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“Michigan seems like a dream to me now”

I’ll go ahead and warn you that I’m not totally sure what direction this post is going to take–whether it’s going to turn out profound like last week’s post or be a stream-of-consciousness reflection on how Simon and Garfunkel lyrics have kept coming to my attention over the past week, which is all that I have in mind right now. Just letting you know.

So, yes, last night while I was making a tuna layered salad to chill for tonight’s meeting of my creative writing group, I listened to my Simon and Garfunkel greatest hits record because for days, I had been coming across direct and indirect references to their songs, from a former grad student telling me that “Bridge over Troubled Water” played an instrumental role in the conversion of Christian singer Jason Gray (shout out to you, Kandy, if you’re reading this!), to Max Lucado’s odd but appropriate mention of “The Boxer” in his early book No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, to the Michigan place-name Saginaw, which always makes me think of the song “America” (which, since that’s the most generic song title ever, most people probably think of as “All Gone to Look for America”). (“It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.”) By the way, I haven’t been to the city of Saginaw, but the reason I fairly often think of the name and hence the song is that there’s a thoroughfare called Saginaw (Street? Avenue? It’s just called Saginaw, apparently. They do that a lot around here) in Lansing where the American Red Cross platelet donation center is. Yes, I do drive an hour to Lansing to donate platelets when I could donate here in Grand Rapids with Michigan Blood Services. I’m loyal to the Red Cross, and I don’t mind making the drive once or twice a month, especially now that I have a new Mazda CX-5 that I really enjoy spending time in.

Okay. Rambling. Focus.

There’s a line in “America”–near the Saginaw line, of course–that I never really paid attention to or possibly even heard until last night. (I recently got a new turntable and speakers, and I’m having all these revelations because I can now hear my records properly for the first time.) It says, “Michigan seems like a dream to me now.” This line brought a bemused smile to my face as I was chopping cucumbers or whatever I was doing at that moment. Michigan does seem like a dream to me now, not because–like the protagonist of that song–I have passed through it quickly and left it behind, but because I am still here after seven months and yet it sometimes doesn’t seem real that I live here. And I don’t mean “dream” in the sense of “beyond my wildest dreams”; after all, if you told me I could live anywhere in the world, no restrictions, I’d probably pick Italy or somewhere else more temperate in climate and with better food than Michigan (no offense intended). But I’m awed, blessed, and kinda proud of myself that I am not only living in a state that a year ago I’d never remotely considered living in, but also working at a university that a year ago I’d never heard of (but only because it’s a hidden gem)–and I own a house in that state and just a few blocks from that university. I even have a Michigan license plate on the four-wheel-drive vehicle I probably would not have bought in Virginia. But it all feels a little surreal, like an unusually long vacation.

That’s all I have to say about that, as Forrest Gump says. I hope it was sufficiently profound for you. Go listen to some Simon and Garfunkel.

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Big Daddy Weave, Christian music, and my judgmental heart

For over a month, I had been going to my chiropractor three times a week and seeing a poster for an upcoming Big Daddy Weave concert every time I hung up my coat. Although I’ve never been a particular fan of BDW, I would sometimes look at the poster and think, “I should go to that.” After all, I’ve been running a streak of attending good concerts ever since last October–basically, since I moved to the Grand Rapids area. Also, the poster said there would be a guest violinist and a guest cellist, and I like classy string music as much as the next person. I have also been slightly intrigued by Big Daddy Weave ever since I read a guest column in the World Vision magazine a few years ago by lead singer Mike Weaver. He wrote about preparing to visit his sponsored child in the boy’s home country and feeling apprehensive about the visit because as an obese person, he thought his presence might be awkward or inappropriate in a severely food-insecure area–and then having his apprehensions made mostly irrelevant when he and his sponsored child immediately connected. I was impressed by the thoughtfulness of this piece and have had it in the back of my mind ever since then.

So I listened to Big Daddy Weave’s top tracks on Pandora and discovered, upon hearing them all at once, that these were some of the most memorable best-written songs I’d heard on Christian radio over the past few years. See, I have this thing about Christian radio–I listen to it while mentally distancing myself from it. After all, life is not always “positive and encouraging,” a favorite slogan of Christian radio stations. But as I studied BDW’s discography (still trying to decide if I should buy a ticket to the concert), I realized that while they do have a number of celebratory anthems about victory in Jesus (“The Lion and the Lamb” is a really good one), they also have a number of songs about shame, discouragement, and other non-positive experiences. Yet they always do point to Jesus somewhere in their songs. I’ve been telling my students that we need more Christian artists who do this, instead of jumping straight to the victory part.

