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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
A secondary schoolmate and Facebook friend, Rick Hill (http://treetrunkproductions.blogspot.com/), sent me this interesting article
***
Show or Tell: Should creative writing be taught?
By Louis Menand
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/06/08/090608crat_atlarge_menand?currentPage=all
***
Because I find the debate over “process” vs. “instruction” an important one in academia, I found the above article interesting. The article both taught me some things and confirmed some other things for me. I also, ironically, found it to be poorly written. It wandered too much and held it's thesis until the very end: after showing in some detail why writing workshops, as they are currently taught (which place the emphasis on process), are bad, the article concludes "In spite of all the reasons that they shouldn’t, workshops work." The author asserts his conclusion without much elaboration.
The article also assumes a false dichotomy: either one tries to write without the help of a writing program or one attends a writing program based on the writing “workshop” model. There is (or should be) a third option: a traditional, instructor led, Robert McKee-style approach. The article provides some interesting history as to why writing programs reject that approach, but I'm not clear why the author doesn't defend a more classical approach that actually tries to teach writing.
What follows are some random reflections on some of the article's passages (provided below in quotations with my comments following the quoted passages)....
ARTICLE: "Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring writers. People who take creative-writing workshops get course credit and can, ultimately, receive an academic degree in the subject; but a workshop is not a course in the normal sense—a scene of instruction in which some body of knowledge is transmitted by means of a curricular script. The workshop is a process, an unscripted performance space, a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart. There is one person in the room, the instructor, who has (usually) published a poem. But workshop protocol requires the instructor to shepherd the discussion, not to lead it, and in any case the instructor is either a product of the same process—a person with an academic degree in creative writing—or a successful writer who has had no training as a teacher of anything, and who is probably grimly or jovially skeptical of the premise on which the whole enterprise is based: that creative writing is something that can be taught."
MY RESPONSE: I like this opening. It sums up the situation nicely. Although the author doesn't return to the point until the last paragraph, basically the value of workshops is that they force people to write. But the value of having uninformed people critique one's work is questionable. It begs the question, if the instructor is a (supposed) expert, why does he or she insist on hiding their expertise?
I mean, some professors can be over-bearing with what they know, very true. But I liked classes where the professor really *knew* his or her stuff. Think about it, would you rather take a instruction based class on how to become President from President Obama or a process based “workshop” class from John Edwards? Or, more to the point, would you rather take the same class from John Doe who has 15 weeks of student presentations with little or no comment on them?
ARTICLE: "Around the time that Cassill delivered his renunciation, there were seventy-nine degree programs in creative writing in the United States. Today, there are eight hundred and twenty-two. Thirty-seven of these award the Ph.D."
MY RESPONSE: Clearly, this is a problem. I can't name THAT many good theology programs, and it seems unethical to me to give someone a Ph.D. if they aren't going to get a job with it. Although the point of the article is that with 822 programs, they can always teach others how to not get published too!
ARTICLE: "The argument is that teaching creative writing should always be a scandal, since it’s a scandal that suits everyone. It allows people in creative-writing departments to feel that, unlike their colleagues in the traditional academic disciplines, they are not cogs in a knowledge machine; and it allows the university to regard itself as what McGurl calls a "difference engine," devoted to producing original people as well as original research. He points out that teachers in creative-writing programs were asking "Can it be taught?" right from the start, but that virtually no one has ever tried to lay down rules for what should go on in the classroom. This is because not having an answer to the "Can it be taught?" question—keeping alive the belief that all this training and socialization never really touches the heart of the imaginative process—is what marks creative-writing programs as "creative." Academic creative-writing programs are, as McGurl puts it, examples of "the institutionalization of anti-institutionality." That’s why institutions love them. They are the outside contained on the inside."
MY RESPONSE: Why can’t there be a happy medium between accounting programs and flower-children? The business /SACS types want to quantify everything in such a way that teaching becomes rote and, to my mind, boring. But “lets all share” approaches, while popular with students, lack rigor, and thus ultimately any standards. Given the ideology of writing programs, how would you assess whether or not they are any good? Students getting published might be one criteria, but that ain't happening.
ARTICLE: "People go in at one end and they come out the other, bearing (like the Scarecrow) a piece of paper with a Latin inscription, but also bearing (unlike the Scarecrow) the impress of an institutional experience. The nature of that experience mutates as the folk wisdom of the workshop mutates—from "Show, don’t tell," which was the mantra in the nineteen-forties and fifties, to the effectively opposite mantra "Find your voice," which took over in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. McGurl suggests that these mantras encode shifting patterns of cultural assumptions—about identity, about work, about gender and class, and, of course, about what counts as good writing—and that they have had a big effect on the stories and novels that American writers have produced."
