sorry for spamming you guys with this, but I figured it would be entertaining to at least one person. I kind of think both these papers are bullshit--I mean they were pass/fail and I had a lot of stuff going on so I wrote about themes that are easy for me to find in anything. But I do think the fact that these themes are so easy to find indicates a lot about how deep in the values are.
HERCULES--ABILITY
Supernatural conditions are sometimes portrayed as being analogous to disabilities; for example, telepathy in True Blood or lycanthropy in the Harry Potter books. It’s not necessary that the analogously “disabled” character lack an ability that other people have, as long as he or she has the wrong abilities compared to other people. Hercules is easily interpreted as part of the magic-as-disability tradition, as his super strength impairs his ability to live normally and fit in with his community.
Hercules can sometimes use his super strength to do chores for his adoptive parents but, perhaps because he lives in a world set up for humans with an ordinary level of strength, he often expends too much strength and ends up breaking buildings and injuring people, which causes him to be unpopular in his community, which labels him a “freak.” Although his adoptive parents love Hercules, they come to accept that he doesn’t fit in their community and must journey elsewhere to be successful.
Hercules’s journey can be seen as a positive message for viewers with disabilities or other people who don’t match the standards of their community. As he moves into different environments and roles--training with Phil, performing heroic deeds in Thebes, partying on Mount Olympus as a god among gods--we see that Hercules, who was not good at anything in his parents’ town, can be good at everything when different things are expected of him. However, his clumsiness isn’t completely cured when he becomes a hero, and this is realistic. He also chooses an imperfect existence as a human over existence as a god, where he presumably wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of clumsiness--showing that if he has a life he’s proud of and happy with, he doesn’t mind not being good at everything.
Like many magic-as-disability works of fiction, Hercules fails to deliver a completely positive message about disability because the resolution of the “disabled” character’s problems is less than applicable to real life. Ultimately, a character with super strength can’t be a real disabled character for two reasons. First, super strength doesn’t resemble any real-life disability so it’s not as easy to identify Hercules as disabled, which limits his ability to be a role model for disabled kids or bring images of disabled people into the minds of non-disabled kids. (This isn’t necessarily the case for all “magical” disabilities; a magical illness, for example, can be easily read as resembling a real illness.) Second, Hercules finds a solution for his problems that’s nearly perfect, and steps into a new life where he’s universally admired. While it is important to show that someone who’s labelled a loser or a freak can be successful by different standards, Hercules’s tremendous success is somewhat problematic because it sets a standard viewers, not having superpowers, may not be able to aspire to or identify with.
Notably, the magic-as-disability aspects of the character are not at all present in the original myth. In the myth, Hercules/Heracles’s problems come from a fact that is completely excised from the movie; Hera, his father’s wife, is not his mother, and even though he lives with his mother and stepfather instead of on Olympus, Hera nonetheless hates him and causes him various problems. Although evil stepmothers are certainly acceptable in Disney movies, the portrayal of infidelity that would be required by an accurate adaptation of the myth would probably be considered inappropriate for a children’s movie. Therefore, the villain of Hercules’s story becomes Hades, who is not evil in classical mythology; and Hercules’s main motivation comes from within.
Protagonists who are unpopular, or who are initially perceived as “losers,” can be appealing in American movies, but don’t really fit with classical values, which had less of a focus on the individual. In the Disney movie, Hercules doesn’t want to be a hero for the sake of glory or other more classical values, but for more modern reasons, and ones that position him as a minority or an outcast in his community, in the same way as other Disney characters like Belle and Mulan.
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
03 December, 2011
cure in Disney movies
I wrote this paper for an exco I took last term and I just found it when Mtthw inexplicably asked for me to repost the notes I took for the class. It is too long for tumblr, so have fun.
DISABILITY AND NORMALCY IN SLEEPING BEAUTY AND THE LITTLE MERMAID
There is often conflict between the disabled community and mainstream society about what is best for disabled people. Often, disabled people think that success involves putting someone in a situation where they can be as happy and functional as possible; while mainstream society thinks that success means altering someone until they appear “normal.” While actual disabled characters don’t usually appear in Disney movies (except for villains like Captain Hook), these kind of values can be read in the treatment of non-human characters who are different from humans or lack abilities that humans have.
An example of a non-human character who sends a positive message about disability is Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. She can’t talk, but this is never a problem, because everyone in Tinkerbell’s life has learned to understand the way she communicates. Even though she wasn’t created to make this point, Tinkerbell can nonetheless make the point to viewers that she doesn’t need to be altered to fit in with the other characters.
Some non-human characters who do alter themselves and attempt to be human are the three good fairies in Sleeping Beauty and Ariel in The Little Mermaid; and each character shows the problems inherent in attempting to be “normal” rather than aiming to be successful as yourself. Each of these characters is competent when she’s in her natural form and environment, but when expected to perform as humans, they are all lacking.
In their non-human form, the fairies are not as powerful as Maleficent, but they are the most powerful characters in the movie aside from her and it is almost solely through their actions that Aurora is saved from the curse. When they are human, they make one of the big mistakes of the narrative that allows Maleficent to find out where Aurora is. The mistake they make is not just because they are human, but precisely because they are fairies trying to be human who have realized they can’t pretend to be human any longer.
As humans, the fairies are portrayed as lacking either the cognitive abilities or the experience (if not both) to perform tasks like cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. In real life, a person who couldn’t cook or clean for herself wouldn’t be able to live without help, and adults who can’t live without help are often treated rather harshly; but in the case of the fairies, their inability to do these things doesn’t mean they’re seen as defective, but simply that they’re trying to be something they aren’t. Their lapse into using magic again, while it happens at an inconvenient time, is the natural result of putting themselves in an unnatural situation.
Therefore, Sleeping Beauty has a positive portrayal of its “disabled” characters. Their inability to perform normal tasks is humorous, and ultimately not a problem for them, because it is acceptable for them to live differently and rely on other skills to take care of themselves. Humanity is not a goal, but simply something they tried and failed, and then abandoned without seeing their failure as reflecting badly on them.
In The Little Mermaid, however, Ariel’s desire to be a human is a goal that, from the perspective of the movie, she has to achieve at all costs. It wouldn’t really be accurate to say that she desires Eric above all, because she is interested in humans from the beginning and seems to fall in love with him because he’s the first human she sees. While the fairies’ disguise as peasants doesn’t seem like something most viewers could relate to, Ariel’s longing for humanity is more comparable to the way real disabled people are expected to long for normalcy; it’s not just another way of being, it’s an inherently better life.
Objectively, Ariel’s life isn’t bad, but she sees it as inferior: “Flipping your fins you don’t get too far/Legs are required for jumping, dancing,” she sings, ignoring the speed and grace of her own movement. There’s nothing strange about a sheltered teenager being interested in people from another place, but it does become disturbing how Ariel dismisses her own body as nothing but an obstacle to human life, and that this is portrayed as not mere teenage restlessness, but a sensible outlook.
Ariel’s initial life as a human is also comparable to the life of a disabled person trying to be as normal as possible. In real life, a disabled person trying to function as a non-disabled person has to make sacrifices non-disabled people don’t have to make. As a human Ariel can no longer do what she did best as a mermaid (singing), and, most importantly, cannot communicate. (It’s interesting that her inability to communicate keeps Ariel from even being able to tell people that she used to be a mermaid. As is often expected to happen when disabled people are “cured,” she completely drops the identity she had before.)
The Little Mermaid had the potential to be a more unique story about a nonstandard character trying to be normal. In addition to losing her voice, the mermaid in the original story finds it incredibly painful to walk and dance, but does so anyway in order to be attractive to the prince; and she ultimately isn’t able to land the prince, partly because she has given up her ability to communicate so he doesn’t know that she’s the person who saved him. In the fairy tale, the mermaid’s attempt to be human is tragic.
Obviously, the Disney version of the story could not be tragic because that’s not how Disney movies are. But the story could have been given a happy ending in which Ariel went back to being a mermaid without losing her relationship or her zest for life. Instead, the Disney movie glosses over Ariel’s sacrifice, by making her only lose her voice instead of also being in pain; and in the end, she is magically cured of both her lack of humanity and the difficulties that a magical creature trying to be human would have (her voicelessness).
The Little Mermaid has often been identified as a problematic movie in terms of gender, because Ariel changes her body for a man. But it’s also problematic in terms of disability, because Ariel must change herself to a more normal form to realize her dreams. While in Sleeping Beauty, the fairies’ attempt to be human is an impetuous bad idea, it’s presented as the only way Ariel can be happy. Viewers are told not only a)having a normal body is worth the sacrifices, but b)don’t worry about that, because actually, switching from abnormal to normal will become easy and eventually have no drawbacks attached at all.
DISABILITY AND NORMALCY IN SLEEPING BEAUTY AND THE LITTLE MERMAID
There is often conflict between the disabled community and mainstream society about what is best for disabled people. Often, disabled people think that success involves putting someone in a situation where they can be as happy and functional as possible; while mainstream society thinks that success means altering someone until they appear “normal.” While actual disabled characters don’t usually appear in Disney movies (except for villains like Captain Hook), these kind of values can be read in the treatment of non-human characters who are different from humans or lack abilities that humans have.
An example of a non-human character who sends a positive message about disability is Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. She can’t talk, but this is never a problem, because everyone in Tinkerbell’s life has learned to understand the way she communicates. Even though she wasn’t created to make this point, Tinkerbell can nonetheless make the point to viewers that she doesn’t need to be altered to fit in with the other characters.
Some non-human characters who do alter themselves and attempt to be human are the three good fairies in Sleeping Beauty and Ariel in The Little Mermaid; and each character shows the problems inherent in attempting to be “normal” rather than aiming to be successful as yourself. Each of these characters is competent when she’s in her natural form and environment, but when expected to perform as humans, they are all lacking.
In their non-human form, the fairies are not as powerful as Maleficent, but they are the most powerful characters in the movie aside from her and it is almost solely through their actions that Aurora is saved from the curse. When they are human, they make one of the big mistakes of the narrative that allows Maleficent to find out where Aurora is. The mistake they make is not just because they are human, but precisely because they are fairies trying to be human who have realized they can’t pretend to be human any longer.
As humans, the fairies are portrayed as lacking either the cognitive abilities or the experience (if not both) to perform tasks like cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. In real life, a person who couldn’t cook or clean for herself wouldn’t be able to live without help, and adults who can’t live without help are often treated rather harshly; but in the case of the fairies, their inability to do these things doesn’t mean they’re seen as defective, but simply that they’re trying to be something they aren’t. Their lapse into using magic again, while it happens at an inconvenient time, is the natural result of putting themselves in an unnatural situation.
Therefore, Sleeping Beauty has a positive portrayal of its “disabled” characters. Their inability to perform normal tasks is humorous, and ultimately not a problem for them, because it is acceptable for them to live differently and rely on other skills to take care of themselves. Humanity is not a goal, but simply something they tried and failed, and then abandoned without seeing their failure as reflecting badly on them.
In The Little Mermaid, however, Ariel’s desire to be a human is a goal that, from the perspective of the movie, she has to achieve at all costs. It wouldn’t really be accurate to say that she desires Eric above all, because she is interested in humans from the beginning and seems to fall in love with him because he’s the first human she sees. While the fairies’ disguise as peasants doesn’t seem like something most viewers could relate to, Ariel’s longing for humanity is more comparable to the way real disabled people are expected to long for normalcy; it’s not just another way of being, it’s an inherently better life.
Objectively, Ariel’s life isn’t bad, but she sees it as inferior: “Flipping your fins you don’t get too far/Legs are required for jumping, dancing,” she sings, ignoring the speed and grace of her own movement. There’s nothing strange about a sheltered teenager being interested in people from another place, but it does become disturbing how Ariel dismisses her own body as nothing but an obstacle to human life, and that this is portrayed as not mere teenage restlessness, but a sensible outlook.
Ariel’s initial life as a human is also comparable to the life of a disabled person trying to be as normal as possible. In real life, a disabled person trying to function as a non-disabled person has to make sacrifices non-disabled people don’t have to make. As a human Ariel can no longer do what she did best as a mermaid (singing), and, most importantly, cannot communicate. (It’s interesting that her inability to communicate keeps Ariel from even being able to tell people that she used to be a mermaid. As is often expected to happen when disabled people are “cured,” she completely drops the identity she had before.)
The Little Mermaid had the potential to be a more unique story about a nonstandard character trying to be normal. In addition to losing her voice, the mermaid in the original story finds it incredibly painful to walk and dance, but does so anyway in order to be attractive to the prince; and she ultimately isn’t able to land the prince, partly because she has given up her ability to communicate so he doesn’t know that she’s the person who saved him. In the fairy tale, the mermaid’s attempt to be human is tragic.
Obviously, the Disney version of the story could not be tragic because that’s not how Disney movies are. But the story could have been given a happy ending in which Ariel went back to being a mermaid without losing her relationship or her zest for life. Instead, the Disney movie glosses over Ariel’s sacrifice, by making her only lose her voice instead of also being in pain; and in the end, she is magically cured of both her lack of humanity and the difficulties that a magical creature trying to be human would have (her voicelessness).
