irrelevantnarcissism

Yes, I watch it. Shut up.

2007-05-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

Can someone please explain to me what’s going on with Grey’s Anatomy? What used to be an entertaining, frothy guilty pleasure has suddenly become leaden and morose, collapsing under the weight of the suffering it’s been inflicting on its characters. The emotional pornography it usually traffics now comes with a heavy dose of S&M – if only someone on the show could remember the safety word. Seriously - not since Buffy was brought kicking and screaming back from the dead, have I seen TV characters endure such unrelenting misery. Interestingly, Marti Noxon, who as primary show-runner on the sixth season of Buffy unleashed punishment after punishment upon the titular vampire slayer, is now a producer on Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

Which is not to say the show is ineffective. Or bad. It has always been much better than the audience to which it’s been marketed. Unlike other shows, say “the O.C,” which allowed the introduction of new characters to drive the plot forward, Grey’s Anatomy has consistently been successful at producing plot that is driven internally, by the interactions between the show’s main characters. Moreover, the show has made the most of its premise and has consistently and successfully mined the tensions generated by setting a soap opera in a hospital. Doctors are by nature put in awkward positions with regards to the level of intimate contact they have with their patients. They are on one level a confidant, whom the patient must trust and feel comfortable sharing medical history that not even the patient’s closest friends and family may know. On the other hand, medical ethics require that doctors maintain a certain level of detachment in order to treat their cases – they can’t become emotionally involved. The medical plots on Grey's Anatomy thus mirror the relationship plots in that both revolve around the various characters attempting to negotiate the boundaries of intimacy with other characters. It’s not surprising, then, that most of the medical plotlines have dealt with violations of the regulations surrounding intimate contact between doctors and patients. That kind of formal symmetry appeals to me – especially since the writers on this show are good enough so that the parallels aren’t (usually) thunderingly obvious.

While it would be easy to write the show off as just another soap, as appealing to the most stereotypical ideas of “what women want,” the juxtaposition between romance and medicine produces some interesting effects. Mostly, the interplay between the two plots enables the show to articulate an entirely new mode of romance. In the universe of the show, love is not expressed through grand gestures (a la Seth Cohen on the coffee cart) or through the traditional trappings of flowers, chocolates or jewelry. Rather, love and romance is re-envisioned as a form of care, collapsing the word’s physical and emotional meanings into one. In this sense, to care for someone emotionally is expressed by tending to him or her, by nurturing him or her, by, in a sense, nursing him or her; the line that separates the doctor and the lover blur. A perfect example of this blending occurs in one scene in which Meredith breaks down in front of her love interest. Rather than taking on the white knight role and fixing everything that is making her unhappy, he instead helps her by giving her a paper bag to breath into so as not to hyper-ventilate.

One could read this another way then in which the show does not reflect some deep-seated desire for a form of romance-as-care, but rather a desire for a form of healthcare-as-romance. Given the rising costs of healthcare, the increasingly impersonal and corporate nature in which its delivered, and the degree to which corporate profits are placed above patient care, it’s possible to read the show as a fantasy of an idealized healthcare system quality of patient care is top priority and healthcare workers treat patients as human beings rather than a source of income. It’s quite possible that the (apparently) legions of women who find Patrick Dempsey’s character so attractive do so not just because they want him to be their boyfriend, but also because they want him to be their doctor.

Nerves and Nausea

2007-05-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

The hard part is over (I hope - please, please dear God). My written exams are finished, and I've got a focused and finite amount of cramming to do before my orals - mostly just trying to make sense of what I actually wrote. Reading it over, not even I can tell what I meant in places, and that's not even taking into account the embarassing frequency of language and syntax errors. Some parts I don't even remember writing. I think I must have entered into some sort of fugue state, or my other more grammatically challenged personality must have taken over.

I don't mean to sound all melodramatic but frankly the experience was, to say the least, very unpleasant. My anxiety and stress was so bad after the first day that I literally gave myself an upset stomach.

My reward after finishing on Thursday was a pile of composition assignments to grade and the backlog of everything else in my life that I had put on hold while I was preparing. Apparently I don't multitask very well.

God I need a vacation.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over My World

2007-03-09T03:37:00.000-08:00

No, I’m not blogging against sexism, but, as the title indicates, this is clearly not another screed against political blogging (although I’m enough of a narcissist to think that the Girl Detective, in a post I thought totally rocked, was making some jibes at me – sorry if I offended you GD!). While I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to think I can authorize various types of blogging or the manner in which people choose to express their political opinions, I think I can get behind “blog against sexism day” in a way that I couldn’t with “blog for choice day” for reasons that are not interesting enough to go into here. Instead, I want to focus on something on which I think we can all find common ground: cupcakes.

