October 2003 / Peiratikos

Last time, I wrote about why I don't like the characterization of rapists in Kill Bill. While I still don't and don't concede any of my objections, I have a thematic defense for it.

This is a revenge movie, but we don't know (and perhaps never will) the reason why revenge is necessary. Sure, The Bride is betrayed by eir (former?) fellow Assassins and left for dead, a massacre carried out at the word of the father of eir unborn baby. But what's eir motivation? I joked that The Bride now has to wipe out all the people who'd seen em whimpering and begging not to be killed to be able to live with eir bad-ass self, and in retrospect I think that could be partly true. There's a pattern of how people die and how they deserve to die. An honorable warrior deserves an honorable death.

Other than giving me Tyrtaeus flashbacks, what does this involve? I'm not entirely sure; I was too caught up in Tyrtaeus. Still, the point is made early in the movie. Vernita and The Bride are evenly matched when sparring with knives and life histories, finding almost a comfortable camaraderie, but this changes when Vernita changes the rules. As quickly as ey shoots from behind the symbolic shield of eir daughter, ey is killed conclusively and bluntly. Against an opponent who fights by whatever code they recognize, The Bride allows the battle to be a contest of skill and athleticism and all sorts of endurance, but those unworthy of such a display are summarily slaughtered.

It's possible that this is why the rapists are basically caricatures, because without honor and principle, they are nothing more than beasts. They have no humanity, no depth because they are not a part of the world The Bride acknowledges as human, as on eir own level. They die bloodily but easily, without fighting back. The dull die quickly.

I'll go ahead and post this now and then go away for the weekend, part of which will be spent discussing the movie. Maybe I'll understand more or better on my return.

I've found the most unworksafe thing ever! Harvard has collected dialect information, and I adore dialect information. So far I've only seen how representative of Kentucky my speech is (unsurprisingly, not much at all) but I was glad to see that many of my fellow commonwealth residents reject the use of "anymore" to mean "nowadays." They only time a majority found it acceptable was in " Pantyhose are so expensive anymore that I just try to get a good suntan and forget about it."

That particular usage, like any other, is absolutely treasonously unacceptable to me. I was horrified and driven to murderous rages by a carpool driver who said "anymore" incessantly and incorrectly. I now feel vindicated that, although I seem to hear it fairly frequently, Kentuckians rightly think it's wrong.

I seem to be bothered mostly with temporal constructions like this one. I wish the test had tabulated whether people think "momentarily" means "for a while" or "in a while" or both. This one makes me want to scream, but I just grimace and keep my silence.

Despite advocating various neologisms (e.g. "monamorous" for "monogamous") and nongendered pronouns, I'm quite stodgy (not to mention snobby) when it comes to issues of grammar.

My plan for the rest of the day is to tabulate my results vs. Kentucky (where I was born and raised), Ohio (since I live on the border), Indiana (just for the hell of it, not because I think I picked anything up in college) and New York (to see what I got from my parents, e.g. "pill bug") and then I'll toss them up here.

Several people are linking to and talking about our blog posts on Alan Moore, so if you've come here for those, you may find this thread on Sequential Tart's message board interesting: "Sexuality in Alan Moore's writings". It has a pretty good discussion of the issue of Moore's use of sexual victimization.

I was going to write more about Moore here, but for now I think I'll just copy-and-paste a comment I made on John Jakala's blog:

I think Watchmen is historically important, as an attempt to explore superheroes in terms of "realism" (whatever that is). (Another minor problem I have with Watchmen is that only two characters have superpowers.) I also think it's formally nearly perfect -- the panel layouts, the voiceover dialogue that relates not narratively, but thematically, to the images, all of that is great stuff. However, I think the writing is mediocre both in terms of style and plot. I also think that having what I see as a very very far-fetched plot element in what's supposed to be a "realistic" exploration of the genre is a fairly serious flaw. So I'm disappointed in Watchmen as an artistic endeavor. I think it's worth reading if you're interested in the superhero comics genre historically, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't interested in the history.

Last week was a much-needed vacation not from work but, to a large extent, from the Internet. Now I'm back, refreshed and exhausted and working 10-hour days.