So I decided to buy a ticket. But I felt like I had to deprecate myself about this. “I’m going to see Big Daddy Weave on Friday night,” I said to two of my music-savvy college students. “And you can make fun of me; I know that’s, like, soccer-mom music.” Their response surprised me. “Oh, we love them! So jealous you get to go to that” was essentially what they said. So I felt a little better about myself.

But when I got to the church where the concert was taking place, and I was standing in line waiting to get in, I saw a lot of soccer moms and soccer dads, and I started silently judging everything I told myself I hated about suburban middle-American Christianity. Honestly, I think this was a coping mechanism because I was really feeling lonely and awkward about attending the concert about myself.

I sat near the back of the sanctuary, which allowed me to do some people-watching, and I ended up being surprised by the diversity of the crowd. Throughout the concert, which was really more of a worship service, I sincerely enjoyed watching the people around me respond to the music. In the row in front of me, there was a group of intellectually disabled adults who were really getting into it. In the row in front of them, there was a group of teenagers who I would have guessed would’ve preferred newer and hipper bands, yet seemed to love the music. (Incidentally, there was a lot of hugging going on in both of those rows, especially toward the end of the concert.) In the row in front of them, there was a row of women who did indeed appear to be soccer moms, but one of them was African-American (one of the few non-white people in attendance–okay, so the crowd wasn’t diverse in every respect), and she wasn’t turning up her nose at the whiteboy music either; in fact, she and one of her friends a few seats down were on their feet almost the entire concert.

By the end of the concert, I felt convicted. What’s so bad about soccer moms anyway? Who am I, in my arrogance, to judge my fellow believers for the music they like or the way they dress or the minivans they drive? Or the way they worship? I felt convicted, but not guilty (another favorite song topic of BDW is how we don’t have to bear the guilt of our sin anymore, so that was good to hear)–I felt blessed that these people didn’t have a problem with worshiping next to a lone concert attendee wearing a weird bandanna and, by the end of it all, a goofy smile. (In case you’re wondering, that was me.)

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India in Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair

Over the weekend, I watched Mira Nair’s 2004 adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. I had seen it several years before, and even before I rewatched it, I remembered that the movie left me feeling more affectionate toward the characters than the notoriously satirical novel did. I tend to have this experience in general with adaptations–it’s usually easier to like a character I am seeing portrayed by a flesh-and-blood actor as compared to a character described by a (sometimes vicious) narrator and perhaps, in the case of a Victorian novel, illustrated in a cartoonish style. But I think there’s an additional reason why Nair applies a more charitable interpretation to the characters, which is simply that she’s a woman. This is no doubt why main character Becky Sharp, while every bit as strong and smart and (a little bit) ruthless as in the novel, appears less like a shrew and more like a woman who has spent her life striving to overcome the disadvantages of poverty and orphanhood.

I also remembered that India, a distant backdrop for some of the plotlines in the novel, takes a more prominent role under the direction of the Indian-American Nair. But not until this latest viewing did I realize the extent and nuance of India’s presence in the film. Unlike some other movies of the last few decades, such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel (which I have to admit I really do enjoy), Vanity Fair does not carry the message that if British people (or white people in general; I think this message is also implied in Eat Pray Love) go to India, they will have a magical experience and all their problems will be solved. While Vanity Fair celebrates the music, cuisine, and clothing styles of India, it doesn’t slap a simple, single symbolic meaning on the entire nation or its culture. For example, in one scene, India seems to represent heartwarming family values (when the lonely Dobbin, who has escaped to India to nurse his unrequited love, watches the happy parents and child), but in a later scene, Indian music, dance, and costume are associated with moral degradation in Lord Steyne’s creepy-sexy “ballet.”