Textual Bulldog, my veganspiration, was kind enough to lend me and L. her vegan cupcake cookbook and two batches later I can tell you they more than live up to the hype. I spent all of last weekend baking and binging so at this point even thinking the word “cupcake” makes me feel like I’m about to slip into a diabetic coma. (How’s that for blog against sexism day? Baking’s not just for girls anymore!).

I think part of the appeal about vegan cupcakes (not to mention their quest to take over the world) is that the entire enterprise has this “fuck-you” attitude around it, like: “You think vegans can’t bake? Taste this!” Vegan with a Vengeance, another cookbook by the same author, takes this attitude further, explicitly invoking a DIY punk ethos. The recipes are interspersed with cutesy anecdotes of the writer’s teenage adventures on the Lower East Side – you know, back when it was cool and before all the Starbucks opened. But c’mon is there anything less punk rock than cupcakes? Actually, yes: cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles.

The element of “subversion” (if that’s what you want to call it) that aligns cupcakes with “punk” is really the seemingly revolutionary idea that there is such a thing as vegan junk food. Veganism and vegetarianism has for so long been associated with asceticism and self-denial that the idea that one can indulge oneself without consuming meat or dairy seems fairly radical. In that sense, the idea that vegan cupcakes could take over the world isn’t as grandiose as it seems: it is clearly part of an attempt to re-brand Veganism, removing the patchouli stink and the new age-y aura and instead associating it with the skuzzy glamour of urban hipsters. More importantly, it wants to refute the idea that vegans live solely on raw vegetables and flax seeds (a myth that textual bulldog’s mouth-watering food-blog debunks with a vengeance) and instead associate it with decadence and indulgence.

One can see something similar with the Veggie Grill. While there is nothing particularly hip about the restaurant, it is also attempting to normalize meat and dairy-free eating, offering a wide array of tasty food that hews closely enough to traditional food presentation that the lack of any meat or dairy is hardly noticeable. If vegan cupcakes are hipster veganism, the Veggie Grill is corporate veganism: it's veganism with a business model. Part of that business model is avoiding the term “vegan” which you won’t find anywhere on the menu or in the restaurant. Rather than trying to re-brand it, the restaurant is avoiding the word and its negative associations altogether.

I’m not making that distinction in order to make a value judgment. Hopefully people will leave the Veggie Grill thinking that it’s possible to have tasty food without meat or dairy and will begin to seek out and explore alternatives to their meat and potato staples. Clearly I’m biased, but I think I enjoy food a lot more since I’ve become vegetarian and especially so since I’ve become vegan. Meat, cheese and cream are so pervasive as staples for flavoring that replacing them with alternatives can make it seem like you’re eating something you’ve had all your life for the very first time. Or, it can force you to try foods and spices you’ve never had before, opening up possibilities you never would have considered before.

I realize this sounds fairly Pollyana-ish, but I’ve been vegan for such a short time that it’s still really exciting to me. Nonetheless, the power of vegan cupcakes cannot be denied.

A Rejoinder

2007-02-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

Just to clear a few things up:

My previous post did not articulate my personal position on abortion, nor did it articulate what I think should be the definitively correct stance on it. Rather, I was speaking more generally to the problems that pro-choice advocates face and I hoped to start a discussion about problems that they face, one of the main ones being the questions of “morality” that I brought up earlier. I hoped to offer a "pro-choice" criticism of Roe v. Wade, a position that probably got overwhelmed by my sheer irritation. Despite what else I may say about the "moral uncertainties" surrounding abortion, I am firmly certain that access to abortion should remain legal as far as the court has defined it (however problematic that definition may be). My concern is that the pro-life groups are using moral uncertainty about abortion, especially "late term" abortions, to chip away at Roe v. Wade through laws that restrict these procedures. In order to stop this gradual erosion of Roe v. Wade pro-choice advocates must confront head-on these debates about morality.

Looking at the numbers, the question of whether or not to maintain access to abortion should be a slam dunk for the pro-choicers. 62% want to maintain the status quo while only 29% want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. This poll tells us what most policy-makers have known for a while: there is a general consensus that access to abortion should remain legal.

But, if you look farther down the page, numbers get more interesting. When asked whether they thought having an abortion was morally wrong, 25% said that it was “not a moral issue,” 24% said it was “nearly always morally wrong,” while 49% think it is “sometimes morally wrong.” Bracketing the question of whether a fetus is or is not a person, or whether abortion is or is not moral, there is a large swathe of the American population that is queasy about abortion and maintains moral reservations about it even if that same segment thinks it should remain legal. In this sense, the debate should perhaps be reframed between the stark polarities of abortion being illegal or legal, to a debate about the circumstances in which it should be legal. I forget where I read this and I’ve already spent too much time looking for it, but I remember reading an article on Slate or Salon that made the argument that abortion is much less contested issue in other countries where it is legal because access is more limited than it is here.

