Day 9, Inspired by TV, Movies, and Travel

Made it to Day 9 with less than an hour in the day to go.

A boyfriend who likes Project Runway. I prefer not to watch TV alone, and somehow I ended up dating someone who likes watching most of the same stuff as me. What luck!

Encouragement to see Titanic 3D. I haven't watched that movie since I was about 12, but when I saw the preview at Hunger Games, A___ and I both got chills. We're seeing it tomorrow.

The chance to travel for work. As much as I love NYC, sometimes I just need a change of scenery. Better yet, this way I don't even have to pay for it!

Movie Review: Waiting for Forever

“Things were as bad as they could get. And then they got worse.”

This quote (an actual line in the movie) perfectly describes the experience of watching Waiting for Forever: it was bad as I thought it could be, and then it got worse.

My first indication that this was a Seriously Bad Movie was when, during the first ten minutes, I couldn’t figure out if the main character (who is hitchhiking his way across the country) is actually retarded or if I am simply too critical of his slow, almost stuttering speech pattern. But gradually, as the plot went from being confusingly strange to overwhelmingly cliché, I determined that this was a really bad movie when incessant close-ups began to remind me of the first part of Disney’s Aladdin, where the storytelling character gets squished up against the camera. “Please, please, come closer. Oops! Too close! A little too close.” Then, in Aladdin, the scene ends with the camera falling back and the character sighing, “There!” Unfortunately, no such luck in Waiting for Forever. The audience is left squirming back against their seats as they are assaulted by one close-up shot after another.

Note to both the director and the cinematographer: close-up shots are meant to capture extremely slight, crucial changes of expression on actors’ faces that help to draw out emotional tension in a scene. These shots should be used sparingly, and for emphasis. If you think every moment of your script warrants a close-up, you are wrong. Furthermore, if your actors incapable of expressing small facial expressions, then you probably shouldn’t use close-ups at all.

Back to my review: Essentially, the plot of Waiting for Forever lumps one big cliché on top of another. In fact, when I tried to describe the movie to my sister, she asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t supposed to be a spoof?” It wasn’t.

To imagine this movie (since you hopefully will not waste your money seeing it), start with the classic, overdone chick-flick premise “follow your heart.” Then, make this idea so literal that the main character, Will, ends up following the love of his life (Emma) all over the country. Add to that the fact that Will seems mentally handicapped, but don’t let any other characters confirm or deny this. That way, for the better part of the movie, the audience sit there wondering whether Will is actually supposed to seem retarded, or if he’s just that lovesick and they’re that judgmental.

Next, focus on Emma, a failed actress whose dour and depressed personality inspires men to fall senselessly in love with her as they gradually become stalkers. Then, throw in Emma’s father, who is irritable, sarcastic, and dying of cancer; Emma’s mother, a woman is so intent on things being “just fine” that she comes off as mentally disturbed; and Emma’s boyfriend, who I at first suspected was abusing Emma (but later found out that he merely murdered his best friend because Emma cheated on him with the guy). On Will’s side are best friend and refrigerator-salesman Joey, Joey’s outrageously short wife, and their blond child who looks nothing like either of them, plus Will’s brother, who wants Will to “shape up” but eventually (of course) comes to his rescue when Will is falsely accused of murder.

Oh, and don’t forget that Will’s parents died in a train wreck when he was a kid and he still talks to them (although we only see evidence of this one time throughout the whole movie).

Perhaps the problem is that Waiting for Forever tries to be too many genres and fails at all of them. It could have been a chick flick, but its tone and subplots are too serious to let it just be a simple love story. (And, in fact, the main plot is probably too serious for it to be a chick flick. After all, as sweet as he may be made to seem, Will was technically stalking Emma.) It could have been a family drama (featuring Emma’s family alone!), but we spend so little time observing any family dynamics that the few “emotional” scenes we do see become ridiculous. (Case in point: there is a scene in the movie where Emma’s dying father is laying in a bathtub and her mother walks in. The father makes some sort of snarky comment, and suddenly the mother is hitting him with a towel and screaming that she hates him and wishes he would die. At this point, the audience is supposed to gasp in shock and feel empathy for both characters. Instead, we all laughed.) It could have been a horror flick, between the stalker/murderer boyfriend and the stalker childhood friend. However, the boyfriend never scares us and the friend is styled to evoke our sympathy, so it definitely did not come close to being a horror film.

