Film Review: Black Swan

I've decided to step away from my usual wordy style for this review of Black Swan.  Instead, I'm going to break it down into bite-sized morsels for you, the person deciding whether or not to see Black Swan.

What's it about?

A ballet dancer with a monster stage mom finally gets her big chance to dance the lead in her company's production of Swan Lake.  She struggles to cope with the nuances the role requires and with the rising star of a rival dancer.  Sometimes, she hallucinates. 

Should I see it?

Do you like any of the following: Darren Aronofsky, stalking Natalie Portman, or Mulholland Drive? 
Then, yes, definitely. 
Are you a fan of dark indie movies?  Do you like being in the know about the various movies that will be nominated come awards "season"?  
Yes, probably. 
Are you just interested because you heard about that, ahem, specific scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis?  
Maybe just check that part out on youtube or something. 
Are you at all squeamish? 
Emphatically, skip it!
Are you my parents?
How about a nice viewing of Tangled?

Anything else I should know?
 
- A fun game to play during the movie is deciding whether Natalie Portman is actually a good actress or if she is just playing the cuckoo bird version of what she normally plays.  Either way, you'll enjoy the performance if you've always thought she was talented or if you're usually annoyed by her.  I think she and Aronofsky are playing up her image to make everything that happens that much creepier.  Enjoy the somewhat tongue-in-cheek casting of the fading star she's replacing in the ballet.

- Hey, Mila Kunis is totally talented!  Who knew she was going to have a career after That 70s Show?  Speaking of, Topher Grace appears to have made a new movie, but it's set in the 80s.  Some day, that poor man will catch up to the present day.

- I'm not much of a ballet fan, so it's hard for me to say whether the actual dancing that occurs makes this worth it as a ballet movie.  I'm just going to assume this is exactly what happens every time a new ballet star gets her big break.

- Darren Aronofsky is an amazing director, but I did think this one occasionally crossed the line from disturbing to campy.  I'm a firm believer in the concept that never seeing the scary thing is much scarier than actually seeing it. 

- Seriously, this movie is very gross.  There are moments that will make you wince.  These moments will then play on repeat for you when you try to sleep.

- If you go into this movie expecting it to be weird, as I did, it will still turn out to be weirder than you were expecting. 

I still feel conflicted.  Are you glad you saw it?
Absolutely, yes.  It's riveting.  You might look away for those gross parts, but the movie will grab your attention from start to finish.

On fandom and children's books

In my last entry, I said I hoped that it would be the first and last time I wrote about reality programming because I dislike it so much.  Conversely, I love today's topic so much that I'm going to have to refrain from writing about it more often.  One does not have a brief conversation about Harry Potter with the Media Reader.  Sure, I can restrain myself, but should whoever I'm talking to demonstrate even the most cursory knowledge of the books, I'm off to the races.  Get ready for some intensely nerdy discussions of wandlore, friend!

The strange thing?  I've never understood the overwhelming appeal of the books.  They're well within the realm of what I would ordinarily be interested in reading.  What is it about them that draws in millions and millions of people, who would not, unlike certain bloggers, have read an embarrassing number of books with swords on the front cover?

Yes, it's well-written, the characters are fun to know, and J.K. Rowling does a great job of developing her whole epic tale of good versus evil across all seven books.  But how many other books, movies, TV shows, etc are of equally good, if not better, quality?

My theory?  I think I (and many of these other readers) like the books so much in part because they're so popular.  I don't mean in the sense that we all want to look cool and like the trendy thing (sadly, I don't think books are going to become the tiny dogs of the future and we'll all want to be spotted with them).  I mean because we all, secretly, want to geek out to a massive degree together.  How often have you started talking about something you really liked, only to realize midway through the conversation that the person you are talking to is politely amused by how much you know about the topic?  And more rarely, how happy are you when the person you're talking to knows exactly what you're talking about?

Usually, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other if hordes of other people have read a book I like.  It's always nice to have someone else to talk to about a book, but it's not like the book is running for governor of Massachusetts and I'm concerned that if not enough people like the book, we'll get stuck with some lame Republican book.  Thank goodness.

With Harry Potter, this is different.  Finding another Harry fan is always fun.  And for the movies?  It's like going to a stadium concert.  The spectacle and the crowd are just as important as the actual music.  Normally I could get all caught up about the terrible acting and bad writing, but for Harry Potter movies, I just turn the critic off.  There's something approaching magical about sitting in a sold out movie theater, having waited and waited for the movie, and then hearing that telltale music start. 

It's why it's more fun to watch your favorite baseball team with other fans.  You may not have been one of the millions of people (entire Media Reader family included) who went to see the seventh Harry Potter movie recently, but I bet you can think of some other experience in your life when you were just happy to be around other fans. There will always be something special about being nerds together, whether it's Harry Potter nerds, Red Sox nerds, or vegan baking nerds.