MY RESPONSE: Give the free-for-all approach, the argument here is that writing programs are good places to get a handle on cultural assumptions and attitudes. Sort of like an academic reality show!
ARTICLE: "Reflecting on yourself—your experience, your 'voice,' your background, your talent or lack of it—is what writing workshops make people do."
MY RESPONSE: i.e. — Writing programs reflect the American obsession with individualism.
ARTICLE: "Most readers of "The Program Era" are likely to be persuaded that the creative-writing-program experience has had an effect on many American fiction writers. Does this mean that creative writing can, in fact, be taught? What is usually said is that you can’t teach inspiration, but you can teach craft. What counted as craft for James, though, was very different from what counted as craft for Hemingway. What counts as craft for Ann Beattie (who teaches at the University of Virginia) must be different from what counts as craft for Jonathan Safran Foer (who teaches at N.Y.U.). There is no "craft of fiction" as such."
MY RESPONSE: The logic here is flawed. Because everyone does not agree on exactly what constitutes craft, therefore there is no such thing as craft. Not everyone agrees on economics, but there are recognizable schools of thought: Republican, cut taxes and let the rich invest and help the economy and Democrats, have the government spend money and stimulate the economy that way. Or even in Obama's own White House, his economic advisors argue over what the best course is, but they argue within a context of the shared discipline of economics, using common economic terms, and being familiar with standard economic questions and uncertainties. I'd love to go to a program where I was taught the debate between James and Hemingway over what constitutes craft. But who is doing that anymore? If everyone gets an equal voice, then there's no time for such an education.
My point is that simply because there will be debates over who exactly should or shouldn't be in the canon, doesn't mean we have to throw out the idea of a canon, and of learning from actual, great writers.
ARTICLE: "David Morley’s advice in "The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing" (2007) represents the orthodoxy: "Write any sort of rubbish that covers the outlines of what you intend: the plot outline; character sketches; description; a hackneyed sestina. Begin by freewriting and free-associating sentences until some patterns emerge that begin to intrigue you solely for the sound they make, their rustle of possibility." It’s a method that generates copy for a class to chew on, but writing that way is like throwing a lot of bricks on a pile and then being asked to organize them into a house. Surely the goal should be to get people to learn to think while they’re writing, not after they have written."
MY RESPONSE: The author here is making the case for teaching craft, and of not doing what many people like to do: use writing as a way to emotionally process or as a form of narcissism.
ARTICLE: “Gardner, in his "book "The Art of Fiction," published posthumously in 1983 (he died in a motorcycle accident in 1982), concludes with a list of writing exercises, such as:
2. Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. . . . Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways.
4b. Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do not mention the murder. 4c. Describe a landscape as seen by a bird. Do not mention the bird. 27. Using all you know, write a short story about an animal—for instance, a cow."
MY RESPONSE: Those sound interesting.... Obviously they won't teach structure, but they might help with description and perspective.
ARTICLE: "Stegner believed that the purpose of writing was to give readers what he called an "intense acquaintance" with the author. "The work of art is not a gem, as some schools of criticism would insist, but truly a lens," he explained in an essay published in 1950. "We look through it for the purified and honestly offered spirit of the artist."
MY RESPONSE: Of course this approach to writing only works if the author is an interesting person!
ARTICLE: "One of Rick Moody’s teachers at Columbia asked the class to indicate, by a show of hands, how many found Moody’s work boring. Donald Barthelme, at Houston, assigned students to buy a bottle of wine and stay up all night drinking it while producing an imitation of John Ashbery’s "Three Poems." Lish taught private writing classes that lasted from six to ten hours, a little like est training. He had students read their stories aloud to the group, and would order them to stop as soon as he disliked what he was hearing. Many students never got past the first sentence."
MY RESPONSE: Ah, the writing as boot camp approach....
ARTICLE: "The writing instructor’s arbitrariness is like the psychoanalyst’s silence: the blanker the screen, the more elusive the approval, the harder students will work to be recognized."
MY RESPONSE: I once studied with a Pulitzer Prize winning author who subscribed to this belief. Alas, he didn't realize that I wasn’t seeking his approval. I actually wanted to learn something. Indeed, I would have stuck with him, despite his disapproval, if he could have actually taught me something! But he was far more interested in trying to psychoanalyze me than trying to teach me how to write.