In the interim, though, I saw Kill Bill and I've been writing and thinking about it in relation to everything else I run into. It was a very frustrating half-movie, all the more so because I feel unable to critique it fully without recourse to the story's end. All I've got are a bunch of references and reminders and preliminary theories, and they all make me want more. I'm not sure if that means it's a good movie. I don't think I'd talk about it in those terms, but it's compelling to me and I enjoyed watching the later parts, although the first half hour or so (maybe hour, one of the benefits of wearing no watch) left me awkwardly uncomfortable.

I held off posting at first after seeing it because what I was going to say was too personal, and because I thought that most of the failure was my own. It's not that I've changed these views, but just that I don't see the point of not saying anything just because I'm unable to escape autobiographical criticism.

I have very strong views about rape. It's an issue that impacts me directly and strongly. I'm interested in theory that surrounds sexual assault and can discuss it intellectually, but that doesn't mean that I can give up my instinctual emotional impact, either. And Kill Bill really annoyed me on this front. I now have an alternate explanation for the way the scenes went, but I want to talk about my immediate understanding of and annoyance with the scenes involving The Bride and Buck, the hospital worker who sold eir body while ey was comatose.

First of all, Kill Bill is in many ways a superficial movie that seems basically devoid of social commentary. I mean, it's not terribly difficult to interpret various stances and arguments into the movie, but, particularly because we don't have all the data, it's very difficult to see if there are moral judgments at work or just what Tarantino is doing. I know this.

Still, it seemed to me problematic and cowardly that Tarantino broadly stereotyped the rapists in the film in the way ey did. Buck and the hapless redneck whose name I didn't catch (if it was ever given) are nasty, miserable, ugly people. Both of them die in nasty, bloody ways as The Bride awakens to begin eir arc of revenge, taking as spoils Buck's outrageous "Pussy Wagon."

The trouble for me is that unlike anyone the Bride kills later (in "real" chronological, not the movie's narrative, order) they are both just caricatures of brainless hormones, Bad People. Or are we not supposed to read them that way? Are they just pitiful exaggerations of particularly sex-starved "normal" guys, albeit hideous and filthy ones?

The reason I called this depiction cowardly is because it's easy. I mean, if they'd been black rather than white, it might have raised an outcry about the perils of racial stereotyping. However audiences just rolled with this characterization, laughing a bit in the audience I sat with. What makes this crime different from the others in the movie is that while most of the people in the audience haven't executed an entire wedding party or disemboweled a man at a bar, a fair portion of what I presume is the target audience has (or knows someone who has) had sex with someone who wasn't entirely awake or sober or otherwise consenting. To have the characters in the movie who do this be vapid idiots seems to me to allow viewers not to have any thoughts that might indict them or the sorts of things they believe in, since there is no entry for identification with the characters.

I don't think Tarantino has any responsibility to advance my political views, and I'm not surprised ey doesn't seem do so. I was just troubled by this in the context all the violence toward and between woman, and the audience reactions to all of it. I'm not sure what I'm asking for, which is why I've come to different views of the scene, but it was upsetting to me basically because it doesn't humanize a very human issue and because it lets stupid guys (and I'm stereotyping on gender and many other grounds, I know) go on being stupid guys when there was a clear chance to challenge them. I shouldn't be looking for verisimilitude in a movie like this, but it's there to some extent, in a chilling and emotionally compelling scene, and yet it could have been so much more and, for me, made the movie so much less.

If the permalinks don't work, it's probably because you're using Internet Explorer (they work fine in Mozilla as far as I can tell, so they probably work fine in Netscape). I'll find the problem and fix it when I have the chance.

I do now what I never did during high school, spend my Friday evenings at the football game. Surprisingly, I like it a lot. Well, all right, recent back pain hasn't exactly been alleviated by cheering, but I like being in among the parents, see my brother doing fairly impressive things, things I'd never be able to do.

At first I was jealous of em, jealous that my parents throw so much time and attention into wearing the right colors and sitting with the right people and making me throw out my back vacuuming before the big party, but I don't begrudge the Jenius this merely because I think I didn't get that sort of support. It's a silly sort of sadism that makes me annoyed when my brothers get things I'd always wanted, because of course I don't want them to lack the way I did, either. And so I watch eir undefeated team play hard and well and stupidly and I don't shout much and I do stand during the National Anthem, despite a strong urge to do otherwise. And I knit and watch and cheer softly. It's a good time, and I feel welcomed.