The one and only time (I hope) that I write about reality programming

I remember, back in 2000, a little show called "Survivor" went on the air and became a huge hit.  The supremacy of "Friends" as the most popular show on television was challenged.  They aired special extra-long episodes to compete.  Doesn't that seem like a quaint, long-ago time?

Of course, in the years since, reality programming has taken off with a vengeance.  It's difficult to remember life before the Snookis and Jon Gosselins of the world.  The genre itself has ballooned beyond all expectations. 

Here's the thing: I understand why they're entertaining.  They have the same dramas, the same villains, good guys, bad good guys, and good bad guys that any show has, but with the added tension of it all being "real."  This is where reality programming loses me.  I can't get over the way these shows are presenting reality, because it's never reality.  Dramatic angles are used, portentous music swells up, and we all know situations are set up.  And worst of all, people are encouraged to act like the lowest possible version of themselves, because they know it guarantees them further fame and fortune.  

The studios are complicit in this celebration of terrible behavior.  They know it brings in viewers.  How else to explain the way people who seem to lag behind other contestants stay on reality competitions for most of the season?  How many shows have you seen where someone who acted like a complete jerk stayed on, week after week after week?

This brings me to the little drama that has been unfolding over the course of this season of "Dancing with the Stars."  According to the official site, Bristol Palin has been at the bottom of the leaderboard for 5 consecutive weeks.  I'm not really sure what a leaderboard is, but to me, that sounds like she's been the worst dancer on a dancing competition for five weeks and is somehow still competing.  I don't mean to group her in with the aforementioned jerks.  As far as I know, this isn't one of the shows that encourages childish behavior, but her continued survival on the show does seem to indicate that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Only in the rarefied halls of reality programming does she qualify as a star.  She is most famous for being the underage pregnant offspring of a failed vice presidential candidate.  Can anyone name another famous offspring of a failed vice presidential candidate?  This is supposed to be an arts blog, but there are times when the political world and the entertainment world intersect, for better or for worse.  Palin was seen practicing in a Tea Party shirt, so as far as I'm concerned, she's making this fair game as a topic.

You may have noticed that the page I linked to above says that more votes were received for the last show than any previous show at that stage in the competition.  Do we really think it's because Bristol is such a fine dancer?  I think, unequivocably, the judges have indicated that no, she's not.  It doesn't take a paranoid conspiracy theorist to guess who is voting for her.

There's got to be some sense from these voters that helping her win is in some way proving their point about Tea Party values.  As someone with political views that I'll readily admit would be anathema to the average Tea Partier, I'm going to go ahead and say, that's not why her victory would aggravate me.

It's aggravating because, like so many other reality show contestants, she's being rewarded despite a demonstrable lack of skill.  I'm going to go a little further here - it goes against the very nature of the Tea Party for her to succeed.  Why are all of these Joe the Plumbers so supportive of someone who is riding in on her mother's coattails?  They claim to love small businesses, the average people, the decidedly non-elite.  Look, someday, young Bristol may take over the world.  Right now, she's the daughter of someone rich and famous and she spends her free time telling teenagers not to have sex.  

I can't change the nature of reality programming.  People aren't going to stop rubbernecking at car accidents on the highway.  What I can do is start a Facebook group, which I think the Betty White phenomenon has shown us is the single most effective way to get things done in this country.  It's called "Nobody puts Baby in a corner".  It's dedicated to helping Jennifer Grey win "Dancing with the Stars".  Jennifer is 50.  She's been in two classic movies that are still in heavy rotation on TV 25 years later.  She's been in the entertainment business since 1979. And to top it off, she's a trained dancer and has been getting high scores all season. 

Let's separate our politics and dancing competitions again.  Join the group.  Next week, vote for Jennifer Grey and prove that experience and skill are what win reality competitions, instead of high drama and red state/blue state bickering.

I have joined the 21st century

Kind of, anyway.  I created a twitter account for the blog.  It's @theMediaReader.  Feel free to follow it if your weekly dose of Media Reader is not enough.  Or if you want to watch me struggle to communicate in 140 characters or less.

5-6-7-8 ROCK

Last week, I went to two concerts.  Both of them featured a two-person band of one man and one woman, playing piano and drums.  It seems like these bands should sound similar, but in fact, they could not really be too much farther apart on the musical spectrum.  The bands were the Dresden Dolls and Matt and Kim.  For the uninitiated, here is sample one and here is sample two.