Let me make an important qualification here: I'm not saying we should legislate morality. I'm just saying that the fact that people hold moral reservations about abortion is a significant factor that pro-choice advocates should take into consideration. This is why I brought up Courtney Love and FAS in my last post - not to assert that these examples are equivalent, but rather to point out how emotionally charged these issues are. Part of the reason I believe that pro-choice groups need to start meeting pro-lifers on their own terms, or if you prefer on their own ground, is not because I think that they can convince people who firmly believe that abortion is murder, but because the pro-life activists are the only ones who are able to speak to the moral uncertainties that the vast majority of people have about the procedure. I think pro-choice advocates need to make some sort of attempt to allay those anxieties. In that sense, I don't think Clinton’s formulation of “safe, legal and rare” implies that abortion is shameful but rather reflects a sense that all things being equal, most people probably don't want to have to have one (is there anyone who's really in favor of more abortions?), that it is not an ideal choice. While abortion is no more risky than pregnancy, and is in fact less risky most of the time, health-wise a woman is still statistically better off having never been pregnant than having gone through an abortion.

One can see a condensation of these moral quandaries surrounding the question of "late term" abortion. Again, if you look at the numbers, an overwhelming number of people believe this procedure should be illegal. I think it's interesting that Kugelmass is unwilling to defend Blackmun's distinction between the various trimesters since that is where most of the current debate about abortion seems to be playing out; it seems impossible to defend Roe v. Wade without giving at least a pro forma defense of the trimester system because it gets to the heart of the ethical/moral questions about abortion. Moreover, it gets to the heart of the question that late term abortions cannot help but beg: where to draw the line between what is alive and what is not. The reductio ad absurdum of the trimester system is that (assuming a 36 week pregnancy) a fetus at 23 weeks and 6 days can be aborted while a fetus at 24 weeks cannot. This is clearly an arbitrary line. There's not (to my knowledge) a magic theshold that the fetus passes through all at once to become "viable"; it's a slower gradated process that the Court treats like a light-switch. In other words, this criteria imposes a generalized chronological standard on a biological process that does not proceed according to the dictates of a majority opinion. Nor does this standard take into account the technological advances that potentially complicate the seemingly straightforward test that tomemos lays out in his initial post. Given technological advances, fetuses can be viable at earlier and earlier stages. So is a potentially viable fetus at, say, 22 weeks life? Or is it just "potential life" (a status that seems fairly meaningless to me given that it carries with it no guarantees, rights or protections under the law)? I don't know. I don't pretend to have answers, but for the reasons I've described above, I think these questions are perhaps worth revisiting and are an important part of the debate that pro-choice activists need to be engaged in. Right now pro-choicers tend to avoid these questions entirely out of fear that they're ceding ground to pro-lifers by even discussing them, but the end result of the silence is that pro-lifers are gaining traction among the 49% of people who constitute the "queasy moral middle."

But, part of the problem with what I hereby refer to as the cult of Roe v. Wade, is that it preempts these questions. When Bush tried to ban late term abortions, pro-choice groups were able to avoid the substance of the debate over late term abortions by characterizing the bill as a threat to Roe v. Wade (which it was since it did not contain any provisions to protect the life and health of the mother). In that sense, they were able to characterize an attack on late term abortion as an attack on all abortions. While their characterization of Bush's strategy was for the most part correct, it put pro-choice advocates in the problematic position of handing pro-life advocates a wedge issue that could fracture their coalition.

Ultimately the legal debate on this case, which centered around the question of whether the law contained a provision allowing an abortion to save the life and health of the mother, bore no relation to the public debate which was about whether "partial birth" abortion is immoral. This is a problem endemic to having what should be public debates about abortion in the court room. The fact that the bill was overturned for not containing a provision that would allow an abortion to protect the health and life of the mother ends up seeming like a "technicality," a decision focusing on the side dishes rather than the substance of the issue. That is why I said that privacy is irrelevant to the terms of today's abortion debate; it's salient from a legal perspective, but not from the perspective of an average citizen - people don't donate to NARAL to protect their privacy rights, they donate to protect their reproductive rights. It is pro choice advocates' job to make up the gap between legal reality and public perception, which is why they should move away from responding solely to the legal reality (what I meant by "legalisms") and begin responding to the emotional reality of this debate. For example, does the pro-choice movement really want to defend late term abortions qua late term abortions? Or do they only want to defend it when it's necessary to preserve the mother's life and in cases of rape or incest? Maybe they should begin making strategic concessions as a way of mooting some of the sticky moral quandaries that late-term abortion brings to the table. But of course, this brings up other questions: If they're not willing to defend late term abortions, how can they justify defending some kinds of abortion and not others?

