You's A Dick

Not you. Well, maybe you. It kind of depends on who you are.

But definitely these people in the first act of This American Life's most recent episode Bait & Switch.

Here's the accompanying article.

I'm, to put it mildly, not exactly happy with the idea of bait cars. I understand the impetus to make those criminally minded think twice about taking a car that looks like the perfect target. At the same time, I don't see how this isn't entrapment. And, possibly owing to my own admitted ambivalence toward the police and their authority, I see this as a potential conflict of interest.

In the article, there's one quote that stands out to me as particularly problematic.

"Let me ask you something: If you see a car with the keys in it, would you take it?" Tate said. "There are hundreds of people walking by these cars, and they make the choice to keep walking. The bottom line is this: If you see a car that doesn't belong to you, don't take it."

And sure, that is the bottom line. But that bottom line gets blurred when the person leaving the car open and inviting to be stolen is the person who is responsible for catching those who steal cars. The car would not have been there if the cops didn't think they could lure someone into taking said car.

And so, here we have a crime (or, in the case of Mark Ledford and Asia Ward, not even that) facilitated by the officers in question.

The same sort of morally grey case building has been highlighted before by This American Life, notably in Arms Trader 2009. That case had all the hallmarks of this one, had the same moral questions of setting someone up, of giving them all of the opportunities to commit a crime they otherwise may have never had the inclination to commit, and then arresting them and trying them for that crime. Another case highlighted in Act II by the This American Life episode Turncoat discussed Brandon Darby, a radical activist-turned-FBI informant who pushed two fellow (and fledgling) activists into more extreme actions than they otherwise would have participated in.

The moral implications of a nation whose policy it was to facilitate fake terrorist actions in order to smoke out people who would or could potentially turn to terrorism disturbed me. I would really rather not have a government goading people who perhaps do have some inklings or some potential to do some pretty bad shit, who have the potential to become arms dealers or crazed lefties throwing homemade bombs at Republican National Conventions, but who would very probably never get to that point on their own.

And in that comment by Sgt. Oliver Tate, it becomes clear as to why. No one should steal a car, or try to smuggle weapons to enemies of America or make plans to bomb places; but there is no moral high ground in creating the perfect storm effect, to push all of the buttons, on those people you suspect may have the want to steal a car or smuggle weapons or make bombs but who - without your help - would have none of the know-how or drive to do so.

What makes the case involving Mark Ledford and Asia Ward all the more abhorrent is what it demonstrates about the people who do plant the necessary buttons, who create those perfect crime-doing scenarios. It is that they don't care about the motivations. Mark Ledford called the car in to the police. He confirmed with a neighbor that she, too, called the car's presence in. And after he got no indication anything was going to be done, he decided to do something about the car himself. Smart? No. Criminal? Not in the least. And instead of admitting that they fucked up, instead of looking over their records and seeing what they could have done differently, instead of looking at the whole "bait" car itself and wondering if leaving a car unattended in a neighborhood may do more to unsettle the neighbors than it would ever accomplish in catching the criminally-minded-but-lazy, the police decided to leave out several salient details and set about bringing a case against Ledford and Ward. Instead of working to make the streets safer, the cops then were just being dicks.

And that's the problem with this "greater good" strategy. It gives too much power to those in authority. It trusts that those in authority are somehow more moral than the average person on the street. It trusts that in the event the authority is proven wrong, the authority will humbly admit to its mistake and take the necessary steps to correct it. And it does not allow for the formation of a crime independent of the entity responsible for stopping said crime. It makes the organization a facilitator in the crime it gets rewarded for preventing. And that? Is pretty heady. It is also possibly among the worst solutions to the problem.

The Book That Changed Your Life

This American Life's show Sunday was about books that changed, in various ways, four specific readers. David Sedaris scarred himself and his siblings with a pornographic and incestuous text, someone else was in love with Little House on the Prairie books, another woman fell in love with a long dead author and ended up following a similar life trajectory for a bit, and a man who wasn't David Sedaris amassed the largest private collection of books on the Lewis & Clark expedition. It got me to thinking about whether or not a book has ever really and truly changed my life. I read. A lot. I read a lot of different authors and on a lot of different subjects. I go through fiction and non fiction phases. Currently, I'm in an 'article' phase. But even though I've consumed a large amount of books in my life and have read my favorites more than a dozen times - easily - each, I was still left wondering if I actually have a book that changed my life. I'm still not entirely sure. I have a poem that reaffirmed my natural enthusiasm in Longfellow's Psalm of Life. I have an autobiography I return to time and time again when I need a pick-me-up or a all-families-are profoundly-crazy assurance in My Life and Hard Times. I have favorite books, and books that I enjoy. But I was at a loss for a book that actually changed my life.