The Little Mermaid has often been identified as a problematic movie in terms of gender, because Ariel changes her body for a man. But it’s also problematic in terms of disability, because Ariel must change herself to a more normal form to realize her dreams. While in Sleeping Beauty, the fairies’ attempt to be human is an impetuous bad idea, it’s presented as the only way Ariel can be happy. Viewers are told not only a)having a normal body is worth the sacrifices, but b)don’t worry about that, because actually, switching from abnormal to normal will become easy and eventually have no drawbacks attached at all.
07 October, 2011
surprise sanity!
I've written about this before a bit. but does it make anyone else really sad when you're reading a book or watching a movie, and a character who originally seems really stereotypically disabled (this especially happens with mentally ill characters) starts to get more complex and less stereotypical and turn into a cool character, and then it's like, surprise...they actually weren't really disabled. or they weren't, like, organically disabled, if it's a mental thing. they acted like that because of something wrong that someone else did to them and/or because society is messed up.
I'm leery of saying this because it kind of sounds like I'm saying PTSD and other stuff that comes from trauma isn't a real disability. I don't think that but I do think there's this weird division in fiction between people who are "really" mentally disabled (usually: depression, psychosis, autism, social anxiety, sometimes intellectual disability) and people who appear that way, but actually it's someone else's fault, making them actually at their core non-disabled.
obvious example: lisbeth salander!!
I'm not saying some of these characters are proven beyond a shadow a doubt to have entered the world non-disabled. but there is a revelation that at least some of their disability is related to trauma, and they are "sensible" at their core even if they are eccentric. and it's like, other people think that they don't know what they're talking about, and think that they don't know what really happened to them and/or what's really wrong with the state of the world, because they're disabled--but surprise, because they aren't innately disabled, they actually DO know what's going on and what they're saying is actually true.
I read a book recently that didn't exactly make clear whether it was doing this or not. it was a great book but I felt disappointed, I guess, by the one element.
early on a (now absent) character is referred to and described for the first time. she's kind of a typical mentally ill/depressed character, there's a big focus on the strange things she did and how difficult it was to live with her and take care of her. as the book goes on she is described/flashbacked to again and again, and seems more complex, human, nice, and interesting each time. in the second half of the book we learn that she was abused, and that the way her family treated her when she was depressed actually kept her from recovering at least as much as her actual depression did. when she finally appears at the end of the book, she is a heroic character.
I thought this was really cool, but I guess I felt a little sad too, because I knew that most people would perceive the book in the ordinary model of mental illness--i.e. this apparently mentally ill character turned out to be a smart and heroic person who was wronged by other people, therefore she wasn't REALLY mentally ill, it was just because of her family, and by defeating them, she can stop being ill. the book doesn't really assert this but it also doesn't assert the opposite--that she would have had mental health problems anyway and they were exacerbated and used as an excuse by her family. it just doesn't really say.
so I've read lots of reviews of the book that are like, "IT TURNS OUT THAT HER 'MENTAL ILLNESS' WAS ACTUALLY BECAUSE OF HER FAMILY!" wah wah. this may seem nitpicky of me, especially because the author may not even have meant for people to have that reaction--but I just find it disappointing because it would be cool to see an inarguably mentally ill character who's also smart and a hero. also a portrayal of interaction between mental illness and life experience, instead of the idea that you can only have one or the other.
I'm leery of saying this because it kind of sounds like I'm saying PTSD and other stuff that comes from trauma isn't a real disability. I don't think that but I do think there's this weird division in fiction between people who are "really" mentally disabled (usually: depression, psychosis, autism, social anxiety, sometimes intellectual disability) and people who appear that way, but actually it's someone else's fault, making them actually at their core non-disabled.
obvious example: lisbeth salander!!
I'm not saying some of these characters are proven beyond a shadow a doubt to have entered the world non-disabled. but there is a revelation that at least some of their disability is related to trauma, and they are "sensible" at their core even if they are eccentric. and it's like, other people think that they don't know what they're talking about, and think that they don't know what really happened to them and/or what's really wrong with the state of the world, because they're disabled--but surprise, because they aren't innately disabled, they actually DO know what's going on and what they're saying is actually true.
I read a book recently that didn't exactly make clear whether it was doing this or not. it was a great book but I felt disappointed, I guess, by the one element.
early on a (now absent) character is referred to and described for the first time. she's kind of a typical mentally ill/depressed character, there's a big focus on the strange things she did and how difficult it was to live with her and take care of her. as the book goes on she is described/flashbacked to again and again, and seems more complex, human, nice, and interesting each time. in the second half of the book we learn that she was abused, and that the way her family treated her when she was depressed actually kept her from recovering at least as much as her actual depression did. when she finally appears at the end of the book, she is a heroic character.
I thought this was really cool, but I guess I felt a little sad too, because I knew that most people would perceive the book in the ordinary model of mental illness--i.e. this apparently mentally ill character turned out to be a smart and heroic person who was wronged by other people, therefore she wasn't REALLY mentally ill, it was just because of her family, and by defeating them, she can stop being ill. the book doesn't really assert this but it also doesn't assert the opposite--that she would have had mental health problems anyway and they were exacerbated and used as an excuse by her family. it just doesn't really say.
so I've read lots of reviews of the book that are like, "IT TURNS OUT THAT HER 'MENTAL ILLNESS' WAS ACTUALLY BECAUSE OF HER FAMILY!" wah wah. this may seem nitpicky of me, especially because the author may not even have meant for people to have that reaction--but I just find it disappointing because it would be cool to see an inarguably mentally ill character who's also smart and a hero. also a portrayal of interaction between mental illness and life experience, instead of the idea that you can only have one or the other.
20 April, 2011
some models and their applications in fiction
To me there are three ways of portraying disability in fiction--medical model, social model, and fake social model, with the first and the last being the most common. Although I wouldn't say it's the best movie I've ever seen, It's Kind of a Funny Story was impressive in its attempt to tell a story within the social model. It doesn't see the main character's problems--suicidal ideation and panic attacks--as a reason to avoid making a fairly typical quirky teen comedy with montages, huge amounts of voiceover, and animated sequences. And although Craig, the protagonist, is in a psych ward with people who have more severe problems than his, he ultimately identifies as "like them." The standard romantic conflict, where a boy must choose between the girl he always thought he wanted and a new girl he really should be with, is here about normalcy vs. visible psychiatric disability. The non-disabled girl Craig thinks he wants sees his hospitalization as "edgy," but is disgusted when his anxiety causes him to throw up; the girl he should be with cuts herself on her face. Reviews of It's Kind of a Funny Story insisted on reading it as either medical model or fake social model, and effectively criticized it for having a protagonist whose disability wasn't obvious or severe enough.
What medical model means in pop culture should be obvious enough. In this dour movie, Craig displays every textbook symptom of depression and anxiety, and the montages and fantasy sequences are excised because they're not appropriate for such a serious subject. Also excised are the major subplots about the academic pressure Craig is under from his friends, school, and family, and how this conflicts with his love of drawing. This might imply that society contributes to Craig's problems, which would mean he isn't really ill, just sensitive! Real disability is obvious and, when untreated, looks the same in all situations.
Fake social model is more fun to watch--a fake social movie could definitely include montages--but it's ultimately just as unsatisfying and lacking in truth. I call it fake social model because I think it's what people are responding to when they say things like, "In this case, the social model fails." Sorry, guys. Prophecies can fail, tongues can cease--but the social model remains applicable to every case there ever has been or will be. The thing is if we say "disability isn't real," we mean objectively. Many important things are not objectively real. The fake social model takes the perspective of, "Not only is disability not objectively real, but it isn't real, full stop." Of course, this is obviously not true, which means that stories in the fake social model which have more than one disabled-identified character often portray the main characters in fake social model, and other characters in medical model. The way this would work in It's Kind of a Funny Story would be to show Craig's anxiety and depression as entirely caused by external pressure, or even imagined out of nowhere because he lives in a society that is always "labeling people." The more severely, inarguably disabled characters would function as jokes--how funny that anyone would think Craig is like them, when he's clearly like us!--and possibly by tragic example they would convince Craig that, since he's not as bad off as they are, he must be normal. The girl Craig falls for would also be fake social model, and in all likelihood would not cut her face--self-injury is serious, you know, and a character who's Not Like Us is too sad or funny to be a viable romantic interest.
Fake social model is frustrating because, of course, it always fails when applied to all disabled people. So it ends up promoting a feeling which is even more offensive than the medical model--that it is wrong for our hero to be under pressure, overmedicated, involuntarily committed, stigmatized, or whatever else he or she faces, as a result of being mistakenly identified as disabled. FWD/Forward did a whole post discussing tropes of non-mentally ill people who end up in psych wards, and came to much the same conclusion. The implication is, invariably, "this is wrong because the hero isn't really disabled." Real disabled people, those ghouls, deserve all this, but fortunately it is not Our Life.
The third option, of course, is social model. True social model can be any genre, though pure tragedy or educational film often has difficulty understanding it. Life tends not to feel like either of those things. It's probably no surprise that I began this post thinking about Skins which awestruck me with its ability to hold two ideas in its head at the same time--a)JJ is genuinely disabled, and b)the stigma he faces is a problem. This is real social model writing, which pays attention to both impairment and outside pressure, as well as the ways the two can exacerbate each other. Though aspects of It's Kind of a Funny Story are very naive, and it doesn't reject fake social model as clearly as I would like, the movie cares enough to portray a complex disability experience and should be commended.
What medical model means in pop culture should be obvious enough. In this dour movie, Craig displays every textbook symptom of depression and anxiety, and the montages and fantasy sequences are excised because they're not appropriate for such a serious subject. Also excised are the major subplots about the academic pressure Craig is under from his friends, school, and family, and how this conflicts with his love of drawing. This might imply that society contributes to Craig's problems, which would mean he isn't really ill, just sensitive! Real disability is obvious and, when untreated, looks the same in all situations.
Fake social model is more fun to watch--a fake social movie could definitely include montages--but it's ultimately just as unsatisfying and lacking in truth. I call it fake social model because I think it's what people are responding to when they say things like, "In this case, the social model fails." Sorry, guys. Prophecies can fail, tongues can cease--but the social model remains applicable to every case there ever has been or will be. The thing is if we say "disability isn't real," we mean objectively. Many important things are not objectively real. The fake social model takes the perspective of, "Not only is disability not objectively real, but it isn't real, full stop." Of course, this is obviously not true, which means that stories in the fake social model which have more than one disabled-identified character often portray the main characters in fake social model, and other characters in medical model. The way this would work in It's Kind of a Funny Story would be to show Craig's anxiety and depression as entirely caused by external pressure, or even imagined out of nowhere because he lives in a society that is always "labeling people." The more severely, inarguably disabled characters would function as jokes--how funny that anyone would think Craig is like them, when he's clearly like us!--and possibly by tragic example they would convince Craig that, since he's not as bad off as they are, he must be normal. The girl Craig falls for would also be fake social model, and in all likelihood would not cut her face--self-injury is serious, you know, and a character who's Not Like Us is too sad or funny to be a viable romantic interest.
Fake social model is frustrating because, of course, it always fails when applied to all disabled people. So it ends up promoting a feeling which is even more offensive than the medical model--that it is wrong for our hero to be under pressure, overmedicated, involuntarily committed, stigmatized, or whatever else he or she faces, as a result of being mistakenly identified as disabled. FWD/Forward did a whole post discussing tropes of non-mentally ill people who end up in psych wards, and came to much the same conclusion. The implication is, invariably, "this is wrong because the hero isn't really disabled." Real disabled people, those ghouls, deserve all this, but fortunately it is not Our Life.
The third option, of course, is social model. True social model can be any genre, though pure tragedy or educational film often has difficulty understanding it. Life tends not to feel like either of those things. It's probably no surprise that I began this post thinking about Skins which awestruck me with its ability to hold two ideas in its head at the same time--a)JJ is genuinely disabled, and b)the stigma he faces is a problem. This is real social model writing, which pays attention to both impairment and outside pressure, as well as the ways the two can exacerbate each other. Though aspects of It's Kind of a Funny Story are very naive, and it doesn't reject fake social model as clearly as I would like, the movie cares enough to portray a complex disability experience and should be commended.
19 December, 2010
So I just remembered something about the movie Legally Blonde, which is the kind of movie that you end up seeing multiple times at birthday parties and stuff when you're a kid, but the first time I saw it was in theaters with my mom, so I would have been twelve. There's a character in the movie, who according to Google is named Enid, who probably talks two or three times that I can remember. This character is a stereotypical lesbian feminist and all her lines are about that. I think there's also a deleted scene where she argues with the main character about the case while eating with a fork out of a plastic container.
The reason I remember this is because I actually thought it was cool to talk while eating with a fork out a plastic container, as a result of seeing the movie. Also I thought that the line "I single-handedly organized the march for Lesbians Against Drunk Driving" was super funny, even though it's not really a joke, it's just supposed to explain that Enid is a lesbian. I would even quote it.