To be totally truthful, I am a person who loves music and judges people by their musical taste, yet knows virtually nothing about it.  I can't carry a tune to save my life, I play musical instruments only adequately, and I can sing along to a song for years without ever noticing what it's about.  It's with some trepidation that I'm currently trying to write about music.  But I think music occupies the same particularly intense place for many of us.  We may not be able to speak with authority about key changes or album themes, but each of us has felt that moment where a song reaches right into you and touches something primal, despite whatever else might be going on at the time.

It's the sort of thing that comes up when you're standing at a concert amidst a group of people dressed as vampires and you're wearing an Ann Taylor Loft shirt and thinking rather critically that Amanda Palmer really shouldn't need a lyrics sheet to get through this show, when you find yourself feeling, deeply and profoundly, that giving in to all of your most melodramatic impulses would probably result in a more meaningful life.

Or you may be noticing that the median age of the other concertgoers is about 18 and you start to think, am I aging out of concerts?  Will all of my concerts after this be sit-down affairs where no one yells "Woooo!" after the exciting parts?  Am I too old to even be aware of what genre of music this opening act is?  (There was a lot of sampling, yelling random phrases, frenetic dancing, and neon clothing.  The whippersnappers around me got all into it, bopping around, probably thinking things like, "This band is part of the prog rock electronica grunge movement, but their sound hasn't fully evolved yet."  I tried some mild bopping, but mostly thought depressing thoughts about when I had stopped being a whippersnapper myself.)

And then Matt and Kim came on.  If you haven't attended a Matt and Kim concert, you are missing out on some of the most exuberantly brainless fun out there.  The crowd started jumping the minute they started playing and continued with only brief pauses straight through to the end.  Afterward, my old lady knees made it very clear that that had been a terrible idea, but in the moment?  How often do you really dance like no one's watching? 

You may not be a fan of either of those bands, but now is probably a great time to listen to that one song you've heard a million times before that still always makes you pause whatever you're doing, simply to think, "Exactly.  That is exactly how I feel. "

Do sitcoms accurately represent today's friendships?

Remember, back in the days of yon (sometime between yore and yesterday) when you had to analyze passages for English class?  Today, I would like to do the same for David Brooks' column "The Flock Comedies", which ran in The New York Times on October 22nd. 

His basic point (at least in my opinion) is that TV sitcoms used to be about families ("The Dick Van Dyke Show", "All in the Family", "the Cosby Show") and now they are all about groups of friends, which is reflective of our lives today.  Also, we only have group friendships and are overly concerned with letting our groups mix. 

The examples he sites about sitcoms all being about groups of friends come from an article by Neal Gabler in The Los Angeles Times.  To quote directly, as he did, “Over the last 20 years, beginning with ‘Seinfeld,’ and moving on through ‘Friends,’ ‘Sex and the City’ and more recently ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ‘Glee,’ ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ ‘How I Met Your Mother,’ ‘Cougartown’ and at least a half-dozen other shows, including this season’s newbies ‘Raising Hope’ and ‘Better With You,’ television has become a kind of friendship machine dispensing groups of people in constant and intimate contact with one another.”

This is pretty much where Mr. Brooks lost me.  I mean, I was already shaking my head, but that was the part where I may have rolled my eyes in irritation.  If, unlike Brooks, you watch any TV, you'd know that "Desperate Housewives" and "Glee" are not sitcoms.   Additionally, "Desperate Housewives", "Cougartown", "Raising Hope", and "Better With You" are all about families, though the first two do have a strong focus on friendships.  I actually wondered if he'd read the rest of Gabler's article, which has more to do with the way we lack connection in our lives than it does the replacement of nuclear families with friends.

I scanned through the listings for the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) and, assuming that a sitcom is any scripted show that is intended to make people laugh and is half an hour in length, I found 19 different sitcoms on the air in the span between Tuesday, the 26th, and Sunday, the 6th.  Of these, three were what I'd call workplace comedies, four were about groups of friends, and 13 were based around families.  So, claiming that "Today’s shows are often about groups of unrelated friends who have the time to lounge around apartments, coffee shops and workplaces exchanging witticisms about each other and the passing scene." is not exactly true.  Also, workplace sitcoms have been around for years and they have reflected a true aspect of modern society for just as long: if you work full time, you spend at least as much time with coworkers as you do with your family.  It is perfectly normal and not particularly a new and different thing to be friendly with your coworkers.

Of the four I categorized as sitcoms about friends ("Community", "How I Met Your Mother", "The Big Bang Theory", and "Rules of Engagement"), I think only "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Big Bang Theory" are really shows about a group of friends in the sense that Brooks means.  I would not call 2 out of 19 "treating friendship norms thoroughly."

The rest of Brooks' column gets into that part about segregating (awkward word choice there, David) our friend groups and how we don't have one-on-one friendships anymore.  I think his point there is somewhat half-baked as well (really, what do geo-location apps have to do with "trading flexibility and convenience for true commitment"?), but it was more the lazy categorization of TV as reflective of today's friendships that got to me.

