If the American 1990s were a mountain, Dream Phone would be its mystifying, captivating, hot-pink summit. Dream Phone was a culmination of every ion of 1990s American culture wrestled into a cardboard box with pictures of cute boys all over it. It was 1991 when the Dream Phone was released, and after that the Nineties basically brushed their shoulders off and said "we're done! Let's pack it in, folks, it's all down hill from here."Dream Phone was the Nineties Stone Tablets handed down to Nineties Moses (Zack Morris?), if that tablet were black with neon geometric shapes and hot pink script drawn all over it: the outline for all that was good and pure and right in 1991.
It was a board game, basically. It was Clue, except instead of finding a cold-blooded murderer, you ticked names off a crib sheet to figure out who, who, who, had a crush on you.
There are photos of "cute" boys around the board, and I use the term loosely because they are cute by definition of the Nineties: a system of judgement that has sadly gone by the wayside. So basically it's a bunch of enthusiastic young men with fades and Flock-of-Seagulls haircuts. And neon lettermen's jackets. And neon mesh sleeveless T's. And neon visors. And shades. O, the shades! Basically, anything you can picture your dad wearing to embarrass you at a family outing to the zoo, these guys are sporting totally un-ironically. Above the photographs, and I can not stress enough that these are actual photographs of young male models of the nineties who are now all adults with crippling cocaine addictions or dead from all the cocaine afforded to young male models of the nineties, there are silhouette illustrations of each respective gentleman highlighting (in neon, but do I really need to keep specifying that?) either an article of clothing that they're wearing, something funky-fresh that they are eating such as maybe an over-decorated cupcake or a slice of pizza (the proud traditional food of 1991) or some overwhelmingly nineties-y activity, like fucking surfing.
They all have nineties-y names, too, but I'm not sure exactly how that's possible. It's just barely twenty years ago, and yet if I say the name "Chad", you and I both know that dick is from the nineties. I guess he and all the "Jamal"s and "Bruce"s of the world just died there, because there sure as hell aren't any of them in this decade.
Anyway, there's a giant pink electronic phone in the center, and you have to dial the numbers of the boys (calling BOYS? OOO YOU SO BAD) and narrow your list down to the one guy who has a crush on you. They'll give you clues that start out loud and turn into a whisper. For instance, it could start out "HE'LL EAT ALMOST ANYTHING...." and then, softly, like a butterfly lighting on your waiting ear: "but not hot dogs." Sometimes you get a phone call from one of your girlfriends with a clue, and sometimes one of the guys is a total and complete asshole and just hangs up on you. "I know who it is, but I'm not telling! Ha, ha!" It doesn't look anywhere near as obnoxious as it sounds, you really have to hear it. It's been more than once that I've accidentally reset the game after throwing the phone against the wall over that dick. And I don't even know which one it is, because all their voices sound the same. One day...
It's worth noting that you just push a button to start the game. You don't program the number of players into it, and so the one guy who has a "crush on you", actually has a crush on whoever figures it out first and calls him. This fact absolutely enraged my male feminist friend who bought me the original 1991 game for my birthday. It took him a full minute to overcome the shock that his crush wouldn't be personalized if he won. I guess it is kind of tragically romantic to think of the other identically robot-voiced Nineties Studs waiting inside the enormous Dream Phone, pining for their one true love, hoping against hope that she'll piece together the clues. The real tragedy was that it took a man to be insulted that he didn't get a personal trophy: the countless girls who've played it through the years just accepted it.
So, I have the Dream Phone game. And it's hilarious. And it's even more hilarious when playing it with a bunch of American men, because the ridiculous, over-the-top, girlishly gleeful design of the game stands in stark contrast to how these men are supposed to behave. I have photos of a straight Canadian man (basically American, let's be real) and a gay American man, posing with the gigantic pink phone in enthusiastically girly poses, and they're adorable and funny and snarky.
Do not play this game with a French man.
Here's the thing: French men will ruin this god-damn game for you. They will play the game with a genuinely earnest, if slightly confused, politesse that makes it fucking useless. You will take one look at the French man across from you, studying his photo of fucking "Brad" to get the phone number right, dialing this enormous pink nineties cell phone without a hint of irony, and waiting patiently for his clue before diligently marking it down on the crib sheet, and you will feel an emptiness that you haven't felt since your singing Power Rangers motion-activated bedroom door sign lost its juice and started sounding like the Power Rangers were melting.
Because honestly, this game sucks. The only great part of it is the ridiculous absurdity, and it's completely lost on the French. First of all, it's sort of difficult for them to sort through the bits of Americana that are earnest and the parts that are satiric or ironic, so in the name of etiquette they sort of have to carefully avoid eye contact with any Americans in the room whenever there's an absurd and outrageous bit of culture staring them in the face, lest they risk insulting one of us and getting killed in one of our "mass shootings", the festivals we hold regularly to celebrate freedom.
The French just aren't raised on the sort of brash commercialism that Americans know intimately and subtly enough to be able to parody, and, to be honest, they don't commodify and over-infantilize their young girls to the same extent that we do here. They don't understand how we mock the shamefulness of being a silly girl (or a girlish boy), because it isn't ingrained in them to be ashamed of being a girl in the same way. Of course, I'm not arguing that French society is a Utopia of equality and harmony (if you've read the news lately, you can't abide that), but on an individual level, I have noted that French women, at least, tend to be comfortable in their own skin in a way that I rarely notice in Americans. An American woman might give you a sidelong glance to make sure her butt is cuter while the French woman is concentrating on the notes of cucumber in her cocktail. American women are suspicious of men if you give them a compliment. They disagree vehemently and assume you're only saying it in order to have sex with them. If you tell a French woman she's beautiful, she'll say "merci beaucoup" and move the fuck on.
It's not our fault. We're raised to believe we're silly, and incompetent, and our value lies in our appearance. Even when an American girl has a wonderful, supportive family with a kick-ass father with his values in the right place, our culture is so saturated with media--lazy media that uses shortcuts and stereotypes to push a product--that a girl can be helpless to succumb.
I don't want to extemporize too much, so I'll just make this note: Obviously, this is not the case across-the-board for every American woman, every minute of every day. It's more like a foul disease that we have to keep at bay, that can grip us when we least expect it. It's not an absolutely curable disease, like the chicken-pox. It's more like depression, with a daily maintenance requirement: awareness is key. The most ass-kickingest, strident, powerful, awesomely smart, rock-and-roll women I know have their moments when all the insulting rhetoric and idealized bodies and men on the street get to them, and it doesn't make them any less powerful, but in fact, stronger for the wear because they've endured.
I've known a few French men who have been blindsided and confused by this American behavior; that American women will pigeonhole the French as sexual predators, or Pepe La Pews, simply because Frenchmen find it useful to say things earnestly, while their American counterparts, products of a media-saturated extended adolescence, will childishly berate the women they find attractive, or act like they don't exist, because they've never grown out of the phase where you pull the girl's pigtail when you have a crush on her. "I find you wonderful" has become a reason for suspicion.
So, I suggest to these Frenchmen to pick up a copy of Dream Phone 1991 Edition, for the low-low price of like seventy bucks on Ebay, and discover for yourselves why American women don't know how to digest your straight-forward approach. Because in a world where we're all competing for the one Robot Chad who's available to whichever the hell one of us gets there first because we're all the same anyway, we can easily sometimes forget our own worth. Which is a fucking bummer, dude.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Judging a Book by its Cover: A review of a book I've never read.