The reason I'm telling you this is that I was thinking about how if you're a minority and you are unfortunately saddled with the desire to consume pop culture (and am I ever), a lot of the time you have to choose between getting attached to some really dumb character just because you're excited to see someone who belongs to your group, or just giving up on finding any characters who that part of you can identify with. Which is sort of okay when you're older, and besides as you get older you can find movies and TV shows that are less mainstream--but in retrospect it is so, so weird when you're a kid.
The reason I remember this is because I actually thought it was cool to talk while eating with a fork out a plastic container, as a result of seeing the movie. Also I thought that the line "I single-handedly organized the march for Lesbians Against Drunk Driving" was super funny, even though it's not really a joke, it's just supposed to explain that Enid is a lesbian. I would even quote it.
The reason I'm telling you this is that I was thinking about how if you're a minority and you are unfortunately saddled with the desire to consume pop culture (and am I ever), a lot of the time you have to choose between getting attached to some really dumb character just because you're excited to see someone who belongs to your group, or just giving up on finding any characters who that part of you can identify with. Which is sort of okay when you're older, and besides as you get older you can find movies and TV shows that are less mainstream--but in retrospect it is so, so weird when you're a kid.
28 October, 2010
so I just rewatched Gattaca (after seeing it and really loving it four years ago) and I seriously almost cried it's so awesome...the problem is it's actually sort of super ableist in its own way. Like, people with invisible disabilities should just follow their dreams, but people with visible disabilities, not so much.
I can think of a loophole out of this so I can still love the movie and not feel bad. But I feel like I'm cheating. Can anyone help?
I can think of a loophole out of this so I can still love the movie and not feel bad. But I feel like I'm cheating. Can anyone help?
20 October, 2010
disabling queerness: Fingersmith
Before I start, there are two kinds of ASD (or generally mind-disabled) characters, besides those who are actually canonically identified as having ASD. There are people like Pete Campbell where I sincerely think that if they were a real person born in 2000, they would be diagnosed with ASD. Then there are people like River Tam from Firefly, who obviously doesn't literally have ASD or schizophrenia, because we know that her ASD/schizophrenic traits come from emotional trauma and brain injury. If I write something "reading" River as a person like me, I'm not trying to deny the canon of the show, but just saying that functionally, she is kind of like people with certain disabilities, and can be identified with/claimed by us.
The character Maud Lilly, from the book and movie Fingersmith, is the second kind of character; she comes off as being like a person with ASD because of her life experience. Although this isn't the reason I love the book and movie--they're just incredibly fantastic and creative--it is probably the reason I find the love story so affecting, because Maud's experience of infatuation is so much like mine.
If you are interested in watching the movie or reading the book Fingersmith, you should probably know that there's a big twist and it has to do with exactly what this post is about. I knew the twist beforehand and I still love the book and movie, but if you want to be surprised, you should stop reading here.
Okay. (I'm talking about the book, but the movie doesn't change any of the facts--it just doesn't focus in on Maud's adolescence and sexuality as much as the book.)
So Fingersmith is a gothic novel about a 19th-century teenage pickpocket, Sue, who is hired to scam a sheltered girl named Maud. Maud lives with her uncle in the country and would inherit a lot of money from him if she ever got married--but it seems like she never will get married because she's so isolated. Gentleman, a con artist, is planning on marrying her and then getting her labeled as "mad" and put in an institution so he can have her money.
Sue's job is to be Maud's maid, become friends with her, and do anything possible to get her to fall in love with Gentleman and elope with him. Sue narrates in the movie, "When I saw her I thought: 'This is going to be easy.'" Maud is very stiff and soft-spoken and has nightmares every night (during which she begs Sue not to leave her alone). Sue has grown up taking care of babies and young children, so despite her plans to hurt Maud she has an instinctive protective reaction to Maud's anxious, childlike nature.
Maud is "developmentally delayed"--I don't use this as a euphemism for intellectual disability, but as a term for something that most disabled young adults have, both because of disability and as a result of being sheltered and not learning to be independent. Maud is young for her age. She does not understand how to do a lot of things that most people her age know how to do.
Sue becomes very attached to Maud, and ends up kissing and having sex with her because Maud claims not to know how to have sex. But she doesn't know how to stop what she's doing, and the con continues as planned. In the days after Maud and Gentleman have gotten married, but before Maud is institutionalized, Sue becomes more and more distraught and depressed about betraying someone she loves, someone who is so innocent. Then Maud steals Sue's identity, and Sue is institutionalized as Maud Lilly. Sue realizes that Maud was actually working with Gentleman to scam Sue.
The twist of the story is that Maud isn't a "pigeon," the term Gentleman uses for an easily manipulated person. This is already a "fuck yeah" moment for disabled readers. But what's even cooler is that Maud wasn't faking very much. She really is developmentally delayed and she really does have nightmares, and she really is very stiff and impaired when it comes to other people. Nonetheless, she is calculating and capable of doing evil.
The unevenness of Maud's abilities, the fallacy inherent in categorizing her as "childlike" or "adultlike," is encapsulated by her knowledge of sex. In the second part of the book, which is narrated by Maud, we learn that her uncle collects pornographic writing and images, and she has been his secretary since she was a child. The servants in the house don't know what her uncle's library consists of, and became unsettled by Maud because she would use sexual terms at a young age; this led to her losing their motherly support, after which she began to bully and harass them. Her uncle's friends are attracted to Maud when they visit the house and she reads porn to them--they think of her as sexy, impure, and probably available, though of course she's never even kissed anyone. After Maud has scammed Sue and is living in London, she tries to get help from one of her uncle's friends, but he refuses to associate with her because of her reputation.
Maud can't be categorized as a virgin or a whore; she is physically and emotionally untouched, but seen as damaged goods because of her intellectual knowledge. To me, the most beautiful passages in the book are those describing Maud's attraction to Sue--her surprise at realizing that something she's very intellectually familiar with could actually happen to her; that sexuality isn't the boring, mildly disgusting thing she always thought it was.
After putting Sue in the institution, Maud realizes that she is in love with Sue and wants to save her. But it's very difficult for her to do anything because she has no common sense or understanding of how to move around in a city. I won't summarize the rest of the book, but don't worry, everything turns out awesome and there are some more twists. I basically just want to talk about what a great mind-disabled character Maud is. She comes off at first as being completely guileless and unable to do anything. Then we find out that isn't true at all and she's a force to be reckoned with, but her disability doesn't just disappear; there really are things she can't do. And she's neither good or evil, she's both, just like all the other characters.
The character Maud Lilly, from the book and movie Fingersmith, is the second kind of character; she comes off as being like a person with ASD because of her life experience. Although this isn't the reason I love the book and movie--they're just incredibly fantastic and creative--it is probably the reason I find the love story so affecting, because Maud's experience of infatuation is so much like mine.
If you are interested in watching the movie or reading the book Fingersmith, you should probably know that there's a big twist and it has to do with exactly what this post is about. I knew the twist beforehand and I still love the book and movie, but if you want to be surprised, you should stop reading here.
Okay. (I'm talking about the book, but the movie doesn't change any of the facts--it just doesn't focus in on Maud's adolescence and sexuality as much as the book.)
So Fingersmith is a gothic novel about a 19th-century teenage pickpocket, Sue, who is hired to scam a sheltered girl named Maud. Maud lives with her uncle in the country and would inherit a lot of money from him if she ever got married--but it seems like she never will get married because she's so isolated. Gentleman, a con artist, is planning on marrying her and then getting her labeled as "mad" and put in an institution so he can have her money.
Sue's job is to be Maud's maid, become friends with her, and do anything possible to get her to fall in love with Gentleman and elope with him. Sue narrates in the movie, "When I saw her I thought: 'This is going to be easy.'" Maud is very stiff and soft-spoken and has nightmares every night (during which she begs Sue not to leave her alone). Sue has grown up taking care of babies and young children, so despite her plans to hurt Maud she has an instinctive protective reaction to Maud's anxious, childlike nature.
Maud is "developmentally delayed"--I don't use this as a euphemism for intellectual disability, but as a term for something that most disabled young adults have, both because of disability and as a result of being sheltered and not learning to be independent. Maud is young for her age. She does not understand how to do a lot of things that most people her age know how to do.
Sue becomes very attached to Maud, and ends up kissing and having sex with her because Maud claims not to know how to have sex. But she doesn't know how to stop what she's doing, and the con continues as planned. In the days after Maud and Gentleman have gotten married, but before Maud is institutionalized, Sue becomes more and more distraught and depressed about betraying someone she loves, someone who is so innocent. Then Maud steals Sue's identity, and Sue is institutionalized as Maud Lilly. Sue realizes that Maud was actually working with Gentleman to scam Sue.
The twist of the story is that Maud isn't a "pigeon," the term Gentleman uses for an easily manipulated person. This is already a "fuck yeah" moment for disabled readers. But what's even cooler is that Maud wasn't faking very much. She really is developmentally delayed and she really does have nightmares, and she really is very stiff and impaired when it comes to other people. Nonetheless, she is calculating and capable of doing evil.
The unevenness of Maud's abilities, the fallacy inherent in categorizing her as "childlike" or "adultlike," is encapsulated by her knowledge of sex. In the second part of the book, which is narrated by Maud, we learn that her uncle collects pornographic writing and images, and she has been his secretary since she was a child. The servants in the house don't know what her uncle's library consists of, and became unsettled by Maud because she would use sexual terms at a young age; this led to her losing their motherly support, after which she began to bully and harass them. Her uncle's friends are attracted to Maud when they visit the house and she reads porn to them--they think of her as sexy, impure, and probably available, though of course she's never even kissed anyone. After Maud has scammed Sue and is living in London, she tries to get help from one of her uncle's friends, but he refuses to associate with her because of her reputation.
Maud can't be categorized as a virgin or a whore; she is physically and emotionally untouched, but seen as damaged goods because of her intellectual knowledge. To me, the most beautiful passages in the book are those describing Maud's attraction to Sue--her surprise at realizing that something she's very intellectually familiar with could actually happen to her; that sexuality isn't the boring, mildly disgusting thing she always thought it was.
After putting Sue in the institution, Maud realizes that she is in love with Sue and wants to save her. But it's very difficult for her to do anything because she has no common sense or understanding of how to move around in a city. I won't summarize the rest of the book, but don't worry, everything turns out awesome and there are some more twists. I basically just want to talk about what a great mind-disabled character Maud is. She comes off at first as being completely guileless and unable to do anything. Then we find out that isn't true at all and she's a force to be reckoned with, but her disability doesn't just disappear; there really are things she can't do. And she's neither good or evil, she's both, just like all the other characters.
02 September, 2010
Whyyyy did this happen
This post is the dumbest example of Oppression Olympics I've ever seen. I know that they come from a place of caring about their friend, but that isn't a reason to set up a weird competition between depression, eating disorders, and autism. This person is jealous of all the portrayals of autism in pop culture, because "so many more" people have depression and eating disorders, and every TV show and movie about eating disorders doesn't count because it's either too cheesy or not popular enough. "Don't let society get you down just because YOUR mental health issue isn't 'popular'," the person admonishes. Oh, the joys of having a "popular" "mental health issue."
Okay dude, I know the pull of Oppression Olympics is a strong one, but seriously? It's almost always wrong. God knows I find myself thinking, "Oh man, wouldn't it be cool if people thought about autism the way they thought about intellectual disability? Instead of thinking it just makes people be insensitive geniuses who do weird shit, who we should all crowd around and stare at like zoo animals, wouldn't it be cool if people just understood that autism makes you not be able to do things that most other people can do? Which sometimes seems to result in insensitivity, genius, and weird shit, but isn't really those things?" (Note that despite all the autism pop culture Southpaw has consumed, they haven't realized that autism is a disability not a "mental health issue.")
But then I remember that even though people with ID aren't treated like circus freaks, they have their own giant pop culture pile of shit. The fact that they're not seen as ~fascinating geniuses~ often means that they're not treated as present at all. Most references to intellectual disability in pop culture consist of making fun of people with ID or using words like "retarded," in a tone that implies people with ID don't actually exist except as the subjects of jokes. A little space is reserved for glorifying the non-disabled people who live and work with people who have ID. Since pop culture forgets that people with ID can be fun to be around, or even have unique personalities, they can think of nothing more saintly than spending time with one of those boring blank slates.
I think about Precious, and I think about Glee, and I totally stop feeling jealous of people with intellectual disabilities.
Similarly, I remember being a kid and watching a Lifetime movie about a girl with anorexia and bulimia. Lifetime movies are too cheesy according to Southpaw, but let's for a second ignore the implication that all eating disorder pop culture has to be good in order to count, since most autism pop culture sucks and therefore doesn't count either. I have never seen a Lifetime movie about someone like me. I have never in my fucking life seen any movie or TV show where a person with autism was the protagonist instead of a device to shock or burden the protagonist. (I know that at least two movies exist with Autistic protagonists, but a sitcom also existed where all the main characters had eating disorders. Being able to point out some exceptions doesn't disprove the overarching trend.)
I also feel really fucking scared and uncomfortable when I realize that a TV show or movie contains a character with ASD. It is so often that the character hurts or kills another person or is involved in crime. Even when the character doesn't do anything worse than unknowingly insult people (which is pretty much a constant factor in autism pop culture), that is still damaging to the lives of people with ASD. We are portrayed as more likely to hurt people than help them.