And yet, there is one. It is A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. I haven't collected all of the books L'Engle has written. I'm not, nor have I ever been, obsessed with L'Engle as a person. It did not scar me, and I have never visited her childhood home. I don't want to move to her town. But A Wrinkle In Time was my constant companion from 4th grade to around 8th grade. I carried it every day in my backpack, I pulled it out during lunch, during class, during recess. Its very presence was comforting.

For a while, I had A Wrinkle In Time completely memorized. I loved it that much. Being the completely oblivious atheist I was (and am), I somehow failed to pick up on all the many religious themes contained within the book. All I knew was that Meg Murray, with her temper and her smarts and her worries she wasn't beautiful enough or smart enough, felt so incredibly real. She came alive, leapt off the page and went to save her brother from the evil of a brain with no heart through love alone. She wasn't me; she didn't have my interests or my particular worries. But she was someone I could relate to. I loved Meg Murray. I absolutely adored Charles Wallace. I liked Calvin. And I was mesmerized by the ideas about space and travel, about our world potentially becoming a Dark Planet, a planet shadowed but fighting in the name of and for the sake of Goodness. A Wrinkle In Time filled me with a sense of hope. I still, from time to time, go back to it. It doesn't bring me the exact same feeling of wonderment anymore, but it I can still see exactly why I loved it so much. I can't explain exactly how it changed me; I don't have a before and after picture waiting to be developed. It obviously didn't convert me to Christianity or anything as world-altering as that. But out of all the books I read and loved, it is the one I don't think I would give up.

And I wouldn't give it up because I can't imagine me without it. I can't imagine what I would be like if I didn't have Meg Murray and her powerful temper and incredible love in my life. I don't know what I would be missing if I didn't know about a tesseract. I may have become a great mathematician if I didn't get into that argument in 6th grade about a square being a two-dimensional object like Mrs. Whatsit said and not, as my math teacher was insisting, a one-dimensional one.

A Wrinkle In Time is the book that changed my life.

Quote of the Day

This is working for me, surprisingly, because, like Jim, the first track that I heard was "Kiss With a Fist". And it, it sounded like a lot of other things I heard before and then the feminist in my just, like, could not compute. I shout down when I heard that one!

- Jacquie Fuller, a newbie to Musicheads, letting her Feminist Flag fly regarding a song of Florence and the Machine's.

In related news, I may be moving to Minnesota. They do have the coolest people on their public radio stations.

Now, onto the song that raised Jaquie's feminist ire:

It is a violent song with a catchy, boppy beat. When Jacquie remarks, "She says it's metaphorical, but I don't quite get ... how. Seems pretty direct to me", I'm right there with her.

What's more, even if the song is metaphorical in nature, even if plates aren't being smashed over fictional characters' heads, the metaphor of violence for the mutually destructive forces playing part in the relationship explored through song is still intensely violent. Domestic violence doesn't just cover being physically beaten. It covers emotional violence as well. And if these two characters are feeling as though they're each being "kissed with a fist", then they are both guilty of abuse. A relationship that has mutually destructive people doesn't mean that it is a victimless relationship. Instead, it means there are two victims, and two perpetrators. Again, I turn to Jacquie in that "I can sort of run with the 'War of the Roses' absurdity of the song until we get to that chorus when she says, "A kiss with a fist is better than none", and there's something so direct about that that it hurts - in a bad way".

I'm going to posit that the reason that line hurts in a bad way is because many people have either been in or watched a friend be in a bad, destructive relationship where the prevailing wisdom was something along those lines - even if the fist was entirely metaphorical. It hurts because the thought that a relationship all about the drama, a relationship that is literally or metaphorically hurting its participants, is still better than the "nothing" of being single (and I use that in quotes simply because being single isn't nothing - far from it) isn't exactly an idea that exists at the edge of Crazytown. There are people who will (and do) prize a relationship over anything else, over their own well-being, over their partner's well-being, over their sense of self.

But it also hurts because that if that fist isn't metaphorical - if it is real and brutal and there - then a dark line about being in that relationship is better than not being in a relationship at all is all the darker. Because that darkness can be the thought that the persons involved in this type of relationship are already broken, that they don't deserve a better, mutually beneficial relationship.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month this year. Songs like this one, peppy-fun-and-bubbly-on-the-surface songs, should be called out as representing a particular kind of domestic violence no matter the interpretation at any point in the year. But it seems a bit more crucial, a bit more pressing, during this particular month. Because too often, we aren't aware.