The connection with India is, I think, the reason for Nair’s significantly more positive portrayal of Jos Sedley, a British colonial bureaucrat home on leave from India and also the first man who makes a bit of a fool of himself over Becky Sharp. In the novel, Jos is a minor character who is regularly mocked by his fellow characters and the narrator–for being fat, for being nonconfrontational (or cowardly, as Thackeray seems to present him, but I think it’s a good thing to have a peaceful young man in a novel full of hotheads and warriors), and for having, in the eyes of his hidebound friends and family, nearly “gone native” in his affinity for Indian clothing and cooking. Although Jos is part of a colonial machine whose purpose is to impose British rule and culture on India, as an individual he seems to be doing more absorbing than imposing. Whenever he appears in the film, he is portrayed as a respectful and delighted fan of Indian culture, which he (again respectfully) tries to share with the folks back home. Although he remains a minor character in the movie, he does not, as in the novel, finally and ignominiously drop out of the story about halfway through, fleeing from the Battle of Waterloo. Instead [SPOILER], he shows up at the end, after Becky has lost her love and many other things, and we learn that he’s been looking for her and hoping to take her back to India with him. The film ends with the two of them riding an elephant in what surely looks like a wedding procession. And while the scene looks a little bit like an India tourism commercial, I love that Mira Nair found a way to celebrate her family’s ancestral land and set Becky Sharp up with the man who’s loved her all along. Thackeray purists may have a problem with the ending, but I think it’s lovely.

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my first winter in Michigan

Here are some things I learned during my first winter in West Michigan:

  1. Weather-related cancellations are rare. They are more likely to happen due to cold than to snow. I understand this because I know that cold can be dangerous, especially to the very young and the very old, but driving on slippery roads with low visibility is also dangerous–just saying.
  2. Speaking of slippery roads, I learned that I can drive okay in snow but that I will feel much more comfortable in an all-wheel-drive vehicle. I came to this decision when my Mazda 6, which has served me well for nearly 10 years, got stuck in the snow twice in one day in February. I plan to begin shopping for a small SUV soon.
  3. On the other hand, I learned that I probably don’t need a garage or carport. This had been one of my must-have items when I began home shopping, but I ended up buying a garageless house that fit nearly all of my other needs and desires. I talked about installing a carport, but now I don’t think I need it. Defrosting my windshield in the morning is a minor inconvenience, and anyway, I live close enough to my job to walk when I don’t feel like digging out the car.
  4. I also learned that you find out who your friendly neighbors are in the winter. During the late January polar vortex, one neighbor whom I hadn’t met saw me struggling to shovel out my driveway and came over with his snowblower. It was too cold to exchange pleasantries, so I still don’t know his name, but I’m grateful to him. Other neighbors helped me push and shovel on that day in February when my car got stuck twice.
  5. And finally, I learned that I can handle a Michigan winter. So to those of you who were hoping to gloat when I came crying back to Virginia–sorry, you don’t get that satisfaction. Heh, heh.
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exploring my characters’ pasts

This is going to be an arcane and self-indulgent post that probably only one or two people who read my blog will actually care about. There, you’ve been warned. I may share this in my writing group, though, since some of them might care about it. I have decided to use this post to explore an idea I had the other day regarding my fictional work in progress, “Sam’s Town”–the zombie apocalypse story I have mentioned a number of times on my blog. Originally, Sam was going to be this lonely soul who never got a girlfriend and died at the end of the story. Now, not only does Sam survive, but there’s also Ramona, this “brilliant and startling” (his words) woman who is into him, which he doesn’t understand because he thinks he’s an affable sidekick at best. And now, after this thing I’m about to share, it seems that he may have a history of seemingly out-of-his-league women falling in love with him. It sounds wildly improbable, and it also sounds like a cliche. But as I’m finding that people who read about Sam usually come to love him, it makes sense to me that he would also be lovable (and not just to his parents and friends) within the world of the story.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Here’s what happened: In one of the Facebook writing groups I’m in, an administrator shared a picture of a pretty young woman with stylish hair and clothes, sitting in front of wallpaper with a tortuous yellow pattern on it (this so distracted me with thoughts of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s haunting short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” that for a while I couldn’t think of anything original to write), and lobbed some character development questions at us. This is what I finally wrote in response:

You guys are all so good at politically complex fantasy, dystopian, and historical stories. I’m going with plain old contemporary realism.

This is Charlotte (a nod to the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” 😁). She is the most popular girl in school, but not a mean queen bee—everyone likes her, even teachers. She is smart, poised, and articulate, and she knows what she wants out of life. Well, that last part isn’t true. She has no idea what she wants—only what others expect of her.