Don't get me wrong.  I loves me some TV.  While I do think there are shows that make some effort to be recognizably in the here and now, for the most part, I don't watch most sitcoms and feel struck by how they've hit at the inner nature of how my friendships work now, in these crazy times of the Facebook and the Twitter and the kids with their loud music.  Seriously, they're ruining their hearing by listening to their ipods so loudly on public transit.

A topic for another day might be why television can be the most traditional form of media, but when it comes down to it, I think we're all still waiting to see what this new era of electronic friendship and connection means.  Someday, sitcoms will no doubt reflect all of that, but for now, they seem to be sticking with what works best.  Have you heard the one about the crazy mother-in-law, the bratty teenage daughter, and the goofy dad?  You can, on 13 different shows, every week.

Ladies, this one's for you

I don't quite remember where I first heard of the Bechdel rule.  I'll read almost anything about movies, so the possibilities are vast.  I have come to believe it is one of those things where, once you learn about it, you can't stop thinking about it.  For instance, say you were about to enter a room full of people you didn't know and someone told you, just as you were entering, "Hey, one of the people in there looks like a celebrity."  Would you remember what you were going in there to talk about or would you be staring at everyone, trying to see a celebrity? Except instead of spotting celebrities, you're spotting gender disparities.  One of those is probably more fun than the other.

At any rate, I'm now totally obsessed with this rule, which might be clear from the fact that this is the second time I've brought it up.  Why am I so obsessed?  Because so many movies fail to pass the rule.  For those of you who don't feel like watching this video describing it, the rule was first mentioned in Alison Bechdel's comic, "Dykes to Watch Out For," in 1985.  To pass the rule, a movie has to have:

1. At least two female characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides men.

If you're curious, there is (of course) a website tracking this in movies.  But for now, let's focus on why this concept is giving me heartburn.  Look at that list again.  It's a short list.  If you are a female-type person, think: when was the last time you went a day without talking to another woman?  And how often were you talking about men?  If you're a feller, think about hanging out with some ladies.  Were they able to discuss topics besides men?  Let's hope so.  How is it possible that ANY movies don't pass this rule?  Unless the movie is taking place in a men's prison, you can bet there should be more than one woman in there.

This is on my mind a bit at the moment because I saw the movie "RED" over the weekend.  Or, as my coworker put it, "the old people movie?"  Yes, dear reader, I saw the old people movie.  It wasn't Citizen Kane, but it wasn't bad.  Notably, it features Helen Mirren and Mary-Louise Parker.  If you are a person of good taste (and you must be, since you're here.  Zing!) then you probably know an important fact about those two ladies: namely, that they are awesome.  Between the two of them, they have approximately a million acting awards and nominations.  See exhibit A and exhibit B.  One might even say they are titans of both stage and screen.  They have one scene together in RED.  Do you know what they talk about in that one scene together?  Spoiler alert!  They talk about Mary-Louise Parker's relationship with Bruce Willis.  In the movie up to that point, Mary-Louise has (continued spoilers about the old people movie to follow) been kidnapped, tied to a bed, and shot at, not to mention become privy to a whole slew of confidential information about the CIA, the vice president, and the likelihood of entirely insane people being armed to the teeth.  Hey, it's an action movie.

A more important question might be, does Mary-Louise Parker talk about anything besides her love life in this movie?  The answer is probably no, but I can't say for sure because even I eventually stop contemplating feminist concepts during movies and get distracted by the many explosions and thinking things like, hey, isn't that the guy from Nip/Tuck?

As I said, it's an action movie.  I'm not looking for Mary-Louise and Helen to have an in-depth conversation about the challenges facing women today while hiding in a snow drift and staking out a house.  But doesn't it seem equally ridiculous to have a heart-to-heart about their love lives at that point?

The questionable logic of action movies aside, how is it possible that so many screenwriters have no interest in writing a simple conversation between two women that doesn't revolve around relationships?  I can't say that my conversations with my female friends are identical to the ones men have around each other, but I can say this: we talk about everything under the sun.  It is laughable to say, in regard to a two hour long movie, no, there are no scenes of two women talking to each other about something besides men.  Or even worse, there is only one woman in this movie.

To touch briefly on a theme of my first post, when you are working in a medium in which anything is possible, there is no excuse for pretending all stories are about 6 men and one woman who will fall in love with one of the men.  I think we can all agree, that world sounds pretty grim for anyone besides that one guy with the love interest.

Three to tango?

