| (no subject) |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|02:49 pm] |
I decided to name my car Torquemada a year or so ago so I can say things like "Oh, Torquemada's hit 20,000 miles. I'd better take him for an oil change." That way I'd feel nicely ridiculous all the time. For some reason this is proving hard to remember to do. If you hear me talking about my car, kindly remind me of its name.
In any case, Torquemada has hit 20,000 miles. That's kinda neat. Those miles have been filled with huge amounts of frustration, with endless traffic jams, grumpy morning commutes and minor traffic accidents. They've also been filled with incredible adventures- following strangers around Westchester, taking wrong turns toward Providence, having amazing conversations with friends, listening to dozens of wonderful albums.
I don't think America's love affair with automobiles has the same dynamics it did when my father was growing up, but I still love driving and I'm excited to keep putting miles on Torquemada. |
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| Mingus Dynasty and James Ensor |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|09:39 am] |
Mingus Dynasty
I can't quite summon enough to say to justify a whole post for Charles Mingus's "Mingus Dynasty", which was my latest AotW listen and which was quite marvelous. I'll note the drum work in particular was terrific, and of course in general a Mingus ensemble is going to follow the lead of the rhythm section more than a typical jazz group. I loved the way this music was in dialogue with all of jazz history, from the reinterpretation of Ellington's "Mood Indigo" to the goofy homage to Parker of "Gunslinging Blues". And yet it sounds like nothing else in jazz, for the realm of Mingus is remarkably idiosyncratic and individualistic and extremely personal. One might go so far as to say that it almost feels invasive to listen to this music, and yet that is too far, because this is the music of a shared ensemble communicating with each other, and they are aware of their audience.
Sunday I went to New York with Lily. We had a nice Indian lunch and then popped uptown, fended our way through a Bastille Day Celebration, and climbed to the top floor of MoMa for their James Ensor exhibit.
Neither of us knew anything about Ensor except for the vague and ambiguous words of They Might Be Giants' goofy song. That was enough justification for the outing. And Ensor and the exhibit rewarded our adventurousness.
James Ensor was a late 19th Century artist whose primary media were painting and drawing. He had a wicked sense of humor, a morbid fascination with death, a highly developed individual spiritual life, and a passion for self-exploration. The paintings and drawings we saw mixed these traits into odd, surprising, joyful, funny and moving combinations.
So we learned that the inspiration for TMBG's "Dig him up and shake his hand," was a direly comic "Self-Portrait in 1960" that depicted the artist as a skeleton. And we found another painting which had begun as an ordinary domestic scene of a person lounging in a chair looking at their china closet until Ensor decided to rework it by painting over their head with a skull.
And we found Ensor painting himself as Christ in a series of paintings that saw him crucified and mocked by an anachronistic crowd that included Biblical figures and contemporaries of Ensor. And there were paintings of masked men that on closer examination revealed that there was no face behind the mask.
But while the content was jarring and often brutally funny, it was the technique that distinguished Ensor. Sketchwork as precise, detailed, and clever as Ensor's is rare. I was awed by his "Christ Entering Brussels" to the point that I got basically elbowed out of the way by other patrons who wanted to see it, too. His lighting was inconsistent and often intentionally inaccurate but quite powerful and effective at altering the mood of the compositions. Lily and I were fascinated by a bedroom scene where the perspective and the lighting contradicted each other in a way that effectively produced cognitive dissonance. And I loved a painting of a young boy where his suit is completely painted in a shiny black that focuses all attention on the way the lighting shapes his curious face.
Lily's favorite painting was a self-portrait we were informed imitated the look of a famous self-portrait of Rubens (I've since looked it up and the resemblance is striking). Except in Ensor's the painter is wearing a stunning floral hat with a garish feather dangling from it. The act wasn't quite a simple parody of Rubens, but certainly a demystification of the grand art of painting was at play.