She is hiding the fact that she really hates herself most of the time. She hates that she always has to perform. She hates her body, and she is bulimic. This is an open secret among her group of friends—most of them are bulimic too—but she’s hiding the fact that she doesn’t want to do that to herself anymore. (So are all of her friends, actually.)

She is also hiding the fact that she likes the boy who sits in front of her in English. He is quiet and terribly awkward, and his goal in life seems to be to disappear. But Charlotte sees him. She hasn’t told her friends because they wouldn’t understand. They call him Ghost Boy. (And no, he’s not an actual ghost—contemporary realism, you guys. His real name is Peter, by the way.) And she can’t tell him because he would think she was just making fun of him. So she just keeps playing her role. THE END (for now)

Almost immediately after I wrote that–actually, maybe while I was still writing it–it occurred to me that this Peter fellow sounds an awful lot like my character Sam (now in his early 30s) as he describes his teenage self. The disappointing interpretation of this is that I only know how to write one male character, over and over, with slight variations. The more cheerful interpretation is that this is Sam and I need to incorporate this into his backstory. I had already come up with a vaguely outlined character named Becky Olson, whom Sam had liked in high school and who might show up again (not as a zombie) in my vaguely planned sequel, but this so-called Charlotte is quite a bit different from Becky, who was supposed to be sweet and quiet and sort of a background type like Sam.

It would be interesting and perhaps vindicating for my Sam fans if the adult Charlotte (also not a zombie) confessed her teenage feelings for Sam, but would it be realistic? Even if she did like Sam back then, would she remember all these years later? Is it a bit corny and idealistic for all these attractive, put-together women to be falling in love with shlubby, semi-reclusive Sam? I think the answers to those questions are probably no, no, and yes, and yet–I can’t help imagining a flashback scene in which Charlotte goes (with her parents, or some friends, or a date) to Clemenza’s, the restaurant where Sam works, and they strike up this awkward, “oh, you’re in my English class” conversation (even though each knows perfectly well who the other is), and even though Sam is just a busboy, he gets her some cannoli in a takeout box, and he rambles on to her about all the ingredients and how good the cannoli is at Clemenza’s and how he’s been practicing at home and he can almost make it like the chefs here do. And she still remembers all these years later.

I’m almost equally torn between gushing and gagging at what I just wrote. If you’ve read this far, let me know what you think.

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Loki the attention-seeking son, part 2

As promised, here are some thoughts I added to my conference paper, after doing some significant cutting of rabbit trails on interesting but unnecessary topics from Othello to The Dark Knight. Read the backstory here.

At the end of Thor: The Dark World, like another famous trickster, Tom Sawyer, Loki essentially attends his own funeral and enjoys hearing the eulogy that Thor believes he is delivering to their father.  Even more stunningly, Loki, in the form of Odin, speaks in praise of himself. The praise is restrained, necessarily so as not to destroy the illusion that Odin is speaking, but in essence, Loki uses Odin’s mouth to speak the affirmation he has always wanted to hear from Odin.

[I called this next section of my paper “The Little Blue Frost-Giant Baby Finally Chills Out.”]

In Thor: Ragnarok (2017), directed by Taika Waititi, one of the best-reviewed and certainly the funniest Marvel film to date, Loki’s character undergoes yet another transformation. Although he persists in his deceptive and treacherous ways, he no longer seems to crave a throne. When we first meet him in this film, he is still impersonating Odin and enjoying a stint as Asgard’s ruler, but this scene is played for laughs, and when Thor brings this travesty of a reign to an end, Loki doesn’t put up much of a fight.

Later, during the bizarre interlude on the waste planet of Sakaar, Loki seems content to stay in this galactic backwater and wield such influence as he can as a right-hand man to the Grand Master. He no longer desires the throne of Asgard. There are many possible reasons for his resignation—one is that Asgard is being taken over by the seemingly unstoppable villain Hela—but I believe the real key to Loki’s significantly more relaxed behavior in this film is the early scene in which Odin, who has been living in retirement on Earth, passes out of this world. Flanked once again by his two sons, Odin speaks words of equal love for Thor and Loki, and this time, they are words of simple acceptance, with no talk of thrones or inheritance. Perhaps Loki has come full circle and really believes, once again, that his father loves and accepts him.