I was on the subway when I noticed the book that the man across from me was reading, entitled "Women" by Charles Bukowski, an author with whom I am not familiar in any capacity. You tell me if that's a tragedy. Now, I have no interest in this book. In fact, I would have scoffed mightily at the title had the man reading it not had crazy eyes. In truth, I've never read a single word beyond the title and author and I won't even be bothered to look up a synopsis, yet I'm going to tell you what it's all about and why it's fucking stupid.
This is a book written by a white man. I can gauge that from his Polish surname, but moreover from the oblivious title of the book. And even though his name is Polish, I'm going to wager that he's American, or at least Americanized and definitely a product of Western culture, and that this is not a translation. I will also wager that he was born to a Christian family, and not Jewish.
Allow me to justify my stereotyping and assure you that I'm only playing with the fact that because I've grown so familiar with sweeping generalizations against me, I've discovered the only assumptions you can ever really properly make are the ones about individuals with real social capital, not in small part because these are the characters that we, as a whole, identify with. We see them clearly because our story is told from their perspective.
If I'm wrong about the author, it's because stereotyping is wrong and easily misleads you, obviously. If I'm right, it's only because I'm so accustomed to hearing the same perspective in every media, historical, and cultural outlet that it's as familiar to me as my own, including the prejudices that those in power hold against me and others that might allow them to assume they could write a book entitled "Women" and have the audacity to think they could speak at length about all women. I couldn't make the same judgement from the perspective of a homosexual man, or a Middle Eastern woman, because their stories are not embedded in my life and culture to an extent that I could understand them like I do white, American, English-speaking, straight, Christian men.
For example, a Jewish boy in France hears about their historic rebellion spurred by rich Christian schoolboys, and he says "we fought for liberty!", while his Christian counterpart hears a story about the trials of Jewish boys during World War 2 and says "that's him and his story". A white American girl sees a movie about a magical little British boy who saves the world, and she says "this is our story about magic!" but her brother won't go see the magic claymation movie with the female lead character because "that's a girl movie." A black boy spends his entire time in history class learning about the white men who built his country of birth and very little time exploring the stories of his own lineage's vital part in it except as a shameful footnote to the main story, a lesbian girl only sees people like her in caricatures and insults. It's only the straight, white, Christian men who are properly humanized. We know these people intimately--the main characters in the stories of our lives, the heroes in every adventure--because we see ourselves in them. They represent humanity.
So, back to "Women". Since this is a novel ("A novel" is written under the title) and not a how-to book ("How To Women: a working title"), I'm willing to bet that it's a book about a bunch of romantic trysts, and part of my reasoning is a result of the dinky little drawing on the cover of the bottom half of a woman (the important part) adjusting a high-heeled shoe. You might say "well, of course it is a book about sexual adventures. It's a book about women, so of course it's about the sexual gratification of the author." To which I say, why the fuck do you equate the two? Yet I would literally bet my back-up hard drive that this is not a book about a diverse collection of female scientists, doctors, waitresses, photographers, civil servants, artists, and lawyers who wear high-heels, including a moving portrayal of the author's mother and sister and their respective trials and tribulations. I am equally certain that it's a book mostly about working-to-middle class white women, with maybe a token Asian girl thrown in for good measure, and maybe also a tragic, drug addicted street urchin.
I will also assert that not only is this a book about a string of romantic trysts focusing on white women, most likely using ill-informed tropes, but that because women [subtext: easy women] are viewed as an indulgence in which to partake in the same vein as drugs and alcohol, that this author is also some kind of drug addict or alcoholic or something. And that he isn't very well-off financially as a result.
You might say betting that an author is a poor alcoholic isn't exactly upping the ante much, but I'm really just pointing out the direct correlation between "women" and "indulgence", as if we were a thing to be enjoyed. When was the last time you saw a personification of lust and it was a well-hung muscly man in a tangerine speedo? You have never seen that. And if you have, I would like to know where you hang out please.
Don't take away from this that I think it's wrong and shameful to write a book about a series of your romantic trysts and one-night stands. You can write whatever the hell you like, I'm not the story police. In fact, I would absolutely read it if your choice of title and cover art wasn't a perfect storm of lazy and uninteresting thought. What I am the god-damn police of is naming your book "Women", as if your stories represent the whole of womanhood itself instead of, you know, several women as viewed through the skewed and biased lens of one very-important man. I mean, generally, as a rule, if you could add "amiright?" at the end of your book title and it wouldn't change the connotation too much, it's time to re-think your material. I would advise conscientious readers to steer clear of any other vastly generalized books this particular author may have written, such as "Black People" or "The Gays". You can't claim to speak for everyone in a categorized group when you don't damn well speak for everyone in that group, especially when you yourself are not a part of that group. Or, I guess, you can claim it, but just get ready for the shit-storm once you do.
Unless Charles Bukowski is dead. In which case, rest in peace little buddy. Don't you worry your pretty little head about the womenfolk no longer.
This is a book written by a white man. I can gauge that from his Polish surname, but moreover from the oblivious title of the book. And even though his name is Polish, I'm going to wager that he's American, or at least Americanized and definitely a product of Western culture, and that this is not a translation. I will also wager that he was born to a Christian family, and not Jewish.
Allow me to justify my stereotyping and assure you that I'm only playing with the fact that because I've grown so familiar with sweeping generalizations against me, I've discovered the only assumptions you can ever really properly make are the ones about individuals with real social capital, not in small part because these are the characters that we, as a whole, identify with. We see them clearly because our story is told from their perspective.
If I'm wrong about the author, it's because stereotyping is wrong and easily misleads you, obviously. If I'm right, it's only because I'm so accustomed to hearing the same perspective in every media, historical, and cultural outlet that it's as familiar to me as my own, including the prejudices that those in power hold against me and others that might allow them to assume they could write a book entitled "Women" and have the audacity to think they could speak at length about all women. I couldn't make the same judgement from the perspective of a homosexual man, or a Middle Eastern woman, because their stories are not embedded in my life and culture to an extent that I could understand them like I do white, American, English-speaking, straight, Christian men.
For example, a Jewish boy in France hears about their historic rebellion spurred by rich Christian schoolboys, and he says "we fought for liberty!", while his Christian counterpart hears a story about the trials of Jewish boys during World War 2 and says "that's him and his story". A white American girl sees a movie about a magical little British boy who saves the world, and she says "this is our story about magic!" but her brother won't go see the magic claymation movie with the female lead character because "that's a girl movie." A black boy spends his entire time in history class learning about the white men who built his country of birth and very little time exploring the stories of his own lineage's vital part in it except as a shameful footnote to the main story, a lesbian girl only sees people like her in caricatures and insults. It's only the straight, white, Christian men who are properly humanized. We know these people intimately--the main characters in the stories of our lives, the heroes in every adventure--because we see ourselves in them. They represent humanity.
So, back to "Women". Since this is a novel ("A novel" is written under the title) and not a how-to book ("How To Women: a working title"), I'm willing to bet that it's a book about a bunch of romantic trysts, and part of my reasoning is a result of the dinky little drawing on the cover of the bottom half of a woman (the important part) adjusting a high-heeled shoe. You might say "well, of course it is a book about sexual adventures. It's a book about women, so of course it's about the sexual gratification of the author." To which I say, why the fuck do you equate the two? Yet I would literally bet my back-up hard drive that this is not a book about a diverse collection of female scientists, doctors, waitresses, photographers, civil servants, artists, and lawyers who wear high-heels, including a moving portrayal of the author's mother and sister and their respective trials and tribulations. I am equally certain that it's a book mostly about working-to-middle class white women, with maybe a token Asian girl thrown in for good measure, and maybe also a tragic, drug addicted street urchin.