ARTICLE: "For, in spite of all the reasons that they shouldn’t, workshops work. . . . I don’t think the workshops taught me too much about craft, but they did teach me about the importance of making things, not just reading things. You care about things that you make, and that makes it easier to care about things that other people make.
"And if students, however inexperienced and ignorant they may be, care about the same things, they do learn from each other. I stopped writing poetry after I graduated, and I never published a poem—which places me with the majority of people who have taken a creative-writing class. But I’m sure that the experience of being caught up in this small and fragile enterprise, contemporary poetry, among other people who were caught up in it, too, affected choices I made in life long after I left college. I wouldn’t trade it for anything."
MY RESPONSE: Lame ending. If your goal of going to a writing program is to have an interesting experience, fine. But one could do that by traveling to India. Or, I recently went to Boston and had an interesting experience even there! If one's goal of going to a writing program is, well, actually to write something, then "I stopped writing poetry after I graduated" would be a bit of a problem, no?
Liberal Arts undergraduate degrees are for studying things that you'll never actually use. Terminal degrees are for careers, for learning things that you'll use the rest of your life!
XXX
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Interesting Op-Ed piece in the NY Times.
Log Line: In the USA, three groups that have been unusually successful despite lower I.Q.s are Asian-Americans, Jews, and West Indian blacks, while North Americans races, with higher I.Q.s, prove less successful ...
Article:
Rising Above I.Q
by Nicholas Kristof
In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us.
Asian-Americans are renowned or notorious for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College.
As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.
West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.
These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.
Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics.
“I think the evidence is very good that there is no genetic contribution to the black-white difference on I.Q.,” he said, adding that there also seems to be no genetic difference in intelligence between whites and Asians. As for Jews, some not-very-rigorous studies have found modestly above-average I.Q. for Ashkenazi Jews, though not for Sephardic Jews. Dr. Nisbett is somewhat skeptical, noting that these results emerge from samples that may not be representative.
In any case, he says, the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have.
One large study followed a group of Chinese-Americans who initially did slightly worse on the verbal portion of I.Q. tests than other Americans and the same on math portions. But beginning in grade school, the Chinese outperformed their peers, apparently because they worked harder.
The Chinese-Americans were only half as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, and by high school they were doing much better than European-Americans with the same I.Q.
As adults, 55 percent of the Chinese-American sample entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of whites. To succeed in a profession or as managers, whites needed an average I.Q. of about 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of just 93. In short, Chinese-Americans managed to achieve more than whites who on paper had the same intellect.
A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy the better to read the Talmud some 1,700 years before any other group.
The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.
Among West Indians, the crucial factors for success seem twofold: the classic diligence and hard work associated with immigrants, and intact families. The upshot is higher family incomes and fathers more involved in child-rearing.
What’s the policy lesson from these three success stories?
It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children. One study found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3; a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words, leaving that child at a disadvantage in school.
The next step is intensive early childhood programs, followed by improved elementary and high schools, and programs to defray college costs.
Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
X-posted to moviebuffs
(click on pic to make bigger)
*MILD/POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
Yes, they've done it again, Pixar, the studio that churns out more hits than misses (have they ever turned out a true miss??). You may have heard critics say that this is Pixar's "movie with depth" ... it does have depth, but not entirely for the reasons given by the critics, and it's more than SIMPLY its depth that makes this film so unique.
Okay, let's set aside the talking dogs and the dogs that can fly airplanes for now (it would be nice to set them aside permanently, but hey ... what can you do?). What gives this film its poignancy is more than the nearly silent montage at the beginning, the montage that sets up the story (let me note that this is quite possibly the best use of backstory I’ve ever seen in a film), what gives this film its power is its use of time. It’s rare to see a film (or even read a story) that uses time so effectively. At any given moment in the film, time — past, present, and consequently the future — is held in dramatic tension, so much so that anytime the viewer is watching “the present,” he or she, at the same time, is being reminded of the past and being asked to consider the future. That's really difficult to pull well off in a dramatic story.
Unique also is that at each of the dramatic turning points there is either little or no dialogue ... the viewer is left in “silence” to interpret the events. From a writer’s or even a director’s perspective that is a risky, dangerous move ... yet this film pulls it off beautifully and powerfully.
UP’s attention to detail is almost unmatched ... the filmmakers are obsessively attentive, down to even the most subtle gesture or nail in the wall, and almost nothing in the film is off-point (if you're wondering what is off point, see the talking dogs or the dogs that can fly airplanes comment above. And folks, if a dog can fly an airplane, he can also open a locked door!).