There is also an interesting scene immediately after this, in which Thor and Loki meet their evil half-sister Hela. She says to Thor, “You don’t look like Odin,” and then to Loki, who is attempting to negotiate with her, “You sound like him.” This apparent throw-away comment by Hela may confirm to Loki that he is truly Odin’s son—perhaps even more so than Thor.

At the end of Thor: Ragnarok comes probably the biggest departure these films have made from Norse mythology. Traditionally, Loki fights with Asgard’s enemies in the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok. But in the film, Loki fights alongside the gods of Asgard. Although Infinity War calls Loki’s motives into question once again, his choice to fight on the Aesir’s side is significant—and may have happened simply because he finally got his father to look at him.

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Loki as an attention-seeking son

A lot of people seem to have Marvel movie fatigue right now; I know I do. (The exception, of course, is the freshness of the recent Oscar nominations and wins of Black Panther.  Let me just go on a rabbit trail for a second and say that as a movie music geek, I was excited to see the baby-faced 34-year-old Ludwig Goransson accept the Best Original Score award for that film. We need some fresh blood in that category, and Goransson’s musically eclectic and emotionally on-point score deserved the win.) Anyway, although many of us are getting tired of keeping track of who has what stone and why, I’ve noticed that my students’ eyes still light up when I mention my favorite Marvel character, Loki (and I mention him more often than is strictly necessary in any college English class). So I trust I will not try your patience if I use this post to test out some ideas on a paper about Loki that I am editing for presentation at a conference this Friday. I originally wrote the paper a few years ago as a chapter, which was ultimately not selected, for an edited collection. It’s 15 pages long, and I need to cut it to almost half that length–while also including some observations on Thor: Ragnarok, which hadn’t been released when I wrote the chapter. So in the next few paragraphs, I’m going to see if I can sketch out my main points briefly and interestingly. Any feedback would be appreciated.

My primary premise is that Loki, as he appears in the Marvel movies (not in traditional Norse myths, where he is quite a different character), is motivated primarily by his desire for respect–or, at bare minimum, attention–from Odin, the adoptive father whom he claims to hate but whose opinion he clearly cares about. My secondary premise is that Loki’s craving for attention manifests itself in his performative behavior. This is where the Marvel character does align with the Norse sort-of-deity: Loki is a shape-shifter, and in the movies, his shape-shifting demonstrates that he will try anything in order to gain an audience. (And although Odin is his primary desired audience, any audience can fulfill his need to some extent.)

This relational dynamic is established in the first film Loki appears in, Thor, which draws from the quasi-Shakespearean world of the classic The Mighty Thor comics and plays to the strengths of director Kenneth Branagh. In its storytelling and staging, this film establishes what I call a Shakespearean inheritance triangle, in which Thor–even during his period of exile on Earth–is consistently portrayed as the biological, legitimate, and/or older son, to whom the kingship legally belongs, while Loki is consistently portrayed as the adopted, illegitimate, and/or younger son. Literally, in terms of the story, it’s unclear which brother is older, and Loki isn’t actually illegitimate, but all of these tropes come into play in the character’s portrayal. With his sardonic humor, intellectual arrogance, and dread of humiliation, Loki fits perfectly within the tradition of the Shakespearean bastard. At the end of this movie, the “triangle” is broken when Loki lets go of Thor’s hand and falls into the abyss, and from this point on, he is “out” as an antagonist.

And he plays this antagonist role with great relish in his next film, The Avengers, in which director Joss Whedon clearly sets up Loki in the role of the supervillain even as he blurs the line between good guys and bad guys. This is the film in which Tony Stark refers to Loki as “a full-tilt diva,” and if I had time I could offer a detailed analysis of the ways in which Loki uses New York City and even the world as his stage (hey! another Shakespeare reference).