How Awesome Is This?

NPR has made available free 12 song samplers for each of the two music festivals taking up residence in Newport, Rhode Island (which may or may not have changed its name recently from the long, cumbersome, and obscure "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to the more well-known and shorter "Rhode Island").

If you have iTunes, I highly recommend downloading them. If you don't have iTunes, I highly recommend getting iTunes and then downloading them.

Quote of the Day

And another thing is the werewolf character, he's supposed to be, like, sympathetic; you're supposed to relate with him. No. By two thirds of the way through the album, he's not sympathetic. He's just creepy. I mean, seriously. There's songs about watching this girl and saying, "Oh, I need to make you mine, I can't wait to get you into bed". You can only take that so much before you start to worry about E. Has E ever had a girlfriend? 

...I don't know if its supposed to be autobiographical or not, but that was just a little bit off-putting and I was disappointed across the board...

...All of these songs are about unrequited love, and when you hear 12 songs about unrequited love in a row, presumably all about the same woman, you realize why Eels had a song called "Restraining Order Blues". I can't get past that, Bill.

Mack Wilson, one of my new favorite people, obsessing about the new Eels album and its disturbing message, Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire on the latest Musicheads podcast.

I'm kind of glad Mack Wilson was there to bring this up - and thought to bring this up - because I often compulsively buy the music I don't immediately dislike that's featured on my music podcasts. Now I know to avoid Eels. Especially since "Restraining Order Blues" creeped me the hell out.

Pixar's Up: Uproariously Funny/Infuriatingly Gendered

What can I say about Pixar's most recent offering, Up? Well, after the pure and innovative wonder of WALL•E, Up seemed almost destined to come in second. And yet, I don't think it is in Pixar's power to make a bad movie. Up, the story of Carl Fredrickson, is so moving, so powerful, so slapstick funny, so entirely different than what has preceded it, that it both fits in the pantheon of Pixar films in terms of greatness and reaches those heights independently. Just like all of the great Pixar films that came before.

I can say that Russell is the most believable kid I've ever seen in a movie. From his reason for wanting the last necessary Wilderness Explorer badge, to his complaints about how his knee hurt and how he had to go to the bathroom, Russell was a prepubescent kid. The excitability, the lack of precociousness, the poking Carl in the face when he thought Carl might be dead - all were spot on.

I can say that the twenty minute montage of Carl and Ellie's life together was perhaps the best and most moving piece of animation I have ever seen. It in and of itself could have been a Pixar short, though a rather somber one.

I can say that Carl's reactions throughout the film, from bonking that guy on the head to his obsession with his mailbox to talking to his house as if Ellie were still in it to kissing Ellie's picture, were achingly, heartbreakingly realistic.

I can say that Dug the Dog was an awesome addition to the movie.

I can say that I would watch this movie perhaps more than any other Disney or Pixar film - if it weren't for Dory's "I wish I could speak whale" moment in Finding Nemo.

And yet. And yet there is the "girl problem". I've posted about this before, after WALL•E came out. But Up continues to highlight the problems I've had with Pixar films - and in ways, it goes farther toward making it worse, to making it less female-friendly.

Like, Ellie gets a couple of lines in the beginning of the film when she's a kid, and then is silenced by the (again, thoroughly beautiful and moving) 20 minute montage, a montage that ends with her death. Young Ellie, for all of her 5 minutes on screen, is the only actual speaking role a main female character, partially because there is only one other main female character. And that's a bird. Named Kevin. I've probably posted before about my dislike of boys' names for girls in movies and television shows. Which I was fine with for quite a while. My antipathy for that particular practice didn't develop until I heard Bryan Fuller talk about how giving girls boys' names made them easier for him to write, that it was hard for him to write a 'girl' character. Then I had a bit of a lightbulb moment.

The lightbulb moment is this: "characters" are easy to write. "Girl characters" are not. A film about someone bringing his house to Paradise Falls and having a young stowaway who only wants his Wilderness badge is a film the Pixar people can write. A film where a girl does the same thing is not.