The only place where Ensor's savage cynicism was tempered was in his spiritual and religious paintings. Many of those bore sardonic touches, but also a true sense of divinity. Lily and I giggled at a painting with a sky ablaze in glory, with her commenting that it reminded her of a Mario Brothers game. But when we looked at it closer, saw the chastisement by the celestial deity of the naked Adam and Eve, I shuddered at the might of Ensor's vision of God. And the aforementioned "Christ Entering Brussels" mocks contemporary Brussels but doesn't fail to capture the immense power of Jesus's name.
On our way back to Penn Station, I got kicked by a hobo. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|11:19 pm] |
Goddamnit, can they just confirm Sotomayor already? The problem with the Supreme Court being a news story is that it leads to me reading about Supreme Court history and the thing is, Supreme Court history makes no fucking sense. Like when I learned that there's a clause in the 14th Amendment that according to Wikipedia has 'remained virtually dormant' since 1873. WTF
It is times like these that I fall back on my old friend, U.S. v. 95 Barrels (More or Less) Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|09:50 am] |
Has anyone read A High Wind In Jamaica? I heard a rave review on the radio last night which mentioned pirates, and I rushed out and bought it. It was written in 1929 and clearly has race issues which are fairly obnoxious. But it seems like it might have some merit. But I was seized by a weird and unnatural somnolence that saw me in bed by 9:30, so I only made it 30 pages in.
Basically, it seems like a Lost Generation take on Stevenson's Treasure Island and that sort of adventure story. Which is intriguing as anything. I hear echoes of Golding's Lord of the Flies, but also of Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.
Speaking of Golding, my sister read Lord of the Flies for the first time last week, because she's studying to become a secondary school English teacher and figures she ought to be familiar with the literature she's probably going to be teaching. She asked me if it was the kind of book that could only be appreciated at 13 or 14, and I agreed. Even without a re-read since I was an early teenager, my opinion of the novel has declined over the years. It's a very juvenile book. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|12:47 pm] |
Soctt, if you haven't watched the match yet and have somehow avoided being spoiled, don't read ahead.
I need to comment on the Wimbledon Championship, but words fail to describe events like that.
I've been watching Roddick play tennis since about '02. He has never played as well as he did yesterday. His U.S. Open Victory was a nice run, but the field that year wasn't that strong, and his championship match was against a Spaniard whose best surface was clay. His Wimbledon in '05 was impressive, but he got demolished by Federer. And since then? We haven't seen much from him. He vanished in the '05 US Open, to my huge disappointment since that was the only year I actually went to the Open. He's had incredible psychological boundaries to overcome.
And then there was yesterday. After beating an incredibly tough pair of quarters and semis opponents in Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Murray (with a hometown crowd), he stepped onto the court with complete dedication to the task ahead. He broke Federer to win the first set and the celebration he made was as genuine as they come. He was genuinely excited to be where he was, and then he pushed that excitement back down and went back to the task at hand with superb focus. His serve was cruising, his baseline game was remarkably clean, and he sent more backhand winners than I believed I'd ever see from Roddick. Federer didn't break his serve until the 30th game of the 5th set. Do you understand how incredible that is?
Federer? Well, I don't understand how Federer works. The word to describe his game is ineffable. It is beautiful, sure. It is elegant. It is built on balance that is more cat-like than human, on court intelligence that verges on telepathic, on just enough power to keep things multi-dimensional. But it does not make you want to root for Federer. You cannot imagine yourself in Federer's shoes. He won. I'm not interested in arguments about whether Federer deserved to win the match. He won, as he usually does.
But there was almost a John Henry-like inevitability to Roddick's defeat. The human putting all his heart into being as perfect as possible and achieving something entirely beyond himself, and ultimately falling short against an opponent who's just plain better, a deck that is irreparably stacked against him. |
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| Weird |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|07:39 pm] |
I usually find Justice Scalia's opinions to be clear, well-articulated, fully logical, and easily understandable. His concurrence in Ricci is none of these things. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|11:04 am] |
This weekend was... more than I was prepared to handle. I did not need that right now. (Lisa's party, this doesn't include you. That was awesome, though I probably could have done without the sleep dep) Damnit Damnit Damnit.