Pro-choice groups are in a uniquely favorable situation as they currently have the law on their side so they have the luxury of taking the time to persuade people that they are right. But the fact that they do have the law on their side also means that they run the risk of becoming complacent and calcifying in their stances. Their strategies should be constantly evolving.

One possibility would be to put resources on what Dan Savage calls the "war on contraception." Help make birth control more readily available, fund education campaigns to increase awareness in particular among poor communities where abortion rates tend to be highest. This would help counter the image of the "abortion slut," and the idea that abortions stem from some sort of failure of "personal responsibility." That could in turn end up being a wedge issue that could be used against the right since the vast majority of people are in favor of contraception use, yet the Right is limiting access to contraception in various localities. Lobbyists could also begin lobbying for more positive protections for abortion access on both the state and national level, a process that would have the added benefit of making politicians more directly accountable for their views on abortion.

Look, clearly if I had all the answers, I'd have a different job. These are just examples, but they do illustrate alternative strategies of activism that could simultaneously protect abortion rights while making at least an attempt to strike a middle-ground with those who are uncertain about abortion.

Safe, Legal and Rare

2007-01-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve made my peace with not having enough time to respond to anything in a timely manner, so the fact that I’m writing this post less than a week after the fact is good for me. I run on BG time.

I don’t know why I’m so pissed off about “blog for choice day” but the very idea just rubs me the wrong way – it’s the sort of symbolic politics, like celebrating Black History Month or wearing an AIDS ribbon, or Buy Nothing Day, that can’t help but irritate the shit out of me. These efforts can’t help but carry the whiff of social coercion – “you’d better blog to show how committed you are!” or “what kind of horrible person are you that you won’t wear a breast cancer button?” Fuck you bushvchoice, I don’t need you to validate my pro-choice bonafides.

I wouldn’t be so offended by this, if I thought there was an actual point to it. At least the money spent buying an AIDS ribbon goes to research, but this project just reeks of irrelevance. While bushvchoice, describes the project as a “day of activism for choice,” and invites us to explain why we’re pro-choice, this enterprise just seems to be another set of utterances that will bounce back and forth among the pro-choice echo chamber, or more specifically the pro-choice blogosphere. Not that I blame the pro-choice activists exclusively, as it seems that neither they nor their pro-life counterparts are able to do anything but preach to the choir.

Part of this has to do with the incommensurability of the terms of debate over abortion. The feminist refrain of “Get your laws off of my body” does not at all respond to the placards wielded by pro-lifers containing graphic pictures of aborted fetuses. Neither group even speaks the same language, nor can they meet on any common ground. Abortion is either murder, or it isn’t, depending on whether the fetus is a person or it isn’t. These are apparently black and white issues. Thanks to Roe v. Wade, we as a nation don’t even get to debate these questions, since they did us the favor of deciding for us. However, my biggest objections is not that the court, summarily and through judicial fiat, quashed a much larger, national debate about what counts as life and about the status of the fetus (although I would argue that it did, and which Kugelmass brings up and does not really address). Rather, it’s because the blunt instrument of the law is incapable of making the fine gradations, of taking into account the shades of gray and the ambiguities entailed by the very complex question of the fetus’ ontological status.

One of the most bizarre moments in the 2004 Presidential debate was, when asked about his future Supreme Court picks, Bush said that he wouldn’t pick anyone who would have voted for Dred Scott. At the time I thought this incoherent non-sequitur was a hopelessly out of touch attempt to court the black vote (something along the lines of: “you guys, I promise I won’t try to re-enslave you”). Later, I read that it was code for his religious base, that what it really meant was that he would use opposition to Roe v. Wade as a litmus test for his future nominations. The reason for this, according to the logic of pro-life groups, was fairly simple: under the law, a fetus, like a slave is considered to be a non-person. It doesn’t take a large step to extend the analogy to imply that the fetus, also like the slave, is merely property, to be used as the owner/mother sees fit. While you may think the analogy ludicrous, the fact that you do so speaks to the fundamental incompatibility between the necessarily imprecise legal categories and the very fluid and malleable degrees of life to which they are supposed to respond. Moreover, it reflects the utter inability of those legal categories to address questions that go beyond simple binaries, like person/property, life/not-life, human/animal. Declaring the fetus a “non-person” is a non-solution to this problem.