I will also assert that not only is this a book about a string of romantic trysts focusing on white women, most likely using ill-informed tropes, but that because women [subtext: easy women] are viewed as an indulgence in which to partake in the same vein as drugs and alcohol, that this author is also some kind of drug addict or alcoholic or something. And that he isn't very well-off financially as a result.
You might say betting that an author is a poor alcoholic isn't exactly upping the ante much, but I'm really just pointing out the direct correlation between "women" and "indulgence", as if we were a thing to be enjoyed. When was the last time you saw a personification of lust and it was a well-hung muscly man in a tangerine speedo? You have never seen that. And if you have, I would like to know where you hang out please.
Don't take away from this that I think it's wrong and shameful to write a book about a series of your romantic trysts and one-night stands. You can write whatever the hell you like, I'm not the story police. In fact, I would absolutely read it if your choice of title and cover art wasn't a perfect storm of lazy and uninteresting thought. What I am the god-damn police of is naming your book "Women", as if your stories represent the whole of womanhood itself instead of, you know, several women as viewed through the skewed and biased lens of one very-important man. I mean, generally, as a rule, if you could add "amiright?" at the end of your book title and it wouldn't change the connotation too much, it's time to re-think your material. I would advise conscientious readers to steer clear of any other vastly generalized books this particular author may have written, such as "Black People" or "The Gays". You can't claim to speak for everyone in a categorized group when you don't damn well speak for everyone in that group, especially when you yourself are not a part of that group. Or, I guess, you can claim it, but just get ready for the shit-storm once you do.
Unless Charles Bukowski is dead. In which case, rest in peace little buddy. Don't you worry your pretty little head about the womenfolk no longer.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Why "The Great Gatsby" trailer infuriates me.
Here we go.
Like every other red-blooded American citizen, I consider The Great Gatsby to be one of my favorite, if not my favorite classic American novel. I adore classic Americana, and it's so sadly scarce nowadays due to the super-ironic, hyper self-aware sort of media that we've been putting out for the last maybe decade or so that I've become very defensive of a particular model of Americana that I believe encompasses the truly great parts of American culture. Americaaaaaa, fuck yeah!
So, anyway, the Gatsby trailer comes out like a year ago, and then they pushed the actual release of the movie back six months, which is always a good sign. Qualitaaayyyy. For those of you who don't know, The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the futility of the American dream, in a freaking nutshell. It follows a level-headed narrator, Nick Carroway, as he moves from the humble Mid-West to the jazzy, flashy Long Island and encounters a mysterious man who is mysteriously rich and mysteriously hung up on a girl from his mysterious past, who happens to be Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, because why not? Daisy is married to a hulking ex-football star who is cheating on her with a full-figured and vivacious woman, Myrtle, who is in turn married to an unreasonably depressing blue-collar worker, noted for being constantly covered in dust. Nick is basically flung into this world of excess with Jordan Baker, the sassy sarcastic friend of Daisy, as his spirit guide.
A few things about Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan: these women are fully-fleshed, fascinating, multi-layered personalities who absolutely drive the story. Nick Carroway is a string of reasonable and thoughtful observations of the people around him, and who wants to hang out with that guy? Not the reader, that's for sure, or we wouldn't ask him to skip through a brief rundown of his life for three months to get to the good parts with the parties, and the drinking, and the characters! But Jay Gatsby may as well be a cardboard cut-out for how stiff and weird he is. His personality is a stream of posturing, and his entire character is just a stand-in for the point Fitzgerald is trying to make about the hollowness of American culture. Meanwhile Daisy is flirty, and charismatic, and flighty, with a bit of that absurd cleverness that we adore in figures like Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Her characterization is a work of art, she is why the Great Gatsby is a classic novel; not its wooden, representative namesake. And Jordan-- her cool-headed, blasé demeanor makes her our perfect Virgil for this exposition, if not a perfect personality, as Carroway discovers to his dismay. And that's just it-- she isn't perfect. She's terribly flawed: selfish and dishonest and cold, but clever and witty and interesting all the same.
And here's where I run into trouble in the damn trailer for this movie: where are the driving forces of this novel? Jordan is relegated to one line by an actress clearly playing her as some kind of two-dimensional gossip, and Daisy is a wilting flower, no pun intended. I mean, while Daisy is not exactly a bastion of strong-willed womanhood in this story, she's not some fawning maiden, either. She's witty, she's incredible: her lines are the best in the book, hands down. Where is the "do you want to hear about the butler's nose?" or "I hope she's a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." In the trailer, she's just overcome with love and lust, in a sensual make-out scene in the woods somewhere that is never written in the book because it's too easy, it removes the layers of dimension to have Daisy and Gatsby just lay it all out there like that. It's sexual tension that creates great and sophisticated art. The tension, not the release. Tension is complicated, and difficult to master. Anyone can do release, it's completely easy.
Which brings us to the hyper-sexualization of the female presence in the movie (always the women). There are go-go dancers in Meyer Wolfsheim's ancient, decrepit old club where he ruminates on his colorful and dark past? Please. The film makers are simply taking the little memorable snippets from the novel: Drinking! Parties! Glitter! Lights! and bulldozing all of the gorgeous, layered, delicate intricacies that makes the story great, so that what we're left with is an over-simplified, jarring, shocking spectacular with no particularly interesting characters or story. It's pretty pictures with no substance, and you could literally do that with any source material so why do this to an American classic? Why make this an option for particular uninformed teachers to show in a classroom to get kids interested in reading? Why make this a thing that readers associate with the novel, why make it harder to grasp the delicately woven spider-web of the book-- make it easier to ignore in favor of the glittery, flashy distractions? I know the answers, of course, and it's ironic because that's exactly the problem that the book warns us against: giving up a rich inner life for the superficial outer trappings of money, over-sexualization, greed, objectification-- and it's one of many reasons why I adore this book. This movie is making it a really meta representation of itself.... and yes, I understand that movies are not always exactly like their trailers and there's a chance this travesty is going to pick itself up and dust itself off to be a fine film, but the marketing is not a good sign. Unless the scenes in the trailer are entirely cut from the movie, I have few hopes. I guess it's true that the best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool.
Like every other red-blooded American citizen, I consider The Great Gatsby to be one of my favorite, if not my favorite classic American novel. I adore classic Americana, and it's so sadly scarce nowadays due to the super-ironic, hyper self-aware sort of media that we've been putting out for the last maybe decade or so that I've become very defensive of a particular model of Americana that I believe encompasses the truly great parts of American culture. Americaaaaaa, fuck yeah!
So, anyway, the Gatsby trailer comes out like a year ago, and then they pushed the actual release of the movie back six months, which is always a good sign. Qualitaaayyyy. For those of you who don't know, The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the futility of the American dream, in a freaking nutshell. It follows a level-headed narrator, Nick Carroway, as he moves from the humble Mid-West to the jazzy, flashy Long Island and encounters a mysterious man who is mysteriously rich and mysteriously hung up on a girl from his mysterious past, who happens to be Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, because why not? Daisy is married to a hulking ex-football star who is cheating on her with a full-figured and vivacious woman, Myrtle, who is in turn married to an unreasonably depressing blue-collar worker, noted for being constantly covered in dust. Nick is basically flung into this world of excess with Jordan Baker, the sassy sarcastic friend of Daisy, as his spirit guide.