In many of the other blog posts about gender issues in Pixar films floating around the feminist ether, some commenter inevitably makes the point that Pixar isn't the only film studio almost exclusively living in Boysville. And that's true, but that (a) doesn't really absolve Pixar, and (b) only demonstrates exactly how prevalent this problem really is - which just reinforces the point that this is a bad and deserves to be addressed. However, the reason I'm picking on Pixar is because the films they make are so imaginative, so talented, so brilliant, so emotionally resonant, that it is all the more disappointing when they either can't or won't write a film with a main character who is a woman - and who isn't a princess. Pixar movies about boys can be chef-rats and toys and superheroes and fish and cars and old men. Pixar movies about girls - the one Pixar movie in the works about a girl - is about a princess. The juxtaposition the complex imaginings of the Pixar oeuvre with the seeming inability to imagine where women and girls fit as individual characters within that oeuvre is profoundly depressing. It is depressing because I believe if ever there was a studio that has the ability to create a universal story with a female protagonist, Pixar is that studio. It is depressing because these are children's films that continually privilege boys, making them the centers of each individual universe, and thus reinforce the idea of Male as default and Female as the other. It reinforces the idea of Woman being the Second Sex.

The Mad Typist has a run down of Pixar films and grades them accordingly in terms of how the women are portrayed, and FilthyGrandeur has another run down of the Pixar dilemma. And again, the problem isn't the films individually. It is incredibly easy to defend the decision to make a film about Flick, or Buzz and Woody, or Bob Parr, or Marlin and Nemo, or Carl and Russell, or Lightening McQueen, or Remy, or Sulley and Mike, or WALL•E. Each individual movie is great. Each individual movie can be rationalized. It is when all of the movies are taken as a group that the issue emerges. Out of the 10 movies that have been released, not one of them features a female protagonist. If we add the 3 movies in some form of production, the average goes to 1 out of 13 movies features a female protagonist. Meanwhile, one is about a newt named "Newt", which just goes further to reinforce that "male as default" thing.

Pixar, because of the power the studio commands, because of the audience their films attract (like, young ones), because of the fact that women make up more than 1/13 of the world population, need to engage in some serious corrective measures. Because as much as I love Pixar, it cuts to consistently see my gender underrepresented or outright erased from the films I pay to see. It hurts to have my gender consistently portrayed as "love interest" or "sidekick" - or both in one character. And to be perfectly frank, it's kind of pissing me off that after the wondrous ingenuity of rats who want to cook and toys who are alive (in a noncreepy way) and old men dealing with grief and life's disappointments, girls once again get the princess crap. As if "Princess" is an underrepresented genre of film for girls. As if "Princess" isn't a problematic description for little girls, if for no other reason than most little girls won't ever be one - because "princess" is something one is and not something one can work at becoming. As Monique Fields said regarding Disney's The Princess and the Frog,

Some little girls are telling anyone who will listen that they want to be princesses when they grow up. If nothing else, I expect a more ambitious and attainable goal from children who haven’t yet learned to read or write.

I have faith in Pixar. I have the expectation that I'll be going to see Pixar films in the theater much more frequently than I will see any other type of movie. I anticipate that, like Linda Holmes, I will adore The Bear and the Bow. But as much as I want Pixar to recognize that there are girls in the world and we're worth their attention, I'd also really love it if they recognized that shorthand for "girl" isn't "princess". You'd think they would have gotten that memo, after making Ellie and EVE and Violet and Dory. But apparently, they haven't yet.

This American Life

If anyone gets a chance to see the encore theatre presentation of This American Life's live show on May 7, I would highly recommend it. 

A Gilmore Girls Moment

While poking around NPR's website at some point in the past two weeks, I stumbled upon this article:
"A Social Experiment: Communes In Cul-De-Sacs"
The first time I saw the article, the issue didn't really jump out at me. The second time I glanced at it, it suddenly hit me:

Someone at NPR needs to watch more Gilmore Girls. If only someone there was an obsessive Gilmore Girls fan, NPR would have never made such an obscure spelling error!

On another note, I'm going to start referring to yo-yos as yos-yo. Just for yucks.

Gendered Sinning

Last week, Feministe had a post about a report by the Vatican saying that men and women sin in different ways, with the most prevalent sin for men being lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, angry, pride, envy and greed, and the most prevalent for women being pride - followed by envy, anger, lust, and then sloth. I rolled my eyes and moved on. Yes, it is horribly gendered, and it reinforces gender norms and beliefs about the differences among the sexes. But, as Cara wrote, "the answer should surprise none of us". I would have been floored had the Vatican actually offered a different explanation for the differences in what men and women confessed than the trite idea that men and women must just sin differently. But then I was actually knocked off of my feet.