To finish things off, I will quote the line that best illustrates the audience’s confusion and the script’s ludicrous nature:

Emma: “Are you following me?”

Will: “I just go where you go.”

Other corroborating reviews:

• MSN Movie Review by James Rocchi
  
• New York Times Movie Review by Stephen Holden
  
• The Hollywood Reporter Movie Review by Sheri Linden
  

Five Reasons You Should See Avatar (If You Haven’t Already)

Or, at the very least, five reasons I was grateful a friend convinced me to see the movie. I strongly advocate seeing it in 3D in a theater before it's too late.

1. The casting.
   Parker (the “corporate white collar” guy of the movie) was PERFECTLY casted. And Jake Sully was very well chosen, too. Trudy and Miles may have been a bit typecast, but they played their parts exactly as needed.
   
2. The fact that the writer managed to direct the movie—or vice versa—and a) didn't screw it up with poor editing or b) stunt its creativity.
   Having watched someone else direct a play I wrote, I highly respect this ability. In cinema, having this sort of full control is likely even more difficult. Imagine being wedded to a really bad line and having no director to edit it out for you. Maybe a line like, “You're not the only one with a gun, bitch!”….
   
3. 3D technology.
   Granted, I’m no technology junkie and consequently am not on the up-and-up of current technology, but this movie demonstrated an extraordinary improvement in 3D visualization since my last experience at Disney World some 10+ years ago. Cameron’s world was beautifully and intricately imagined, and I think it will prove a hallmark for future filmmaking.
   
4. The relevance of some of the movie's messages.
   Never mind the blatancy with which those messages were made. Some people may mock Avatar by claiming that it is a movie about loving and cooperating with nature (which, in many ways, it is—and should be, considering our impending global warming crisis!), but Cameron also includes many criticisms of our own government: our insistence upon ruling with force; our ignorance of other cultures; and our refusal to take the time to learn things before we act in ways we think are “best.”
   
5. The movie’s surprising emotional poignancy.
   Frankly, I didn't expect to feel any emotional connection to a futuristic alien/nature-lover-turned-war movie. Usually, these types of movies really aren't my bag. However, due to the aforementioned points, Cameron gripped me with his movie’s emotional bond, forcing me to tense in anger as Pandora came under siege, to wince away as beloved characters died in battle, and to smile in pleasure as I exited the theater, ready to spread the word about his impressive cinematic work.

The Single Life

Ordinarily, being single does not bother me. In many regards, I quite like it—I enjoy the broad freedoms that people in relationships simply do not have. For instance, no one can lay claim to my time except for me. I can hang out with whatever friends I want whenever I want. I can move to England for six months without feeling like I am cutting off a person-shaped appendage in the process. I do not have to worry about whether or not to have sex before marriage (well, I suppose I could still worry about that, but without a guy to whom I am immensely attracted and feel an intimate emotional connection, the option seems much less appealing). I can seek whatever job I want wherever in the country (or even world) I want without the risk of feeling like I am leaving someone behind. Basically, being single provides me the freedom to think of myself and my own desires first.

Needless to say, being single comes with its disadvantages, too. Perhaps it is my age (isn’t early twenties when women approach their sexual peak?), perhaps it is my personality, perhaps it is even what the media has taught me I should want, but if there is one frequent regret I have about being single, it is that I have no big warm male body to cuddle with. (I’m a girl—I want to be held!) Also, I have no automatic company for attending functions; I must attend them alone. Granted, this “lack of partner” can be a positive aspect of singleness, as it probably facilitates meeting new people and being social with all of the members of a party/gathering/event, but there is also no one on whom to fall back when I feel excluded, unknown, or simply bored.