For today's blog, let's start out by traveling back in time to a simpler year: 1998.  The biggest national issue was whether or not the president hooked up with a 23 year old, rather than, say crushing unemployment or people comparing the president to a Nazi because of his healthcare reform plan.  Also notable: a little show called "Dawson's Creek" went on the air.  Like many other young people, I watched it for awhile.  I think I gave up on it at some point in high school, but for awhile there, it was the hottest show around for the young folks.  These days, you more often hear of it as a reference point for soapy teen dramas.  To me, it stands out as the beginning of something significant: the overwrought love triangle in teenage entertainment.

I know, they didn't invent the love triangle.  It's been a dramatic device since the beginning of dramatic devices.  I didn't watch "90210", but I'm sure they did their share of love triangles as well.  It's more that "Dawson's Creek" is the first time I can remember where the love triangle became the single overriding storyline for the show.  Now, it's nearly a requirement.  Off the top of my head, the following are shows/books (some "intended" for teens, some not) that feature a love triangle as one of the most significant plotlines:

"Gossip Girl"
"The Vampire Diaries"
"Gilmore Girls"
"Life Unexpected"
Twilight
The Hunger Games
"Grey's Anatomy"
"Glee"
"Bones"
"Community"
"The Office"


I'm sure anyone reading this is already thinking of other instances.  What I find most interesting is that most shows/books that are all about the love triangle are geared towards women.  Not exclusively, of course.  However, it does seem like the people behind these know that that is a surefire way to reel in female viewers.  When did that become the fantasy of choice for so many women?  I don't remember voting for that. 

It's often set up the same way.  There's the obvious choice (the Dawson).  Usually, the apex of the triangle (the Joey) starts out in love with the Dawson.  The Dawson is a noble do-gooder who is initially inaccessible, either by being too dense to notice that his best friend looks like Katie Holmes, or by, say, being a vampire.  Once the initial obstacle is surpassed, the Joey and the Dawson get together.  That's when the Pacey comes swooping in.  The Pacey is generally "bad" (mildly rebellious), but with a heart of gold.  Another way to differentiate him from the Dawson is that the Dawson is entirely humorless.  The Pacey is funny.  He encourages the Joey to let loose a little bit.  Jealousy, fights, and longing looks ensue, the decision is drawn out until the end of the trilogy, series run, what have you, and then the Joey makes her final choice, for reals this time.  Generally, the Dawson gets picked when that initial romance has been set up as a true love situation.  Like, say, Twilight or "The Vampire Diaries", or even "Grey's Anatomy."  If nobody has suggested that the Dawson is the true love, the Joey is free to pick the Pacey.  As she did.  Because when it comes down to it, unless we're saying true love, we're going to pick the dude with the personality.

The love triangle is inhibiting.  No matter how many years go by, the Joey is only ever going to be picking between the Dawson and the Pacey.  Other men may show up and toss their tousled locks dramatically, but they don't stand a chance.  Instead, it's years and years of wavering between the same two people.  Imagine being friends with these people.  If I had been friends with the Joey, I would have given her up as a lost cause after about six months of that nonsense.  I can only be a sympathetic friend who wants to hear about your relationship troubles for so long.  At least have the courtesy to throw some variety in there.

Like I said, it's not perfect.  "Community" has fun with this by having the more obvious pair in the love triangle (Jeff and Britta) both be terrible people.  The less obvious choice (Annie) is more of a Dawson.  The general model stands, though.  If the Dawson is the true love, he gets picked.  If he's not, the bad boy gets picked.

The weirdest part of all of this?  I can almost always figure out who's going to get picked, but I have still watched/read all the items on that list.  And that is why I am perpetuating the Love Triangle Monster That Will Never Die. 

When I decided to write about love triangles, I wanted to talk about why women are so obsessed with them, but I'd gone on for awhile and never really got into what I saw as the reasons behind the whole phenomenon.  You know, something about how part of the point of the female fantasy love triangle is being relatively chaste with the Pacey until a final choice is made.  But when I mentioned my idea for a love triangle post to my wise friend Caryn, her comment was, people want what they can't have.  I can't really argue with that, so there you have it.  Twilight is a multi-million dollar phenomenon because of how fun it is to watch people want what they can't have.

Media Repeater

I am one of those people who rereads and rewatches.  Many people are not.  They read a book once and no matter how much they like it, they don't pick it up again.  Me?  I've seen the 2005 Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice an embarrassing number of times.  The line "My small rectory abuts her estate" will strike me funny nearly every time, so long as the viewings are spaced out enough.

Normally, this obsessive fandom does not extend to plays.  For one thing, plays tend to be much more expensive.  For another, they're not nearly as accessible.  Just because you'd like to see a play again does not mean there is a production nearby.  That said, if anyone makes me see West Side Story again, I'm just going to take a two hour nap.