Some background. NPR have little programs that focus on a particular topic combine several of the stories they have done on their various programs throughout the week that fall under the umbrella of that topic. I don't know how many there are; I generally listen to the Political Rewind, NPR: Music, and NPR: Religion. On one of the programs making up the NPR: Religion podcast (normally they're news shows like All Things Considered or Morning Edition or Weekend Edition), Jesuit priest Father James Martin first commented on what the survey actually measured, saying, "You read the survey, and you could also interpret it as those are the sins they confess more. Which may not mean that they're actually sinning in that way, but those are the sins they confess most often to confessors". That is an important distinction; I remember talking to some of my friends who actually went to confession after their confirmations and made up some plausible sins because they couldn't remember any of their real ones. Measuring what people confess could be just a measure of what they generally feel expected to confess and not what they actually feel like they've done.

Father Martin also brings up the sociological aspect of who sees what as sinful, remarking, "Women may be more encouraged when they're young not to be proud and be more self-effacing. They actually may be more attentive to the sin of pride than men would be. But that may not mean that they are any more proud than men are but that they may confess it more." That was what almost laid me flat, because it acknowledged societal gender roles as playing a part in how people interpret their actions and how what may be different is not the type of sinning but what men and women consider to be sinful. "That's very similar to my thinking. I wondered if what women would identify as the sin of pride men would identify as just, you know, a bit of swaggering self confidence," agreed host Scott Simon.

Something not really addressed in the conversation but that occurred to me was the philosophical question of sin. I wondered, while listening to the podcast, whether or not men and women may not truly sin differently simply by virtue of experiencing sin differently. Or, are women, by acknowledging their pride, actually sinning where men experiencing the exact same emotions or going through the exact same actions are not, simply because they don't perceive what they're doing as sinful? Not being religious, I can't really see sin as being something existing independently of those sinning. But at the same time, I would imagine for the religious it is. Otherwise, it would simply come down to perception - and if sin is just about perception then the person who inhales a carton of ice cream could not be gluttonous and the person who had that extra piece of bread could be. And if sin is simply about the sinner's perception of sin, then men and women would sin differently - and the question would then become why a particular action or emotional response would be a sin when attributed to women but not when attributed to men. But I don't really think that's how the Vatican and the 94 year old who documented these confessions are approaching the gendered sin question; I think they really just stop short of really getting what this report could actually be saying to them. 

A Few (Somewhat) Random Thoughts

My commute to and from work is north to south in the morning (and thus south to north in the evening) and, on a good day, about forty-five minutes. Some days it is closer to fifty-five, and on iffy days it is closer to an hour. Given that, I spend a lot of time on Connecticut roadways. And what I can tell you, having spent that time on the roads, is this: 

People in southern Connecticut need to learn how to drive in inclement weather. People in northerner Connecticut need to learn how to drive more cautiously in inclement weather.

Why? Well, today's afternoon forecast was a wintery mix. In southern Connecticut, where I work, that meant flurries in the sky that dissolved before hitting the ground. It was in the upper 30s and the sun was still out, meaning there was nothing but the barest hint of wetness on the ground. There wasn't even any slush. And yet... the top speed until I hit the line of accumulation demarcation was about 20 miles per hour. It was like these drivers had never seen snow flakes before, like they were terrified that somehow the snowflakes, if hit too fast, would severely damage their cars. It was, in a word, hell. Meanwhile, after I passed that lovely line of demarcation, after the sun had set because it took an hour to get there when it normally takes 20 minutes, the slowest the cars around me were willing to go was 60 mph. And because snow started gathering before it did in the south, there was actual snow and ice on the ground and the wintery conditions were actually fairly dangerous. That was clearly the time meant for speeding.

Along the way, though, I learned a few things.

One of those was that I love the duet of "As Long As The Grass Shall Grow" sung by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. This is a reworking of the song written and performed to protest the treatment of the Native Americans, and it takes almost nothing from the original except the melody and a bit of the chorus. According to a guy who was not Bob Boilen on All Songs Considered (I think it may have been Stephen Thompson), Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash recorded this version of the song about a year before they both died. It is absolutely beautiful, a truly wonderful love song. This may be because it fits right into the musical styling I love, but I also think there is something to the lyrics. This is a song that deftly fits the Cashs' history; and unlike many love songs that highlight the beginnings of love, this one celebrates a robust and aged love - a love that is still strong even though its participants are nearing their twilight and the love shared between them has spanned the decades. I highly recommend listening to it; it's the third one down in the list of songs featured on the Lesser Known Love Songs list.