And so I found myself two weeks ago in a different stadium, still nursing that sore back and cursing the hard seats, watching a band competition. Bands aren't such a big deal where I'm from. I missed the football game where the competitors had a great band (and a not-great football team) but I've been very fond of the tiny schools with their tiny bands, including a football player who performs in uniform during halftime. And yet this marching band phenomenon is totally alien to me.

Sure, I did band in high school, but it was a wacky group of mismatched instruments. I had to transcribe clarinet parts for my violin, things like that. We were very heavy on the electric basses and pianists, who had to play vibraphones and light percussion on their off-songs. There were no prancing girls with flags, no costumes. We just stood where we were supposed to and played at our few concerts each year. Marching band is not like that.

I don't think I would have minded watching our band concerts, not for half an hour every few months. I wouldn't mind seeing a better band more often than that, to choose pets among them, watch how the oboist progresses. But the parents in the stands were dressed far more wildly than the football parents ever get. There was facepaint, hair colorings, huge buttons with their children's faces, pennants. Admittedly, this was a comptetition and football parents will probably get more involved when the state tournament nears. Still, it seemed more pitiful to me that these band parents were cheering on their kids than that the football moms wear charms for luck and have the same little photo-buttons.

So am I a horrible person for granting more legitimacy to sports parents? I do feel vaguely guilty about it, but I am not particularly working to improve my Geek Street Cred. Anyway, my problem was that most directors seemed to try to mask any inadequacies by having each person walking an unrelated pattern and by playing fairly discordant music. Or maybe the directors had totally different plans and that's just what happened. It's hard to tell. While I appreciated it and I know that the kids in the band were probably having fun and that I'd certainly go if I were a hypothetical band parent, the degree of fanaticism involved didn't leave me. Is it a desperate pride that the kids have accomplished anything at all? Are these otherwise the dregs of the high school? Of course, it wasn't my school, so I can't begin to guess what the parents liked. Probably the gossip and camaraderie, mostly.

At any rate, I've decided it's not that I'm pro-jock. I still loudly proclaim my disdain at any special treatment for football players, that studies show it's creating a dangerous precedent! And if given the choice, I'd choose a band concert over a football game. I like the music and like the chance I have as an audience member to watch the performers, create character descriptions from their quirks and looks. I'm sure it would be fascinating to watch elaborate movement routines perfectly choreographed. I'd sign on to contemplate a bunch of well-trained kids doing honeybee dances. But girls twirling flags are not anything I can work into my personal schema anywhere, I think. I have to draw the line.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the band competition. It was fascinating, and the music wasn't bad. I'd just have preferred better music and less tramping about and fewer silly hats. And football is totally problematic too. I hate when anyone gets hurt and own up to secretly rooting for the other team if they're pitiful underdogs and if they're trying. So I guess it's a matter of knowing the young folks involved and caring about them or something like that. But really! Another good argument against spawning is that it might someday encourage me to show up in public in a witch's hat with puffy-painted jeans. And if I want to do any of that, I'll do it on my own terms. But not now, thanks.

Three women in three stories are prompted to move by forces they recognize within themselves. The complementary themes are clear, but each story draws closer to the event that places them in the same reference, an announcement of an accident.

The first woman, Delia, packs eir children to leave eir abusive husband and start a new life. Is that life settling into the role of a respectable woman like the high school acquaintance who takes the family in? In reclaiming the "slutty" reputation ey left behind when ey married? In something else altogher, a moment of stillness, a glimpse of sky?

I believe it's the second woman, Greta, who's told that "we all have our own personal velocity," which is meant to console em about leading a life ey considers mediocre by the standards of eir expectations. After all, how can Greta's blandly supportive WASP husband compete with Greta's excitement over eir illicit attraction to the hot young writer whose book ey's editing. And what kind of liberation does Greta really want? Is ey successful in eir own eyes? In such a secular setting, does religion matter as a class marker, or is the divide something else?

And last comes Paula, youngest of the three, driving wildly away from eir life, stopping unexpectedly to save a boy who isn't looking for salvation. Where is home and how do you find it? What is the meaning of life if it can be so easily snatched away? Ey explores generations of mistakes generating mistakes.