However, the disadvantage to being single I have most recently confronted is the fact that I have no one to spend the holidays with. Now, I readily acknowledge that this is a very “blanket” statement, and one which is easily refutable. “What about your family?” “Don’t you have any friends?” Both family and friends are viable options on most occasions, hence why I have never considered this feature a serious disadvantage before. I always spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with my family. I celebrate my birthday, the Fourth of July, and Halloween with my friends. However, New Year’s has always been split. I used to spend it with my family and family friends when I was growing up. Sometime near the end of junior high school or at the beginning of high school, I began to attend New Year’s Eve parties thrown by friends. Effectively, where and how I would spend my New Year’s Eve has never been a problem…until this year.

Originally, I was supposed to spend New Year’s Eve with my dear friend Emily. However, when she later decided to spend the evening with her boyfriend Jake’s family and sleep over at his house, my invitation was (understandably) revoked. My friend Kelly had plans to see the Clarks play at First Night downtown with her boyfriend John, so I could not very well invite myself along to that concert. My other friend Emily invited me to hang out with her and her boyfriend at their house, but at this point I decided that being a third wheel would not make for a very pleasant New Year’s celebration, so that option was out, as well. This left me with two remaining possibilities (or, rather, three if I decided to stay home and sulk instead). On one hand, I could spend the evening with my parents. They were going to see a movie and get dessert, and my dad repeatedly assured me that I was “more than welcome” to come along. However, this again would make me a third wheel, even if the couple was my parents. On the other hand, my alternate option was to attend a party being thrown by a friend of Vicky’s. At this party, I would allegedly know very few people (including the host, whom I have only met a handful of times) and most likely spend my night watching everyone get drunk and play beer-pong.

In short, neither option sounded great; so in the end, I chose to try both. First, I went and saw The Great Debaters with my parents. At the theatre, we ran into several other couples—all my parents’ age, and all sans-kids. Every time we ran into another couple, I felt like there was a great big sign around my neck announcing: “No, I do not have anything better to do than tag along with my parents on New Year’s Eve. Yes, I am single.” Afterward, I drove to Vicky’s friend’s party (his name is Drew), where I spent a majority of the time declining celebratory liquor shots and refilling the beer pitcher for the pong table.

On a positive note, I do enjoy spending time with my parents, and the movie was better than I had expected. I like Denzel Washington as an actor, and the other younger actors and actresses in the movie were very talented. Additionally, the party was not a total loss, since it allowed me to spend time with a few old high school friends. One of them even flirted with me pretty shamelessly, so I cannot claim to have had a miserable time.

My New Year’s Proposition: Embrace single-ness. You never know when it might end.

Welcome to 2008.

Where are all the women?

Ever since I started taking ENG 380: Problems of Western Civilization, my feminist eyes (which I didn’t even know I had) have been progressively opened. Example: a simple outing to the Regent Movie Theatre yesterday was an eye-opening one.

I was on the bus, coming back from having had battery replaced at the mall—can you believe I survived half a week without a watch?—when I ran into a member of Film Interest Floor (a double suite in which I have several friends). He told me that a bunch of them were going to see American Gangster and invited me to come along. As this is one movie for which I have actually happened to see previews (I must admit, this has been one benefit to watching House every week), I decided that it looked intriguing enough. Also, a social outing to a movie would be at least marginally more productive than spending my afternoon brooding over the fact that I was not in upper state NY with the rest of the swim team. Thus, I went to see the 4:15pm showing of American Gangster.

For those of you not familiar with this movie, the basic plot is this: Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas, the lacky for one of NYC’s big crime bosses. Early in the movie, his boss dies, and Frank takes his place, expanding and improving his heroin operation with the introduction of an extremely pure strain called “Blue Magic.” Meanwhile, Richie Roberts—played by a somewhat stoutly Russell Crowe—is an ex-cop, booted from his position on the force for honestly turning in upwards of $900,000. Ever the “good guy,” he takes on NYC’s drug war, pursuing—inevitably—Frank and his family in the face of social and political opposition. (And yes, I did write that extremely catchy plot summary myself; can people make careers out of these sorts of things?)