Fourth on the Lesser Known Love Songs list is one by Betty Davis. Not the actress Betty Davis, the one whose eyes were immortalized in the Kim Carnes song. This one:

Called "Anti Love Song", Carrie Brownstein on All Songs sums it up when she says, "The lyrics represent a total reluctance and resistance, but the way Betty Davis sings it conveys this undeniability and an understanding that she's going to give in to this very, very soon... ...It's slightly libidinous." 

It is very, very hot. And while there is a bit of that "I don't want to give in and yet I will, what is also there is this power, this recognition that as much as she is going to give in to this love and this libidinous experience, so will he. Because she's that good. And there's about 5 different ways that's awesome.

Then there was a revelation on Bill Moyers' program The Journal. Like many of the programs I wish I actually watched, I generally catch Bill via podcast and so sometimes it is a while before I get around to listening to him. In honor of Lincoln's birthday, Lincoln was the topic. And the guy who wrote one of my history texts for my college Civil War class, Eric Foner, was one of the guests. His postulation, that progressives of the early 20th century

"saw Lincoln as, you might say to go back another couple of generations, a combination of Jefferson and Hamilton at the same time. In other words, Lincoln is a man who believes in Jeffersonian ideals and equality, of democracy, of the government by the people. He's not an elitist in the way of Hamilton, who wanted a monarchy basically. On the other hand, he believes in a powerful government, like Hamilton did and Jefferson did not. He believes the government can be an agent of social change and social reform and improvement."

Lincoln, a combination of two of my favorite revolutionary/post-revolutionary figures!

The last thought is that there are some truly gifted poets out there, and Bill Moyers presented me with one I have not heard before. Nikki Giovanni seems like one of the coolest people to have ever lived. Just listening to her speak on The Journal was like listening to a free form poem. She was entrancing and funny and witty and brilliant. One of my favorite moments was when she said,

"I've always been amazed that you can break up with somebody, and somebody will say to you, 'Well, if you leave me I'm going to kill you.' Now, logic says, if I'm dead, you still don't get me."

I also loved when she said,

"girls are always sitting around listening to stupid things that boys say. And girls, you know, half the games girls play, Little Sally Walker, what is she doing? She's rising to the east, looking for the one she loves the best. What did - what's her name? - Snow White. And she's going to go to sleep until "one day my prince will come". You get sick of that. You got a girl who can spin flax into gold, and her father, "The Miller's Tale", which became "Rumpelstitskin", her father then takes her up to the prince to say, "You should marry my daughter. She can spin flax into gold." What does she need with him? If I can spin flax into gold I would - I mean, she didn't need the prince."

My favorite line, though, was this:

"life is a good idea."

And to end this, the first poem I heard by her on The Journal:

"Bicycles"

Midnight poems are bicycles

Taking us on safer journeys

Than jets

Quicker journeys

Than walking

But never as beautiful

A journey

As my back

Touching you under the quilt

Midnight poems

Sing a sweet song

Saying everything

Is all right

Everything

Is

Here for us

I reach out

To catch the laughter

The dog thinks

I need a kiss

Bicycles move

With the flow

Of the earth

Like a cloud

So quiet

In the October sky

Like licking ice cream

From a cone

Like knowing you

Will always

Be there

All day long I wait

For the sunset

The first star

The moon rise

I move

To a midnight

Poem

Called

You

Propping

Against

The dangers

A Post In Which I Review "Ghost", and Dollhouse

Dollhouse has the worst theme. Ever. Well, possibly not ever. The theme for 7th Heaven wasn't exactly winner material. But it is pretty damn bad. Out of my Whedon themes, it comes in dead last, so far down that it hasn't even managed to cross the line yet (my theme list, in case you're interested, goes Buffy, Firefly, and then Angel; there used to be more of a gap between Firefly and Angel, but Dollhouse has made the Angel theme all the more endearing to me). This really has little to do with the actual show, but it is a weakness.

Overall, I thought that the first episode Dollhouse was good. "Ghost" suffers from many of the same problems that plague other pilots in that it did not feel as though it had completely gelled yet. It also didn't feel like classic Whedon writing, but there was enough signature lines and enough of the Whedon humor that I was unbothered. After all, Firefly has a whole different vernacular and verbal style than Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and although I like BtVS' verbosity better for day to day quotage and it can consistently give me a writing high (it also highly influenced my own vocab, sadly enough), Firefly's distinctive style was seamless in terms of what it was representing in-show. And with lines like:

"Stroke of midnight."