Recently, I had the opportunity to see a play for the second time in a year.  I first saw Sarah Ruhl's In The Next Room (yes, the vibrator play) on Broadway last year.  Last week, a friend told me he'd gotten free tickets to see the Boston run and wanted to know if I'd like to join him.  I said yes, of course, because that should be everyone's policy when offered free tickets to a show.  I felt some buyer's remorse later, though.  Would it still be fun if I knew what was coming? 

What happened was that I learned again how much difference actors and staging can make.  When I reread a book, the only change to the experience is my own growth as a reader, which can lead to either a greater appreciation for the writerly craft involved or a permanent shelving, due to the now exposed and creaking machinery of the more graceless plot twists.  The experience of seeing a play is entirely up to the director and actors.  Seeing a new production of In The Next Room was almost like seeing a new play.

I should have known.  While waiting for my friend to meet me for the show, I passed the time by reading some of the review quotes on the poster for the play.  One of them, a quote from the Boston Phoenix review, called the play a "cross between I Love Lucy and Desperate Housewives."  That didn't sound remotely like the occasionally funny, often deeply sad play I'd seen and it wasn't quite what I saw in Boston, but it wasn't far off.  The actual review is more nuanced than that pull quote would suggest, but pull quotes are always like that. 

In the Boston production, they played up every moment of slapstick they could.  Granted, the play is about using vibrators to treat hysteria, so there are inevitably going to be moments of slapstick and comedy mixed in with the larger message about women in the 1890s.  The acting was good, but I recognized why the Phoenix reviewer referred to the two female leads as Lucy and Ethel.  The actress in the Boston play was almost winking at the audience.  It was funny, but it also kept events so much on the surface that the sadder moments that take place in the play's second half didn't earn the degree of heartbreak that I thought they should.  In the New York version, they didn't get as many laughs from the audience, but I cared a lot more about what was happening to everyone. 

Or did I?  Did I give the Boston production a worse review simply because my viewing experience was informed by my memory of a different production that I liked a great deal?  I've come around to thinking that ultimately, this is the biggest reason to see or not see a show a second time.  If you can enjoy the play itself solely on its own merits, you are ready to be a grade-A repeat theatergoer.  But if you're like me and you tend to see plays only as the sum of their parts, you're going to get cranky when acting choices, direction, and set design fluctuate. 

This isn't exactly groundbreaking for anyone who sees plays frequently, but for someone who can't resist the re-view, it's been interesting to think about the difference a live performance makes.  When the repeat experience is a static piece of media, I enjoy it a lot more.  The verdict?  Clearly, my friend should take me to more free shows.

Why isn't "The Social Network" better?

If you haven't seen "The Social Network" or read any of the plethora of articles written about it yet, be warned: there are some mild spoilers about what happens in it below.

In the fall of 2002, Mark Zuckerberg and I both moved to Massachusetts to attend college.  Today, one of us has an English degree and one of us is the youngest billionaire on the planet, a phrase I've seen used to describe Zuckerberg in nearly every article about "The Social Network."  On the plus side, no one will be making a movie of the stupid or heartless things I did when I was 19.

The movie has been getting all kinds of accolades.  It has a 97% positive rating on rottentomatoes.com and I've seen a few "best picture" predictions tossed in there. Is it wrong to think it's not terribly original?  The story of people getting thrown under the bus in business dealings is not exactly a new one.  For someone as creative as Zuckerberg, it was awfully uncreative of him to screw over the people who helped him get his start.  Maybe I'm the only one here, but I wasn't exactly shocked to know this about him.  This is someone who has been regularly selling my privacy to the highest bidder.  What's interesting about Mark Zuckerberg is not that he's ruthless.  How often have you seen a movie or TV show where the successful businessman turned out to be a jerk?  What's interesting about Mark Zuckerberg is that he changed the world.

The movie is certainly well-made and it has its clever touches.  I particularly enjoyed hearing world famous recording artist Justin Timberlake talking about creating Napster.  The Winklevoss twins, as played by Armie Hammer, were both magnetic and pathetic.  But the movie depends too heavily on trying to tug our heartstrings about the way Eduardo Saverin got forced out of the company.  It's upsetting and rotten that he helped get the company started and ended up shut out, but in the film's depiction of Zuckerberg, it's hard not to wonder why he would ever have gotten involved with him in the first place.  Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg displays almost no traces of personality or affection for Saverin.  Instead, Aaron Sorkin gives us some code to explain him.  Girlfriend who dumps him just prior to the creation of Facebook and who we are expected to believe he is still pining for years later.  Final clubs, to represent all the privilege that he can't reach, that he needs to invent Facebook to reach.  He was attending Harvard University.  He was brilliant.  There was no question that he was going to be very successful.  Why would a hacker who was about to change the way we all communicated be interested in something as old-world and staid as the final clubs?  And why would he think inventing Facebook was going to impress a group like that?  It's reductive and simplistic to say A + B = C for something like this.  Unless A = money and B = more money.