Is this Pixar’s best to date? Hmm ... I’m tempted to say yes, but then I’m reminded of Toy Story (some of the writers on this film also wrote Toy Story) ... so ... I don’t know, but both Toy Story and UP have taken a genre too often relegated to the realm of simple children’s tales and elevated them to art. UP is a animated tale that could rival Oscar winning dramatic films like Million Dollar Baby or even a film that deals with UP’s same themes, like About Schmidt.
If that’s not enough, and if you’ve seen UP, consider this: isn’t UP similar in many, many ways to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”? Doesn’t Carl’s journey also take him through the end of an age and ... there and back again ... in a way that leaves him forever changed :-)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
So lately I've been surfing the world of photoblogging (professional photographers who keep blogs), and today I ran across this blog: http://www.stuckincustoms.com ... the photos (a sample posted below) by photographer Trey Ratcliff are simpy stunning, and Trey writes not only of his adventures from around the world but also gives photography tips:
(click on Trey's photo of Dresden below to make bigger):
A photoblog that I try to visit everyday is http://www.jezblog.com ... also beautiful photos, and I enjoy reading Jez's journal from his daily life as well as his travels around the globe. His blog was named one of the best blogs in the world by the London Sunday Times. Below is, to date, my favorite "Jez" photo. It's a pic of NYC:
(click on Jez's photo to make bigger):
Monday, May 25, 2009
I love visiting zoos (and planetariums and museums). The bigger zoos are the better zoos, like this one in Columbus, Ohio, where they'll let you walk right up to the flamingos (hey, I hope everyone is having a HAPPY Memorial Day!):
Thursday, May 14, 2009
photo by Vasil Bachvarov
We're adopting a little girl from Bulgaria, so that means two trips to Bulgaria in the upcoming year. I'm trying to become familiar with the country and am picking out a few things I might like to see while I'm there (not to mention trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I'm going to Bulgaria ... and going to Bulgaria to pick up a 3-year-old girl).
But if all of Bulgaria looks like this ... well, I might just be tempted to stay! :-)
This is the oldest monastery in Bulgaria:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rila_Monastery
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
It's been awhile since I posted a pic of me, so here's a couple my that hubby took today ... he's trying to learn how to work my camera. I have a similar picture of me on a red car that was taken when I was 16-years-old and had just gotten a red sports car for my birthday. My husband loves that picture, so he wanted to take this pic ... yep, seriously, I need a tan! :-)
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Being a photography geek, I love looking at photos/photo blogs. Here's a link to photo blog from a guy named Amin. His photos are mostly from in and around NYC, but occasionally he posts awesome pics from the Dominican Republic too.
Today's photo (May 7, 2009) is a subway photo (that's a small version of his posted below, but you can see his bigger/better version on his blog. I posted a smaller version of his photo here because the thumbnail wouldn't work on my posted link, hope he doesn't mind.). Being a film lover, I love this pic. It's very edgy, very Film Noir! Check out him and his cool photos at:
http://www.amintorres.com/blog/
Thumbnail of Amin Torres' photo from May 7, 2009:
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Rahila is one of our students at the University where I teach. An amazing young woman! As a girl she survived civil war, Taliban rule, and living in refugee camps. She's from Afghanistan, and though she's from a rural, agricultural village --- and at age seven she was promised in a marriage contract to marry her cousin --- she managed to escape to come to study in the USA. She graduated from college just this past week. Now her goal is to make it possible for other Afghani girls to learn, study, and find freedom from their oppressive lifestyle. Check out her 100 Mothers Literacy Project at: http://www.globalgiving.com/2706
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A wonderful image posted by http://moorephotos.livejournal.com/
reminded me of this Kierkegaard quote:
The Man Who Walked Backwards
from The Parables of Kierkegaard
Why do inconsistent behaviors so often accompany exorbitant professions of good intentions?
When a man turns his back upon someone and walks away, it is so easy to see that he walks away, but when a man hits upon a method of turning his face towards the one he is walking away from, hits upon a method of walking backwards while with appearance and glance and salutations he greets the person, giving assurances again and again that he is coming immediately, or incessantly saying, "Here I am" - although he gets farther and farther away by walking backwards - then it is not so easy to become aware.