Consider for a moment the grounds of the ruling. Privacy, has absolutely no relevance to the current state of debate (such as it is) about abortion and I find that problematic. I don’t think you will find anyone who says that privacy was the issue at stake in Roe v. Wade just as I don’t think you will find anyone who thinks that property rights were at stake in Dred Scott. Privacy was just a cover, and by ruling on those grounds, the court sides with tomemos who says that

an embryo or fetus is part of a woman’s body. Its status is the same as that of all her other cells: biologically dependent on her. It’s nourished by her nutrients, and if she dies, it dies. It’s her responsibility, a responsibility that cannot be shared, and as such it’s her decision whether to sustain it or not

I don’t find this account very persuasive mostly because, well . . . I think it’s just more complicated than that. First of all, even if we assume that a fetus is no different than a cyst, or say a really big hairy mole that we want to surgically remove, that still doesn’t mean that people have complete autonomy over their own bodies to begin with. To return to the trope of property rights, you can’t sell your organs (although you can give them away), you also can’t prostitute yourself, or be euthanized. We’ve established ethical and legal boundaries (one might call them taboos) around bodily acts, or more precisely acts performed upon the body that we as a society have deemed unacceptable because they violate our notions of life’s sanctity, or sacredness. These taboos, euthanasia being a prime example, are in the process of being debated and I don’t think it’s difficult to foresee an inevitable legalization of doctor-assisted suicide.

Kugelmass argues that the state allows people “to make any number of other decisions (about diet, use of intoxicants, occupation, sexual activity or abstinence, and so forth) that affect reproduction.” True, but the state regulates plenty of things for the sake of public health, and for the health of the unborn – why do you think wine bottles and cigarette boxes carry warnings that imbibing while pregnant could cause birth defects? Why do you think that Courtney Love’s admission that she used heroin while pregnant was such a scandal? Why do you think the public health discourses surrounding “crack babies” and fetal alcohol syndrome babies reached such a heightened emotional pitch? Now, I’m not saying that we should give into all of our biopolitical impulses, but I think that these examples are all indicative of deep-seated cultural anxieties about the expecting mother’s relationship and obligation to her unborn child and the general uncertainties surrounding the status of the fetus, legal or otherwise. Pro-choice activists can’t simply pretend that these feelings and uncertainties don’t exist. Of course, as L points out, these anxieties are precisely why access to abortion must be guaranteed by law. Otherwise we risk so as to prevent a slippery slope that could potentially penalize pregnant, or even potentially pregnant women who aren't taking enough folic acid.

Earlier, I wrote that pro-life activists and PETA had a lot in common because they were both at the bleeding edge of discussion about what constitutes life and about what kinds of life should be preserved. The problem with Roe v. Wade (whose anniversary provided the occasion for “blog for choice day”), and the reason that I don’t want to celebrate it but rather think of ways to move past it, is that the legal system as such is unable to acknowledge the gray areas that these debates need to address. Obviously it is a good thing that Roe v. Wade guaranteed access to abortion facilities. But I think pro-choice activists need to reorient the direction of their debate and begin to ask themselves some really difficult questions about the ethical and moral implications of abortion. I can’t help but feel that too much ground has been conceded to the pro-life movement by not engaging them in their own terms, but rather retreating to legalisms and the rhetoric of the inviolability of female reproductive rights. Pro-choice proponents need to begin taking control of this part of the debate, as it serves no one’s interest to allow the pro-life camp to do so.

Cinerama

2007-01-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

I can now see why magazines and newspapers do this whole year-end listmaking thing. Partly because there’s not really much to report at the end of the year, partly to indulge its readers’ obsession with instant nostalgia and navel-gazing, and partly because it’s sort of fun.

Thankfully I’ve seen more new movies this year than I have listened to new albums, so you’ll get a full 10.

Now onto the movies, in ascending order:

10. Little Miss Sunshine

Yes, it’s fairly slight – a road trip comedy dressed up in pseudo-intellectual garb. But, it’s also very entertaining, even if child beauty pageants are a very easy (and disturbing) target. The performances are outstanding and the cast is incredible, including Abigail Breslin who unlike many child actors, manages to actually act like a child rather than a preternaturally young adult (I’m looking at you Dakota Fanning). Moreover any comedy that doesn’t star Robin Williams and manages to avoid having one of the main characters get kicked/punched/head-butted in the balls is already half way there. It’s rare to have comedies that are actually made for adults.

9. Casino Royale

Daniel Craig is just amazing. Since Connery left, Bond has sunk into self-parody, reaching a nadir with Brosnan who seemed to be unable to distinguish between suavity and smarminess. Craig brings a raw violence to his performance which challenges the viewer’s identification with him – being 007 isn’t all martinis and Aston-Martins. This movie also challenges Bond’s previous status as a sort of aspirational brand for straight men. The fact that the camera repeatedly and lovingly lingers on his naked body may have something to do with it. Whereas in previous versions, the director established Bond’s character so that the male viewer wants to be him, this one establishes his character so that the male viewer just wants him.

8. Marie Antoinette

It may seem like I gave this movie a bad review earlier, but in many ways it’s still an impressive piece of filmmaking and fiercely intelligent to boot. Coppola’s visual flair makes the movie pure eye candy.