It is not very fun to talk to some person who has become "interested in autism" thanks to consumption of autism pop culture or the almost as deadly autism pop science. These lovely people will insist that a verbal person has Asperger's even if the person has a different ASD diagnosis (or simply doesn't identify as having Asperger's, which should be enough). They will patronize the fuck out of people with ASD and explain a bunch of basic shit to them because they mistakenly think we can't learn. Awesomest of awesomes, they will announce that someone is "claiming to have autism when they're just a little awkward." You see, based on the wacky, overdramatic behavior of Autistic fictional characters, APC consumers think that all ASD people act really weird in a very specific way, all the time. And since they'd rather listen to pop culture than real PWDs, these poor creatures never get better. They are truly trapped inside a shell of autism pop culture, which prevents them from connecting with other human beings.
However, I'm not saying it doesn't suck that depression and eating disorders aren't portrayed that much in pop culture. It sucks a lot. Good observation! But why can't you just write a post about that, instead of a post about how people with autism have it sooo easy with our "popular" "mental health issue" (a post which includes the bizarre caveat "I love discussing Autism"--well, good for you, I fucking don't)? Wouldn't that be nice?
(By the way, I was googling "Oppression Olympics" and I found this post on Racialicious about it. I really love comment #13, and the whole comment thread in general.)
Okay dude, I know the pull of Oppression Olympics is a strong one, but seriously? It's almost always wrong. God knows I find myself thinking, "Oh man, wouldn't it be cool if people thought about autism the way they thought about intellectual disability? Instead of thinking it just makes people be insensitive geniuses who do weird shit, who we should all crowd around and stare at like zoo animals, wouldn't it be cool if people just understood that autism makes you not be able to do things that most other people can do? Which sometimes seems to result in insensitivity, genius, and weird shit, but isn't really those things?" (Note that despite all the autism pop culture Southpaw has consumed, they haven't realized that autism is a disability not a "mental health issue.")
But then I remember that even though people with ID aren't treated like circus freaks, they have their own giant pop culture pile of shit. The fact that they're not seen as ~fascinating geniuses~ often means that they're not treated as present at all. Most references to intellectual disability in pop culture consist of making fun of people with ID or using words like "retarded," in a tone that implies people with ID don't actually exist except as the subjects of jokes. A little space is reserved for glorifying the non-disabled people who live and work with people who have ID. Since pop culture forgets that people with ID can be fun to be around, or even have unique personalities, they can think of nothing more saintly than spending time with one of those boring blank slates.
I think about Precious, and I think about Glee, and I totally stop feeling jealous of people with intellectual disabilities.
Similarly, I remember being a kid and watching a Lifetime movie about a girl with anorexia and bulimia. Lifetime movies are too cheesy according to Southpaw, but let's for a second ignore the implication that all eating disorder pop culture has to be good in order to count, since most autism pop culture sucks and therefore doesn't count either. I have never seen a Lifetime movie about someone like me. I have never in my fucking life seen any movie or TV show where a person with autism was the protagonist instead of a device to shock or burden the protagonist. (I know that at least two movies exist with Autistic protagonists, but a sitcom also existed where all the main characters had eating disorders. Being able to point out some exceptions doesn't disprove the overarching trend.)
I also feel really fucking scared and uncomfortable when I realize that a TV show or movie contains a character with ASD. It is so often that the character hurts or kills another person or is involved in crime. Even when the character doesn't do anything worse than unknowingly insult people (which is pretty much a constant factor in autism pop culture), that is still damaging to the lives of people with ASD. We are portrayed as more likely to hurt people than help them.
It is not very fun to talk to some person who has become "interested in autism" thanks to consumption of autism pop culture or the almost as deadly autism pop science. These lovely people will insist that a verbal person has Asperger's even if the person has a different ASD diagnosis (or simply doesn't identify as having Asperger's, which should be enough). They will patronize the fuck out of people with ASD and explain a bunch of basic shit to them because they mistakenly think we can't learn. Awesomest of awesomes, they will announce that someone is "claiming to have autism when they're just a little awkward." You see, based on the wacky, overdramatic behavior of Autistic fictional characters, APC consumers think that all ASD people act really weird in a very specific way, all the time. And since they'd rather listen to pop culture than real PWDs, these poor creatures never get better. They are truly trapped inside a shell of autism pop culture, which prevents them from connecting with other human beings.
However, I'm not saying it doesn't suck that depression and eating disorders aren't portrayed that much in pop culture. It sucks a lot. Good observation! But why can't you just write a post about that, instead of a post about how people with autism have it sooo easy with our "popular" "mental health issue" (a post which includes the bizarre caveat "I love discussing Autism"--well, good for you, I fucking don't)? Wouldn't that be nice?
(By the way, I was googling "Oppression Olympics" and I found this post on Racialicious about it. I really love comment #13, and the whole comment thread in general.)
22 August, 2010
oh oh oh call on me
A few months ago I made a post saying that most physically disabled characters in mainstream media have acquired disabilities and that I thought this was because audiences couldn't identify with characters who identified as disabled, and weren't miserable about being disabled. Disability has to be a relatively new thing that you can do montages about, like on House. Or it has to come out of a tragedy like on Glee (Artie was of course in a car accident that killed his mom when he was a kid).
I wandered in while my mom was watching Covert Affairs and I was like, "That guy is bad at pretending to be blind," and my mom was like, "Oh, he just became blind in an accident." Surprise surprise. Doesn't that make things easy for Christopher Gorham?
Anyway, in my previous post I didn't address non-physical disabilities at all. But I was thinking maybe the reason ASD tends to suck in fiction is sort of another version of the same thing. Writers cannot imagine what it's like to have lived your whole life with a disability, so they write about ASD as though it's something that just happened to the character last week. That's why characters with ASD suck at everything. (To be specific, I'm referring to characters who are verbal and whose problems are portrayed as being mainly social.)
This is something that always makes me really mad. My mom was trying to get me to watch the movie Snow Cake, which I've heard is very good and everything, but just the idea of watching an Autism Movie makes me feel ashamed and sick. I know that like most people I can be selfish and stupid, but in Autism Movies these are portrayed as defining traits for someone like me and it just sucks to know that people are watching movies and thinking that's what ASD people are like.
Lots of people with ASD have anxiety and anger problems as a result of social failure, but this is often not portrayed in fiction because to acknowledge that someone can have anxiety and anger problems, you have to acknowledge that they can have awareness of their social failure, which in turn means acknowledging that they have lived with a disability their whole life. The really oversimplified "oh I just got autism yesterday" ASD characters in the mainstream media are insulting because their portrayal implies that ASD people don't have common sense or the ability to learn from mistakes and cope with impairment.
Seriously even coping badly is okay with me. I am so in love with Mad Men 3x01 when Pete thinks he's about to be fired so he starts making an awkward speech about how he should have socialized with Lane Pryce more. Because it shows that Pete knows people don't like him. A lot of Pete's behavior in early seasons comes out of his (sometimes buried) knowledge that people don't like him, and that's one reason I enjoy him as much as I do. He is someone who has lived with whatever-he-has for 26 years when the show starts, and this hasn't been a good thing, but it has made him complicated. What really frustrates me about intentional portrayals of ASD is that the characters are incredibly uncomplicated. They have not responded or reacted to anything in their lives.
There's also the fact, of course, that these characters don't just suck on TV, but they make non-disabled people suck in real life because they think that ASD is uncomplicated, and think they're qualified to diagnose or misdiagnose people based on brief interactions. Good times for everyone.
I wandered in while my mom was watching Covert Affairs and I was like, "That guy is bad at pretending to be blind," and my mom was like, "Oh, he just became blind in an accident." Surprise surprise. Doesn't that make things easy for Christopher Gorham?
Anyway, in my previous post I didn't address non-physical disabilities at all. But I was thinking maybe the reason ASD tends to suck in fiction is sort of another version of the same thing. Writers cannot imagine what it's like to have lived your whole life with a disability, so they write about ASD as though it's something that just happened to the character last week. That's why characters with ASD suck at everything. (To be specific, I'm referring to characters who are verbal and whose problems are portrayed as being mainly social.)
This is something that always makes me really mad. My mom was trying to get me to watch the movie Snow Cake, which I've heard is very good and everything, but just the idea of watching an Autism Movie makes me feel ashamed and sick. I know that like most people I can be selfish and stupid, but in Autism Movies these are portrayed as defining traits for someone like me and it just sucks to know that people are watching movies and thinking that's what ASD people are like.
Lots of people with ASD have anxiety and anger problems as a result of social failure, but this is often not portrayed in fiction because to acknowledge that someone can have anxiety and anger problems, you have to acknowledge that they can have awareness of their social failure, which in turn means acknowledging that they have lived with a disability their whole life. The really oversimplified "oh I just got autism yesterday" ASD characters in the mainstream media are insulting because their portrayal implies that ASD people don't have common sense or the ability to learn from mistakes and cope with impairment.
Seriously even coping badly is okay with me. I am so in love with Mad Men 3x01 when Pete thinks he's about to be fired so he starts making an awkward speech about how he should have socialized with Lane Pryce more. Because it shows that Pete knows people don't like him. A lot of Pete's behavior in early seasons comes out of his (sometimes buried) knowledge that people don't like him, and that's one reason I enjoy him as much as I do. He is someone who has lived with whatever-he-has for 26 years when the show starts, and this hasn't been a good thing, but it has made him complicated. What really frustrates me about intentional portrayals of ASD is that the characters are incredibly uncomplicated. They have not responded or reacted to anything in their lives.
There's also the fact, of course, that these characters don't just suck on TV, but they make non-disabled people suck in real life because they think that ASD is uncomplicated, and think they're qualified to diagnose or misdiagnose people based on brief interactions. Good times for everyone.
09 April, 2010
I'm trying not to write off-topic posts
but I'm just so happy I want to vomit all over the place, so:
Okay, first, can I just tell you about my life experience so far with Scott Pilgrim? Three years ago, my best friend went to a theater program where she became really attached to a particular counselor. He advised her to read Scott Pilgrim. A few weeks later, we were at a comic store and she bought the first book. (I bought the first Runaways collection, launching an obsession of about a year--and I hope to God they never make that into a movie, because they will FUBAR it.)
While I was away at school, A.T. became so enamored of Scott Pilgrim (and is such a good friend) that she bought and sent me the first three books. Magic! A.T. has since controlled my Scott Pilgrim intake, since I am too lazy to walk the approximately four steps from my dorm room to Infinite Monkey. (That's actually not true, but last year Y the Last Man started taking over my brain and I wasn't capable of spending money on anything else.)
Last year we had occasion to get excited about the SCOTT PILGRIM MOVIE! We didn't know what to think about Michael Cera being in it, even though we feel the way about him that we do about Scott Pilgrim (and have since before he "made it," if you're keeping track). Scott Pilgrim isn't supposed to be mellow and Michael Cera has never played anyone who wasn't. It was being directed by Edgar Wright, though, which was basically perfect, because something like Spaced has a very similar genre and feel.
AND NOW! LOOK AT THIS:
AAAAAAAAGH
(I don't think Michael Cera is going to be as mellow as I feared. And also, I just realized I'm way too excited to care.)
Okay, first, can I just tell you about my life experience so far with Scott Pilgrim? Three years ago, my best friend went to a theater program where she became really attached to a particular counselor. He advised her to read Scott Pilgrim. A few weeks later, we were at a comic store and she bought the first book. (I bought the first Runaways collection, launching an obsession of about a year--and I hope to God they never make that into a movie, because they will FUBAR it.)
While I was away at school, A.T. became so enamored of Scott Pilgrim (and is such a good friend) that she bought and sent me the first three books. Magic! A.T. has since controlled my Scott Pilgrim intake, since I am too lazy to walk the approximately four steps from my dorm room to Infinite Monkey. (That's actually not true, but last year Y the Last Man started taking over my brain and I wasn't capable of spending money on anything else.)
Last year we had occasion to get excited about the SCOTT PILGRIM MOVIE! We didn't know what to think about Michael Cera being in it, even though we feel the way about him that we do about Scott Pilgrim (and have since before he "made it," if you're keeping track). Scott Pilgrim isn't supposed to be mellow and Michael Cera has never played anyone who wasn't. It was being directed by Edgar Wright, though, which was basically perfect, because something like Spaced has a very similar genre and feel.
AND NOW! LOOK AT THIS:
AAAAAAAAGH
(I don't think Michael Cera is going to be as mellow as I feared. And also, I just realized I'm way too excited to care.)
18 March, 2010
Were the World Mine
I just watched this really strange, good movie, Were the World Mine (well I watched it on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, but I've been stimming out on it since then so it's basically like I've been watching it nonstop for the past three days). It's about a gay teenage boy who is put upon in every possible way--he goes to a private school where he's bullied by jocks, he lives in a small town where everyone is cartoonishly homophobic, his mom thinks he's ruining her life, and he has a crush on the only jock who doesn't bully him, who appears to be straight. But never fear, Timothy is a boss singer, and relaxes by indulging in ridiculously awesome fantasy sequences.