All the women deal with parental separation, with new parent-figures. They look at their child-selves as lost potential, try to get back to the innocence and hope, all the while knowing what a doomed quest it is. And they see that decisions, calculated or rash, are powerful and meaningful and frightening. When we watched this in winter, I wasn't sure whether to identify or to find the situations and characters almost patronizing. The digital video keeps them close and raw, making it harder for me, watching, to shy away or disconnect myself, even when I didn't really have reason to identify. S's mother disapproved of the sexual situations, and probably the language. That's the trouble with realism, though, psychological or otherwise.

Although I'm not sure I could say I liked Personal Velocity, I would like to see it again, to see what I pick up, where the details are. I'd like to see it now, 8 months later, as a different person. I appreciated the focus, that even when dealing with major problems, it was the tiny decisions that mattered most. Looking back at myself, I tend to think of things the same way, a path full of little symbols, not a moment when everything became clear, but when I recognized a pattern and followed it for a little while until eventually I found a piece of myself. Did I like the movie because I read myself into it and liked the ambiguity, the mix of hope and disappointment? Was I there to gauge my own progress against that of the characters? I don't know. It left me with questions, and I think that's what life's supposed to do. And maybe so is art, whether or not it imitates.

To Jared who posted a comment to my post on The Athenian Murders, if you're still reading. Ah, I didn't realize anybody else was reading the blog, thanks for your comment. Right, the book is more than just the joke about Plato's quote that appears at the beginning of the book. Or rather, I do think that that's largely what the book is about, but I erred in calling it a "little" joke. There's more to say if I'd been writing a full review rather than a quick reaction immediately after finishing. At any rate, I found the book shallow and not entirely satisfying, though certainly complex. I'd be more willing to consider it as more than a jokey puzzle book if Somoza (or the translator, who may very well share some or all of the blame) had put more effort into making it read like a "real" Greek text.

Where it all began.... Playing quizbowl this summer, I buzzed after the first sentence of a question, "You can't fight in here; this is the War Room!" As I answered correctly, every guy in the room groaned with jealousy. I have precious little geek street cred, but this was a minor triumph. I was the girl who knew Dr. Strangelove.

Admittedly, we first saw it at a showing by the Campus Greens, trying to make some major political point, probably Keep US out of Afghanistan! (Am I right about this? Could I have gone with Mandy? I don't recall, don't recall.) At any rate, it was watched. I, still being uncomfortable with movies and men, wasn't even alert enough to play Where's Peter Sellers, but none of the words got past me. Back then, I seldom laughed during movies, but this one had me enthralled throughout.

From youthful obsessions, I was used to depressing nuclear holocaust stories, perhaps with a glimmer of hope to encourage the teenaged readership. Cataclysm comedy was new to me, and encouraging. (Ok, that's not entirely true. I had at very least a serious infatuation with Tom Lehrer's Who's Next, and probably still know all the words.) Still, Dr. Strangelove was probably as close to a perfect comedy as I'd seen, and political and meaningful, which (at least at the time) were strongly preferred attributes in films.

It was by no means a first date, but it was a lovely experience. S laughs more during films than anyone I know, the possible exception being King Bertie, who once gave emself a black eye by kneeing emself in the face while lurching with laughter at Mr. Bean. I've always been uncomfortable in theaters, unable to shake the feeling that I'm being observed and judged by other patrons. I had a tendency to laugh inappropriately (by others' standards, at least) and that just intensified my worrying. Seeing someone relax and enjoy the movie was something of an eye-opener.

So, from one prevert to another, this one comes highly recommended.

I've got a new theory. I've often complained, to S's great dismay, that my writing is not bloggy enough. Sadly, one major aspect of this is that I don't hang around long enough to blog. I make my writings big production pieces and then use that as an excuse to avoid writing. So now I have a goal. I'm going to keep track of the books I read, now that I'm reading again, on mine own little blog.

Here, though, I'm going to do capsule summaries or reactions or whatever to all the movies S and I have seen together, one at a time. I've tried to keep ticket stubs, but there are also videos. I won't necessarily get a lot of style or substance, but at least I'll be cranking out words, and perhaps something will come of it eventually.