7. Tristram Shandy

Haven’t you ever heard of postmodernism? The freeplay of source material and adaptation? As far as I’m concerned Steve Coogan can do no wrong, and he especially can do no wrong with Michael Winterbottom at the helm. Coogan is the Bill Murray to Winterbottom’s Wes Anderson, the Julianne Moore to his Todd Haynes, the George Clooney to his Soderbergh, the Jean Paul Belmondo to his, well, you get the point.

6. The Devil Wears Prada

This movie gets everything that Marie Antoinette gets right about fashion completely wrong – Meryl Streep often looks a mere shoulderpad away from being an extra on Dynasty. But, the “sweater” speech (which I describe here, second comment) is worth the price of admission alone. It’s a character defining moment that transforms Miranda Priestley from a shrill caricature into a savvy, albeit ruthless and occasionally cruel, executive. It also provides an entirely compelling argument for the importance of fashion, a subject that the movie, like everyone else, pretends to disdain but is secretly obsessed with.

5. Brick

While Veronica Mars did it first, this movie is just breathtaking in its ambition and audacity. Initially, high-school and the suburban sprawl of San Juan Capistrano may seem to be entirely wrong for a noir, at least atmospherically, but the weird sense of disjuncture that alienates you in the beginning ends up seeming integral to the story the movie is trying to tell. What could have been an empty deconstructive exercise in style ends up having an peculiar organicism that gives the narrative a heightened sense of urgency.

4. The Queen

Two words: Helen Mirren. One more word: Oscar. She deserves whatever acting accolades that are out there that still mean anything. Much like Kirsten Dunst in Marie Antoinette, she managed to show the humanity that exists underneath layers of court protocol and tradition. Yet, unlike Marie, this Queen relies entirely on that protocol as a guide to understanding her place in the world and her relationship to history. This protocol also becomes a way of mediating her relationship to both family and country – two things that the movie is at great pains to conflate. The tumult surrounding her reaction to Diana’s death, then, threatens not only a series of anachronistic, hidebound traditions, but the very basis of the Queen’s identity as such. Mirren brilliantly portrays a character who, throughout the course of the movie, must literally rethink and re-evaluate her entire purpose for existing in the world.

3. Half Nelson

This movie is the anti-Dangerous Minds. Gosling’s attempts to politicize his eighth grade history class by teaching them about dialectical materialism and the SDS seem as hopeless and as pointless as his own frustrated radicalism. This movie more than just a critique of the white messiah complex - it is an autopsy of 1960s radicalism. Gosling is simply a revelation – one of the most charismatic screen presences I’ve ever seen.

2. Children of Men

This movie extrapolates a future dystopia from our current political situation, taking our obsession with homeland security and producing a world that is nothing but checkpoints, refugee camps and IEDs. Completely chilling, and frighteningly real. A directorial tour de force, I spent most of those single shot scenes trying not to throw up (I mean that in the best possible way). Walking out of the theater, I was never so happy to be in the artificial wonderland that is Orange County.

1. The Wire – Season 4

Alright, so I stole this idea from David Edelstein, who said on NPR that a “very well-established” film critic was going to put this season of The Wire as his No. 1 movie of the year. I have no idea who that critic is, since I haven’t seen any list which has The Wire on it, so I will take it upon myself to do so.

I imagine that the reason that a film critic would put a TV show as his Number One movie of the year is that there has not been a single more important cultural text produced this year than the Wire. Whereas before, it could have been mistaken for just a very smart procedural, this season dramatically upped the stakes by putting the police investigations on the backburner and focusing on four middle-school students as they attempt merely to survive inner-city Baltimore. It is mandatory viewing for anyone interested in questions of social justice as it presents an unflinching and devastating portrait of how poor black youths are continually failed by the very institutions that are designed to protect them (even if you’ve never seen the Wire before, this season is enough of a stand-alone that little prior knowledge is necessary). Reminiscent of the panoramic sweep of 19th Century realist novels (at one point, one of the characters makes a bad pun on “Dickens”), the show goes from street-level drug dealers all the way to the mayor, presenting a comprehensive picture of an urban American city. The organicism of the plot is simply remarkable as it manages to perfectly capture the interrelationship between larger political forces (in this season, a mayoral election) and the particularities of everyday life in Baltimore – a single drug deal or arrest can have effects that reverberate up the political chain of command until it reaches the mayor whose subsequent response sets into motion another chain of events that ultimately play out on the streets, thus setting the same process back into motion. In this way, the show manages to avoid taking potshots at easy targets like “No Child Left Behind.” Rather, the writers manage to demonstrate through this dense interconnected web the vast disparity between the street-level reality and the imperatives that drive institutional practice, continually mining that disjuncture for both dramatic tension and sociopolitical critique. In many ways, it’s like watching the consequences of Katrina unfold - just in slow motion.