A few things about Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan: these women are fully-fleshed, fascinating, multi-layered personalities who absolutely drive the story. Nick Carroway is a string of reasonable and thoughtful observations of the people around him, and who wants to hang out with that guy? Not the reader, that's for sure, or we wouldn't ask him to skip through a brief rundown of his life for three months to get to the good parts with the parties, and the drinking, and the characters! But Jay Gatsby may as well be a cardboard cut-out for how stiff and weird he is. His personality is a stream of posturing, and his entire character is just a stand-in for the point Fitzgerald is trying to make about the hollowness of American culture. Meanwhile Daisy is flirty, and charismatic, and flighty, with a bit of that absurd cleverness that we adore in figures like Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Her characterization is a work of art, she is why the Great Gatsby is a classic novel; not its wooden, representative namesake. And Jordan-- her cool-headed, blasé demeanor makes her our perfect Virgil for this exposition, if not a perfect personality, as Carroway discovers to his dismay. And that's just it-- she isn't perfect. She's terribly flawed: selfish and dishonest and cold, but clever and witty and interesting all the same.
And here's where I run into trouble in the damn trailer for this movie: where are the driving forces of this novel? Jordan is relegated to one line by an actress clearly playing her as some kind of two-dimensional gossip, and Daisy is a wilting flower, no pun intended. I mean, while Daisy is not exactly a bastion of strong-willed womanhood in this story, she's not some fawning maiden, either. She's witty, she's incredible: her lines are the best in the book, hands down. Where is the "do you want to hear about the butler's nose?" or "I hope she's a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." In the trailer, she's just overcome with love and lust, in a sensual make-out scene in the woods somewhere that is never written in the book because it's too easy, it removes the layers of dimension to have Daisy and Gatsby just lay it all out there like that. It's sexual tension that creates great and sophisticated art. The tension, not the release. Tension is complicated, and difficult to master. Anyone can do release, it's completely easy.
Which brings us to the hyper-sexualization of the female presence in the movie (always the women). There are go-go dancers in Meyer Wolfsheim's ancient, decrepit old club where he ruminates on his colorful and dark past? Please. The film makers are simply taking the little memorable snippets from the novel: Drinking! Parties! Glitter! Lights! and bulldozing all of the gorgeous, layered, delicate intricacies that makes the story great, so that what we're left with is an over-simplified, jarring, shocking spectacular with no particularly interesting characters or story. It's pretty pictures with no substance, and you could literally do that with any source material so why do this to an American classic? Why make this an option for particular uninformed teachers to show in a classroom to get kids interested in reading? Why make this a thing that readers associate with the novel, why make it harder to grasp the delicately woven spider-web of the book-- make it easier to ignore in favor of the glittery, flashy distractions? I know the answers, of course, and it's ironic because that's exactly the problem that the book warns us against: giving up a rich inner life for the superficial outer trappings of money, over-sexualization, greed, objectification-- and it's one of many reasons why I adore this book. This movie is making it a really meta representation of itself.... and yes, I understand that movies are not always exactly like their trailers and there's a chance this travesty is going to pick itself up and dust itself off to be a fine film, but the marketing is not a good sign. Unless the scenes in the trailer are entirely cut from the movie, I have few hopes. I guess it's true that the best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
A new experiment called: drink some Pastis in the afternoon and recount a shameful story.
There's one restaurant in Italy that I can never return to ever in my life, but I can't remember which one it is because I was too drunk, but it's somewhere in Florence. I just hope if I ever find myself in Florence again I'll have the good sense to ask all the waiters there if they've ever seen me or someone like me throw a glass of wine in someone else's face, and then I will know to leave immediately and never return.
I didn't even have a good reason to throw a glass of wine in this person's face. Or at least, at the time, I didn't have a good reason. I found out later that he had been cheating on me for three weeks, which is a fact that I wish I had known at the moment that I was throwing wine in his face, because it would have made the event seem justified, or even awesome. But no. I didn't even really have a reason besides the fact that I was in such a hideous and terrible relationship with this person that I just hated so, so much that when I got drunk enough, I actually just threw things at his face in public. Liquid things, to clarify. Liquid things, and it only happened once, but Holy Christ did I hate this person, for incredible and valid reasons that do not belong in a throwaway comedic article.
We weren't even alone. I met him and a mutual friend in Italy after he had been traveling through Europe with his adult puppet show for a month, and I waited until said friend went to the bathroom before whipping around out of nowhere and tossing some wine across the room. In fact, splashes of it hit the people behind us and there were actual gasps in the restaurant before everyone realized that they were Italian and saw this shit every day, and went back to their meals.
Yes, he was a puppeteer in an adult puppet show, which is exactly what it sounds like and more or less as confusing. And there were some parts of it that were absolutely delightful, I am not going to lie, but I can and will credit none of them to my no-good, very bad ex. When you have a drag queen singing into a microphone with a three foot ponytail of hair hanging off of it and teacups elegantly dancing to Au clair de la lune, I am just sold, and that's the truth.
So he was a puppeteer. Maybe he still is, who cares. But he was not a good puppeteer. He traveled through Europe with this team of artists as the equivalent of a swing or an understudy, waiting in the wings for one of the talented puppeteers to get a tragic hand cramp or whatever happens to puppeteers so he could swoop in at the last moment and proceed to be astoundingly terrible at puppeteering.
Now, I'm no expert. I don't even know what string you pull on a marionette to make the things go, but I do know what humans look like when they're moving, and unless it is a very specific stage direction, they are not supposed to look like really shaky, arthritic old men that drag their legs behind them when they walk, gingerly slapping the items around them while their head looks in the complete opposite direction, if it is in fact possible to slap something gingerly. If you've ever seen a bad puppeteer, you know that it is possible. To be fair, people-puppets are probably some of the hardest to maneuver, but when you're piloting a UFO, for instance, and it spends the majority of its time onstage halfheartedly turning slowly in the air with one end drooping sadly until it finally crashes into a wall in an act of desperation, and then a succession of curtains that you're captaining get hopelessly caught every single time they try to open like a kindergarten graduation's Hell of Repetition, maybe it's time to hang up your delightfully wacky checkered blazer and rainbow beanie with a propeller, Mr. Quirky Artist, and stick to gluing red sparkles on the devil puppet's enormous foam dick.
The girl he cheated on me with, consistently, for three weeks, before I threw wine in his face, was another puppeteer in the group, and a more successful artist. They had had an "art routine" or whatever together where they dissected stuffed animals, that bled for some reason, while they themselves were I guess scientists or something dressed only in cellophane. So. I guess I should have seen that coming, and I would have, if she wasn't such a nonsense human being. Every time I saw her, she was embarrassingly, cryingly, nakedly drunk, tripping over her stilettos that she couldn't walk in sober and having everyone ("everyone" in this sense meaning "me") take care of her ass even though she was like, twenty-eight years old. I was maybe nineteen, and bewildered as shit. Secondarily, she was also physically unattractive and smelled like Trix cereal. I know because she very frequently leaned all over me, while a drunken mess, and publicly molested me more than once. But, it's okay, though, guys... she was drunk. It's okay to grope people when you're drunk. (It's actually not.) My mean Belgian friend told me that some men, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like to sleep with really plain women while they're with attractive ones. Being mean, he never directly indicated that it might be the case with my relationship, but it made me feel better all the same. Thank you, mean Belgian friend.