"Midnight?"

"End of the ball."

"Dude, it- it's like, 5."

And:

"Something fell on me."

"I bet it was something great."

And:

"Make sure the ladies at my table have everything they need, huh? The champagne never stops flowing - the good stuff. (pause) The first few bottles, the good stuff. After that, the house is fine."

And:

"Find out who's connected to the Dollhouse, the Borodin family won't be touched, and you'll never see me again."

"I haven't seen you yet."

I'm not worried about the writing having its very own style that fits with Whedon's overall idiosyncratic personality.

Likewise, I'm not worried that the characters we have been introduced to did not, as a whole, have glaringly obvious and distinctive personalities and reasons as of yet. This is a new show, and part of its purpose is an examination of identity. I'm not surprised that we don't know Topher or Boyd or Adelle or Paul as well as we knew Buffy and Willow and Xander and Mal and Inara and Kaylee yet. What we have been shown is intriguing.

That being said, there are some weak points to the show, and unfortunately, one of them is Eliza Dushku. There was too much Faith in her opening characterization, when she looked bedraggled and was being consigned into Dollhouse service. There was too much Faith in her first motorcycle-riding, fun-dancing, sexy-rope-using persona. There was too little oomph in some of her other scenes. Part of my problem stems from the fact that I've never been all that impressed with Eliza Dushku's acting, and although I've been told many times that she could create chemistry with a log I've never been one to see it. I have to hope she gets slightly better at speaking zombie post-wipe Echo lines, because right now it is slightly painful for me. There were also some poor plot points. I had to wonder, during Sierra's initial wipe, why Topher or Adelle (or anyone, for that matter) would house that particular room in that particular location, where the ensuing light show would be (and was) more than visible to anyone down below. And if they had decided that location was the best for that room for X,Y or Z reasons, why no one would think it important to lock the door. Echo wandering in (along with the cringe-worthy "She hurts") was something that induced heavy eye-rolling. Another blinking red light moment for me was during Eleanor Penn's 'treatment'. There was no real reason given for why Topher decided to not wipe her, unless I missed it completely.

And yet, the list of things right with this show far outweighs those two points right now - and given that the show focuses on Eliza, that is saying something. Every other actor is phenomenal. Fran Kranz makes Topher human, unlike Adam Busch's evil Warren and Tom Lenk's amoral Andrew (he is too unlike Jayne at the moment for those two amoralities to be adequately compared). Kranz's reactions to Echo and Boyd, his thoughtful articulations of what Dollhouse is and what a person is made up of, is incredibly engaging. He is amoral, and I suspect he is crafted to be seen as amoral; but even with that knowledge, Whedon has taken the trick he employed most effectively in Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and made Topher someone the audience can connect with even as they are (potentially) disturbed by that bit of enjoyment and understanding. Harry Lennix as Boyd is another perfect fit. One of the complaints I've read about the show is that if Echo is almost wholly without her own personality, the audience is left unable to connect to her. Lennix's Boyd provides the easy answer; we are connected to Echo's story because Boyd is connected to and concerned about Echo. Even if we cannot fully recognize who Echo is due to Echo herself not being privy to that information, we can connect to Boyd's empathy for her, and his own attachment to her. Olivia Williams is yet another bit of inspired casting. I want to know what makes her tick, why she believes Dollhouse is a force of good.

The parts of the show itself that are good are fantastic; the entire premise of the Actives on engagement creates a strange sense of vertigo; Eleanor Penn (the persona we spend the most time with in "Ghost", the persona whose narrative is responsible for the title of the very episode) is not, conventionally, real. The experiences she draws upon to form her opinions and her own idea of who she is and how she has come to be are not, technically, her own. The years that she has spent studying psychology and forensic science, profiling from former instructors at Quantico, being licensed for seven years, handling 12 negotiations, the very things she offers up as reasons to trust her never truly happened to this one person. And yet, for her, they have and they did. That disconnect between what we normally experience as reality and Eleanor Penn's vision of reality is what creates friction between this woman who is innocently unaware of the underlying tension and the man who paid for an Active from Dollhouse. When this scene goes down:

ELEANOR PENN: You have to trust that I've done this many, many times.

GABRIEL: I have to trust that, right. Yesterday you weren't a nurse or a clown in the circus.

ELEANOR PENN: What?

GABRIEL: You're the best. The best one they could send. Why is that? What makes you so good at this?

ELEANOR PENN: I don't have any hobbies.

