John Waters – This Filthy World

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  • This Filthy World (2007) With: John Waters. Directed by Jeff Garlin.
  • This movie is for: Lovers of filth, people who enjoy a good yarn, fans of Waters’ films. Those who love bad films, and those who hate film clubs that show Star Wars.
  • This movie is not for: People who are squeamish, people who don’t like profanity or frank discussions of piss, shit, and come, those who know Waters only from Hairspray.

A couple nights ago, I revisited one of my favorite movies, This Filthy World. It’s not a movie in the conventional sense; it’s basically a stand-up concert film from a tour of colleges and theaters that Waters did 5ish years ago. It’s ostensibly a lecture about Waters’ films–and he does talk about them–but has an element of theater (it has a set) and meanders like stand-up comedy.

I would imagine that this film is only entertaining if one of these things are true: you love John Waters’ movies and are interested in hearing about his influences, his early films, and what it was like working with Divine; or you revel in filth, love hearing people talk about filthy things, and laugh out loud at the idea of “a watery load from Michael Jackson’s flaccid, polka-dotted dick.” Or both.

M.I.A. – Born Free

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Like the rest of the world, I’ve been fascinated by Lynn Hirschberg’s New York Times Magazine profile of M.I.A. I can’t say that my opinion of her or her music has been much changed by the article; it was a hit piece–a very well written one at that– but I never really listened to her music for the politics.

I have been reconsidering her controversial music video for “Born Free,” however:

Hirshberg doesn’t think much of the video, calling it “politically naive” and calling attention to it’s violence. It’s obvious that the video is intended to shock, but I think the discussion has to be a little more nuanced than that.

You have to consider if you can appreciate the work of art, the video, independent of the aesthetic of it’s creator. It would be valid to dismiss the video as an exploitative offering by a political dilettante, especially considering the cartoonish governmental figures in the video, and the stylized violence. It undermines the sincerity of the video to know the extent of M.I.A.’s political involvement. At the same time, the video kind of works without knowing that context. It’s central conceit is to take paramilitary actions and images that we’ve become familiar with in the context of the war on terror, and apply them to a population that has never been targeted as such (“gingers”). It takes racial profiling to an abstraction. The message, if there is one, is that if targeting a population for their red hair seems senseless and counter to the mantra of “born free” that repeats in the background, why would you accept those actions for any other population? There’s a debate to be had about whether the video is honest or exploitative, but I think it’s unfair to call it “politically naive.”

Zadie Smith – White Teeth

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  • Zadie Smith, White Teeth, 2000.
  • This book is for: fans of family saga novels. People interested in contemporary British fiction. Those who love fully-formed characters, and their interactions.
  • This book is not for: people looking for an uncomplicated look at immigration, racism, generational conflict, and bi-racial issues. People who move their lips when they read.

Although this is Zadie Smith’s first novel, it’s not the first one I’ve read. I first read her novel On Beauty on a whim, not aware of the accolades and praise she has gathered. They are both domestic novels, concerned with large families over long spans of time, as well as the culture clash inherent to interracial relationships, and the way that those clashes are expressed through their children. As the child of mixed-race parents, a lot of her writing rings true to me, although the cultures involved are different.

At the heart of White Teeth is the lifelong relationship between Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Jones and Iqbal, a Bangladeshi, met as young soldiers at the tail end of World War II, then became friends after returning to England. They both married younger wives at the same time: Iqbal to a 25 years younger Bangladeshi through an arranged marriage, Alsana; and Jones to an equally young, second generation Jamaican immigrant, Clara. They both have children at the same time. Samad and Alsana have twin boys, Magid and Millat, and Archie and Clara have a girl, Irie. The plot of the novel is concerned with the different generational conflicts associated with immigration: race, religious identity, education, class, respect and the child-parent  relationship.

By focusing on these characters and their interactions with each other, Smith has the opportunity to present not only the conflicts, but the way that different circumstances affect those conflicts. Samad and Alsana both come from the same culture, so their fears are that their children will replace “English” values with their values. Archie and Clara are both English by birth, so they are both comfortable with Irie being a part of the dominant culture, however their is some tension in their relationship because they come from different backgrounds. Magid and Millat respond in different ways to their family’s religion: although Magid is sent back to Bangledesh to become a religious scholar, he becomes an atheistic intellectual that is “more British than the British.” Millat is more troubled, turning to a fundamentalist Islamic group in, however  he, too, has a freedom in his spirit that comes from English youth culture.

This is an astoundingly good book. The characters are lively, the emotions are real, and Smith knows how to write her characters such that they are free to be ugly. I’m curious about other people’s responses to the work. Smith doesn’t pass judgment on her characters, and whatever side you sympathize with probably comes down to culture and temperament.

Wunderkind

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One of the books that I return to on a regular basis is a short-story collection, First Sightings: Contemporary Stories of American Youth. It was one of the things I read in my high school freshman English class, and I’ve found it a valuable tool for keeping track of the way that my mind thinks differently about things from the last time I explored the collection. The stories never change, but I do. It also seems like every time I go back to the collection, a different story calls to me.