Needless to say, before the movie even started, my “anti-woman radar” went on high alert. Movies nowadays seem intent upon barraging their audiences with images and sound from the moment you walk into the theatre. I honestly thought we were missing previews when we entered the screening room, there was so much noise and commotion going on on-screen. However, big flashy movie-esque advertisements are now the norm before movies; no more idle chatter while waiting for previews to begin. (If you want to talk, you’ll have to shout into the ear of the person sitting next to you, never mind trying to communicate with someone a few seats away.)

After a sexualized car ad and a rather repetitive Fandango ad (I suppose they work, though, because I did remember that brand name), a music video began to play. It was a new song by 3 Doors Down called “Citizen Soldier.” This video is apparently a simultaneous advertisement for the National Guard, which is a very interesting ploy on the part of both the entertainment industry as well as the department of defense, but that is not what I want to point out regarding this ad. As shocking as this entertainment/military combination may have seemed, what shocked me even more was the absence of women from the video.

I saw two women in the entire video. One was receiving a medal of some sort from an obviously higher-ranking man. The other was running to retrieve her child from a man who had obviously rescued him. There were no women combatants, not even in the scenes from current day wartime situations (as contrasted with those from revolutionary times, where I would not have expected to see any women). And yet, the lyrics say the following (the bolding is mine):
On that day, when you need your brothers and sisters to care.
I'll be right here.
Citizen soldiers.
Holding the light for the ones that we guide from the dark of despair.
Standing on guard for the ones that we've sheltered.
We'll always be ready because we will always be there.

By excluding women from the video, the producers (or the band? or the National Guard?) are making the implicit claim not only that women are not involved with war, but that we are in fact not citizens. If soldier-ship is equated with citizenship, and women are not soldiers, then women are obviously not citizens, either. And we thought we had achieved equality!

Now, this was all before the movie even began. I will allow that American Gangster was a period piece and, therefore, I am willing to accept many of the roles that women played as their “places” in that particular society. (For instance, I doubt there were many women cops serving as part of the NYPD in the 1970s.) However, women were not only treated as completely secondary characters in this movie, they were treated as stereotypically weak and cardboard figures, as well. Frank’s wife, Eva (played by Lymari Nadal) is chosen by him and follows along with his every whim. She plays the typical money-bulldozed wife of any rich man, who suffers silently and even when she does attempt to take a stand, ends up acquiescing and retreating back into silent assent. Most of the other women who appear in the movie are the heroin choppers: they are black, nude, and (literally) voiceless. (The only one with a line is the “head” of the operation, and even she only gets two lines, neither which were of any significance.)

The only woman who shows any strength at all throughout the movie is Frank’s mother—she threatens to leave him if he kills a cop. Yet, the strength of this influence is still questionable, because before Frank even has the opportunity to kill the cop, his drug operation is destroyed and Richie takes him into custody. Would he have killed the man, anyway? Would his mother’s having left him even mattered? Is that all the influence women have: the threat of disappearing?

According to “Citizen Soldier,” we weren’t even visible to begin with.

From Fugitives to Freakenomics

It is about time I wrote a “media review,” considering I just saw a phenomenal movie and have also recently finished reading a number of books. I will begin with the movie.

Because I am a Reader and not a Television Watcher, I have seen significantly fewer movies than most of my media-savvy peers. For example, I only just saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie a few months ago, during my stay in England. (My American friend/housemate Carl showed it in his room in honor of the new Turtles movie that had just come out. He and several other people were about to go see it in theaters, but he wanted to see the first and second “originals,” first.) Apparently, Turtles was a “classic” for everyone my age while we grew up—the original Turtles movie came out in 1990—and, subsequently, one I missed. Needless to say, I have “missed” a good number of movies throughout my life, and various people have taken a personal interest in seeing that these gaps in my media-awareness are sufficiently filled. One such person is my friend Ben.