GABRIEL: No, no, no. You have to do better than that. You have to make me believe. Believe like you believe.

the tension inherent in the scenario where one person knows about a game being played the other is completely in the dark about creates a dynamic scene. Because Gabriel is describing the world of Dollhouse, and Eleanor isn't an Active. She doesn't know what Adelle and Topher have done to make her the best, because for her, she wasn't made. She just is. And so when Gabriel demands that she has to make him believe, like she believes, she is automatically at a loss. Because she doesn't just believe it; she has memory of living it. She knows it. And that is part of what makes the very set up of the show tragic, what we witness first hand in Eleanor Penn. She (and every other Persona) is at an immediate disadvantage, partially because she is the paid for in any of these situations, but also because she is lacking the fundamental knowledge necessary to properly interact with the people in question. And yet, she (and every other Persona) cannot have that fundamental knowledge if the house of cards is to remain standing.

What stems from that is the question of the authentic experience. One of the people who made up Eleanor Penn was sexually abused by the man Eleanor comes into contact with while trying to ensure the safe release of Gabriel's daughter. Her reactions are of someone who was truly abused; but she - at least in this way - had not been. That history never existed. Unfortunately for Eleanor, she never spoke a truer word than when she told the man that he couldn't hurt her, that you can't fight a ghost. Because that is essentially what Eleanor is, someone who lived on the world for a while, but never in it. Someone who could remember people who had never met her, or abused her. In the end, Eleanor gets the girl back, but she still doesn't win. And neither does Echo. They are both erased, used by a larger organization that cares very little about them and their authentic lives.

The show also managed to explain the functionality of the premise well. The expositiony dialogue was less jarring and boring because it was tangled up in the philosophical thoughts of Topher. When Boyd questions making Echo nearsighted, Topher manages to explain why the personas are never going to truly be Superman, and yet also manages to heighten the intrigue into his very own character. In a truly captivating bit, Topher explains the process of creating an identity as

"You see someone running incredibly fast, the first thing you gotta ask is are they running to something or are they running away from something. The answer is always both. These personality imprints, they come from scans of real people. I can create amalgams of the personalities, pieces from her or there; but it's not a greatest hits. It's a whole person. Achievement is balanced by fault, by a lack. Can't have one without the other. Everyone who excels at something is overcompensating. Running from something. Hiding from something."

Since Topher himself excels at something, and since he seems to have universalized his own experience, the question immediately becomes what is Topher running from? And yet, now we know more about the Actives themselves. The thing that separates Joss Whedon's sci-fi/fantasy writing from so many others is that the exposition is oftentimes just as much about the immediate story and the characters as it is about granting those of us in the viewing audience access to the necessary road maps. It very rarely actually feels as though Whedon is pointing to a Yellow Brick Road and telling us where he wants us to go and what he wants us to know. It is just a natural evolution of the 'verse itself.

Year Of Science

This year, the year of 2009, has been declared The Year of Science. By whom, you ask? Well, these guys. Why? Because there are a heck of a lot of scientastic anniversaries being celebrated this year. Like, Charles Darwin will have been born exactly 200 years ago this year on February 12th. Like, Origin of Species was first published November 24, 1859, making this year its 150th year in existence. Like a couple of other cool things the Brian Greene talked to Ira Flatow about on friday (if you really care all that much, listen here).

Long and short of it is, there are going to be themes and events celebrating those themes for every month of the year, because it is The Year of Science! January is the Process and Nature of Science - an intro month to the whole thing. My birthday month (October) gets Geosciences and Planet Earth; coolness. I'd recommend checking out the theme page to see what you get as well (September is Biodiversity and Conservation). And although there are no events yet planned in my neck of the woods, I'm sure that will be rectified soon. Plus, there's always the World Science Faire in New York City June 11th through the 14th. Sounds potentially fun. I'm almost considering volunteering.

And for anyone who is puzzled and wondering why I'm so hip to this whole year of science thing, given my absolute abhorrence for all 3 of the science classes I took in college, to you I say... shut up. But seriously now, those classes were not of the good. And the year has themes! How could anything that has themed months be a bad? Also, Science Friday and The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe have taught me that I actually do like science - I'm just not good at doing the science. Kind of like how Planet Money taught me that I can listen to economic talk without wanting to kill someone or becoming extremely obstinate. So, I'm willing to give this a try; to pay attention and learn some facts each month pertaining to the topic at hand. And I'm also almost willing to promise that I will highlight the month in question's theme and some of the info I've gleaned about that topic. It should be fun. Or disastrous. It's hard to tell right now.