What is the biggest problem with this movie?  It's called "The Social Network" and doesn't have anything to do with social networking.  Not that I needed to see a movie about people stalking their exes online, but I was able to glean from a few small (read: heavy-handed) hints dropped throughout the movie that I was supposed to be struck by the profundity of how the man who invented a website to bring us closer together has no friends.  Instead, what I saw was a story about a guy who gets rich and ditches the people who got him there.  Did Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher miss the last five years where Facebook changed all of our lives?  Did they watch Citizen Kane too many times?  Where is the recognition that there is something more interesting about Facebook than simply the fact that it caught on really quickly?  There is a reason this story about a fight over money and creative credit got made into a movie and not any of the other stories like it, but this movie doesn't know what it is.

I recognize that that's not the story they wanted to tell and that what we have is without question a movie of quality.  I just think there could have been a more exciting movie than this one about a group of people who are already millionaires fighting for a bigger piece of the billionaire pie.  In the words of a certain famous musician, cry me a river.

Perhaps The Villain Is That Gentleman With The Mustache

Monday's blog about the old-fashioned gender roles in fantasy novels got me thinking about other overused plot devices that tend to aggravate me enough that they distract me from whatever I'm watching.  This is a list of the ones that really get my goat, as the kids say.

1. Marriage is awful!
Epitomized by a shrill wife and a dumb henpecked husband. (Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan in Going the Distance,  Jaime Pressly and Jon Favreau in I Love You Man)  Is this the only way married couples are funny?

2. The Wait, What? 
Starting stories in media res, that is, after some sort of game-changing event, only to immediately switch back to events however many days or hours earlier. (V, Firefly, Fight Club, How I Met Your Mother)  Otherwise known as, let's start things off with a cliffhanger so you can't leave!

3. The Comical Incompetent
Someone who does not cook often decides to cook a meal.  They are not just unskilled, they are suddenly without any common sense. (Friends, Bridget Jones' Diary)  Look, I'm not a good cook.  But since I can read, I can follow a recipe.  So can everyone else.

4. The Kevin James 
Heavyset, not so Brad Pitt-esque man, skinny, hot wife/love interest.  (According to Jim, the Simpsons, Family Guy, Knocked Up, Superbad, everything Kevin James: King of Queens, Hitch, The Dilemma, Grown-Ups)  Not to call out Mr. James as a complete Quasimodo, but did he really need to be married to Winona Ryder in his newest movie?  It's not so much that I think it's unimaginable that a hot girl would like a slightly shlubby dude, it's more that I don't understand why the girl has to be so very hot.  I know, I know, it's a male fantasy.  But would it be impossible to cast women who are a little more normal looking?

5. The Stifler
Totally pleasant lead character mysteriously has completely repellent friends.  Often found in comedies. (The Sweetest Thing, American Pie, the Hangover) I think this is usually an effort to make the leading man/lady more appealing.  But come on.  We all judge the person we're dating by their friends.

6. The Feminist's Delight
Ladies give up their careers in order to be with the man they love.  (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Fool's Gold, 27 Dresses) It's like a code.  The moment you see a woman rushing around, talking on a Blackberry and holding a disposable coffee cup, you can just assume that she is about to learn the importance of giving up on her career so she can make it to her new boyfriend's adorable nephew's teeball game.

7. The Best-Laid Plan
One last heist and then I'm getting out of this business, I swear! (The Italian Job, The Score) Could the possibility exist that the costs of that final heist will outweigh the rewards? There are more examples of this one, but frankly I find this concept so dull that I usually can't make myself go see this type of movie.

8. Men Don't Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses
Lady takes off glasses, is suddenly more attractive.  (She's All That, My Big Fat Greek Wedding) Ahem.  As a lady who wears glasses, I am insulted, insulted I tell you, by the implication that glasses don't make you look good.  Also, who wants to put contacts in every morning at 7am?  Not this girl.

9. Diagnosis: Consumption
Cough once, die in twenty minutes. The only example I want to list here is Moulin Rouge, since this is a spoilery plot device, but really, we all know this one.  If you're watching a period film, the person who coughs has a dramatic deathbed scene fast approaching.  I mean, plenty of people had tuberculosis in Ye Olden Times, but there were so very many ways to die back then.  I'd like to see more people dying of cholera.  I will also accept snake bite, because I enjoy Oregon Trail references.

10. Abstinence, kids!
Couple gets together, man dies, woman is left pregnant.  Also, having sex once gets you pregnant.  Again, I'm only going to list one example here (Cold Mountain) since this is a big spoiler.  But honestly.  I think this is the one that annoys me most.  Currently.  As is probably clear by now, I'm easily irritated.

What about you?  Which over-used plot device really gets your blood boiling?