There was Shabbos, which was fine. My parents are in Israel, so it was just the three kids. It's weird to be the Head of Household, saying Kiddush for the family, etc... But that was okay.
Then, after Shabbos, racing over to Lisa's house to join her birthday party in the middle. I raced over to catch as much of it as I could, but Lisa and her group were later getting back from New York than they'd planned so I waited around, reading and then talking to Lisa's parents, until they all showed up.
Lisa's friends are cool! We stayed up until 3:30 AM talking. Well, Lisa was mostly asleep by then, but we kept talking anyway. And then I drove home and managed all of three and a half hours of sleep before I had to wake up to go over to my uncle's house.
And then there was a three hour drive to Long Island for my great-aunt's unveiling. And psalms and Kaddish and thinking about death and family and searching for my grandfather's grave and thinking about how he died ten years ago and how the death affected by dad and my uncle and my grandmother, and thinking about what it meant to me, and then searching for my other great-aunt's grave and thinking about how the death of someone that happened five years before my birth has affected my family. And thinking about the records we recently found of my great-grandfather's naturalization in America and the four children he listed on it. And thinking about how my grandfather's one living sister, born in America, learned a story today about her older sister's emigration from Poland that she'd never heard before. And not knowing how to deal with any of these thoughts, how to synthesize them, how to make sense of them. And not knowing how to hold onto histories that are essential to my sense of self.
And then there was the long, traffic-filled drive back from Long Island. And I was worn out and exhausted, emotionally and physically. And I was dehydrated after the time in the hot sun of the cemetery. And I gulped down water and tried to prepare myself to be awake and alert enough to enjoy the opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream." And then I glanced at the schedule one last time and realized that the show was 5 hours earlier than I'd thought, and that I'd missed the show. Fuck. In the scheme of things, it didn't matter much. But it was the light at the end of the tunnel and then it was pulled away at the last minute.
So I listened to Pachelbel's Canon and commiserated with Belle and Lily and Alai, who are awesome people that I love so much, and tried to make sense out of the chaos. |
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| "Quartet for the End of Time" by Olivier Messiaen |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|04:50 pm] |
-Given my powerful fascination with the 20th century classical canon, it's surprising that I've never listened to any Messiaen before. I mean, I think I once heard some minor piano thing of his at a concert, but I've really never spent any time with his music. I bet it's because he's French and French music has always seemed separate from the rest of European classical music. And I'm afraid of things I don't understand.
-There's a way to read the "Quartet for the End of Time" as a stripped down version of late Debussy. I'm not saying it's the right way to read it. I think it's an extremely limited way to read it. But the fact that it's a possible read is significant. The influence of Impressionism here shouldn't be overlooked.
-The Quartet features simple music figures repeated again and again. It's not quite Minimalist, either, but again, that's a valid possible read. I'd bet at least some of the Minimalists would cite this piece as an influence.
-The TASHI Quartet who plays on my recording does an excellent job of staying together as a coherent ensemble. Some of their playing, well... I can't say I dislike it, but I don't think it's how I would read the music. There's vibrato in places that feels off to me, for example. But I admire the boldness of the playing and I admire the unity of the ensemble playing, the way even when a solo is being performed it feels like the other musicians are silent partners.
-Unlike Schoenberg, for whom it makes complete sense to say "The right way to play Schoenberg is to play his music as if you were playing Brahms," or "the right way to sing Schoenberg is to sing his operas as if you were singing Mozart," there's something about the Quartet that seems to demand the kind of sterile, inhuman playing that Schoenberg's less competent interpreters fall back on. This is not a criticism of Messiaen. It's just different and interesting. Because that sterility produces very emotional music.