One evening two summers ago, the two of us were discussing movies after having finished watching Cruel Intentions—apparently another “adolescent classic” that I had missed during junior high school. Actually, we were playing one of our more frequent games: “what-movies-has-Allison-not-seen.” Obviously, I was losing. Finally, we pulled out a movie guide my dad had bought several years ago and started flipping through, with Ben pointing out “great movies” that I “had to see.” Determinedly, he wrote down a list of 5 to “get me started:” L.A. Confidential (which I have yet to see); Terms of Endearment; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; Platoon; and the one I finally saw last night, The Fugitive.

I’m ordinarily not a big action-movie fan. I tend to like movies that are more “brainteasers,” dramas, or comedies. (Some examples of what I’d consider a “brainteaser” movie are Unusual Suspects, Momento, and The Butterfly Effect.) However, The Fugitive might have just qualified as my favorite action movie.

Essentially, the plotline is not very complicated and very action-oriented: Harrison Ford—playing Dr. Richard Kimble—is unjustly convicted of murdering his wife. On the way to prison, the armored truck containing Dr. Kimble and other convicts crashes, and Kimble is set free. He goes on the run, with Tommy Lee Jones (who gives an outstanding performance as the chief investigator Marshal Gerard) intent upon hunting him down.

What I really like about this movie is the fact that it is not only an action movie, but also somewhat of a “brainteaser” or “mystery movie” as well. It is a “smart” action movie. A substantial part of the plot involves Richard Kimble trying to figure out who murdered his wife and why. However, Kimble not only solves this mystery, he also leads the authorities to the evidence he discovers and culprits he catches without being caught, himself. The setup and execution of this complicated plot involves a good bit of genius on the parts of the screenwriters. Thus, since I named the primary actors in this film (Ford and Jones), I must also name these worthy screenwriters: Roy Huggins, David Twohy, Jeb Stuart, and David Twohy.

I am always on the look-out for intelligent writers, and recently I have been reading a plethora of work from one such writer, Chuck Palahniuk. If you have read any single book by Palahniuk, it was probably Fight Club, and if you haven’t read the book, you have probably seen or at least heard of the movie. I never read that particular book, but about a year ago, a friend from Rochester mentioned to me that Palahniuk was one of his favorite writers and that I should try reading his novel Invisible Monsters. That summer, I did check out Monsters from the local library. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, but I did not pursue reading any more of his work until recently, when I came across another person—a friend of my sister’s, in fact—who named Palahniuk as one of her favorite writers. She suggested a few titles to me, and I ordered them from the library.

Palahniuk has a very unique style. His writing tends to mix horror with satire, yielding books that are as intriguing as they are bizarre. He almost always writes in the first person, with arresting, often disturbed protagonists telling the story. In Lullaby, my first Palahniuk novel of the summer, the narrator is a newspaper reporter covering sudden infant death syndrome. During his investigations, he discovers that it is caused by a culling song—a magical incantation that has been written into children’s poetry books—and can be used to kill virtually anyone to whom the song is read. However, a real estate agent who sells haunted houses (without telling the buyers that they are haunted, of course, so that she can quickly resell them) also knows about this culling song and uses it to her advantage. Thus, a battle ensues, both internally and externally: how should the song be used? Should it be used? Who should have the right and responsibility to use it?

Lullaby examines the ideas that knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility. It pits social responsibility against humans’ addictive desire for power and control over one another—in this case, the power over life and death. Meanwhile, amongst all of these philosophical question, Palahniuk mixes in a variety of wacky characters (aside from the narrator and the real estate agent, who are bizarre enough) including a necrophiliac, a witchcraft-practicing secretary, and a hippie animal rights activist.