If you can't tell from this video that this is practically the best movie ever made, I should emphasize that it's not "fabulous." I think they tried to market it that way because one of the posters features Tanner Cohen making a dramatic facial expression on top of what I think is a marquee. I really prefer this poster, which better evokes how sad and weird the movie is:
To me the word "fabulous" means something where feminine gay men are used as a joke or a harmless spectacle, and not treated as real people. This isn't the case in Were the World Mine at all. Timothy is a passive but angry character, and the fantasy in the above video isn't harmless at all; in context, it's actually rather mean-spirited and bitter. Timothy casts the jocks he loathes as the comically swishy backup dancers in his fantasies, making them caricatures of the mannerisms and identity they bully him for having. When he calls the demasculinized jocks "fairies" it's not supposed to be a quirky pun; it's an assertion of the dominance he doesn't have in real life.
He ends up getting it in real life, though; about an hour into the movie, Timothy is looking through an old edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is being performed as a musical at his school, when he finds a recipe for the love spell used in the play. After following the directions, he produces a flower that squirts juice onto people's eyes and makes them fall in love with the first person they see. Timothy uses it to make Jonathan, the guy he likes, fall in love with him, but when people react negatively to their relationship, Timothy gets pissed off and makes all the homophobic people he knows fall in love with someone of the same sex.
This causes trouble because people get attacked for being gay, especially because the spell makes them really dopey and prone to public displays of affection. Also, Timothy only has two friends, a boy and a really annoying girl who have a crush on each other, and he accidentally made the boy fall in love with him. Timothy's drama teacher, who's implied to be a lesbian and some sort of magical being, is the only person who knows what's going on. She eventually convinces Timothy that what he's doing is wrong, and he reluctantly undoes the spell. This sounds like it might be depressing, but a)for some reason the spell has made it so no one is homophobic anymore, and b)it turns out Jonathan was actually gay in the first place.
I didn't mind Jonathan being gay--it had been sort of set up the whole time--but I thought it was cheesy that everyone stopped being homophobic. Also the homophobia was really cheesy in general; there's more than one scene in the movie where someone dourly turns to Timothy's mom and says, "Your son is a homosexual?" I don't really think these aspects of the movie are a huge deal, though, and I'm puzzled that I've seen reviews describing the movie as really awful in parts and good in others. I'd say it's mostly awesome and the weaknesses don't detract that much from how good it is.
This one clip that I keep watching over and over is the scene where Timothy auditions for the musical. He starts out singing nervously, but his confidence builds thanks to the encouragement of the ambiguously gay, ambiguously magical drama teacher; then, halfway through, the scene transforms into a blue-tinged fantasy sequence where Jonathan and Timothy walk through the halls with the jocks lurking creepily in the background.
The transition starts when Jonathan hears Timothy and the teacher singing, and peers into the room. We know from earlier shots that Timothy is standing next to the drama teacher, who is playing the piano. But from Jonathan's perspective, we see this:
In the same moment, Timothy begins to sing by himself: "We fairies that do run/From the presence of the sun/We follow darkness/Like a dream." This moment just about breaks my heart--the ache in his voice when he says "fairies," the fact that there is no "we fairies" because he doesn't know anyone gay except himself, the surprising accuracy of the lyrics when applied to gay people, especially gay kids; but largely the shot, in which Timothy is looking very cool but also very small, talented but alone.
If you can't tell from this video that this is practically the best movie ever made, I should emphasize that it's not "fabulous." I think they tried to market it that way because one of the posters features Tanner Cohen making a dramatic facial expression on top of what I think is a marquee. I really prefer this poster, which better evokes how sad and weird the movie is:
To me the word "fabulous" means something where feminine gay men are used as a joke or a harmless spectacle, and not treated as real people. This isn't the case in Were the World Mine at all. Timothy is a passive but angry character, and the fantasy in the above video isn't harmless at all; in context, it's actually rather mean-spirited and bitter. Timothy casts the jocks he loathes as the comically swishy backup dancers in his fantasies, making them caricatures of the mannerisms and identity they bully him for having. When he calls the demasculinized jocks "fairies" it's not supposed to be a quirky pun; it's an assertion of the dominance he doesn't have in real life.
He ends up getting it in real life, though; about an hour into the movie, Timothy is looking through an old edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is being performed as a musical at his school, when he finds a recipe for the love spell used in the play. After following the directions, he produces a flower that squirts juice onto people's eyes and makes them fall in love with the first person they see. Timothy uses it to make Jonathan, the guy he likes, fall in love with him, but when people react negatively to their relationship, Timothy gets pissed off and makes all the homophobic people he knows fall in love with someone of the same sex.
This causes trouble because people get attacked for being gay, especially because the spell makes them really dopey and prone to public displays of affection. Also, Timothy only has two friends, a boy and a really annoying girl who have a crush on each other, and he accidentally made the boy fall in love with him. Timothy's drama teacher, who's implied to be a lesbian and some sort of magical being, is the only person who knows what's going on. She eventually convinces Timothy that what he's doing is wrong, and he reluctantly undoes the spell. This sounds like it might be depressing, but a)for some reason the spell has made it so no one is homophobic anymore, and b)it turns out Jonathan was actually gay in the first place.
I didn't mind Jonathan being gay--it had been sort of set up the whole time--but I thought it was cheesy that everyone stopped being homophobic. Also the homophobia was really cheesy in general; there's more than one scene in the movie where someone dourly turns to Timothy's mom and says, "Your son is a homosexual?" I don't really think these aspects of the movie are a huge deal, though, and I'm puzzled that I've seen reviews describing the movie as really awful in parts and good in others. I'd say it's mostly awesome and the weaknesses don't detract that much from how good it is.
This one clip that I keep watching over and over is the scene where Timothy auditions for the musical. He starts out singing nervously, but his confidence builds thanks to the encouragement of the ambiguously gay, ambiguously magical drama teacher; then, halfway through, the scene transforms into a blue-tinged fantasy sequence where Jonathan and Timothy walk through the halls with the jocks lurking creepily in the background.
The transition starts when Jonathan hears Timothy and the teacher singing, and peers into the room. We know from earlier shots that Timothy is standing next to the drama teacher, who is playing the piano. But from Jonathan's perspective, we see this:
In the same moment, Timothy begins to sing by himself: "We fairies that do run/From the presence of the sun/We follow darkness/Like a dream." This moment just about breaks my heart--the ache in his voice when he says "fairies," the fact that there is no "we fairies" because he doesn't know anyone gay except himself, the surprising accuracy of the lyrics when applied to gay people, especially gay kids; but largely the shot, in which Timothy is looking very cool but also very small, talented but alone.
04 February, 2010
The harder fallacy
I keep thinking about something my friend said after we watched Precious and I was talking about how the portrayal of the child with Down Syndrome was offensive. (I'm going to refer to the character as Quishay, which is the name of the little girl who played her.) My friend kept saying, "Well, it IS harder to raise a kid with Down Syndrome." I said "Do you actually know any people with Down Syndrome, because if you did, I think you'd feel differently." My friend was like, "What do you mean, do you think I wouldn't think it's harder to have Down Syndrome? It's a DISABILITY. It's not a good thing. Are you saying it's not harder?"
I'm probably caricaturing this in my mind because it was a while ago and also it made me really mad. When I quote people who made me mad I tend to repeat the things they say in this particular voice that's both monotonous and overdramatic. I know this is a problem. I should be mature enough to disagree with people without being shitty about it. But it's really hard not to be shitty about it! Plus I hate the "it's harder" strawman even more than I hate the "but bad things will happen to you if you don't pass!!" strawman (#3 in the linked post).
So, I will just say what I wanted to say to my friend, but couldn't get out very clearly. Here are two facts about disability:
1. For whatever reason, nondisabled people tend to get grossed out or uncomfortable around disabled people.
2. By definition, all things being equal, it is harder to be disabled than it is to be nondisabled. Also, it's harder to be the guardian of a kid who is disabled because it often costs more money and the kid might have to live at home longer, or forever. Also, it's sometimes harder to be close to a disabled person (as a friend/significant other, as part of your job, or as a family member) because you are used to relating to people in a particular way that doesn't work with this person, or because you had built them up in your head as a person without a disability.
Some parts of #2 are not inherent aspects of disability. For example it isn't fair that it costs more money to raise a kid with a disability. That shouldn't be the case. But the fact that it's not inherent doesn't make it less real for the people for whom it's real. If a person is spending all their money so that their disabled kid can go to school, because public school does not do what the kid needs, it IS harder for them. So, yes. I'm saying it is harder to raise a disabled child.
But that's not the only thing in the world that is hard. And hard is not the same thing as repulsive or tragic.
In Precious, Precious has two kids. She is a young teenager. Her kids are the product of nonconsensual incest. Having kids as a young teenager is really hard. Getting raped by your father isn't just "hard," it is horrible, evil, and tragic. There aren't enough words to describe what it is. It's a lot worse than having a kid with Down Syndrome or any disability.
Now I guess it sounds like I'm on a track of saying Down Syndrome is okay because being raped by your father is worse. That's not my intent. What I'm saying is, Precious has two kids. The second kid she has, who has no disabilities, changes her life. She loves him tremendously, right away, and her love for him gives her the strength to fight back against her abusive mother and seek help. There are other factors that give Precious this motivation; it's not just the baby, it's that she has gotten support from her teacher and classmates. But still, this thing that is very difficult--a baby born to a single teenage mother--ends up being AMAZING. This exact thing happens to girls in real life, sometimes. Situations that are objectively really hard are experienced as wonderful and joyful.
So, harder doesn't equal bad or gross. And I would say that the portrayal of Precious's older child is as something bad and gross. It is totally unrealistic for Precious to have a baby with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome isn't an inherited condition, it's a genetic mutation, so incest doesn't increase its likelihood. An older mother increases its likelihood, and Precious is very young. I believe that this plot development, which belongs in a sci-fi movie, is just meant to add to the atmosphere of tragedy and gloom around Precious's life so far. She's physically abused! She's sexually abused! She can't read! She's poor! She had a baby and is pregnant again...AND, her kid has DOWN SYNDROME. WORST THING EVER. Quishay is not shown smiling or interacting with Precious and is not filmed in the loving way that her second child, Abdul, is filmed. (It's true that Quishay doesn't live with Precious for most of the movie, but number one, no one forced the writers to write the story that way; and, number two, we could have had shots emphasizing Quishay's cuteness and lovability when Precious gets her back at the end of the movie.)
The movie Precious is hateful to people with Down Syndrome because it uses Down Syndrome as a shortcut to say "Precious's life is horrible." At the beginning of this post I listed two facts about disability. This movie exploits fact #1, nondisabled people's discomfort and revulsion about disability. That is an immoral thing to do. It is incredibly disingenuous to claim that the portrayal of Quishay is somehow legitimate because "it's harder to raise a kid with Down Syndrome." This isn't about difficulty, it's about prejudice and using a disabled child as a horror-movie monster.
I am so tired of this. I call it "the harder fallacy." It sucks because when you're trying to point out that someone is being prejudiced, you get totally knocked off balance by a bogus argument about whether the victim of the prejudice, or their parents, has a hard time. But it's not about that. They're two totally different things.
eta: I'm pretty bad at science, I apologize. Apparently it's not as unlikely as I thought for a teenager to have a baby with Down Syndrome. However, my points about the portrayal of Quishay still stand, and would stand no matter what disability she had.
I'm probably caricaturing this in my mind because it was a while ago and also it made me really mad. When I quote people who made me mad I tend to repeat the things they say in this particular voice that's both monotonous and overdramatic. I know this is a problem. I should be mature enough to disagree with people without being shitty about it. But it's really hard not to be shitty about it! Plus I hate the "it's harder" strawman even more than I hate the "but bad things will happen to you if you don't pass!!" strawman (#3 in the linked post).
So, I will just say what I wanted to say to my friend, but couldn't get out very clearly. Here are two facts about disability:
1. For whatever reason, nondisabled people tend to get grossed out or uncomfortable around disabled people.
2. By definition, all things being equal, it is harder to be disabled than it is to be nondisabled. Also, it's harder to be the guardian of a kid who is disabled because it often costs more money and the kid might have to live at home longer, or forever. Also, it's sometimes harder to be close to a disabled person (as a friend/significant other, as part of your job, or as a family member) because you are used to relating to people in a particular way that doesn't work with this person, or because you had built them up in your head as a person without a disability.
Some parts of #2 are not inherent aspects of disability. For example it isn't fair that it costs more money to raise a kid with a disability. That shouldn't be the case. But the fact that it's not inherent doesn't make it less real for the people for whom it's real. If a person is spending all their money so that their disabled kid can go to school, because public school does not do what the kid needs, it IS harder for them. So, yes. I'm saying it is harder to raise a disabled child.
But that's not the only thing in the world that is hard. And hard is not the same thing as repulsive or tragic.
In Precious, Precious has two kids. She is a young teenager. Her kids are the product of nonconsensual incest. Having kids as a young teenager is really hard. Getting raped by your father isn't just "hard," it is horrible, evil, and tragic. There aren't enough words to describe what it is. It's a lot worse than having a kid with Down Syndrome or any disability.