I’m going to stop here because this post is getting really long. I may do a Part 2 later this week. I just this moment had a great thought about the scene at the end of Thor: The Dark World in which Loki takes on the form of Odin. And I have some thoughts about the poignant scene in Thor: Ragnarok in which Odin passes from this world with equally loving words for both of his sons. But more on that later. Tell me your thoughts so I can steal your ideas! (just kidding about the stealing)

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focusing on focus

Yesterday I responded to a journal prompt, and I decided my response wasn’t too embarrassing to share here on my blog:

The word I want to focus on in 2019 is “focus.” (How very meta.) I’m almost always thinking about the next thing I’m going to do. My work suffers from this, my walk with God does too, and certainly so do my relationships with other people. I don’t even go to the bathroom anymore without taking my phone. But those short tasks (brushing teeth, etc.) are great opportunities to practice mindfulness. I’m not wasting my mind when I think about brushing my teeth; I’m letting it be quiet and rest.

I know that focusing on whatever I’m presently doing is a habit of mind that comes from practice and prayer (another thing that’s hard to focus on), but there are adjustments I can make to get my life to be more conducive to focus, and one of them is to do fewer things. One reason why I was so eager to hit “reset” on my life by moving to Michigan is that I felt like I was doing many things and doing okay at them, but I wanted to do a few things really well (and joyfully). True, I’m doing fewer things than I was before, but I keep coming up with new things to make me busy so I can avoid focusing on important things. This appears masochistic when I really consider it.

My flexible work schedule is both a blessing and a curse. I’m so thankful I don’t have to be in my office 40 hours a week. But that doesn’t mean that those few hours when I’m teaching are the only hours I owe to my job. I know there are ways I can enjoy my flexibility while still working productively (e.g. checking email in a coffee shop, reading for class in a park, having online “office hours” for 1-2 hours on weekends). By spreading out my work this way and priming myself to enjoy it (and I really do enjoy most of the actual work), I can avoid that rush to get things done at the last minute and come to class better prepared.

I want to experience “flow,” that state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about, when I don’t feel like I need to look at my watch or daydream about what I’m going to eat later or obsessively replay conversations in my head. I want to enjoy Tuesday instead of wishing it were Friday. I want to enjoy February instead of wishing it were May. I don’t ever want people to hear in my voice or see in my eyes that I’ve stopped listening to them and started thinking about something else, because that feels really crappy. I want to do whatever I’m presently doing with no shame or dread about what I “should” be doing instead.

I want other people to see me as an integrated person, not necessarily a busy person. I want to stop treating busyness as a virtue. I want to model self-care for my students by having boundaries and letting them know I’m not always working, but I also want it to be evident to them that I respect them enough to prepare for class, reply thoughtfully to their emails, and really read their written work. I don’t want my default response to be “Oh, I forgot you asked me about that” or “What page are we on?” Being an absent-minded professor isn’t cute; it’s lazy (for me).

This year, I want to really learn to focus. I’m tired of making false starts on this. I want to write in December about how much more focused I became in 2019.

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my take on the 2019 Best Picture nominees

I watch the Academy Awards every year and have blogged about them several times over the years, but this year I decided, for the first time, to see all the Best Picture nominees before Oscar night. Since there are only eight this year and I had already seen Black Panther (probably the only nominee that many people have seen), I was able to do this in one weekend. I did watch the rather inordinate number of five movies in my local cinema last weekend, which means that I saw the trailer for Isn’t It Romantic no fewer than three times. (It still looks pretty funny.) I rented one of the nominees from my local Family Video (yes, we still have rental stores around here) and finished up last night by watching one on Netflix.

Instead of writing a separate review of each film, I thought it would be more interesting–and less wordy–to make some lists of themes and motifs that appear in two or more of the films. Think of this as a textual Venn diagram that shows where the nominees overlap and thereby shows, perhaps, what was on Hollywood’s (and America’s and the world’s?) mind this year.

Let’s start with the obvious: Films that have the word “Black” in the title. Okay, maybe too obvious. Let’s move on.

Films about lonely musicians who abuse alcohol and/or drugs: Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born

Films about political intrigue and insiderism that have zero likable characters: The Favourite, Vice

Films that deliberately hark back to older styles of filmmaking: Vice, BlackkKlansman, Roma

Films that incorporate multiple genres: BlackkKlansman, Vice (editorial note: Vice takes the cake in this category, using Shakespearean blank verse, restaurant menus, a helpful narrator who’s also sort of a character, historical footage, and even a fake credit roll in the middle of the movie in order to explain concepts. Also, a side note: BlackkKlansman and Vice have another feature in common–really cool, sometimes funky, sometimes epic scores by composers I’m not familiar with but whom I hope to hear more from in the future.)