I once went to this girl's birthday party, in which she was in fact turning twenty-nine for those of you following along at home. The invitation said to bring "glitter and fun crafts", again, to a twenty-nine year old's birthday party. I mean, I'm all for being young at heart but do you have to drag everyone down else with you? Furthermore, fucking glitter? By the time we found her shitty apartment in the bowels of Brooklyn, she was entirely naked, having had her body painted by guests as a party activity, which we sadly missed. At this point, she was drunkenly painting figure eights on the walls of her apartment and absolutely covered in god damn glitter, which if you don't know, never comes out of anything no matter how hard you try and if you ever get any on you, congratulations you have been sentenced to a life of glitter-face. Even if you scratch off your own flesh, the glitter will somehow find its way permanently into the bloody wound you've carved into your own body. Basically, fuck glitter, is what I'm saying. Anyway, when she saw us, she came right up to us and gave us both our own big individual, naked, glittery hugs.
I decided then and there that I needed to be the most stoned and drunk I ever was and ever will be.
I'd only smoked the mary-juana cigarettes before, and so when someone passed me a bong I wasn't sure if there was something different to it, and I asked the girl next to me. She gave me the snottiest, judgiest look I've ever seen since, and I've glanced in a reflective surface while I'm talking about interpretive touch-dancing. I very clearly remember saying "alright, get over yourself" before like, inhaling from a bong? Is inhaling what you do? I don't remember, but I'm sure inhaling was a big part of it.
Etcetera etcetera etcetera, the girls at the party started like, mean-girl "complimenting" me on wearing a sheer blouse, like they were surprised because they think of me as the biggest prude on Earth, which if you know me, you realize this is patently untrue in many ways, although I will grant them that I don't get naked at parties and have people paint me. They started saying my blouse was "so risque", while their drunk friend tripped naked over the one stiletto heel she was still strapped into, the other having been lost to time and the elements. At once point they dragged a bag of wine out of its box and told me to drink from the spout and slap the bag "like a baby". This was a little bit before I was going to a lot of hipster parties and before it was kind of a thing to slap items like you might an infant, although for the life of me I still have no idea what that shit is about. I just got backed into a corner, feigning ignorance and entreating that I can't slap it like a baby, because I just wouldn't slap a baby. Seriously, guys?
I stumbled out of the bathroom later to have Weird Guy McWeirdyPants waiting for me outside, insisting that my boyfriend made out with a guy in the other room while I was gone. He followed me for a bit, insisting, until I decided I was so fucking leaving it wasn't even funny.
Anyway the moral is, get your story together before you throw a drink in someone's face, because you might need an interesting story to tell Italian Customs when you finally get your act together and cheese it.
I didn't even have a good reason to throw a glass of wine in this person's face. Or at least, at the time, I didn't have a good reason. I found out later that he had been cheating on me for three weeks, which is a fact that I wish I had known at the moment that I was throwing wine in his face, because it would have made the event seem justified, or even awesome. But no. I didn't even really have a reason besides the fact that I was in such a hideous and terrible relationship with this person that I just hated so, so much that when I got drunk enough, I actually just threw things at his face in public. Liquid things, to clarify. Liquid things, and it only happened once, but Holy Christ did I hate this person, for incredible and valid reasons that do not belong in a throwaway comedic article.
We weren't even alone. I met him and a mutual friend in Italy after he had been traveling through Europe with his adult puppet show for a month, and I waited until said friend went to the bathroom before whipping around out of nowhere and tossing some wine across the room. In fact, splashes of it hit the people behind us and there were actual gasps in the restaurant before everyone realized that they were Italian and saw this shit every day, and went back to their meals.
Yes, he was a puppeteer in an adult puppet show, which is exactly what it sounds like and more or less as confusing. And there were some parts of it that were absolutely delightful, I am not going to lie, but I can and will credit none of them to my no-good, very bad ex. When you have a drag queen singing into a microphone with a three foot ponytail of hair hanging off of it and teacups elegantly dancing to Au clair de la lune, I am just sold, and that's the truth.
So he was a puppeteer. Maybe he still is, who cares. But he was not a good puppeteer. He traveled through Europe with this team of artists as the equivalent of a swing or an understudy, waiting in the wings for one of the talented puppeteers to get a tragic hand cramp or whatever happens to puppeteers so he could swoop in at the last moment and proceed to be astoundingly terrible at puppeteering.
Now, I'm no expert. I don't even know what string you pull on a marionette to make the things go, but I do know what humans look like when they're moving, and unless it is a very specific stage direction, they are not supposed to look like really shaky, arthritic old men that drag their legs behind them when they walk, gingerly slapping the items around them while their head looks in the complete opposite direction, if it is in fact possible to slap something gingerly. If you've ever seen a bad puppeteer, you know that it is possible. To be fair, people-puppets are probably some of the hardest to maneuver, but when you're piloting a UFO, for instance, and it spends the majority of its time onstage halfheartedly turning slowly in the air with one end drooping sadly until it finally crashes into a wall in an act of desperation, and then a succession of curtains that you're captaining get hopelessly caught every single time they try to open like a kindergarten graduation's Hell of Repetition, maybe it's time to hang up your delightfully wacky checkered blazer and rainbow beanie with a propeller, Mr. Quirky Artist, and stick to gluing red sparkles on the devil puppet's enormous foam dick.
The girl he cheated on me with, consistently, for three weeks, before I threw wine in his face, was another puppeteer in the group, and a more successful artist. They had had an "art routine" or whatever together where they dissected stuffed animals, that bled for some reason, while they themselves were I guess scientists or something dressed only in cellophane. So. I guess I should have seen that coming, and I would have, if she wasn't such a nonsense human being. Every time I saw her, she was embarrassingly, cryingly, nakedly drunk, tripping over her stilettos that she couldn't walk in sober and having everyone ("everyone" in this sense meaning "me") take care of her ass even though she was like, twenty-eight years old. I was maybe nineteen, and bewildered as shit. Secondarily, she was also physically unattractive and smelled like Trix cereal. I know because she very frequently leaned all over me, while a drunken mess, and publicly molested me more than once. But, it's okay, though, guys... she was drunk. It's okay to grope people when you're drunk. (It's actually not.) My mean Belgian friend told me that some men, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like to sleep with really plain women while they're with attractive ones. Being mean, he never directly indicated that it might be the case with my relationship, but it made me feel better all the same. Thank you, mean Belgian friend.
I once went to this girl's birthday party, in which she was in fact turning twenty-nine for those of you following along at home. The invitation said to bring "glitter and fun crafts", again, to a twenty-nine year old's birthday party. I mean, I'm all for being young at heart but do you have to drag everyone down else with you? Furthermore, fucking glitter? By the time we found her shitty apartment in the bowels of Brooklyn, she was entirely naked, having had her body painted by guests as a party activity, which we sadly missed. At this point, she was drunkenly painting figure eights on the walls of her apartment and absolutely covered in god damn glitter, which if you don't know, never comes out of anything no matter how hard you try and if you ever get any on you, congratulations you have been sentenced to a life of glitter-face. Even if you scratch off your own flesh, the glitter will somehow find its way permanently into the bloody wound you've carved into your own body. Basically, fuck glitter, is what I'm saying. Anyway, when she saw us, she came right up to us and gave us both our own big individual, naked, glittery hugs.