Behind the Music

2007-01-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve got a lot of posts percolating. In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about my disenchantment with early Radiohead, the passing of the O.C., the deliciousness of the Veggie Grill and Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I got for Christmas (Thanks L’s Mom!). Somehow I can’t really focus on those and get them down, so as a sort of placeholder I will take a page from Mr. Kugelmass and do a year-in-review for the stuff that I like.

I’m starting with music first simply because it’s the most, um, barren of my lists. I just don’t listen to that much new music anymore. At this point, I think I already know what I like, which can be neatly summed up by the following equation, which I have called the Holland-Dozier-Holland Principle:

Pop Hooks + Wall-of-Sound-like production + (Female) Vocal Harmonies = Music That Is Made Of Awesome.

When I was in college, my CD collection looked like a sampler platter: some post-punk fritters, an art-rock soufflé, a classic rock risotto, all served on a bed of power-pop. Gone are the days when I go to the record store and buy Husker Du, Jonathan Richman, Low and Joni Mitchell all at once. Instead, I’ve decided to get deeper on sounds and genres that I already know that I like. Call me parochial and narrowminded if you wish, but it makes me happy (and yes, that is a studied refusal not to engage Kugelmass’ previous posts on taste which I will also respond to at some point). So, without further ado, my favorite albums of 2006:

1. Cat Power – The Greatest

Absolutely sublime. The “doo-wop” vocal harmonies at the end of “Lived in Bars” are an album highlight. You could even take out Chan Marshall entirely, and I’d listen to the production by itself, it’s that good.

2. Pipettes - We are the Pipettes

A sort of post-feminist Spice Girls. I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want is more songs like “Dirty Mind.” Their vocal harmonies are off the charts.

3. The Concretes – In Colour

A lovely Swedish pop band evocative of both Zombies and the Cardigans at their respective bests. Pure ear candy.

4. Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country

Delightful and Enchanting. I’ve always been impressed by their ability to synthesize a wide variety of sounds, from mellow country rock to Leonard Cohen-ish balladeering to Motown rockouts. Everything just works on this album.

5. B&S – Life Pursuit
Not my favorite album of theirs, but it holds up surprisingly well after repeated listens. Seeing them at the with the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl was a special treat as well.

6. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

I’d listen to her sing the phonebook. I still maintain that Neko is rapidly turning into a darker and more country-fied version of Stevie Nicks (“Hold On, Hold On” is pure Fleetwood Mac pastiche). But of course, coming from me that’s a compliment.

*****

Also, I’ve uncovered a few gems that were not released this year, so here are some of the older albums I’ve found that have made an impression (with many thanks to Paul who gave almost all of them to me).

The Left Banke – There’s Going to Be a Storm

You’ve probably heard “Don’t Walk Away Renee” on an oldies station somewhere. The rest of their album is just as good. One of the first bands to add classical arrangements to British Invasion-style pop songs.

Lee Hazelwood – Cowboy in Sweden

A gritty, working class counterpart to Leonard Cohen (“Leather and Lace”), or perhaps a prettier, shinier version of Johnny Cash (“Pray Them Bars Away”). Either way, a perfect blend of country and pop with beautiful arrangements.

Material Issue – International Pop Overthrow

Lovely, early ‘90s power-pop. If you like Matthew Sweet and Teenage Bandwagon, you’ll also like . . . .

The Pastels – Mobile Safari

One of the seminal Scottish indie-pop bands without which we would not be enjoying B&S or Camera Obscura. Their arrangements are very shambling and loose, but still very pretty.

The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro

Some fun post-punk pop music. They have horns. Enough said.

Next Post: Movies!

The first in a series of exam related freak-outs

2006-12-16T23:56:00.000-08:00

Alright. I have roughly 130 days before my exams, and about 88 texts to read before then. 28 of these are novels, 13 of them are books, or “selections” of poetry, and the rest, 47, is theory/criticism. This seems doable, but I’m basically starting to freak out. I know exam lists have their own idiosyncratic math where I’m not actually going to spend 1.47727 days on each book (somehow I imagine the Faulkner will take a bit longer). I feel reading for exams exacerbates my worst and laziest tendencies as a reader. I have to fight the urge to skim as it is, but with that kind of math it becomes impossible not to.