And so it is with the one who, rich in good intentions and quick to promise, retreats backwards farther and farther from the good. With the help of intentions and promises he maintains an orientation towards the good, he is turned towards the good, and with this orientation towards the good he moves backwards farther and farther away from it. With ever renewed intention and promise it seems as if he takes a step forward, and yet he not only remains standing still but really takes a step backward. The intention taken in vain, the unfulfilled promise leaves a residue of despondency, dejection, which perhaps soon again leave behind only greater languor. As a drunkard constantly requires stronger and stronger stimulation - in order to become intoxicated, likewise the one who has fallen into intentions and promises constantly requires more and more stimulation - in order to walk backward.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Okay, I should point out that I am not trying to convince someone who disliked the film that he or she should have liked it, there seems to be quite a few Watchmen haters out there, and there are a number of stylistic points that either worked or didn't.
For example, it posits a weird alternative world. The Nixon character didn't entirely work. Part of what you need to bring to the film is the very real sense that America and Russia might have blown up the world had history not allowed cooler heads to prevail. We are distanced from the Cold War now, and thermal nuclear war between superpowers might seem somewhat naive in retrospect. We're more worried about a terrorist with a small bomb, than global destruction. But if you accept a world with superpowers on the brink, and both sides contemplating a first strike as the only saving response, then you've entered into the paranoia of Alan Moore's alternative 1985. But given the necessity of this mindset, I'm glad that the movie stuck with a 1985 setting and didn't try to update it. The archetype needed to be West versus East, not West versus terrorism. The saving grace of the Cold War is that "even the Russians love their children too" to paraphrase a Sting song. I don't know if the terrorist's love their children or not, but they seem perfectly content in having them be blown up. I guess the plan is to reunite in heaven?
The film could have developed this Cold War paranoia a bit better. That said, the music worked, though the choices struck me as odd at first: The Times They Are a Changin, Sound of Silence, 99 Luftballons! But they did give the surrealness of the alternative setting a real world connection added emotion. But I can respect that other people might have found the real world music in the alternative setting clashing.
If I had a major critique of the film, it is that they did not develop Ozymandias as fully as in the comic. We are told that he is a genius, but the movie didn't really make me feel this until, perhaps, the end. I realize that they didn't want to tip off the ending, but more development of this essential character would have been nice.
That said, I think the movie overall worked. Here are guesses as to why the film might not have worked for others:
1) The number of characters.
Alan Moore's original story is very dense, and even though the film removed two major subplots---a story-within-the-story pirate comic and New York ordinary folks gathering at a corner news stand---most of the original main arc is in the movie. There is a little of the X-Men factor going on: a lot of "heros" to keep up with. But unlike the X-men, where all you really need to know is their power and what side they are on, each of the Watchmen is a developed personality. Or more to the point, a developed archetype.
I loved that each character stands for something. The basic idea is that we live in a violent world that stands on the edge of destroying itself. Ordinary humanity seems to be divided between the evil and the victims of evil. Each of the Watchmen stands for a different response to the evil of humanity.
The Comedian sees the evil of humanity and has chosen to become a parody of it. He is a Captain America figure, but instead of embodying the virtues of America, he has chosen to embody it's vices. Which adds irony to the fact that he is the one who cries when he discovers that Ozymandias is going to destroy part of the world in order to save the rest of it.
Ozymandias and Rorshach represent two opposites: a utilitarian ethic that is willing to "silence the chicken" to save the rest of the people on the *bus versus a Kantian duty-based ethic that says one must uphold the standards of justice regardless of the consequences.
(*A reference to the final episode of M*A*S*H where a woman smothers her crying baby on a crowded bus so that the North Koreans don't discover the hidden bus and kill everyone on board.)
The Owl's response to the violence is initially one of simple fear. I'll hide my head and hope the problems go away.
Dr. Manhattan embodies a Nietzschian sort of ethic: given his perspective of fate, he is literally beyond good and evil, and thus beyond humanity.
And if Dr. Manhattan is beyond humanity, it is appropriate that his tether to earth is Silk, who as the love interest for Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, and (in directly) the Comedian embodies humanity in a sense. And, perhaps in slightly sexist tones, the victim.
Note also that each of these characters, except Ozymandias, undergo transformations: The Comedian weeps for humanity, Rorshach, who was willing to die in the pursuit of justice for the sake of vengeance on the guilty, calls in the end for his own, UNJUST death for the sake of the innocents.
Owl overcomes his fear. Manhattan rediscovers his humanity. And Silk ceases being a victim.
So for a super-hero movie, the characters are surprisingly complex. That said, other possible reasons for its mixed reviews:
2) It mixes genres, it is one part super-hero movie and one part hard-boiled detective story (and one part philosophical treatise?).