Now I guess it sounds like I'm on a track of saying Down Syndrome is okay because being raped by your father is worse. That's not my intent. What I'm saying is, Precious has two kids. The second kid she has, who has no disabilities, changes her life. She loves him tremendously, right away, and her love for him gives her the strength to fight back against her abusive mother and seek help. There are other factors that give Precious this motivation; it's not just the baby, it's that she has gotten support from her teacher and classmates. But still, this thing that is very difficult--a baby born to a single teenage mother--ends up being AMAZING. This exact thing happens to girls in real life, sometimes. Situations that are objectively really hard are experienced as wonderful and joyful.
So, harder doesn't equal bad or gross. And I would say that the portrayal of Precious's older child is as something bad and gross. It is totally unrealistic for Precious to have a baby with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome isn't an inherited condition, it's a genetic mutation, so incest doesn't increase its likelihood. An older mother increases its likelihood, and Precious is very young. I believe that this plot development, which belongs in a sci-fi movie, is just meant to add to the atmosphere of tragedy and gloom around Precious's life so far. She's physically abused! She's sexually abused! She can't read! She's poor! She had a baby and is pregnant again...AND, her kid has DOWN SYNDROME. WORST THING EVER. Quishay is not shown smiling or interacting with Precious and is not filmed in the loving way that her second child, Abdul, is filmed. (It's true that Quishay doesn't live with Precious for most of the movie, but number one, no one forced the writers to write the story that way; and, number two, we could have had shots emphasizing Quishay's cuteness and lovability when Precious gets her back at the end of the movie.)
The movie Precious is hateful to people with Down Syndrome because it uses Down Syndrome as a shortcut to say "Precious's life is horrible." At the beginning of this post I listed two facts about disability. This movie exploits fact #1, nondisabled people's discomfort and revulsion about disability. That is an immoral thing to do. It is incredibly disingenuous to claim that the portrayal of Quishay is somehow legitimate because "it's harder to raise a kid with Down Syndrome." This isn't about difficulty, it's about prejudice and using a disabled child as a horror-movie monster.
I am so tired of this. I call it "the harder fallacy." It sucks because when you're trying to point out that someone is being prejudiced, you get totally knocked off balance by a bogus argument about whether the victim of the prejudice, or their parents, has a hard time. But it's not about that. They're two totally different things.
eta: I'm pretty bad at science, I apologize. Apparently it's not as unlikely as I thought for a teenager to have a baby with Down Syndrome. However, my points about the portrayal of Quishay still stand, and would stand no matter what disability she had.
17 January, 2010
Time is scary?
It's sort of hard to explain what I mean, but I think that a lot of my difficulty in Doing Stuff comes out of a fear of becoming so absorbed that I lose self-awareness or awareness of time. Of course this fear is not without merit.
It makes me nervous to watch a movie. This is funny because I watch so much TV, and in marathons. But I usually watch TV on my computer, so I know exactly when it will end. Also, TV shows are usually pretty much the same length--about 20 minutes, about 30 minutes, about 40 minutes, or about 60 minutes, depending whether they're on pay television or not. Watching a 72-minute movie is actually scarier than watching 2 episodes of Mad Men, which takes 80 minutes. My dad got annoyed at me last year because we were watching a movie and about halfway through I picked up my computer and started doing my Internet things (you know, email, livejournal, etc.). He said that if I didn't want to watch the movie we should stop and finish it later. But it wasn't like that, exactly. I needed the computer to ground myself in time.
I suffer from an urge to multitask when I am doing something that might remove me from time. I used to just think it was a sensory thing, and I still think that might be part of it. It's very important for me to have something to eat at movies and even at plays (for some reason plays aren't quite as intimidating to me as movies in the theater). I also tend to feel that I should have something to eat while I'm doing work. This probably accounts for certain things being my favorite foods and not others (a particular rhyming concoction comes to mind). I like foods that last a long time and are easy to eat while doing something else.
What is work? Work is whatever a body is forced to do. Okay, not really. Work is whatever my body thinks it's being forced to do. For example, since I was a kid I have wanted to be a fiction writer, so my body thinks it's being forced to write fiction, so I don't write fiction very much because it makes me nervous, and I have an idea that I need to set myself up with a big supply of food in a comfortable place or I won't be able to write fiction. The only reason this blog exists is because I started writing in it as a way to procrastinate. If I ever get too excited about this blog (whereas now, I just look on it with a huge amount of affection because it is the most calming place to waste my time, but it's not entirely unproductive because some people read it and sometimes I'm writing about important things), I'll probably start writing a lot more fiction.
I produce a ton of music because music doesn't feel like work yet.
Latin is work.
But anyway, back to the losing time thing. When I was six I entered kindergarten and turned into a monster. Everyone thought that I had probably been molested because I sat curled up in a corner reading the same books over and over, and hit anyone who tried to make me do schoolwork. (I went to a Montessori school so I was able to get away with this for an astonishingly long time.) Clearly I was lost. The first time I recall noticing myself being lost was when I was reading a Narnia book in the bathroom and I looked up and saw that the sun was setting. I was existentially heartbroken and terrified and came crying to my dad, "I read in the bathroom until sunset!"
I guess this is possibly why I don't read books; maybe they make me feel scared in the same way. Anyway, the reason I started thinking about this is that it's winter term, which means I'm supposed to be working on a project I made up myself, on my own. My project is reading De Caelo et Ejus Mirabilibus et De Inferno by Emanuel Swedenborg. It seems like a really cool book but in the four days that I've had it, I've only read two pages. This is embarrassing. Today--as I had been planning to do every day since I got the book--I finally trundled myself off to the library where I sat in the empty and unlooked after library cafe in the booth next to the vending machines. I bought some M&Ms to be my multitask. But I ate the M&Ms while writing in my notebook about how I like ASD culture better than queer culture. I thought about some more snacks and drinks that I could buy from the machines, but decided for the time being to just start reading the book.
I read. And read some more. I read twice as many pages as I read in the first four days, in two hours. I kept thinking I should stop. Or, I kept thinking I should want to go on one of the library computers and check my email, or that I should want to buy some Doritos. But I didn't want to that much. I just kept reading. I kept feeling vaguely anxious about what I was doing. I kept feeling like I shouldn't be liking it, because it was work; how could I stand it, without something to guide me through it, like a bowl of cheese and peas? Or an episode of Firefly going in the background, like I used when I was interning at the school and had to keep myself in time while I was getting dressed and making breakfast? But after a while, under the anxiety, I realized how happy I was and how much I was enjoying myself.
I don't know what to make of any of this. I love trains. My ideal life would be one where I had to commute to a job, maybe an hour each way, on a really comfortable train, like a Metro North. I love trains because when you're on a train you're stuck inside someone else's schedule and you can't get lost. Trains are the easiest places to write and read.
It makes me nervous to watch a movie. This is funny because I watch so much TV, and in marathons. But I usually watch TV on my computer, so I know exactly when it will end. Also, TV shows are usually pretty much the same length--about 20 minutes, about 30 minutes, about 40 minutes, or about 60 minutes, depending whether they're on pay television or not. Watching a 72-minute movie is actually scarier than watching 2 episodes of Mad Men, which takes 80 minutes. My dad got annoyed at me last year because we were watching a movie and about halfway through I picked up my computer and started doing my Internet things (you know, email, livejournal, etc.). He said that if I didn't want to watch the movie we should stop and finish it later. But it wasn't like that, exactly. I needed the computer to ground myself in time.
I suffer from an urge to multitask when I am doing something that might remove me from time. I used to just think it was a sensory thing, and I still think that might be part of it. It's very important for me to have something to eat at movies and even at plays (for some reason plays aren't quite as intimidating to me as movies in the theater). I also tend to feel that I should have something to eat while I'm doing work. This probably accounts for certain things being my favorite foods and not others (a particular rhyming concoction comes to mind). I like foods that last a long time and are easy to eat while doing something else.
What is work? Work is whatever a body is forced to do. Okay, not really. Work is whatever my body thinks it's being forced to do. For example, since I was a kid I have wanted to be a fiction writer, so my body thinks it's being forced to write fiction, so I don't write fiction very much because it makes me nervous, and I have an idea that I need to set myself up with a big supply of food in a comfortable place or I won't be able to write fiction. The only reason this blog exists is because I started writing in it as a way to procrastinate. If I ever get too excited about this blog (whereas now, I just look on it with a huge amount of affection because it is the most calming place to waste my time, but it's not entirely unproductive because some people read it and sometimes I'm writing about important things), I'll probably start writing a lot more fiction.
I produce a ton of music because music doesn't feel like work yet.
Latin is work.
But anyway, back to the losing time thing. When I was six I entered kindergarten and turned into a monster. Everyone thought that I had probably been molested because I sat curled up in a corner reading the same books over and over, and hit anyone who tried to make me do schoolwork. (I went to a Montessori school so I was able to get away with this for an astonishingly long time.) Clearly I was lost. The first time I recall noticing myself being lost was when I was reading a Narnia book in the bathroom and I looked up and saw that the sun was setting. I was existentially heartbroken and terrified and came crying to my dad, "I read in the bathroom until sunset!"
I guess this is possibly why I don't read books; maybe they make me feel scared in the same way. Anyway, the reason I started thinking about this is that it's winter term, which means I'm supposed to be working on a project I made up myself, on my own. My project is reading De Caelo et Ejus Mirabilibus et De Inferno by Emanuel Swedenborg. It seems like a really cool book but in the four days that I've had it, I've only read two pages. This is embarrassing. Today--as I had been planning to do every day since I got the book--I finally trundled myself off to the library where I sat in the empty and unlooked after library cafe in the booth next to the vending machines. I bought some M&Ms to be my multitask. But I ate the M&Ms while writing in my notebook about how I like ASD culture better than queer culture. I thought about some more snacks and drinks that I could buy from the machines, but decided for the time being to just start reading the book.
I read. And read some more. I read twice as many pages as I read in the first four days, in two hours. I kept thinking I should stop. Or, I kept thinking I should want to go on one of the library computers and check my email, or that I should want to buy some Doritos. But I didn't want to that much. I just kept reading. I kept feeling vaguely anxious about what I was doing. I kept feeling like I shouldn't be liking it, because it was work; how could I stand it, without something to guide me through it, like a bowl of cheese and peas? Or an episode of Firefly going in the background, like I used when I was interning at the school and had to keep myself in time while I was getting dressed and making breakfast? But after a while, under the anxiety, I realized how happy I was and how much I was enjoying myself.
I don't know what to make of any of this. I love trains. My ideal life would be one where I had to commute to a job, maybe an hour each way, on a really comfortable train, like a Metro North. I love trains because when you're on a train you're stuck inside someone else's schedule and you can't get lost. Trains are the easiest places to write and read.
01 January, 2010
Precious
I feel like art is bad art if it portrays horrific events in a way that dulls the audience's reactions. I felt this way about the book Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind by Chavisa Woods, which contains several stories in which underdeveloped female characters are violently abused and murdered. According to comments I've read of hers, almost every event described in the book happened to two women who Chavisa Woods knows. However, because of the way some of the stories are written, the abuse stops seeming real because the characters don't feel real; they seem to exist only as the objects of abuse. I'm not trying to write a review of Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind--for the record, it has some stories I really like--but I'm just saying that I don't think it matters if the events of a piece of art are literally true, I think it's still legit to say that they come off as over-the-top or dulling.
Anyway, I sort of expected to have this reaction to Precious--i.e. I thought it would be so horrifying that I wouldn't be able to actually engage with it. I do feel like Precious's mom is so one-dimensionally evil that it's hard to relate to what's going on, but it turned out that the movie wasn't just a one-way trip to The Worst Life Ever, so that ended up being a smaller aspect of the story than I thought it would be. I don't feel qualified to comment on whether the movie is racist and/or damaging, except to say that Precious was a likable and interesting character and not just a one-dimensional victim, which is cool.
I might as well talk about what I actually feel qualified to talk about: the portrayal of Precious's young daughter with Down Syndrome. I was sort of biased because I had read Dave Hingsburger's post where he criticized the movie because the child was called "Mongo" and never given another name. It's not like I think the creators of the movie are saying that's a good thing to do, so I feel a bit like I can't criticize the movie for that.
However, when I really thought about it, I realized that it's incredibly unrealistic for a teenage girl to have a baby with Down Syndrome because most people who have babies with Down Syndrome are middle-aged. I said this to my friend, and she said that it's not unrealistic at all because the baby was a product of incest. But then when we actually looked this up, we found this article saying that there is no correlation between incest and Down Syndrome. So now I feel like they only made the baby have Down Syndrome because it's supposed to be just another shocking horrible thing about Precious's life. And that's really fucked up.
When Precious has her second baby, her love and devotion for him changes her life. She is capable of this love and devotion partly because her life circumstances have already begun to change, because her teacher and classmates care about her. It makes logical sense that when she had her first baby, she didn't react in the same way. But it still bothers me that they created a narrative where her disabled child is just another problem, while her nondisabled child improves her life.