-This is especially true on the peculiar unison sections in Movement 6. Damn, those are tricky passages to play in unison, and damn, the mix of timbres produced is eerie and wonderful, and damn, any attempt to interject individual personality here would totally destroy the balance of the music. It's like navigating a convoy of trucks at 60 mph down a narrow twisting road. TASHI does a great job of staying together through it.
-I cannot really comment on the Christian content here. And we know that I usually don't hesitate to comment on Christian art, but here... well, the ineffability of Revelation has little meaning for me. But it's kind of a problem, because clearly the reason Messiaen is able to write a quartet "for the End of Times" that sounds like this is because he has deep faith that the end of Times will bring with it divine truth and the affirmation of his belief. And that's a part of the music I can't connect to.
-I think I really ought to give a listen to another recording. This is music that leaves a lot of room for the interpreter to insert himself, and yet requires a sort of impersonality from the interpreter. I'm curious to hear how others have approached it. My problem is that I don't know which other recordings to look for.
-The instrumentation is kind of odd. The Quartet consists of a violin, cello, piano, and B-flat clarinet. Which makes plenty of sonic sense, so I'm not sure why it's a rare combination, but TASHI was apparently put together just to play this piece, and when they were done they looked around for other music to play and found that if they wanted music for that combination, they had to commission it. You have an interesting mix of timbres in the strings, woodwind, and piano.
-But of course, that's not why Messiaen chose the collection of instruments he did. He composed this piece for the three musicians who happened to be with him in a German POW camp during WWII. So something must be said for the serendipity that produced such a unique piece of music.
-"Feed the Animals" was the first album I've reviewed that several people immediately went out and listened to, so I think I was right in saying it's "a party that everyone's invited to." This piece lacks that sort of populist appeal. It's austere, evasive, relentless, uncertain. And while I don't want to say that popular and brilliant are opposites, especially in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, I think the Quartet is one of those places where its brilliance could not possibly garner popularity, where in some ways its brilliance drives away popularity. I pursue this kind of music relentlessly and it is always a powerful pleasure to find it.
-This week I've also given Regina Spektor's new album "Far" a couple listens. I'm not going to give it the intense scrutiny an AotW album gets, but it's a pretty good album. If you like intense piano pop with agile vocals and clever and moving lyrics, check it out. There is nothing as catchy as "Fidelity" on this album, but to be honest, the more I listened to "Fidelity", the more I found myself tuning out and longing for "Samson" or "The Consequence of Sounds." "Far" gives me more of what I want, especially on "Machine". |
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| Feed the Animals by Girl Talk |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|03:25 pm] |
-Girl Talk is like a party that everyone is invited to.
-No, seriously, that's the best description of their music I can come up with. Girl Talk is a remix artist who takes samples from all sorts of pop music and throws it in a blender to see what comes of it. I mean, seriously, if you want an education in late 20th century pop music, just take a look at the list of samples used on the album here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_the_Animals . It's all over the map. It's practically guaranteed you'll hear songs that are important touchstones for you.
-In my case, the music especially brought back memories of summer camp. The bus driver would play top 40 radio as we rode to camp, and those bus rides were probably my most intense exposure to mainstream music. Those songs bring back nostalgic memories that surprise me, because I always rolled my eyes at that obnoxious 90s pop, and yet time has transformed it into a valued childhood memory.
-There's a lot of really clever mashup here, things I would have never expected to hear together and especially things I would have never expected to work together.
-Listening to albums like this just energize you, you know. Good dance music makes you want to dance even if you're an inappropriate situation to dance. I had a smile on my face all week listening to this.