My next Palahniuk book of the summer was entitled Choke. Again, this novel grapples with the idea of power, particularly power over life and death. The narrator/protagonist of the story is a medical school dropout who fakes choking to death in multiple restaurants every night in order to enlist monetary support from his rescuers—who do this to uphold their moral self-images, he claims—so that he can keep his mother alive in a nursing home. However, he refuses to invest in a feeding tube to help her health improve, because he resents her for wielding power over his childhood. (This resentment is developed by a series of flashbacks in which he is a foster child and his mother randomly appears and kidnaps him from his foster parents.) Meanwhile, the narrator attempts—but fails—to achieve sexual gratification by coupling with members of sex addiction support groups. Thus, throughout the novel, the reader is never quite sure whether the narrator is a sex addict himself, or whether he is just futilely searching for a sense of fulfillment in the absolutely wrong places.

As a reader, I was also never quite sure what the “main” purpose of the novel was. That is, I was never quite sure what “overall storyline” I should be following. While the title of the novel implies that its premise centers on the narrator’s nightly choking escapades, surprisingly little time is dedicated to this aspect of the story. Most of the narration deals with the narrator’s mother (both in the hospital and within flashbacks), the narrator’s friend and roommate (a prior sex addict who obsessively collects rocks in lieu of indulging his sexual addictions), and the narrator’s various sexual encounters. Also—and this may sound impossible, but it is how I felt reading the book—the narrator seems impassive and frantic at the same time, as if he is paranoid while also being emotionally numb. How Palahniuk achieved this combination is a mystery to me, and although I didn’t care for this novel as much as Monsters and Lullaby, I was still impressed by it.

My final Palahniuk novel of this summer was called Survivor. This story is told by the alleged “sole survivor” of a religious cult. It sets up the story with the narrator explaining that he is on an airplane destined to crash and is telling his life story to the plane’s “black box” (the indestructible part of the plane that records all activity up until the point of impact). The rest of the story culminates to this moment in the narrator’s life. Again, as with most of his novels, Survivor grapples with concepts of power over others and power over life/death. The narrator sets up a false suicide hotline so that people contemplating suicide or even just having a bad day call him. Then, he encourages them to kill themselves. Meanwhile, he is expected to kill himself, because the colony of the cult to which he belonged all killed themselves, and so every member of this colony existing in the “outside world” are expected to kill themselves, too. Eventually, he is believed to be the last survivor of this cult, a position which elevates him to celebrity status until his surviving brother and Fertility, the sister of a boy whom the narrator encouraged to commit suicide early in the novel, arrive to “save him from himself.” What I found most interesting in this novel is the way it explores the many ways in which humans can slowly kill themselves without acknowledging or even necessarily intending self-destruction. Is there really a difference between blowing your brains out, asking your brother to bash your face in with a rock, or taking steroids while starving your body, undergoing ultraviolet tanning, and shooting your face full of Botox to fulfill an “ideal image”?

The latest book I finished (yesterday, in fact) is called Freakenomics by Levitt and Derber. Let me begin by saying that I have never taken an economics class, nor have I ever been remotely intrigued by the field. However, this book was recommended to me by a variety of people relatively recently, so I figured I should check it out. It is the least economic-y economics book I have ever read. Honestly, I think (without being able to directly reference the book) that the entire thing was written without citing one single numerical statistic. Basically, the book shows that by using concrete data (i.e. numbers generated by real-world circumstances), you can find an answer to even the most bizarre questions. Take the title of a few chapters as examples: “Why do Drug Dealers still live with their Mothers?” “What do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers have in common?” “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” My personal favorite had the least interesting-sounding name: “Where have all the criminals gone?” (The answer is, they were never born. Crime went down not because of an improving economy or improved police forces, but because abortion was legalized in the famous case Roe vs. Wade. Fifteen years later, all of the babies who would have been born into circumstances that would have led them to lives of criminality were…nonexistent. Or, as pro-life activists would claim, dead.)

I’ve never been much of a nonfiction buff, but if there is a nonfiction book worth investing time in, this one is it. It almost makes me want to study economics. Almost.