My friend said that it is bad to have a kid with Down Syndrome because it makes your life harder. I don't think that disabilities being hard is a reason to use a person with a disability as a plot device to show how awful their parent's life is.
It's not a huge aspect of the movie. It's not even a small aspect, I guess. I think they just didn't think about it but that almost upsets me more, that it just made perfect sense to them to use Down Syndrome as a shorthand for awfulness.
Anyway, I sort of expected to have this reaction to Precious--i.e. I thought it would be so horrifying that I wouldn't be able to actually engage with it. I do feel like Precious's mom is so one-dimensionally evil that it's hard to relate to what's going on, but it turned out that the movie wasn't just a one-way trip to The Worst Life Ever, so that ended up being a smaller aspect of the story than I thought it would be. I don't feel qualified to comment on whether the movie is racist and/or damaging, except to say that Precious was a likable and interesting character and not just a one-dimensional victim, which is cool.
I might as well talk about what I actually feel qualified to talk about: the portrayal of Precious's young daughter with Down Syndrome. I was sort of biased because I had read Dave Hingsburger's post where he criticized the movie because the child was called "Mongo" and never given another name. It's not like I think the creators of the movie are saying that's a good thing to do, so I feel a bit like I can't criticize the movie for that.
However, when I really thought about it, I realized that it's incredibly unrealistic for a teenage girl to have a baby with Down Syndrome because most people who have babies with Down Syndrome are middle-aged. I said this to my friend, and she said that it's not unrealistic at all because the baby was a product of incest. But then when we actually looked this up, we found this article saying that there is no correlation between incest and Down Syndrome. So now I feel like they only made the baby have Down Syndrome because it's supposed to be just another shocking horrible thing about Precious's life. And that's really fucked up.
When Precious has her second baby, her love and devotion for him changes her life. She is capable of this love and devotion partly because her life circumstances have already begun to change, because her teacher and classmates care about her. It makes logical sense that when she had her first baby, she didn't react in the same way. But it still bothers me that they created a narrative where her disabled child is just another problem, while her nondisabled child improves her life.
My friend said that it is bad to have a kid with Down Syndrome because it makes your life harder. I don't think that disabilities being hard is a reason to use a person with a disability as a plot device to show how awful their parent's life is.
It's not a huge aspect of the movie. It's not even a small aspect, I guess. I think they just didn't think about it but that almost upsets me more, that it just made perfect sense to them to use Down Syndrome as a shorthand for awfulness.
18 December, 2009
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia PART TWO
QUOTES and/or summaries of delightful incidents:
Vincent Kartheiser wears big owl glasses while giving himself a tattoo that says "por nada" while voiceovering about how he doesn't have any reason to be in love with this girl, he just is. The best part is mostly the glasses! I hope that someday a movie is made where Vincent Kartheiser wears owl glasses in every scene. I might attempt to become a producer just so this could happen.
(The girl's boyfriend understandably pretends to run Vincent Kartheiser over with his car and then jumps out of his car and starts shaking Vincent Kartheiser by his tiny, tiny shoulders.)
Vincent Kartheiser: Don't touch me unless you love me.
The girl's boyfriend: Are you some kind of faggot?
Vincent Kartheiser: Think about it--if I was, would I really tell you?
The girl's boyfriend: (although I don't think this was intentional by the writer or actor, this comes off as SUPER gay) I don't know. Maybe you want me to know. (remembers he is supposed to be straight) Just because Roseanne likes you doesn't mean you can act like this.
Vincent Kartheiser: She cares about you a lot. That's a big responsibility. You have to give her lots of love.
The girl's boyfriend: What?
Vincent Kartheiser: (all enraged and kicking his tiny feet around) FORGET IT!
The girl's boyfriend: (strangely infuriated) Forget what? You forget it! (starts beating up Vincent Kartheiser, who can't really do anything, being roughly the size of a kitten)
THE BEST SCENE
(The girl is in science class and the teacher asks her a question.)
Girl: I don't know.
Teacher: Why don't you know?
Girl: Uh...
(All of the sudden, Vincent Kartheiser bursts into the room wearing a giant wreath of garlic around his neck.)
Teacher: Excuse me, you can't just walk in here like this.
Vincent Kartheiser: I had a dream last night about evil, horrible things. I'm using this garlic garland in order to ward off the evil spirits of that dream. Do you need this? If you need it, it's yours.
(intensely, while trying to hug the girl or put the garlic on her or something) LET ME HELP YOU.
(The girl jumps up and runs out of the classroom while Vincent Kartheiser and the teacher yell her name in a bored fashion. After a minute, Vincent Kartheiser puts the garlic back on.)
Girl: Well, if there is a God or a Jesus or whatever (LOL like the two are mutually exclusive), I think He sucks.
Vincent Kartheiser: I think you expect more out of Him than I do.
Girl: Well, He sure takes shitty care of the people that believe in Him. Look at you.
Vincent Kartheiser: (attempts to snort jadedly) What do you expect me to believe in? The police?
HA HA HA HA
THE MOST HILARIOUS VOICEOVER: We kept passing motels. I wondered if she'd go into one of them with me if I asked her. But I never did. I didn't have any money anyway.
Girl: You knew.
Vincent Kartheiser: What?
Girl: You knew what I did. You knew that I...
Vincent Kartheiser: That you murdered your stepfather? Of course I knew.
(I don't think you can even imagine how great this scene is, the thing to remember is that VK is being incredibly mellow and cheerful and looking at the girl adoringly, as if they're talking about stealing a puppy from the pet store.)
Girl: You're insane.
Vincent Kartheiser: (smiling) I followed you. I took a lot of pictures that night.
Girl: Why didn't you take them to the police?
Vincent Kartheiser: Why would I take them to the police? I hate the police.
(He even sort of stutters as he is saying this because he's so confused by the idea that you might turn someone in to the police after they kill someone.)
Vincent Kartheiser wears big owl glasses while giving himself a tattoo that says "por nada" while voiceovering about how he doesn't have any reason to be in love with this girl, he just is. The best part is mostly the glasses! I hope that someday a movie is made where Vincent Kartheiser wears owl glasses in every scene. I might attempt to become a producer just so this could happen.
(The girl's boyfriend understandably pretends to run Vincent Kartheiser over with his car and then jumps out of his car and starts shaking Vincent Kartheiser by his tiny, tiny shoulders.)
Vincent Kartheiser: Don't touch me unless you love me.
The girl's boyfriend: Are you some kind of faggot?
Vincent Kartheiser: Think about it--if I was, would I really tell you?
The girl's boyfriend: (although I don't think this was intentional by the writer or actor, this comes off as SUPER gay) I don't know. Maybe you want me to know. (remembers he is supposed to be straight) Just because Roseanne likes you doesn't mean you can act like this.
Vincent Kartheiser: She cares about you a lot. That's a big responsibility. You have to give her lots of love.
The girl's boyfriend: What?
Vincent Kartheiser: (all enraged and kicking his tiny feet around) FORGET IT!
The girl's boyfriend: (strangely infuriated) Forget what? You forget it! (starts beating up Vincent Kartheiser, who can't really do anything, being roughly the size of a kitten)
THE BEST SCENE
(The girl is in science class and the teacher asks her a question.)
Girl: I don't know.
Teacher: Why don't you know?
Girl: Uh...
(All of the sudden, Vincent Kartheiser bursts into the room wearing a giant wreath of garlic around his neck.)
Teacher: Excuse me, you can't just walk in here like this.
Vincent Kartheiser: I had a dream last night about evil, horrible things. I'm using this garlic garland in order to ward off the evil spirits of that dream. Do you need this? If you need it, it's yours.
(intensely, while trying to hug the girl or put the garlic on her or something) LET ME HELP YOU.
(The girl jumps up and runs out of the classroom while Vincent Kartheiser and the teacher yell her name in a bored fashion. After a minute, Vincent Kartheiser puts the garlic back on.)
Girl: Well, if there is a God or a Jesus or whatever (LOL like the two are mutually exclusive), I think He sucks.
Vincent Kartheiser: I think you expect more out of Him than I do.
Girl: Well, He sure takes shitty care of the people that believe in Him. Look at you.
Vincent Kartheiser: (attempts to snort jadedly) What do you expect me to believe in? The police?
HA HA HA HA
THE MOST HILARIOUS VOICEOVER: We kept passing motels. I wondered if she'd go into one of them with me if I asked her. But I never did. I didn't have any money anyway.
Girl: You knew.
Vincent Kartheiser: What?
Girl: You knew what I did. You knew that I...
Vincent Kartheiser: That you murdered your stepfather? Of course I knew.
(I don't think you can even imagine how great this scene is, the thing to remember is that VK is being incredibly mellow and cheerful and looking at the girl adoringly, as if they're talking about stealing a puppy from the pet store.)
Girl: You're insane.
Vincent Kartheiser: (smiling) I followed you. I took a lot of pictures that night.
Girl: Why didn't you take them to the police?
Vincent Kartheiser: Why would I take them to the police? I hate the police.
(He even sort of stutters as he is saying this because he's so confused by the idea that you might turn someone in to the police after they kill someone.)
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia is one of those movies about a cheerleader who has to decide if she wants to date a football player or an edgy loner. This particular edgy loner distinguishes himself by being played by Vincent Kartheiser from Mad Men, who is my favorite actor and in my opinion the most attractive person who ever lived. The girl is really cute too, and I say this as someone who never thinks girls in movies are attractive. She's also mean, which is hot.
Unfortunately, this movie isn't content to just be an archetypical high school romance. It tries to be a modern update of the book Crime and Punishment. So, the girl's stepfather rapes her and she murders him with the help of her football player boyfriend, and then she has to deal with the guilt when her mom is accused of the crime. The problem is that whoever wrote the movie is way more into the romance storyline than they are into the rape and murder storyline, and it shows. The rape and murder just seems like it's a device to get the girl to fall in love with Vincent Kartheiser, which is sort of offensive.
Also Vincent Kartheiser basically acts like a serial killer, masturbating to pictures he surreptitiously took of the girl, giving himself tattoos in his room, and inexplicably peeling carrots for hours at a time. He's also supposed to be super moral and hopeful and preternaturally wise--which is actually sort of endearing in its incongruity, but what's the point of creating such a charmingly nonsensical character if you're going to toss him aside for long stretches of Rape Murder Guilt Plot? Come on!
A good way to watch this movie is on mute with strategically placed fast-forwarding:
Dear filmmaker, good job hiring actors who are attractive but in the future you could let the audience enjoy that, maybe?
Unfortunately, this movie isn't content to just be an archetypical high school romance. It tries to be a modern update of the book Crime and Punishment. So, the girl's stepfather rapes her and she murders him with the help of her football player boyfriend, and then she has to deal with the guilt when her mom is accused of the crime. The problem is that whoever wrote the movie is way more into the romance storyline than they are into the rape and murder storyline, and it shows. The rape and murder just seems like it's a device to get the girl to fall in love with Vincent Kartheiser, which is sort of offensive.
Also Vincent Kartheiser basically acts like a serial killer, masturbating to pictures he surreptitiously took of the girl, giving himself tattoos in his room, and inexplicably peeling carrots for hours at a time. He's also supposed to be super moral and hopeful and preternaturally wise--which is actually sort of endearing in its incongruity, but what's the point of creating such a charmingly nonsensical character if you're going to toss him aside for long stretches of Rape Murder Guilt Plot? Come on!
A good way to watch this movie is on mute with strategically placed fast-forwarding:
Dear filmmaker, good job hiring actors who are attractive but in the future you could let the audience enjoy that, maybe?
14 December, 2009
Preemptive movie review
So, on the plane tomorrow I'm planning on watching Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. GUESS WHAT IT'S ABOUT.
This girl has a lot of problems. And guess who fixes them? Vincent Kartheiser, that's who! He constantly follows her around taking pictures of her so he already knows what all of her problems are and he helps her kill the people she doesn't like! I'm so excited!
I also found this quote on IMDB:
Girl: What's wrong with you? Why are you always giving people a reason to laugh at you?
Vincent Kartheiser: I'm sorry, was I not fitting in?
SO GOOD!! That's right up there with "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same." Which was probably actually cool in 2000, when this movie came out.
By the time I can post about the movie, I'll be home. And by the time I'm home, I'll have lots of other stuff to do like talk to my parents and animals, and call my friends on the phone, and annoy A.T. when she gets home. But on the other hand, I'm really looking forward to posting about the movie because I know it's going to be amazing. So I'm just posting about it now, because how could it not be amazing? It's like, people always say that J.K. Rowling isn't that good at dialogue or plot, but her books are amazing anyway because she's so good at world-building. That is how I feel about Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, because no matter how bad it turns out to be, any world where Vincent Kartheiser stalks you and kills your enemies is a world I want to be part of. So, in advance: it's my new favorite movie. Watch it.
Sorry this blog has degenerated into being about my love for Vincent Kartheiser and other stupid stuff. I've been really depressed while I've been in the UK and the only way not to feel it was to develop some obsessions and keep myself in a manic state about them all the time. Once I get home and am able to actually calm down and read and hang out with people, etc., I'll probably only post here when I actually have something to say. Thank you for reading.