-From a metamusical point of view, it's fun the way this album loops around on itself. It's literally designed to be played as an infinite loop. And I have to say, if I ever had the time to experiment, I bet I could listen to it on repeat five or six times before tiring of it. |
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| The Dream |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|09:00 am] |
Anybody want to see Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the McCarter Theater in Princeton with me, this Sunday 6/28? Tickets for the upper tier are 30 dollars, which is a bit steep for me but it's a price I'm willing to pay for a well-reviewed production of a favorite opera of mine. If so, let me know soon. It doesn't seem like many tickets are left. |
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| "Quark, Strangeness and Charm" by Hawkwind |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|11:57 pm] |
-I made two previous attempts to review this album and found that neither communicated the tone I was intending to communicate. So I'm going to start by just going out and stating that tone: This was a fun album, with some significant flaws, that I enjoyed overall anyway. I wouldn't say it was a good album, but it was a fun album.
-Hawkwind creates space rock, according to Wikipedia. This appears to be a more dignified way of saying that they make filkish prog-rock. Many of their songs are inspired by SF stories or are SF stories themselves. Is this kind of childish? Well, yes. But it's also kind of novel. So much contemporary music backs itself into a corner by insisting on making its lyrics be about a limited set of ideas which sell. It's nice to hear music that tells the stories it wants to tell, even if they're silly, absurd, and often kind of pointless.
- My favorite track here was "Damnation Alley", a hodgepodge of post-apocalyptic imagery loosely based on Roger Zelazny's novel of the same name. It's a good jam tune with some nice guitar work and the notion of merging Dr. Strangelove into the narrative, giving us a beginning to the story to supplement Zelazny's ridiculous motorcycle-punk story, makes a surprising amount of sense.
-"Quark, Strangeness and Charm" is my second favorite song. By all accounts, it is purely a novelty single. But it's a novelty single about science and love and wordplay, and so it's geared directly at me. I was annoyed by "Einstein was not a handsome fellow/Nobody ever called him Al /He had a long moustache to pull on/It was yellow/i don't believe he ever had a girl" because it's plainly untrue. Einstein was married twice. And this was typical of Hawkwind's lyrics throughout the album, and typifies the flaws I spoke of above which marred but did not ruin the album for me. These are songs that work lyrically the first time through, but the first time you attempt to put any thought to them, they just fall apart in shreds.
-The thing that pissed me off most about the album, though, was "The Forge of Vulcan", where the band thought it'd be cute to have a hammer-on-anvil sound be part of the music. It's not. It's an annoying sound that doesn't integrate with the rest of the music and made me want to hit someone.
-"The Days of the Underground" is another one of the songs (I've heard a bunch of them over the course of this AotW journey) that I would have liked a whole lot more if it were a minute shorter. Brevity is the soul of wit. |
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| Oh Wow |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|11:17 pm] |
Fucking Hell. Brian Francis Slattery and a banjo. What a night. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|09:30 am] |
Just a note to say that it's sad but predictable to think that a place dedicated to testimony against evil could become the target of that evil. It just means our work isn't done yet.
My prayers go out to the family of the guard who was killed.
And while I'm at it, my prayers go out to the family of Dr. George Tiller. His death isn't about pro-abortion or anti-abortion. It's about an effort to annihilate the ideals that American democracy stand on. We cannot let the challenge stand un-answered. |
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| The City and the City |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|11:05 am] |
I just finished the new book by China Mieville, The City and the City. Confused thoughts follow. Generally, I like Mieville, but his last book was a letdown and this one, while enjoyable, didn't deliver as well as I'd hoped.
The premise is something out of Kafka or Borges- a pair of Eastern European cities that... overlap. The occupy the same ground, 'grosstopically', to use the word Mieville coins, but have a different population, a different culture, and as a result of training since birth, are able to 'unsee' the other city. A walk through Mieville's Besz or Ul Qoma requires a citizen to ignore the 'cross-hatched' areas and people that are part of the other city.
And I think it would have made a fantastic Borges short story. And I think Kafka could have pulled a whole novella out of the premise. But Mieville goes for a novel, by trying to insert a Raymond Chandler story into the setting. And I think he falls short on several grounds.
