another problem I have with that movie is white people playing non-white characters, which bugs me more and more as I get older.
Labelled in my brain for over a decade as Natalie Wood Syndrome, due to this very show! (Although frankly I found Janet Leigh in "Bye Bye Birdie" even more appalling.)
-- 21:33, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
I think the worst is Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is why I've never been able to watch much of that film. Well, one reason why.
We have at least one region-free player in the house so I may check with nonelvis. Not all that fond of the other filmed versions of Hamlet myself, not even the one with Marianne Faithfull.
-- 21:38, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
Jette, Amazon says the Region 1 DVD will be out on May 4, and I know it's showing on PBS' "Great Performances" sometime in mid-April. It's an excellent adaptation of the stage production, and retains quite a bit of the original's minimalism while adding new elements that work better on film (for example, including a CCTV aspect that wasn't necessary onstage).
The performances themselves are likewise excellent, though I think Tennant overdoes it slightly in some of the louder, more agitated speeches -- I know he adjusted his performance when the production moved from Stratford to London, and presumably he tweaked things as well for film. But he's fantastic in the quieter, more emotional scenes. Oliver Ford Davies is also a marvelous Polonius, and Patrick Stewart -- well, he's amazing, as always. I very much recommend this version of the play.
-- 22:05, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
Mel:
Just chiming in as another non-fan of West Side Story. I've never quite gotten it, apparently.
-- 22:50, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
"I don't mind dancing gangs, but they had better look mean and rough and menacing and dance in a way that doesn't scream Bad Fifties Musical Choreography."
But... isn't WSS a Fifties Musical? I must have it all wrong. I've always thought the fact that a gang war could be so elegantly choreographed (I'm a sucker for Bob Fosse/Jerome Robbins-type dancing)was one of the GOOD things about WSS.
And isn't the measure of a performance the ability of the actor to make you believe they actually were the character? If you can forget who you're watching, then the performance was a success. So, what does it matter that whites play Puerto Ricans, or any other combination? Help me out, here.
As for grammar and syntax, Columbina, I have to force myself to read comments to anything, be it newspaper articles or journal entries, to try to get a sense of the general opinion of the readers. I get so hung up on how appallingly illiterate the comments are, I'm totally distracted from what they're trying to say. Is this the product of the education system at which we throw so much money? Or do people really just not care, anymore? (Present company excepted, naturally. The command of the King's English is one of my favorite things about this here journal thingie, including the commentary.)
-- 23:09, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
Iain:
You know, I was just wishing you'd do something like this with your Twitter feeds. I subscribed to the RSS, and it all looks like halves of several very interesting conversations.
West Side Story is indeed much easier to listen to than to watch ... though, actually, I don't mind the knife fight. And for what it's worth, Sondheim has said, “There are no characters in ‘West Side,’ nor can there be.” They are by necessity, he said, “one-dimensional characters for a melodrama.” (In the current Broadway revival, they've actually put the Puerto Rican characters songs into Spanish for significant chunks.)
If the gangs were grittier, if the material were handled with even the street-realism level of "Carmen,"
...Street-realism level. Of an OPERA. ...What? (And it's also worth pointing out that Carmen the character doesn't make even the tiniest bit of sense.)
(Although frankly I found Janet Leigh in "Bye Bye Birdie" even more appalling.)
I'm suddenly terribly glad that I've never seen that version.
Either Ebert has lost his mind or ... no, no, I'll wait for other reviews.
Hot Tub Time Machine seems to be getting wildly mixed reviews. Hollywood news sums up one section that pretty much ensures that I will likely never see this: The movie is getting at the very foundation of the era, the movies, the politics (there’s a very funny part of John Milius’ notorious “Red Dawn,” now of course, being remade), but in the best sections, it is trying to use the presumed idiocy of the formula to make comments about the unseemly collision of slapstick and violence. Of the movie’s many comic riffs, the funniest is the black humor regarding the severing of the bellhop’s arm. But the sexual material, especially the riffs on male sexual panic, is blunt, nasty and unfunny, especially an unusually homophobic bit involving Lou and Nick in a dare gone horrendously wrong. Apart from that, all of the descriptions seem to indicate that the characters all feel that they've failed to achieve anything in their lives, then they get sent back in time with people perceiving their adult bodies as their teenaged selves, and then have to be terribly careful not to change anything, because if they do, that means their future -- which they all hate -- will never come to be. (I'm assuming, for the sake of sanity, that they all have The Great Time-Travel Epiphany -- Omygawd, we love our future! we want it back! -- but if they all feel like they've failed, wouldn't at least one of them go, "You know what? Screw that. You guys make sure you get that back, but I want to change things." Of course, if you do that, then you don't have a wacky hijinks screwball comedy with severed limbs and homophobic jokes; you have something altogether different. But I digress. I think.)
-- 23:20, 25 March 2010 (GMT)
...Street-realism level. Of an OPERA. ...What? (And it's also worth pointing out that Carmen the character doesn't make even the tiniest bit of sense.)