This girl has a lot of problems. And guess who fixes them? Vincent Kartheiser, that's who! He constantly follows her around taking pictures of her so he already knows what all of her problems are and he helps her kill the people she doesn't like! I'm so excited!
I also found this quote on IMDB:
Girl: What's wrong with you? Why are you always giving people a reason to laugh at you?
Vincent Kartheiser: I'm sorry, was I not fitting in?
SO GOOD!! That's right up there with "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same." Which was probably actually cool in 2000, when this movie came out.
By the time I can post about the movie, I'll be home. And by the time I'm home, I'll have lots of other stuff to do like talk to my parents and animals, and call my friends on the phone, and annoy A.T. when she gets home. But on the other hand, I'm really looking forward to posting about the movie because I know it's going to be amazing. So I'm just posting about it now, because how could it not be amazing? It's like, people always say that J.K. Rowling isn't that good at dialogue or plot, but her books are amazing anyway because she's so good at world-building. That is how I feel about Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, because no matter how bad it turns out to be, any world where Vincent Kartheiser stalks you and kills your enemies is a world I want to be part of. So, in advance: it's my new favorite movie. Watch it.
Sorry this blog has degenerated into being about my love for Vincent Kartheiser and other stupid stuff. I've been really depressed while I've been in the UK and the only way not to feel it was to develop some obsessions and keep myself in a manic state about them all the time. Once I get home and am able to actually calm down and read and hang out with people, etc., I'll probably only post here when I actually have something to say. Thank you for reading.
12 December, 2009
Quid Pro Quo
"OMG CONNOR LOOKS LIKE HE'S GOING TO SHIT HIMSELF LIKE HE JUST SAW A PYLEAN OR SOME SHIT OMG"
--ontdmadmen "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" thread
This quote is actually not related to my post which is about another boy I have a crush on, Nick Stahl!
I am just being lazy and using a picture I already uploaded to Photobucket in July when I was obsessed with Carnivale. Nick Stahl has this facial expression in almost every minute of every episode of that show. But in the movie Quid Pro Quo, which I watched last night, it turns out that he can make other expressions, too.
Quid Pro Quo is a movie about a guy who works for a euphemism for NPR. He wants to do a story about able-bodied people who would prefer to be paralyzed or amputees. (In real life this is called Body Integrity Identity Disorder.) He meets with a woman who claims to know someone who has BIID, but she's really talking about herself, duh. He has paraplegia from a car accident when he was a kid, so the woman kind of has a crush on him and asks him for advice about how to use a wheelchair and stuff. Also he has a crush on her too? And they have sex? And he finds this pair of shoes that un-paralyze him when he puts them on, and he starts walking with braces and then a cane. And the woman is more and more mysterious and depressed and tells him that she wants him to help her become a paraplegic.
Yeah. The very end of this movie has a twist that really annoyed me because I thought it was cheap and just not necessary and unbelievable. I think the thing about the movie is that because it's kind of a genre film--magic realism/noir/ish--the disabilities become thematic elements, if that makes sense.
It's hard to explain what I mean by this but basically, if you have read Fingersmith or Affinity by Sarah Waters, or seen the movies, they're both gothic thrillers centered on lesbian relationships. Because of the genre, and the way that lesbianism has historically been used in that genre, I think the lesbianism comes off as kind of creepy and gothic itself in both stories; it comes off as something that adds to the theme. And I can see how some people would think this is offensive, because you could say that lesbianism is being used as a trope or a symbol. But personally, I really like it, because when lesbianism is being used a genre thing, it means that you get more interesting lesbian stories, and you get lesbian stories that aren't issue stories about coming out or something. Another example of what I'm talking about is Mullholland Drive.
Anyway, in Quid Pro Quo I feel like Isaac fits better as a noir hero because he looks different from other people when he's going down the street, and because he's experienced discrimination. And then later, disability moves around in a dreamlike way--as Isaac becomes physically better, Fiona becomes mentally worse--general art movie stuff, not trying to do a realistic portrayal of bodies and brains, but kind of messing around with bodies and brains to say something about the human condition, or just create a strange story that's aesthetically pleasing. Quid pro quo, this in exchange for that; the idea that there's some kind of cosmic bargain, or some symmetry, where people like Isaac wish they could walk and people like Fiona wish they couldn't, and it's possible to tap into that pattern, somehow. This is how I would like to think of the movie, and although I know some people just 100% wouldn't like the fact that disability is used as an aesthetic thing or a metaphor, and I understand why--well, I think it's a more interesting story about disability than the straight issue movies that usually get made. And also Isaac is just a cool character because he's basically nice and competent without being boring or "inspirational," and he's allowed to complain about ableism without being an "angry" character.
But okay, would you like to hear the end? SPOILER:
Isaac figures out that Fiona is the person who paralyzed him and killed his parents, because she tried to run away from home and was driving her mom's car when she was like ten years old and she crashed into Isaac's family's car. Also, he always remembered seeing her, but he blocked out the memory? Whatever. I'm not sure that this is a realistic reason for someone to develop BIID, but okay, the ridiculous part is: Isaac confronts Fiona and she tells him that he's not actually a paraplegic and he just has a hysterical condition because he felt guilty that his parents died. Isaac gets really mad and tries to jump out of his chair and attack her, and falls down because he's not used to walking, but as he's lying on the ground Fiona sees his legs moving, and the movie ends with Isaac (presumably now ambulatory) on fake-NPR telling the story and saying how he never saw Fiona again.
This bothers me, because I think I can only accept the disability-as-metaphor thing (instead of finding it weird and offensive when Isaac is "cured" by the shoes) if the movie is not supposed to be realistic. If the shoes are actually magic, then I think the story can be a fairy tale or a parable or something. I think it would be cool if the movie ended with Isaac paralyzing Fiona and then being able to walk without a cane. That kind of thing.
But instead, the surprise ending is that it's actually not magic. First of all this just bothers me because it means that in a movie that uses paraplegia as a symbol and a theme, there are no paraplegic main characters. I don't like this because I think that if you're going to use a minority group like lesbians or paraplegics to enhance your genre movie, you should acknowledge that we/they actually exist outside of genre. Does that make sense? I feel like the movie is offensive if Isaac isn't actually paraplegic because it's acting like paraplegia is just a distant theoretical thing.
And also, I just thought it cheapened the story and was a Big Surprise Ending that wasn't really supported by any previous events or by anything we knew about Isaac.
So, in conclusion, there are some reasons to think that this movie is offensive and/or dumb, but I am glad that Nick Stahl is so good-looking because I probably wouldn't have watched it otherwise and I mostly enjoyed it, and thought it was more interesting than most movies about people with disabilities.
--ontdmadmen "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" thread
This quote is actually not related to my post which is about another boy I have a crush on, Nick Stahl!
I am just being lazy and using a picture I already uploaded to Photobucket in July when I was obsessed with Carnivale. Nick Stahl has this facial expression in almost every minute of every episode of that show. But in the movie Quid Pro Quo, which I watched last night, it turns out that he can make other expressions, too.
Quid Pro Quo is a movie about a guy who works for a euphemism for NPR. He wants to do a story about able-bodied people who would prefer to be paralyzed or amputees. (In real life this is called Body Integrity Identity Disorder.) He meets with a woman who claims to know someone who has BIID, but she's really talking about herself, duh. He has paraplegia from a car accident when he was a kid, so the woman kind of has a crush on him and asks him for advice about how to use a wheelchair and stuff. Also he has a crush on her too? And they have sex? And he finds this pair of shoes that un-paralyze him when he puts them on, and he starts walking with braces and then a cane. And the woman is more and more mysterious and depressed and tells him that she wants him to help her become a paraplegic.
Yeah. The very end of this movie has a twist that really annoyed me because I thought it was cheap and just not necessary and unbelievable. I think the thing about the movie is that because it's kind of a genre film--magic realism/noir/ish--the disabilities become thematic elements, if that makes sense.
It's hard to explain what I mean by this but basically, if you have read Fingersmith or Affinity by Sarah Waters, or seen the movies, they're both gothic thrillers centered on lesbian relationships. Because of the genre, and the way that lesbianism has historically been used in that genre, I think the lesbianism comes off as kind of creepy and gothic itself in both stories; it comes off as something that adds to the theme. And I can see how some people would think this is offensive, because you could say that lesbianism is being used as a trope or a symbol. But personally, I really like it, because when lesbianism is being used a genre thing, it means that you get more interesting lesbian stories, and you get lesbian stories that aren't issue stories about coming out or something. Another example of what I'm talking about is Mullholland Drive.
Anyway, in Quid Pro Quo I feel like Isaac fits better as a noir hero because he looks different from other people when he's going down the street, and because he's experienced discrimination. And then later, disability moves around in a dreamlike way--as Isaac becomes physically better, Fiona becomes mentally worse--general art movie stuff, not trying to do a realistic portrayal of bodies and brains, but kind of messing around with bodies and brains to say something about the human condition, or just create a strange story that's aesthetically pleasing. Quid pro quo, this in exchange for that; the idea that there's some kind of cosmic bargain, or some symmetry, where people like Isaac wish they could walk and people like Fiona wish they couldn't, and it's possible to tap into that pattern, somehow. This is how I would like to think of the movie, and although I know some people just 100% wouldn't like the fact that disability is used as an aesthetic thing or a metaphor, and I understand why--well, I think it's a more interesting story about disability than the straight issue movies that usually get made. And also Isaac is just a cool character because he's basically nice and competent without being boring or "inspirational," and he's allowed to complain about ableism without being an "angry" character.
But okay, would you like to hear the end? SPOILER:
Isaac figures out that Fiona is the person who paralyzed him and killed his parents, because she tried to run away from home and was driving her mom's car when she was like ten years old and she crashed into Isaac's family's car. Also, he always remembered seeing her, but he blocked out the memory? Whatever. I'm not sure that this is a realistic reason for someone to develop BIID, but okay, the ridiculous part is: Isaac confronts Fiona and she tells him that he's not actually a paraplegic and he just has a hysterical condition because he felt guilty that his parents died. Isaac gets really mad and tries to jump out of his chair and attack her, and falls down because he's not used to walking, but as he's lying on the ground Fiona sees his legs moving, and the movie ends with Isaac (presumably now ambulatory) on fake-NPR telling the story and saying how he never saw Fiona again.
This bothers me, because I think I can only accept the disability-as-metaphor thing (instead of finding it weird and offensive when Isaac is "cured" by the shoes) if the movie is not supposed to be realistic. If the shoes are actually magic, then I think the story can be a fairy tale or a parable or something. I think it would be cool if the movie ended with Isaac paralyzing Fiona and then being able to walk without a cane. That kind of thing.
But instead, the surprise ending is that it's actually not magic. First of all this just bothers me because it means that in a movie that uses paraplegia as a symbol and a theme, there are no paraplegic main characters. I don't like this because I think that if you're going to use a minority group like lesbians or paraplegics to enhance your genre movie, you should acknowledge that we/they actually exist outside of genre. Does that make sense? I feel like the movie is offensive if Isaac isn't actually paraplegic because it's acting like paraplegia is just a distant theoretical thing.
And also, I just thought it cheapened the story and was a Big Surprise Ending that wasn't really supported by any previous events or by anything we knew about Isaac.
So, in conclusion, there are some reasons to think that this movie is offensive and/or dumb, but I am glad that Nick Stahl is so good-looking because I probably wouldn't have watched it otherwise and I mostly enjoyed it, and thought it was more interesting than most movies about people with disabilities.
03 December, 2009
best films of the 00s that I've seen according to the Onion AV Club
Adaptation
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Brokeback Mountain
Pan's Labyrinth
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Incredibles
The Squid and the Whale
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Mulholland Drive
The Royal Tenenbaums
Spirited Away
Memento
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I really love all these movies except Brokeback Mountain, which I should probably watch again. When it came out I was really depressed and I felt sort of angry that a movie everyone was making such a big deal out of was just about gay people being lonely and hating themselves. I was really happy that Crash won the Oscar even though I know Crash isn't actually very good. I was just sick of everyone bending over backwards saying how great it was that a bunch of straight people would make a movie about gay people being miserable.
I think if I watched it now I might feel completely different, and even see it as the love story it's supposed to be. At the time I just desperately wanted to see something positive about gay people and I wasn't capable of appreciating the film objectively.
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Brokeback Mountain
Pan's Labyrinth
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Incredibles
The Squid and the Whale
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Mulholland Drive
The Royal Tenenbaums
Spirited Away
Memento
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I really love all these movies except Brokeback Mountain, which I should probably watch again. When it came out I was really depressed and I felt sort of angry that a movie everyone was making such a big deal out of was just about gay people being lonely and hating themselves. I was really happy that Crash won the Oscar even though I know Crash isn't actually very good. I was just sick of everyone bending over backwards saying how great it was that a bunch of straight people would make a movie about gay people being miserable.
I think if I watched it now I might feel completely different, and even see it as the love story it's supposed to be. At the time I just desperately wanted to see something positive about gay people and I wasn't capable of appreciating the film objectively.
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