This was a lot more fun when I first started reading and my exam seemed so far in the future that it wasn’t even worth thinking about (see also: college, graduating from). My brilliant idea was to read my lists in chronological order which meant that I read my B list before my A list (see a copy of my lists and an embarrassing attempt at headnotes here). It was great for a while; I got to enjoy spending a whole 10 days reading Portrait of a Lady, and if Moby Dick seemed interminable, that’s alright – I’ve got plenty of time. But when I was reading Sister Carrie, I begrudged myself every minute over the allotted time I gave myself to read it (In all fairness, I would have begrudged ANY time I spent reading that book - what a truly awful novel). Now, I’m pissed because I feel pressured to hurry through the stuff I was the most excited about reading (i.e., Hemingway, Larsen, Faulkner, Hurston)

But part of what I was looking forward to when I started reading was the pleasure of just reading without any direction, prompt or artificial deadline from a syllabus. Now I find myself drowning in my own lack of structure. I’ve managed to stay on top of the readings (I think – we’ll see), but this is clearly not a speed-reading contest, and I still feel like I know as much about Realism, Naturalism and Modernism as when I started. It makes me really regret the way my C list turned out. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, actually, I do know what I was thinking. I was trying to combine a intellectual history of American Studies with more recent stuff that would put me in conversation with contemporary debates. I ended up doing neither of these things particularly well. Some of what appear in retrospect to be the most egregious missteps (Charles Beard? Irving Babbitt?) resulted from being too exhausted by the entire process to resist suggestions from my chair (at the list meeting he appeared to be very pleased with it – go figure [ok, I really need to cool it on the parenthetical asides]). That’s not entirely fair though. I should really take responsibility for how it’s failing to serve my needs. I’ve started compiling some books that may be more appropriate and maybe I’ll read some of those instead of what I have, or lobby to switch it up at the last minute.

At this moment, I mostly just regret spending the first week of winter vacation watching The Wire at my parents’ house rather than reading The Professor’s House.

My Head Just Imploded

2006-12-08T05:22:00.000-08:00

From IMDB (fifth item down):

Renowned feminist author Camille Paglia has slammed young stars such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan for their recent pantyless antics with the paparazzi. Paglia insists their behavior is destroying the strides the feminist movement has made, along with their own reputations. She tells American publication Us Weekly, "These girls are lowering themselves to the level of backstreet floozies. It angers me because I fought a bitter fight to get feminism back on track and be pro-sex at the same time. This is degrading the entire pro-sex wing of feminism. I am completely appalled by what these young women are doing because I think that they are cheapening their own image and obliterating all sexual mystery and glamour." Paglia singles out Spears for her recent hard-partying ways, insisting is ruining her career. She adds, "A great promise was contained in the moment when Madonna kissed Britney at the MTV Awards. She in a sense was saying, 'I'm passing the torch to you.' It was a fabulous moment. Britney looked toned, in control of her career and it was up to her to take the next step. Literally, from that kiss, from that moment onward, Britney has spiraled out of control. It's like Madonna gave her the kiss of death! Britney is throwing it away!"

Wow. My two least favorite public “intellectuals” have gaffed in the same week. I must just reek of schadenfreude.

I don’t even know where to begin. I could start with the ridiculous assertion that a publicity stunt whose sole purpose was to resurrect the career of a pop star who is quickly fading into irrelevancy and which depends on titillating its audience through the packaging and commodification of soft-core lesbianism is heralded as a historic moment in feminism. By that standard, Marissa Cooper’s Sapphic dabbling in the second season of The O.C. must have a cultural relevancy equivalent to the passage of Title IX and the publication of The Feminine Mystique put together. This is not to mention the assumption implicit in Paglia’s statement that a couple of paparazzi shots, which are admittedly in poor taste, are single-handedly setting back the feminist movement (or the fact that Paglia, who once said that if women ran the world we'd all still be living in grass huts could, with a straight face, accuse someone else of setting it back).

Or, I could bemusedly point out that Camille Paglia is perhaps the only person to have ever been interviewed on both C-Span’s BookTV and US Weekly. Oh my god, I totally hope US Weekly gives her a column. Or add her to the Fashion Police. I would definitely get a subscription then.

Most likely, I’d realize that meta-blog posts that detail the various possible ways I would write about this is already a cliché and I’m too new at this to rely on such hacky rhetorical techniques.

What I will say is: Thank God. I’m sure these celebrities’ various managers, publicists and their other assorted handlers were just unable to communicate to their charges that going “commando” is not only unhygienic but a bad career move. I’m sure now that The Paglia has spoken they’ll be sure to change their ways.

Sticks and Stones

2006-12-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

I've said it one, I'll say it a thousand times: Shut up, Christopher Hitchens!

While women may not ever be funny - I wonder if it's because they're so emotional! - I'm beginning to wonder if Hitchens has lost his own sense of humor. I mean, when he said that we could turn Iraq into a stable, liberal democracy, I thought that was pretty funny. Looks like the joke's on us though.

Coming on the heels of a slate article in which he thoughtfully and insightfully discusses the taboo surrounding the word "nigger," this Vanity Fair article seems particularly egregious and in bad faith. I'm wondering whether he's just running out of ways to be provocative. What's next, some good old-fashioned Jew baiting? Maybe some gypsy bashing?

For shame, Hitch, for shame.