Fear not, fair maiden. A cliché has come to save you.

Recently, I traveled to Edinburgh with a friend.  We'd just done the obligatory Edinburgh Castle tour and were more or less wandering the city on our way to a radical feminist bookstore my friend had read about in my Lonely Planet.  For anyone still reading after that bit about the radical feminist bookstore, there is a lot to see in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival, which is when we were there.  I think there were more people juggling at any given time than there were people just walking about with no dangerous objects hurtling through the air in front of them.  In some areas you couldn't go ten feet without being handed a flyer by an earnest youth asking you to come see a free comedy show.  Somehow in the midst of all the excitement, my friend spotted another bookstore.  Upon closer inspection, it was a very particular kind of bookstore.  No, not THAT kind of bookstore.  It was all fantasy and scifi books.

So, no beating around the bush: I am totally unable to resist fantasy books.  I started reading them in junior high and even though these days I mostly read what we might call non-genre fiction, if someone hands me a fantasy book, I can't put it down.  I try not to read them too frequently, because honestly it's not very healthy for me.  I will hold off on eating and sleeping in favor of reading and for those not in the know, that is like Sarah Palin being all, I would rather  do that than talk in a folksy way about the liberal elite while an eagle stands next to me.

Knowing I had an exciting night to spend in the airport on the way home from Edinburgh, I figured my best option was a fantasy book to gorge on.  I managed not to buy out the whole store and picked out a nice thick book to read obsessively for a few hours.

I picked it out for two reasons.  One, it clearly had a female lead character, which is always something I like.  Two, it was written by a female author.  While I don't only read books by women, I figured I'd rather support a random female author than a random male author.  Women only make 75 cents to every dollar men make, or something like that.

I read the entire book in one giant gulp.  To be fair, I had hours free, I wasn't that tired, and the book was fun.  Fun enough, anyway, that I may or may not have gobbled up the two sequels as soon as I got home.  But we're nearing my point now.

Much as I enjoyed the book, there was one aspect of it that made me angry.  The story took place in a world in which women were subordinate to men and had traditional, old-fashioned gender roles.  For anyone who is a frequent reader of fantasy books, this is a pretty common situation.  Most of them take place in worlds where medieval society is the norm.  You get swords and sorcery instead of guns and cell phones.  Despite the addition of dragons, fabled swords, and magic, a lot of these books retain the gender roles that were common in medieval society in Europe.  I've been a reader of this kind of books for years and after reading this latest entry, I've come to an important verdict.

Creating a fantasy world where the women are subordinate to the men is complete crap.  It is clichéd and annoying and completely unnecessary.  You are creating an entire world.  Anything is possible in a fantasy book.  Time travel?  Sure.  Using your mind to throw a lightning bolt at your enemy?  That's also fine.  So why do so many of these books insist on using that old trope?  I can't even say that kind of thing is always written by men, because obviously that isn't true.

I know there are plenty of fantasy books out there that don't fall victim to this problem.  But I'm throwing down the gauntlet now for all the fantasy writers out there.

Any book that takes place in a world where the women are subordinate to the men, where the good women tend to be virginal, where the women who break out of those preconceived roles are unusual, is automatically clichéd hackwork.  Usually I'm not one for sweeping generalizations, but here's one I feel pretty firm on: there is nothing new to be said about a fantasy medieval society where the women are supposed to stay at home.  For anyone finishing off a series, fine, go for it.  But any new series that you're contemplating, stop and do some rewriting if you've automatically assumed the women will be second class citizens.

I'm not saying this is the only cliche afflicting fantasy writing.  Frankly, there are quite a lot of them, which I also find frustrating, since, as I said before, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  Anything.  Literally, anything.

What's the big idea, you killjoy, you say?  To that, I have to admit that I'm just a little disturbed that so many authors, when given the choice, create their new world by putting women in their place.  In your invented world, the women shouldn't still be stuck in the kitchen or the bedroom.  You can still have a delicate flower of womanhood as your female lead, if you have to (even though that is totally lame).  Just give her all of the same opportunities as your male characters.  And while we're at it, let's employ the fantasy novel version of the Bechdel rule here.  Don't let your male characters outnumber your female characters by so much.  There should be women besides the love interest and the mother.  Creating that middle-aged bachelor wizard?  Have it be a woman.  Salt of the earth soldiers to keep your main character grounded?  Throw in a few women.  There is nothing to be lost by letting women play these roles.  This kind of old-fashioned attitude is not helping a genre that often suffers from neglect and condescension from more mainstream readers.  We may not have equality in the real world yet, but if we can't even have it in our fantasy worlds, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold onto my favorite form of comfort food.  Oh, who am I kidding.  I"ll keep reading the damn things.  But some real ingenuity would make those long nights at the airport a lot more enjoyable.