I decided then and there that I needed to be the most stoned and drunk I ever was and ever will be.
I'd only smoked the mary-juana cigarettes before, and so when someone passed me a bong I wasn't sure if there was something different to it, and I asked the girl next to me. She gave me the snottiest, judgiest look I've ever seen since, and I've glanced in a reflective surface while I'm talking about interpretive touch-dancing. I very clearly remember saying "alright, get over yourself" before like, inhaling from a bong? Is inhaling what you do? I don't remember, but I'm sure inhaling was a big part of it.
Etcetera etcetera etcetera, the girls at the party started like, mean-girl "complimenting" me on wearing a sheer blouse, like they were surprised because they think of me as the biggest prude on Earth, which if you know me, you realize this is patently untrue in many ways, although I will grant them that I don't get naked at parties and have people paint me. They started saying my blouse was "so risque", while their drunk friend tripped naked over the one stiletto heel she was still strapped into, the other having been lost to time and the elements. At once point they dragged a bag of wine out of its box and told me to drink from the spout and slap the bag "like a baby". This was a little bit before I was going to a lot of hipster parties and before it was kind of a thing to slap items like you might an infant, although for the life of me I still have no idea what that shit is about. I just got backed into a corner, feigning ignorance and entreating that I can't slap it like a baby, because I just wouldn't slap a baby. Seriously, guys?
I stumbled out of the bathroom later to have Weird Guy McWeirdyPants waiting for me outside, insisting that my boyfriend made out with a guy in the other room while I was gone. He followed me for a bit, insisting, until I decided I was so fucking leaving it wasn't even funny.
Anyway the moral is, get your story together before you throw a drink in someone's face, because you might need an interesting story to tell Italian Customs when you finally get your act together and cheese it.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Oz, the "great" and "powerful": A review
Let me begin this movie review by saying that I generally really don't know that much about movies and I don't actually go and see that many of them. But I will say this: when I do go to a movie, I go in order to love that movie. I'm not the person who goes to a movie so that I can hate it and in fact, I generally will do my best, no matter what, to find some pleasant little nuggets and enjoy the films that I do attend. That being said, "Oz the Great and Powerful" should be classified as a crime against humanity, what a terrible god damn movie it was.
Now, when I said "I don't actually go and see that many" movies, don't make the mistake that I'm saying I don't watch movies frequently. I do, in fact, watch movies all the time-- I just tend to watch the same ones over and over again ad infinitum, to the point where most of my friends and loved ones avoid the topic completely lest they get an entirely new reading of the plot to Inglourious Basterds for the thousandth time. (In fact, I do this with most media... wait, do I have a neurological problem?)
To make a long story short, I love "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". I have no idea why it's named after the Wizard, seeing as he makes like a four minute cameo, even including all of the other nine thousand characters the actor plays in the movie. No "Dorothy and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz"? "Dorothy in the Land of Oz"? Freaking Toto is on camera more than the wizard. "Toto and the Wizard Take Oz!" But I digress.
I have a longstanding love affair with Americana like this, the very specific type of unabashed, unashamed Americana that you can really only find in older media now because all of our movies and television today wink at themselves so much that it looks like they've been up all night drinking coffee and being scared by their mean-spirited older brothers that burned half the face off of one of those old MySize Barbie dolls and think it's funny to keep popping the zombie-faced near-lifesize bridal Barbie into your bedroom window at all hours of the night. Even though it's not funny at all. I lost my train of thought, but basically it feels like media today is really too self-aware to be genuine Americana because it's just trying so hard to be snarky. At itself.
So, gripe number one with freaking "Oz the Shit and Shitterful": they were just completely confused about where exactly they were. These lazyass writers were like, "Okay, now we enter Magiclandia where everything is colors and crazy flowers. Next." NAY, Lazy Writers. That is not how you create a landscape for a traditional piece of American folklore. I guess they had all read "Alice and Wonderland" before they started writing and got confused, because the world they created was certainly not the exaggerated-to-absurdity American landscape that we all know and love from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and in fact, could more specifically actually just be Wonderland. Where were the cornfields, the poppy fields, the forests of oak and maple and apple trees? Yeah, sure, you threw a few cornfields and poppy fields in as a reference or "plot" point (I use the word "plot" loosely), but overall the place was totally unrecognizable as a Bizarro America, which is what it's supposed to be. Jerks.
Second gripe: James Franco, learn some freaking diction. Your annoying California surfer accent is fine when you're playing a hippie that gets stuck under a rock, but when you're playing an adult, and a ...suave? (Suave. Is that what he's supposed to be?) one at that, you look like a damn fool. And you make everyone around you look like a fool. It's like Keanu Reeves is all like "uh shyeah I'm from Stockton-on-Tees, and it's rad, dude". You're from god-damn Kansas, you act like it.
Third gripe, and you know this is coming: WHAT THE FUCK THE WICKED WITCH IS JUST PISSED ABOUT BEING TWO-TIMED BY THE WIZARD WHO SUCKS? THAT is why she's wicked???? And she's honestly just fucking dumb enough to take her lying, bitchy, manipulative sister's word for it? ALSO SHE KNEW HIM FOR LIKE TWO DAYS WHY IS SHE PISSED ENOUGH TO REMOVE HER OWN HEART?? (Sidenote: Can Sam Raimi get another make-up artist? Why do all of his characters just look like the 'Green Goblin, again'?) She goes from like, painfully naive and virginal to like, big bad bitch of the West, gonna fuck y'all up because I got slighted, once, by this one guy, who clearly wasn't that into me in the first place! And there's a weird plot point of like, who killed who's father for power? Like, the power was rightfully in the hands of a big strong man and then the wicked one goes and kills him to take power, instead of just waiting and being happy with what she's given, like a good little girl. There's some weird confusion in the beginning over which witch is which (ha), but the evil one is consistently described as the one who asserted her power instead of staying in her place.
Okay, look... I know I was asking for it by going to see a fantasy movie outside of Oscar-nomination season. And I know I should have done more research and realized that Sam Raimi was indeed the director, in which case I would have definitely re-thought my excitement about another Oz movie. But the lazy landscape and bad acting and weird plot aside, do we actually need to fall back on these careless, awful tropes? I mean they actually have a girl character, made of freaking porcelain. She's a pretty, white, little, delicate, breakable thing, and she's one of the freaking heroes. And, does she overcome her delicateness (read: femininity) to be an awesome character despite her inherent (inherent) sucking? No, she gets captured and constantly has to be saved from being dropped too hard. Is she spunky and resistant to authority? Yes. Is it played as a farce, that she's really just an insolent child and all she really wants is a nice cuddle and protection? Also yes. Also she acts like a little girl throughout the movie, even though she's clearly like fifteen.
There was no reason for this movie to go so off-the-rails. All I am asking for, in retribution for this very personal strike against me, is a stronger vetting process for people who want to come in and shit all over classic pieces of Americana-- where the ladies are genuinely spunky, and sometimes gun-totin', and sometimes sexy and vampy back when being sexy and vampy was rebellious and cool and not so patriarchally-funded-and-supported. Where the poppy fields and corn fields were center stage, unwinkingly. Where the regional accents of actors weren't so distractingly awful. We can't re-create that past (of course you can, ol' sport! Oh, you, Gatsby!), and bullshit movies like this are threatening an already endangered species.