First, Mieville is not a European Modernist, and so he never feels fully committed to his game. It's a clear departure from his previous 'New Weird' fantasies, the toe-dipping of an explorer on tentative new ground. It is equally apparent that after this little dalliance with Modernist metaphysics, Mieville will return to his old grounds, or take up some new experiment.
Second, the idea is the sort that can grab you for a few pages, but isn't really logical enough to sustain a novel. Cracks emerge. To make his murder investigation work, Mieville has to fudge his own reality by suggesting that a van that legally crosses over from one city to the other would not be noticed by citizens of the new city because they wouldn't notice the visitor's pass that let them know it was okay to see the van. Here is a point where the fantasy cracks because plot demanded it, and it is the sort of nudgy problem that appears again and again as Mieville tries to keep his story moving.
Third, style lets Mieville down. He tries to tell a Chandler type mystery without Chandlerian language, yet one can't say he's really captured the feel of European Modernist language, either. The book doesn't have a distinctive linguistic feel, but it feels like it should. When we are in Besz, it should feel like we are in Besz. When we are in Ul Qoma, the language should be part of the clue to tell us that. Instead, the book never really establishes a style that the reader can hold onto. And so Ul Qoma doesn't feel as different from Besz as it should. Breach... Breach feels different, but Breach is weird.
I liked some things anyway. I like the premise a lot. It's an extremely clever way to examine urban geography and its relation to people. The way Ul Qomans ignore Beszians is not too different from the way one ignores their fellow subway riders. Mieville asks quite clearly what we are losing by becoming faceless in the mortal city, and turning those around us faceless, too. And the way architecture can become faceless, too- how we can lose sight of the beauty of buildings that are around us if we spend too much time with it. It is heartbreaking to see Inspector Borlu try to restrain himself from admiring Ul Qoman architecture as he walks through areas that in Besz are dull or sordid. It is equally heartbreaking when he finally makes it to Ul Qoma and must now ignore the comforting sights of home that are all around him.
When I lived in New York, I made a point to take long walks every so often- either alone or with a single friend. We'd hit areas we hadn't walked through in a while, or areas that we walked through only as routes to a destination. And what I saw again and again was that the City changed so constantly, so frenetically, that every walk was a renewal of my faith in life. And what I also saw was that sometimes all it took was walking two blocks and it would feel like I was in another city entirely. Mieville shows here that he understands, even as his execution falls short of his promise.
And, in the end, I liked the story, too. It fell way short of my expectations, because the premise is so strong and inventive, but it was an enjoyable metaphysically involved murder mystery with a good payoff and likable characters. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|10:33 am] |
There are sensations I wish I could share with people.
Last night, driving on a dark and quiet night, through pouring rain on an empty, twisty country road, with trees overhanging the road, and Vienna Teng's "Blue Caravan" playing on the car's speakers... that was one of those sensations.
But if I'd been with anyone, it wouldn't have been the same sensation, of quiet loneliness being subsumed by a powerful sense of being at home with myself. |
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| Rhapsody in Red |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|09:55 am] |
I was unsatisfied with my first try at a story about the Red Matter in Star Trek. It was fun, and it captured a scientist's voice fairly well, but it was coarse and it didn't feel much like Star Trek. I gave it another try. This story feels more like Star Trek. Contains movie spoilers, bad characterization, and not as much Data Prime as I'd originally intended.
( Rhapsody in Red ) |
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| I Hate That Vulcan |
[May. 21st, 2009|09:57 pm] |
Warning: Contains spoilers for the new Star Trek movie. Not that the plot is worth spoiling. Also, contains adult language. Also, is abysmally bad. Seriously, this is Ferret writing Star Trek fanfic! Stay Away!