That was sort of my point. If "Carmen" does it better than you do, something's wrong. Sure, it's an opera, but the lives and habits of the cigarette girls are indisputably sordid. When Carmen slashes another woman's face with a knife, even though it's offstage, you can bet she didn't choreograph it.
-- 00:12, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Oh, okay okay okay. You're allowed to hate the movie. Natalie Wood should really not be allowed to sing, in general. I thought you were talking about the score. The score is fucking brilliant. Personally, I find "I Feel Pretty" to be one of the less satisfying songs in the show, and I still like it.
"America" is, of course, the best. But, god, the tritone that starts "Maria"? The diminished seventh tha starts "Somewhere"? The chromatic weirdness of "One Hand One Heart"? The sheer craziness of the Rumble dance music? Brilliant. Brilliant! Okay, never mind, I'm back to thinking you're totally crazy.
-- 03:18, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Being John Malkovich. Eight Men Out. Come on. (Although, granted, Eight Men Out is primarily a John Sayles movie, not a John Cusack movie, by which I mean it's good but the pacing sucks, except that it's about baseball, so that's, like, meta and stuff. Unlike the other John Sayles movies which are about...okay, actually, maybe the pacing sucking is always meta. I will watch more John Sayles movies to find out. Stay tuned.)
But one of the reasons I love GPB is that Minnie Driver looks him in the face and says, "Don't you get it? YOU DON'T GET TO HAVE ME." And her furious refusal to be the prize for a sudden switch to good behavior makes me so happy. Particularly when he's trying to give her the big speech about life and them and changing how he's living and her response is, "Make this gun work." She is not buying into the lovesick emo stalker boy mythos, and if he ever slips into trying to sell it to her, she's done. And I love that.
As for High Fidelity, which I love for the bit where Tim Robbins comes into the shop, among other things, I didn't actually like Laura, so not actually liking Rob either was less of a problem. They both needed a thorough kicking.
-- 03:45, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Oh, and for non-white characters played by white actors, I just tried to watch Dragon Seed earlier this week. Aaaaaagh. Entire cast is in yellowface. I love Katharine Hepburn, but it turns out only enough for half an hour of that movie.
-- 03:47, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
She is not buying into the lovesick emo stalker boy mythos, and if he ever slips into trying to sell it to her, she's done. And I love that.
Me too.
Eight Men Out is a John Sayles film. The actual actors in a John Sayles film are largely irrelevant. (However, though I loved it, I've never needed to see it more than once, mostly because of the pacing.)
Being John Malkovich, of course, may very well be the Movie I Most Hated That I Actually Attempted To Watch Ever. But I suspect I would have hated it just as much even if someone other than Cusack had been playing that character.
-- 03:59, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Two other possibly pertinent links of interest from the archives:
Eccentric_Flower:200003/The_Error_of_the_Detestable
Eccentric_Flower:200004/In_Which_the_Eccentric_Flower_Eats_Crow
-- 04:03, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Peebles: I did say I thought the score was brilliant. Was it not clear I was positive about that? I don't like "Somewhere" at all, but that's about my strongest objection. ("Maria" is great but I'm over my lifetime quota.) I could listen to "America" over and over. "I Feel Pretty," I admit, I like mostly because the lyrics are charming (if somewhat alarming).
-- 04:11, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
"And isn't the measure of a performance the ability of the actor to make you believe they actually were the character? If you can forget who you're watching, then the performance was a success. So, what does it matter that whites play Puerto Ricans, or any other combination? Help me out, here."
I can't think of any performances that are so good they remove the discomfort I feel at watching someone portray someone of another race. There may be a few. But it pulls me out of the movie and out of the character -- it doesn't work. Maybe onstage it would where you're not so close to the actors.
Also, as much as I love musicals, I have problems with a lot of the movie musicals from the 1950s. The sanitizing of the stage musical lyrics is annoying, some of the choreography dates badly, and the sexism drives me up the wall. Just because they're a product of their time doesn't mean I have to like them. I remember liking the barn-raising sequence in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" but the storyline is so awful I could never watch it again. "Singin' in the Rain" is the only one I actually like.
-- 12:46, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
I wonder if Rosie was originally meant to be Hispanic, since the part was first offered to Eydie Gorme. According to a Wikipedia reference, Rosie's last name was changed from Grant to Alverez to accommodate Chita Rivera in the part. Ironic that later they'd cast Janet Leigh.
-- 15:28, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
Iain:
Natalie Wood should really not be allowed to sing, in general.
Actually, she didn't, not in West Side Story. That's Marni Nixon, also known as Anna/Deborah Kerr in "The King and I", Eliza Doolittle/Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady", and the high notes at the beginning of "Diamonds are a Girl's best friend" in "Gentlemen prefer blondes". (A side note: Marni Nixon flatly refused to re-do all of Marilyn Monroe's singing when asked, because she thought Marilyn had done a perfectly decent job, and it would have destroyed Marilyn to have done all that work and gotten it wiped out.)