This time around, it was “Wunderkind,” a famous story by Carson McCullers, first published in 1936. The story is about Frances, an adolescent girl who has trained to be a piano prodigy, coming to the slow realization that it is not in her to be a musical genius. The story takes place over the course of a piano lesson, where her teacher grows increasingly frustrated with her inability to bring life to her music. She thinks back to a recital she gave with another prodigy, Freddy, on violin. Freddy is now making his debut orchestral experience, and she realizes that she might never reach the same level of artistry as he.

I was blown away by how sad this story is. I may have read it before, but this time it kicked me in the gut. McCullers herself planned to study at Juilliard, but was unable to pay tuition. I couldn’t say that this story is autobiographical, but the specificity of the writing shows that McCullers was familiar with the thoughts and emotions that go through Frances’ head.

Though Frances is a musician, the story is really about potential, and the self-doubt that comes with great potential. When Frances and Freddy present their recital, they are both poised to move on to greater things (although a negative newspaper review suggests that perhaps Frances never had as much potential as she thought), and yet Freddy is moving on to the next stage, while Frances stays behind. Her potential becomes a burden; her teacher, her parents, all of the people that she’s been introduced through her music carry expectations, and Frances is confronted with the thought that she might not be able to fulfill those expectations. It’s the heaviest burden.

The burden of potential, both in failure and success, seems to me to be if not unique to music, at least the easiest to see in music. I would imagine that it is similar for writers and painters, mediums in which production falls to one person. In the course of my music studies, it’s been interesting to see how common this self-doubt is in composers. This doubt is not a function of success or failure. Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was extremely poorly received by critics, and it launched him into a depression, and accompanying writer’s block, that lasted years. At the other end of the spectrum, Sibelius wrote seven symphonies, each more acclaimed than the last. His Eighth Symphony was so eagerly awaited that he felt trapped by the public’s expectation and never wrote another note.

LOST: The End

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There will never be another episode of LOST. Throughout Season 6, an annoying ABC promo blared “The time for questions is over.” Well, now the time for answers is over too. Like the audience as a whole, I am deeply divided.

Part of the problem is that “The End” was answering many different questions: Was this a good episode of LOST? Does this change my perspective on Season 6? Was there a coherent series-long arc? Was it worth it? I’ll try and tackle these questions one at a time.

Was this a good episode of LOST?

This is the question that I feel most comfortable answering with an unequivocal “Yes.” There was as good a mixture of character moments, action, and mythology as you’re going to get in a LOST episode (actually, it now occurs to me that many of the all-time great episodes, “The Constant,” “The Economist” “Walkabout,” most of the season finales, also contain that balance). While the writers have talked at length about how they see Season 6 as a mirror to Season 1, I think that the series finale contains tonal elements from every season of LOST: the fight over the heart of the island hearkens back to the first discoveries of island properties in Season 1; as noted by Smokey in the episode, the Jack/Locke conflict and descent into the heart parallels some of the hatch conflict in Season 2; the walking back and forth on the island from Season 3 (just kidding, but kind of not really); the on-island/off-island dynamic, and the snazzy clothes from Season 4; the sci-fi elements from Season 5; and the sentimentality from Season 6.

There were some great lines and exchanges; my favorite is probably Locke’s quip about how Jack was the obvious choice for Jacob’s successor. There was some great acting. If you had told me at the beginning of the season that I would be on board for a Jack-centric finale, I would have rolled my eyes. Jack has been the standout character from this season, however, and I thought he completely earned his dramatic moments in the episode. Also great work from Terry O’Quinn (the cold-hearted badassery in the Rose/Bernard/Desmond/Locke scene was chilling). I was grateful that we got a real resolution for Richard Alpert and Frank Lapidus, as well as some nice moments from Jin and Sun (who were criminally underused by the show both this season and for the second half of the series).

As an episode of LOST, it was perfectly fine, and indeed one of the better episodes of the series.

Does this change my perspective on Season 6?

This answer is a little more complicated, because it breaks down into two questions: Was there a direction that the events of Season 6 were moving towards? and Am I (the viewer) satisfied with the way that they got there? The answer to that is yes, and not even close.

Unlike some people out there, I don’t have a logical problem with the ending scene. The way that I interpret the ending is that when Jughead was detonated, the combination of the losties’ proximity to the blast and the extreme emotion of their desperation, hope, and love created an alternate universe in which they and those they love are fulfilled (this is because the island is a place of both physical (aka electromagnetic pockets) and spiritual energy). I didn’t take Christian’s “everybody here is dead” [pf.] to mean that the church, or alternate timeline, was purgatory, but rather a reassurance to Jack that in a sense he is dead, but he [Jack] also made himself another life in which he could be fulfilled. It’s a little mushy, but it makes sense with what we know of the heart of the island and the sidewaysverse material from this season.