( I Hate That Vulcan ) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 21st, 2009|03:11 pm] |
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I rarely write fanfiction. There's a few doodles in alternate Star Wars universes, and a few really weird and trippy attempts to write fanfic for classic novels that don't have fandoms. But since seeing Star Trek last night, I've written 750 words of a story whose purpose is to explain how the hell the magical treknobabble substance at the center of that movie could have a name as stupid and unexplanatory as "Red Matter". By the time I'm done, the story will likely be two or three times that long and full of anger and profanity. I think it'll be kinda good. Tentative story title is "I Hate That Vulcan." |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 19th, 2009|09:15 am] |
So... Dollhouse. Got renewed, despite my absolute conviction that it wouldn't be. Hm... I'm not exactly happy about this.
Dollhouse started out lousy, but an intriguing lousy. But we'd been warned about that. People involved with the show were out by episode two or three saying, "Wait until episode 6. That's when it gets good."
Episode 6 was... better. It wasn't good, but it was better. And episode 7 was a little better than 6, and episode 8 was better 7, and episode 9 was a retreat back to the level of 6, and then episode 10 was about as good as 8, and then episode 11 was the show's best episode by miles, the only episode of the season that actually made you remember, "Oh, Joss Whedon's writing this show. He's the guy who made Firefly so awesome." And then episode 12 was kind of meh, and I thought I was done with the show, and glad for it.
Because here's the thing about this review of the season. It ignores the big debate that was going on in fandom throughout the whole show: Is this show feminist? Is this show exploitative? Is it both?
In the comments of a previous post where I mentioned this show, I linked to this video: http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/781451.html
This video which encapsulates the problem of Dollhouse as a show made by a male auteur in 21st century Hollywood. The problem of making a show as an entertainment that is fundamentally about raping women. The problem of setting up a man as the hero who will save the women, and the problem of dramatizing that man's conversion into a willing and complicit rapist. The problem of making the viewer voyeuristically complicit in the raping of young, attractive women. The problem of trying to make the viewer sympathize with the rapists, and with the pimps.
Let us not say that Joss Whedon was unaware of these problems. Several points in the second half of the season show an awareness of how fraught the area he was plumbing is. But being aware doesn't mean you're free from the blame. Being aware clearly didn't keep Whedon from making mistakes.
When Lisa wrote that what she liked about "Haunted" was that it made her like Topher, I cringed. Topher, the man who operates the Dollhouse's mindwiping machines, the man who prepared these women to be sent out to sexual encounters they would have no memory of, and which they would have no serious possibility of consenting to... we are not supposed to like him. If the show makes us like him, either we are watching the show wrong, or the show is presenting him wrong. I think the show is presenting him wrong.
What I like about the Dollhouse concept is its potential to explore the idea of identity. If you can wipe your whole personality and put in a new one, what kind of core sense of self can you have? How do you know who you are when there's a wall between body and soul? And the show's final episode touches on this is some pretty clever ways- the villain threatens to 'kill' a doll by destroying the recording of her original personality. The doll would still live on as a doll, and the show has suggested that there is some core Echo personality that could never be wiped, but... losing your soul and keeping your body is not living.
But... I'm not willing to do that exploration at the cost of losing my own soul. The more I watch Dollhouse, the worse I feel about myself for watching it. As I said earlier, the show makes you complicit in the rape. If you are watching, you are deriving entertainment from this abhorrence. You are being manipulated by the camera's voyeuristic eye, manipulated by the camera's sexualized obsession with Echo. I cannot deal with it anymore.
So, much as I'd love to watch Alan Tudyk continue his impressive new role, I will not be watching Dollhouse Season 2. I will be avoiding Dollhouse Season 2.
On the other hand, Chuck was also renewed for a 13 episode season. Chuck I can watch without feeling guilty, and Chuck I can watch for Adam Baldwin's stellar post-Firefly performance. I am so, so relieved that Chuck was renewed.
Also... The suit is Robin!!!!!!! |
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