If you want to hear Natalie Wood's actual singing voice, you should watch "Inside Daisy Clover". You wouldn't believe that voice could come from the same person who sang Maria's role -- and of course it didn't.
-- 17:19, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
If Rosie was not originally meant to be Hispanic, then they not only changed the name but tinkered with the script, since Albert's mother Mae is constantly harping on Rosie's ethnicity. And then there's the whole song "Spanish Rose" (which happens to be one of my favorites) and starts with the recitative:
Rosie: I'm just a Spanish tamale according to Mae
Right off the boat from the tropics far far away
Which is kinda funny, since where I come from is ... Allentown, PA ....
Spanish? OK, Mae, I'll be Spanish.
Right after I marry Alberrrrrrrrrrto [roll]
[begin song]
I'll be the toast of chi-chi Costanango
And all day long my castanets will click,
I'll hide behind my fan and do the tango,
I'll be so Spanish it will make you sick!
And so forth. Although come to think of it I guess that doesn't rule out the idea that she could be not-Spanish and Mae could just be hallucinating. She often is.
-- 18:19, 26 March 2010 (GMT)
"Bullets Over Broadway" (in which the flaws of Woody Allen and John Cusack somehow manage to cancel each other out)?
Also: don't ever try watching "500 Days of Summer."
-- 18:35, 29 March 2010 (BST)
I was going to try to mount a defense of 1950s movie musicals, but after racking my brain all weekend all I came up with besides Singin in the Rain was South Pacific and The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.
-- 19:21, 29 March 2010 (BST)
Okay, I'm at a loss. What about The King and I, Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Porgy and Bess (or is that considered more an opera than a musical?) Was I perhaps too young to notice their flaws? Maybe I was blown away by the music and dancing. What'd I know of hatred, racism, degradation. I just thought they were wonderful tales, with unforgettable scores and lyrics. (And I do mean unforgettable. Sometimes, not often, it's a curse.)
I was more "aware" in the sixties, but still loved Roar of the Greasepaint, Stop the World, etc. Just love musicals, is all. Busby Berkeley to Tommy Tune. I even got a kick out of the occasional musical skits Drew Carey tossed into his sitcom. Too schmaltzy? I don't think so.
-- 05:32, 30 March 2010 (BST)
Andy:
Why does it bother you when people in a musical dance in situations where they wouldn't dance in real life, when it doesn't bother you when people sing in situations where they wouldn't sing in real life?
People in real life don't sing when they're sad. But in a musical, they can sing a song that expresses the emotion, even if no-one feeling that emotion in real life would sing. The same is true (for me) for dance.
-- 13:55, 30 March 2010 (BST)
It's probably because I grew up around spontaneous singers, but not around spontaneous dancers.
-- 03:32, 31 March 2010 (BST)
Andy:
It seems like a big jump from "I don't like this musical because of a particular quirk in my upbringing" to "If this does not repel you then you are not examining the context closely enough."
-- 13:52, 31 March 2010 (BST)
Ah, I think you're misreading me slightly. Yes, that would be a big jump. But the repulsion is not from the dancing per se - it's from what the dancing is meant to represent, in the particular case I cited. It's the way they handle and gloss over the idea that these people are street thugs. Again, as noted, I have this problem with gangster movies and a lot of crime-related material as well - I just don't feel this is behavior that needs to be glorified as popular entertainment, unless the point of the entertainment is "Look at these bad men, now watch as something truly atrocious happens to them."
-- 16:38, 31 March 2010 (BST)
In short, I'm okay with "Tony must die because he is a juvenile delinquent" but not okay with "Tony must die because he is a Tragic Doomed Lover."
heh. Well, you can't say I'm not honest about my likes and dislikes!
-- 16:40, 31 March 2010 (BST)
Here's a gangerster film I'm sure you'll love. Safe for work, technically speaking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uovMpapeCJQ&feature=player_embedded
-- 20:40, 31 March 2010 (BST)
Jette:
I'm working on an essay about how I've seen a disproportionate number of films lately where the protagonist was a completely unlikable guy ... and yet I liked the movie. Why? That's what I'm trying to figure out. And I don't mean John Cusack characters, either, I mean really sad sacks like Roger Greenberg and Chris Doubek's character in "Lovers of Hate" and the title character in "Harmony and Me." (The last two are local indies.) I'm reviewing "Greenberg" now and I'm baffled as to why I didn't dislike it. My husband can't stand most of these films, by the way.
I've never liked "West Side Story" either. I don't mind dancing gangs, but they had better look mean and rough and menacing and dance in a way that doesn't scream Bad Fifties Musical Choreography. And use cruder language. Another problem I have with that movie is white people playing non-white characters, which bugs me more and more as I get older.
Which "Hamlet" are you watching, by the way?
-- 21:25, 25 March 2010 (GMT)