Films in genres that traditionally don’t get nominated for Best Picture: Black Panther, A Star Is Born (And remember, a monster movie won last year. And the year before that, a musical won. Oh wait, no, it didn’t. Never mind.) I almost put Bohemian Rhapsody here because I was thinking of it as a feel-good movie/sort-of musical, but the Oscars do tend to love musician biopics (c.f. Ray, Walk the Line). Green Book somewhat fits into all of the categories I just mentioned as well, except that the focus is not so much on the musician as on his driver/bodyguard/friend.

Films that address contemporary issues: Oh wait, that would be all of them.

Films that felt like they were trying to out-weird last year’s weird period costume drama, Phantom Thread: I guess The Favourite is the only one that belongs here.

But perhaps the average filmgoer who doesn’t want to spend the equivalent of a full-time job in the movie theater will be most interested in these three categories.

Films that made me feel good: Black Panther, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody

Films that made me feel sad but okay: BlackkKlansman, A Star Is Born, Roma

Films that made me want to become a cynical world-hating hermit: The Favourite, Vice

That’s all for now. If you’ve seen any of these, let me know what you think. And if you happen to know why Roma is called Roma, let me know that too, because I’m pretty sure I missed something.

 

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thoughts while watching The Return of the King

I’m watching The Return of the King right now, and I thought I’d blog about it. (Excuse me while I do a 20-second plank because I just saw the Eye of Sauron; I’m doing a LOTR workout I found on Pinterest.) I just heard the line that I blogged about a few months ago–“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you”–so I’m nearly at the end. Here are just a few observations.

First, zombies. A little while ago, I saw an orc who looked like a zombie. I think he’s only in the extended edition, in that scene where Sam and Frodo dress up like little orcs to blend in and then start a (rather unconvincing) fight to cause a distraction and get away. The orc in question had a missing nose (but not Voldemort-style; it looked like it had been burned off) and a generally ravaged face, his one working eye was a milky pale blue, and the first time he opened his mouth, he roared rather than spoke. He looked like he could have blended in just fine on The Walking Dead. But this was not the first time I had thought about zombies while watching the movie this afternoon. When Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli take the Paths of the Dead and meet those glowing, ectoplasmic ghosts, I was thinking of what an unfortunate special effects choice this was and how the army of the dead would be much cooler–and more threatening–if they looked like zombies. And it occurred to me that if this film had been made ten years later, this scene probably would have taken more inspiration from The Walking Dead and less from Pirates of the Caribbean; The Curse of the Black Pearl. (Not that the ghosts in Pirates were badly done at all. They fit better in that movie than in Return of the King.)

And now, a more serious observation. I’m far from being the first person to have noted this, but it really struck me this time. Okay, so in the tower on the edge of Mordor where Sam is reunited with Frodo (you know, the one with an orange light at the top but that isn’t the Tower of Barad-Dur–I wonder how many people thought it was and were totally disappointed when they found out that Frodo and Sam still had many more miles of stumbling dirty-faced through Mordor)–anyway, in the upper room of that tower, Frodo is in a panic because he thinks the orcs have taken the Ring. When Sam hands it back to him (with a slightly cocky little flourish that he totally earned by being absolutely kickass for the past fifteen minutes of the movie), you can see the instant relief in Frodo’s eyes and his whole demeanor. But when he puts the chain back around his neck, you can almost see a physical weight descending on his shoulders. The Ring is keeping him alive, and it’s killing him at the same time. That’s why, of all the symbolic meanings that have been suggested for the Ring (and I know, I know–die-hard Tolkien fans say it’s not a symbol at all), I think the most appropriate is that it represents the object of addiction, or perhaps addiction itself. Frodo needs the Ring at that moment, but in the long term, it’s the last thing he needs. Just like drugs, or lies, or whatever we keep going back to even though we hate it. Elijah Wood portrays this descent into psychological prison extremely well throughout the trilogy. And of course, Andy Serkis as Gollum masterfully shows what it looks like when you’re so deep in that prison you forget who you are.

Okay, now the hobbits are all cleaned up and looking adorable and giving bittersweet toasts in the Green Dragon. I’m going to go enjoy the last few (30?) minutes of this movie. Let me know your thoughts on The Return of the King.