Speaking of which, please stay tuned for my frothy review of the trailer for the upcoming Great Gatsby movie, which I will not see.
Now, when I said "I don't actually go and see that many" movies, don't make the mistake that I'm saying I don't watch movies frequently. I do, in fact, watch movies all the time-- I just tend to watch the same ones over and over again ad infinitum, to the point where most of my friends and loved ones avoid the topic completely lest they get an entirely new reading of the plot to Inglourious Basterds for the thousandth time. (In fact, I do this with most media... wait, do I have a neurological problem?)
To make a long story short, I love "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". I have no idea why it's named after the Wizard, seeing as he makes like a four minute cameo, even including all of the other nine thousand characters the actor plays in the movie. No "Dorothy and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz"? "Dorothy in the Land of Oz"? Freaking Toto is on camera more than the wizard. "Toto and the Wizard Take Oz!" But I digress.
I have a longstanding love affair with Americana like this, the very specific type of unabashed, unashamed Americana that you can really only find in older media now because all of our movies and television today wink at themselves so much that it looks like they've been up all night drinking coffee and being scared by their mean-spirited older brothers that burned half the face off of one of those old MySize Barbie dolls and think it's funny to keep popping the zombie-faced near-lifesize bridal Barbie into your bedroom window at all hours of the night. Even though it's not funny at all. I lost my train of thought, but basically it feels like media today is really too self-aware to be genuine Americana because it's just trying so hard to be snarky. At itself.
So, gripe number one with freaking "Oz the Shit and Shitterful": they were just completely confused about where exactly they were. These lazyass writers were like, "Okay, now we enter Magiclandia where everything is colors and crazy flowers. Next." NAY, Lazy Writers. That is not how you create a landscape for a traditional piece of American folklore. I guess they had all read "Alice and Wonderland" before they started writing and got confused, because the world they created was certainly not the exaggerated-to-absurdity American landscape that we all know and love from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and in fact, could more specifically actually just be Wonderland. Where were the cornfields, the poppy fields, the forests of oak and maple and apple trees? Yeah, sure, you threw a few cornfields and poppy fields in as a reference or "plot" point (I use the word "plot" loosely), but overall the place was totally unrecognizable as a Bizarro America, which is what it's supposed to be. Jerks.
Second gripe: James Franco, learn some freaking diction. Your annoying California surfer accent is fine when you're playing a hippie that gets stuck under a rock, but when you're playing an adult, and a ...suave? (Suave. Is that what he's supposed to be?) one at that, you look like a damn fool. And you make everyone around you look like a fool. It's like Keanu Reeves is all like "uh shyeah I'm from Stockton-on-Tees, and it's rad, dude". You're from god-damn Kansas, you act like it.
Third gripe, and you know this is coming: WHAT THE FUCK THE WICKED WITCH IS JUST PISSED ABOUT BEING TWO-TIMED BY THE WIZARD WHO SUCKS? THAT is why she's wicked???? And she's honestly just fucking dumb enough to take her lying, bitchy, manipulative sister's word for it? ALSO SHE KNEW HIM FOR LIKE TWO DAYS WHY IS SHE PISSED ENOUGH TO REMOVE HER OWN HEART?? (Sidenote: Can Sam Raimi get another make-up artist? Why do all of his characters just look like the 'Green Goblin, again'?) She goes from like, painfully naive and virginal to like, big bad bitch of the West, gonna fuck y'all up because I got slighted, once, by this one guy, who clearly wasn't that into me in the first place! And there's a weird plot point of like, who killed who's father for power? Like, the power was rightfully in the hands of a big strong man and then the wicked one goes and kills him to take power, instead of just waiting and being happy with what she's given, like a good little girl. There's some weird confusion in the beginning over which witch is which (ha), but the evil one is consistently described as the one who asserted her power instead of staying in her place.
Okay, look... I know I was asking for it by going to see a fantasy movie outside of Oscar-nomination season. And I know I should have done more research and realized that Sam Raimi was indeed the director, in which case I would have definitely re-thought my excitement about another Oz movie. But the lazy landscape and bad acting and weird plot aside, do we actually need to fall back on these careless, awful tropes? I mean they actually have a girl character, made of freaking porcelain. She's a pretty, white, little, delicate, breakable thing, and she's one of the freaking heroes. And, does she overcome her delicateness (read: femininity) to be an awesome character despite her inherent (inherent) sucking? No, she gets captured and constantly has to be saved from being dropped too hard. Is she spunky and resistant to authority? Yes. Is it played as a farce, that she's really just an insolent child and all she really wants is a nice cuddle and protection? Also yes. Also she acts like a little girl throughout the movie, even though she's clearly like fifteen.
There was no reason for this movie to go so off-the-rails. All I am asking for, in retribution for this very personal strike against me, is a stronger vetting process for people who want to come in and shit all over classic pieces of Americana-- where the ladies are genuinely spunky, and sometimes gun-totin', and sometimes sexy and vampy back when being sexy and vampy was rebellious and cool and not so patriarchally-funded-and-supported. Where the poppy fields and corn fields were center stage, unwinkingly. Where the regional accents of actors weren't so distractingly awful. We can't re-create that past (of course you can, ol' sport! Oh, you, Gatsby!), and bullshit movies like this are threatening an already endangered species.
Speaking of which, please stay tuned for my frothy review of the trailer for the upcoming Great Gatsby movie, which I will not see.
Please Cast Me as Enjolras in your next production of Les Miserables.
So, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I think that I would be absolutely perfect for your cast of Les Miserables, but hear me out, because it's probably not in the part you imagine. Yes, I know I played Eponine in Our Lady of Victory Parish's 2004 production of Les Miserables (who hasn't heard of it?), and yes, I know I rocked the shit out of that role. There is no question about that, it is not up for debate. Nor is the absolute fact that I would be the feistiest, scrappiest Fantine you ever did see now that I'm older and a little more qualified for the more complex role, because everybody who plays Fantine makes her this sad-face little waif for absolutely no reason seeing as she gets into a fistfight with not one but two people in the first half hour of an eighteen hour musical before she dies horribly of being French in 1810, also in the first half hour. No, these are not the parts that I would be perfect for. Do not even mention the name Cosette, I don't want to hear it. Ugh. What a shithead.
I realize that we have nearly run out of female characters here, and that is a purposeful arrangement. You see, the part that I would be absolutely perfect for forever is the part of Enjolras, the leader of the young revolutionaries and the hands-down most bitchingest character in the show. You might not know the character by name, but he's the one who wears the red jacket in the movie and the yellow vest in the stage show. He's the one who throws his gun down in a hail of bullets to raise the revolutionary flag, then gets shot down in a tragic blaze of glory, the revolutionary and/or French flag draped dramatically over his corpse in his death throes, the one who inspires the people of Paris, if only for a moment in his life, to take arms and fight the powers that be, the one who tells Marius to shut the hell up for like one second in his life when he's moaning about some goddamn sentimental shit while I'm giving my incredible, moving speech about mother-fucking freedom and will someone please give me this part already?