Whether I am satisfied with they way that they arrived here is a completely different story. With the final puzzle pieces in place, the time spent at the Temple at the beginning of the season seem like even more of a waste. In interviews, Darlton have been saying over and over that this is a character-driven show, and that Season 6 would come around to the same tone as the character-driven Season 1. I’m OK with that. I’ve generally enjoyed the small, non-action, non-mythology character moments in this season. What I’m not OK with is wild goose chases like Sayid’s “disease” or the tragicomic way that Jin and Sun never crossed paths, or Sun’s inability to speak English. Those aren’t character moments, those are character gimmicks. Plus, it’s hard to take the writers seriously when, in the final season no less, LOST has churned through unexplored, interesting characters like Dogen, Illana, and the Temple crew. A lot of the Season 1 character conflicts are closed: no more daddy issues plotlines from Sawyer, Jack or Kate, no more Sun/Jin marital conflict, no more “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” And yet the writers chose to revisit old territory (without adding much to the story or the characters) rather than advance a new plot. I’m not OK with that*.

In fact, I’ve never felt more betrayed by the show than when Kate kissed Jack. I thought that the writers had learned their lesson from Season 3, that a) Jack and Kate don’t have much natural chemistry, and b) the audience is incredibly tired of the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle. I supposed I could have guessed that the show might dip into that well one more time after this NYT interview:

While the mythology was important, first and foremost the show was about the characters. I think that a lot of people care much more about what’s going to happen to Kate. Is she going to end up with Jack, is she going to end up with Sawyer?

I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the show’s audience. Of course it is the characters that keep the show engaging. The writers are right when they say that the weakness of LOST-clones like FlashForward is that they spend too much time on the mythology early, before their audience becomes invested in the characters. At the same time, I (and nobody I know) didn’t much care whether Kate was romantically linked to anybody anymore.

Season 6 also has a huge problem that I would like to hear the writers explain: if the alternaverse was created when Jughead exploded, did the events of season 6 matter at all? We’ve seen crossovers between the timelines in wounds, Desmond, and (perhaps) Jack looking up at the sky and seeing a plane (do we know if it’s the plane?). This would suggest that events on the island can affect the other timeline. At the same time, Christian says that everybody dies sometime, suggesting that no matter what happens in the original timeline the characters will be there*.

*Also, how annoying is it that in interviews and in podcasts, the writers tried to discourage the use of the word “alternate” as in alternate timeline?  That’s basically the big reveal.

In short, I do think that the season completed a coherent story arc. It remains, however, one of LOST’s weakest seasons, albeit with some standout moments. Given that the show had an end date scheduled three years ago, and that this was the final season, I find it incomprehensible that they wasted so much time.

Was there a coherent series-long arc?

This is the tough question. It really pains me to do so, but I’m going to have to answer no.

This has been the preemptive defense of the series from the writers: a) LOST is a character driven show, and b) it would ruin the drama to explain every mystery, every mechanic (e.g. midichlorians). As I wrote above, I agree with the former. I don’t agree with the way that they use the latter as a defense.

My feelings can be summed up by commenter retro on the AV Club (in response to, “The show was always about the characters.”):

False. The show was about a fucking magic island that the people had to deal with. It’s easy to write characters losing and gaining relationships; it’s difficult to wrap up a mystery in a satisfying way. At some point, darlton said fuck the mystery, let’s make it seem like that was never the point. It’s a shitty copout.

This comes close to how I feel. I think that there’s a pretty big gap between “We don’t want to explain the mechanic of how the pool in the Temple brings someone back to life” and the way that they ended the show. In fact, we know this based on the way that the show handled the Dharma Initiative in seasons 4 and 5. The show didn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of how the project was financed, or the connection between Widmore and Paik, or the specific nature of the projects that were being researched at the stations. But we did get a satisfying sense of closure, a sense that the time we spent speculating about that plotline wasn’t time wasted.

That security wasn’t present in the final storyline. It was never established why the island mattered in the first place. It’s a cork. For what? We don’t know. We don’t know that the smoke monster is bad, except that it upsets us when he kills people. We don’t know how the island relates to the real world. As far as we know, the worst that would have happened if Smokey had succeeded is that the island would have ceased to exist. We don’t know why that’s bad.

And this is why I have a problem with the self-righteous attitudes from the writers about character. It’s hard for me to be invested in a character when I don’t understand why they are making the choices and sacrifices that they are. It’s not enough for Jack to make a sacrifice. There’s no chance that I will be invested in that action unless I understand what Jack is thinking about, what options he’s presented with, what’s weighing on his mind.

Ultimately, the writers did not have what it takes to close on the series. After the doldrums of Season 3, it looked like after they had planned their ending, the series would tighten and form a greater coherence. That paid off in Seasons 4 and 5. Unfortunately, it didn’t continue through Season 6.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.