Old School

Angela, her friend Sha, and I watched Save the Last Dance tonight. I had already seen this movie several years ago, when it first came out (in 2001, I believe). However, seeing it again brought back fond memories, not only of seeing and enjoying the movie the first time, but of my high school experiences, as well. One of the features that made the film so enjoyable the first time I saw it was its correspondence to real life. The high school it portrayed was very similar the high school I attended (although mine had a significantly greater white population), and many of the experiences were very accurately portrayed. For instance, the way Sarah (Julia Stiles) has trouble dancing is exactly the way most white people have trouble dancing, while black people seem to have an “innate” sense of rhythm and affinity for hip-hop dancing. When she first tries to dance at Steps (the club her friend Chenille takes her to), she attempts to move her body from her shoulders. Successful hip-hop movements must start with the hips. I learned this early on from attending junior high and high school dances (although I am not particularly successful at applying this knowledge), and it was amusing to recognize Sarah’s development as a dancer in this way.

Another similarity was the crowdedness and chaos of the school. I never recognized it as such when I attended it—although I did acknowledge and complain about our zoo-like hallways. Everything area of the school was noisy, with kids jostling each other, from the hallways to the lunchroom. Sha wanted to know if we had “locker rooms like that” where I went to high school during a gym locker room scene. I hadn’t considered the locker rooms significant or unusual at all, but apparently they don’t have those in Singapore. “Yes,” I told her, “ours were just like that.”

And, of course, the interracial factors were very true to life. While most people don’t cross racial boundaries (black or white), those few who do have very assertive personalities (like Chenille) and usually somehow “integrate” into the opposite culture. (For instance, Derek tended to dress more “white” than his black counterparts, and Sarah had to learn to talk the “hard core” language of the company she kept.) It was very eye-opening to watch this movie and think of the high school chapter of my life “in retrospect.”

Culture, Actually

I met a Japanese boy who lives on the second floor last night. He, Fluf, Eddie, and I all watched Love Actually in Fluf’s room. While I did remember that the movie was set around Christmas time, I hadn’t remembered that Love Actually was a British movie. It is, however, completely British—set in London and everything—and once again, Americans are completely unfairly portrayed. There are three American characters in the movie, only one of whom I would qualify as even partially “normal.” The other two are the President of the United States—who is portrayed as an arrogant, pushy, bigoted prick who tries to steal the Prime Minister’s “girl”—and an eleven-year-old African-American girl—who is depicted as being able to sing like the next American Idol and puts on a performance complete with gospel choir and participatory audience. Poor Americans. We are either cut down by stereotypes or expected to live up to them.

After the movie, the four of us began a discussion that ranged from voting practices in our countries to cultural differences between US, Japan, and the UK. I was shocked that, of the four of us, I (who was the youngest in the room; the others were 23, 26, and 30) seemed to have the best understanding of overall political systems and parties. I spent at least fifteen minutes explaining the US voting system, of which the others had absolutely no knowledge. Fluf was convinced that our people voted for our President—which is different from how the UK elects its Prime Minister, since each political party elects its own candidate—and I had to explain to him not only the intricacies of primary elections, but also the workings of the Electoral College. All that for a non-political science major…I must give thanks to St. Robert Bellermine, St. Maurice, and Woodland Hills for my grand American education.