This mixing of genres may confuse people, in that they may not entirely know what they are watching.
3) It is NOT really a super hero movie, in that action is not really it's driving force, e.g. there is no arch-villain exactly. I mean, there is, but we only find out in the end. So it is really more a detective film that a super-hero film.
4) In typical Alan Moore fashion, even to the extent in which it is a detective or super hero movie, it deconstructs both genres somewhat like Unforgiven did with the Western genre.
As a detective film, it inverts the ending, in that the hero gets away with it, and, to some degree, we want him too! Or at least, to the extent that we identify with Nite Owl, we want Ozymandias to keep his lie.
And as a super-hero film, it deconstructs expectations. This is most evident with the Comedian, but none of the characters are without flaw. Note even the irony of the title: Watchmen. The Watchmen never actually exist. They had too many internal disagreements to ever form a working group.
Also, in the end, the story never tells us who is right. Was Ozy? Rorshach? What would you have done at the end of the film? How do you respond to the violence in the world? Moore, the uncredited co-creator, asks, but doesn't answer these questions. That made me think. And the film, including the extreme violence, got under my skin. It's rare for a film to get under my skin. Which to me is why I appreciate the film, even if "enjoy" is not quite the term I'd use for it.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I x-posted this to Photographers ... I'm hoping Yobubba sees it. He's bird photographer extraordinaire (check out his photos: http://yobubba.livejournal.com/). He inspired me to try some bird photos myself.
UPDATE: TRYING A NEW LINK, the old one wasn't working. Hopefully the pic will show up this time:
Monday, February 16, 2009
I went to see The Wrestler last night (the pic is from last night's trip to the theater) --- and I know that some of you are going to disagree, but of all the best picture nominees for 2008, I think this is the best of the bunch. In fact, it's the best film that I've seen this season.
It's tightly written. Everything is on point --- literally, there's not a misstep in the entire film. While its focus is not as broad as Slumdog or Milk --- in that sense it's a very small, even quiet, film --- what it does, it does masterfully.
Everything is on point from the setting/images, to the actors (Rourke turns in the peformance of his life), to the music (every song has been carefully chose and adds to theme), to the world it creates, to the themes it explores --- and these themes, I believe, have more depth than either Slumdog or Milk (yes, I'm aware that Milk is limited by history).
Although it's sure to be passed over at Oscar time --- Slumdog is getting all the media attention --- The Wrestler, a near perfect film, is my pick for film of the year :-)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
So I've been sitting here for six months waiting for Milk to come to my town (the little artsy theater here has had the "coming soon" poster and ads up since August 2008. Can you believe it?). The movie "pickins" have been very slim this year . . . but then suddenly, yesterday, all in one day, MILK, FROST/NIXON, and THE WRESTLER show up . . .
Unfortunately, I'm overwhelmed with classes right now, so I'm starting with MILK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unu-9vM9VZw
Yes! Go Sean Penn & Emile Hirsh! Hopefully I can catch the other two before they leave . . . *great* movies don't stay around here for very long (neither do great art exhibits, or great theater shows) . . . yep, I live in a town where it seems most people think films like "Mall Cop" are masterpieces and "World Wrestling" is art :-(
(And yes, it is driving me crazy!)
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Elizabeth Alexander’s Inaugural Poem
Praise Song for the Day
Each day we go about our business
walking past each other catching
each others' eyes or not
about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise.
All about us is noise
and bramble, thorn, and din,
each one of our ancestors
on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem,
darning a hole in a uniform,
patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying
to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello boom box,
harmonica,
voice.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words,
words spiny or smooth,
whispered or declaimed;
words to consider,
reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways
that mark the will of someone,
and then others,
who said, "I need to see what's on the other side;
I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe;
we walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks,
raised the bridges,
picked the cotton,
and the lettuce,
built brick by brick
the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean
and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle;
praise song for the day!
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by "First do no harm,"
"Take no more than you need."
What if the mightiest word is love,
love beyond marital, filial, national.
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle,
this winter air,
anything can be made,
any sentence begun.
On the brink,
on the brim,
on the cusp,
praise song for
walking forward
into that light.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
It RARELY snows in my town --- having moved here from Notre Dame, Indiana, where we were under 3 feet of snow half of the year every year --- I joke that I live in perpetual summer, but not yesterday. Yesterday it looked like this (click to make bigger):
That's my neighbor's little dog . . . alas though, snow doesn't last long around here. It's already melting . . .
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
Merry Christmas!!
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