Look, there's a reason I'm always typecast as the intense or witchy, mean characters in shows. I've played an actual, sorcerer witch three times in my short stage career, and in basically every other show I've died horribly in some other way as punishment for being a dick. I was crushed by a giant for cheating on my husband, I was figuratively burned to death for trying to convince some guy to burn himself to death, I was melted for keeping slaves and kidnapping some little brat, I was shot to death on a barricade for being a spunky idiot. I also died of diabetes, but that doesn't really fit into my theme. My point is: I look the part. My face is intense, my hair is wild and untamed (read: uncombed), my voice is dark. My point is also: I act the part. Please read that "witchy and mean" when applied to a female character translates to "absolutely fucking awesome" in a male character. I can be freaking intense and intimidating when I want to be. I've had more people stammer "But I... thought you hated me?" at me than any normal person ever should, and these are people that I usually actively liked. I'm apparently not a pleasant person and I'd like that to work to my advantage for once.
Just imagine the possibilities of a female Enjolras, especially a memale Enjolras: Female Enjolras is commanding in a way that isn't overtly sexual, meaning she isn't some femme fatale vamping around stage, which would be such a breath of fresh air for lady performers! Imagine, strength apart from sexuality and pettiness? Who thought it could be possible? Femjolras is simply a strong presence with a knack for leadership, like Joan of Arc, except less insane. She might wear some kind of simplified female dress for her time, or she might wear a version of the men's costume with maybe a longer coat or shirt-tails. Also, let us never, ever call her "Femjolras".
Think about the moments ripe for building with Eponine, whose character can be more developed than the annoying, pining, lovelorn sadgirl with just a few moments being mourned by a female Enjolras. "She is the first to die, the first of us to fall upon this barricade... we fight here in her name... she will not be betrayed." Eponine is justified by someone of her own gender, instead of constantly being defined by men! There could be more female revolutionaries, as it would make so much more sense seeing as there were actual female revolutionaries in the real French revolution. And a notable female revolutionary, in this play about revolutionaries whose only previous interaction between women includes some prostitutes pushing Fantine to sell her body, an old lady and a prostitute arguing over corner space, and Madame Thenardier yelling at baby Cosette to go out into the woods in the middle of the night, would be doing it for better reasons than "there's a cute boy!"
Not to mention it would add a character into this musical, which is otherwise so deftly written and a story so beautifully told, who isn't a woman pining over a man, whose entire character arc isn't defined by men, and who isn't an "evil" or otherwise distasteful character. I changed my mind; I don't care if it's me who plays Enjolras (even though I assert that I would be amazing): please make a version of this play with some female (speaking) revolutionaries scattered in the mix, played by whoever. It already makes no sense that Eponine is dressed like a boy to sneak behind the barricade. There are usually women depicted behind the barricade anyway; they just aren't represented as students. The line "Let us not waste lives, let all the women and fathers of children go from here" is said after Eponine is dead. It technically makes no historical sense that Norm Lewis, an African-American actor, played Inspector Javert in the Broadway revival, and yet he was freaking phenomenal because the humanity of the story trumps the finicky historical details, and defying them even adds to it. I guess I'm just tired of women being left out of the human story through categorization, and I just really want to hear a woman upbraid Marius, "Who cares about your lonely soul? We strive towards a larger goal. Our little lives don't count at all!" instead of being distracted from the glory of history by their own personal dramas, like their crush on a boy, or stealing items off of corpses, etc. Make a female Enjolras. Make a female Grantaire. Make a female Courfeyrac. DO IT. DO IT NOW.
I realize that we have nearly run out of female characters here, and that is a purposeful arrangement. You see, the part that I would be absolutely perfect for forever is the part of Enjolras, the leader of the young revolutionaries and the hands-down most bitchingest character in the show. You might not know the character by name, but he's the one who wears the red jacket in the movie and the yellow vest in the stage show. He's the one who throws his gun down in a hail of bullets to raise the revolutionary flag, then gets shot down in a tragic blaze of glory, the revolutionary and/or French flag draped dramatically over his corpse in his death throes, the one who inspires the people of Paris, if only for a moment in his life, to take arms and fight the powers that be, the one who tells Marius to shut the hell up for like one second in his life when he's moaning about some goddamn sentimental shit while I'm giving my incredible, moving speech about mother-fucking freedom and will someone please give me this part already?
Look, there's a reason I'm always typecast as the intense or witchy, mean characters in shows. I've played an actual, sorcerer witch three times in my short stage career, and in basically every other show I've died horribly in some other way as punishment for being a dick. I was crushed by a giant for cheating on my husband, I was figuratively burned to death for trying to convince some guy to burn himself to death, I was melted for keeping slaves and kidnapping some little brat, I was shot to death on a barricade for being a spunky idiot. I also died of diabetes, but that doesn't really fit into my theme. My point is: I look the part. My face is intense, my hair is wild and untamed (read: uncombed), my voice is dark. My point is also: I act the part. Please read that "witchy and mean" when applied to a female character translates to "absolutely fucking awesome" in a male character. I can be freaking intense and intimidating when I want to be. I've had more people stammer "But I... thought you hated me?" at me than any normal person ever should, and these are people that I usually actively liked. I'm apparently not a pleasant person and I'd like that to work to my advantage for once.
Just imagine the possibilities of a female Enjolras, especially a memale Enjolras: Female Enjolras is commanding in a way that isn't overtly sexual, meaning she isn't some femme fatale vamping around stage, which would be such a breath of fresh air for lady performers! Imagine, strength apart from sexuality and pettiness? Who thought it could be possible? Femjolras is simply a strong presence with a knack for leadership, like Joan of Arc, except less insane. She might wear some kind of simplified female dress for her time, or she might wear a version of the men's costume with maybe a longer coat or shirt-tails. Also, let us never, ever call her "Femjolras".
Think about the moments ripe for building with Eponine, whose character can be more developed than the annoying, pining, lovelorn sadgirl with just a few moments being mourned by a female Enjolras. "She is the first to die, the first of us to fall upon this barricade... we fight here in her name... she will not be betrayed." Eponine is justified by someone of her own gender, instead of constantly being defined by men! There could be more female revolutionaries, as it would make so much more sense seeing as there were actual female revolutionaries in the real French revolution. And a notable female revolutionary, in this play about revolutionaries whose only previous interaction between women includes some prostitutes pushing Fantine to sell her body, an old lady and a prostitute arguing over corner space, and Madame Thenardier yelling at baby Cosette to go out into the woods in the middle of the night, would be doing it for better reasons than "there's a cute boy!"
Not to mention it would add a character into this musical, which is otherwise so deftly written and a story so beautifully told, who isn't a woman pining over a man, whose entire character arc isn't defined by men, and who isn't an "evil" or otherwise distasteful character. I changed my mind; I don't care if it's me who plays Enjolras (even though I assert that I would be amazing): please make a version of this play with some female (speaking) revolutionaries scattered in the mix, played by whoever. It already makes no sense that Eponine is dressed like a boy to sneak behind the barricade. There are usually women depicted behind the barricade anyway; they just aren't represented as students. The line "Let us not waste lives, let all the women and fathers of children go from here" is said after Eponine is dead. It technically makes no historical sense that Norm Lewis, an African-American actor, played Inspector Javert in the Broadway revival, and yet he was freaking phenomenal because the humanity of the story trumps the finicky historical details, and defying them even adds to it. I guess I'm just tired of women being left out of the human story through categorization, and I just really want to hear a woman upbraid Marius, "Who cares about your lonely soul? We strive towards a larger goal. Our little lives don't count at all!" instead of being distracted from the glory of history by their own personal dramas, like their crush on a boy, or stealing items off of corpses, etc. Make a female Enjolras. Make a female Grantaire. Make a female Courfeyrac. DO IT. DO IT NOW.
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