After the political discussion, the Japanese boy (whose name I cannot pronounce, much less attempt to spell) wanted to know if there was a great difference between America and the UK. I replied that there was, but it was comprised of many many small things. If someone from the US were just plopped down in Britain, they wouldn’t immediately say that it is tremendously different here. I attribute that to our shared language and the fact that the two cultures exchange so much in terms of fashion, entertainment, etc. Still, when you encounter all of the little things affecting daily life, the US is pretty different from the UK. It starts with language (“trousers” for “pants,” “jelly” for “Jell-O,” “cheers” and “mate”—words we would never say in the US) and works its way up to trends in lifestyles. Here, people walk their dogs without leashes, and they walk them as a form of recreation, not just in order to prevent the dog from peeing on their dining room floor. They walk their children, too, and the styles and designs of baby carriages I have seen probably outnumber the different models of cars they sell here. Also, as I have mentioned before, things are generally smaller here: the stores are smaller, the number of choices are smaller, even the toilet seats are smaller. America is a country of opulence and options: you can have your pretzel in a mini twist, a jumbo twist, a rod, a mini rid, ultra-thin, ultra-thick, sourdough, with salt, without salt, cheese-covered, cinnamon-and-sugar, soft, hard, and in any size portion imaginable. Here in Brighton, there are two varieties: Penn State brand mini twists, 175g bag, salted or sour cream and chive.

If I had covered all of the differences, I would have been going all night. So I mentioned the words and the pretzels. He said Japan and the UK offer about the same number of grocery store brands and varieties. Then he wanted to know if the people were different—their attitudes or personalities. This is a harder trend to explain. The answer is “yes, they are different” but even more subtly so than the “cultures.” The best way I have of explaining the general difference in people comes from observing interactions between students in Holland House. The Americans aren’t afraid to come out and say what they think. They will start conversations with the Europeans and with each other, argue over issues, and send food back in restaurants because damn it, they’re entitled to good service. British people are generally more reserved. They’re perfectly willing to talk to you…if you initiate the conversation. They also have less of the fight-for-my-rights spirit. If something is substandard, they are far less likely to complain. Their mentality isn’t, “Hey, I paid for this,” it’s, “Well, at least I got something.” I take this difference in personality to account for the country’s lagging technology and the shoddy state of public facilities in general (particularly the gyms). Still, I would say that British people are, on the whole, friendlier than American people. They are less self-centered, perhaps because they are less “driven;” they don’t seem so focused on the goal of “getting ahead” all the time. This works to their disadvantage—in sports, most obviously—but it also makes my task, as the American, to initiate conversations here easier than in America!

According to the Japanese boy, the difference between British people and Japanese people is that the Japanese are more reserved. Thank goodness I didn’t study in Japan. Initiating conversations with the British is hard enough.

Borat

For those of you who have not heard of this movie, here is the premise: an English actor (Sacha Baron Cohen) pretends to be a journalist from Kazakhstan. He travels across America, allegedly making a documentary about his travels. As he interviews people, he performs outrageous stunts under the guise of “Kazakhstan rituals/beliefs/customs” in order to get reactions from real American people, and he films the full extent of these antics.

The idea sounded funny and a potentially interesting way to reveal the prejudices of Americans until I realized that the entire mocumentary is filmed in the South. There, Sacha manages to find the most racist, bigoted, Confederate-flag-waving people possible to represent America. The fact that these people exist is bad enough, but to make an entire movie in which they represent our country to the world is simply one more ax-swing at a country that simply does not need to be cut down any more than it has been already. Fellow Holland-houser Carl defended us best: “It would be like filming in just northern England and making the assumption that all English people are uneducated.”

Eternal Sunshine

Spotless Minds:

What would happen if you could forget all about someone? Would you continue to fall in love with them; is doing so inevitable because of who you are and who they are? Or does that only happen if the two of you were “meant” to be together? Would that not happen if they truly “bad for you” and you became a wiser person for having known them and learned about yourself by knowing them? …But then wouldn’t you erase all that wisdom you gained by knowing them when you erased all memory of that person?

And how impossible would it be to erase all traces of a person in your life? Joel is instructed to gather up all paraphernalia, any article related to or which may remind him of Clementine that materially exists in his life. Imagine what an impossible of a task that would be. Perhaps that is only the case for me and Joel, since we would have garbage bags stuffed with all sorts of items—from homemade potato heads to “borrowed” hoodies—and other patients in the waiting room only had single objects: a trophy, a nameplate. I’m not sure I could ever successfully erase the reminders of having had an important person in my life successfully. What if drinking water reminds you of that person? Watching a new movie? One cannot stop living.