Stigmata

I watched Stigmata on TV a couple of nights back. I kept thinking, "Is this the Da Vinci Code? I thought that hadn't come out yet." Stigmata has all the same elements: secret Catholic society, hidden gnostic text, disillusioned priest, etc. etc. But since the action never seemed to stray far from Philadelphia (where it was raining in just about every scene), I figured it wasn't.

All in all, I enjoyed it. It's got an incredibly weak ending. And an incredibly weak premise. It's threaded through with the kind of anti-Catholicism that is rather commonplace to American culture. And while I think Gabriel Bryne is an exceptionally handsome man (and makes an exceptionally handsome priest), he isn't my favorite actor in the world. The thing that makes the movie worthwhile is that it is visually gorgeous. It's one of those image heavy movies: kind of like watching a very long MTV video. (There's a movie called Streets of Fire which has, possibly, the dumbest dialog on record, but if you turn the sound off and just watch the scenery, it's fairly spectacular.)

Basically, a young girl in Philly is invaded by the ghost of a dead priest (why, I have no idea; I missed the first twenty minutes, but I didn't get the impression that they ever explained it) who discovered the missing Gospel of Jesus and wants the world to know. The priest is either crazy or the girl is also invaded by the devil, I'm not sure which (and they never tell you) because at one point, she starts screaming and throwing people around the room. ANYWAY, she begins to experience the stigmata, which is a real thing (in the sense that people really have and do claim to experience it); the stigmata are the wounds that Christ received on the cross.

A young priest shows up and sort of falls in love with the poor chick but doesn't sleep with her, which was an unexpected twist. And he finally commands the spirit of the dead priest to leave her alone which it does (which makes you wonder why he didn't do it earlier).

And while this rather vapid plot is unwinding, the audience is treated to eerie and atmospheric scenes of dirty subways and apartments filled with urns to catch water and white statues in a foggy garden (replete with doves) and lots and lots of rain. And it is very effective. Like watching a poem. I didn't feel, even with the rather non-climactic ending, that it had been a waste of time. Which sometimes I do feel with movies on TV.

And then they spoiled it at the end by sticking in a little paragraph, right before the credits rolled, about the Gospel of St. Thomas, which the Catholic Church has refused to accept, even though all these other scholars have.

Now, I believe in Occam's Razor; the simplest solution is usually the right one. I'm also an optimist (on paper, anyway) which means that I believe the simplest, nicest solution is usually the right one. Which means that I start from the premise that the Catholic Church is not full of conspiracies, and that Catholic scholars, especially at the Vatican, are actually pretty good at their jobs.

It's a useful premise to start from. Remember, I'm a Mormon so I believe that by circa 70 A.D. (or C.E.), the Church of Jesus Christ had lost its original form, which was not restored until Joseph Smith did so in 1835. Sounds crazy. But that's what I think. Joseph Smith also preached that the Bible is "true, in so far as it is translated correctly." There are as many scriptural literalists in the Mormon church as there are in other churches, but, due to Joseph Smith's useful little caveat, they are a lot easier to debate.

My point is that Mormons have little investment in the tensions between the Gnostic gospel promoters and the Catholic Church. The Gnostic gospel promoters (and I mean here the theorists who believe that the Catholic Church suppressed the feminist Gnostic gospels and replaced them with the chauvinistic, patriarchal gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and the Catholic Church are arguing over texts from about 150-200 A.D. (C.E.) and in particular over the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), a period of time that Mormons tend to ignore (they skip right to the Reformation).

So my premise that the Catholic Church knows what it is talking about stems more from a bias in favor of institutions rather than an investment in the conclusion. I tend to trust conservative, traditional evaluations until I'm given some better reason than a conspiracy theory to drop them. Which means I think Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were probably picked because they were the best, if not the only, intact gospels available. On top of which, there is really no good reason, as far as I can see, to believe that the Gnostic gospels weren't equally chauvinistic and patriarchal (and some very good reasons to think that they were moreso).

So, I resented Stigmata throwing in their half-baked criticism of the Catholic Church. It took the movie out of its surreal/fantasy context and turned it into some kind of statement, and since, as I've mentioned, the plot was a bit stupid, it made a really stupid statement.

It harks back to the "show, don't tell" approach that teachers tried to pound into us in High School. Or, rather, the "show, don't pontificate" problem that so much art seems to stumble over. In his review of the movie Constantine, my brother Eugene wrote: "The reward, as I've mentioned, is that some small aspect of actual Christian theology eventually gets treated seriously and hammered out. Okay, hammered into a twisted wreck, but at least there's metal under the mallet." This is how I felt with Stigmata--it started with a legitimate Catholic concept with a lot of meat to it and great "hammering" potential. The mistake was for the writers to try to sermonize about THE CHURCH at the same time they were pushing all this radical imagery. The result was a dull thud.

Conclusion: If you're going to borrow heavily from Catholic theology, use it. Don't start to use it, and then inform the viewer that really this is all so pretentious and corrupt. It's rather like feminists who want women to be pro-active while telling them how victimized they are. Like, okay, choose already.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Two Tendencies of Human Nature

Tendency the First

To assume that because we like or dislike something, that is the same thing as it being good or bad.

First, there is a substantial difference between the subjective and objective responses. For instance, I don't care for Picasso. Never have, much. And I'm not a big fan of abstract art. I like art to have people in it: recognizable people. In fact, my favorite artists are the Pre-Raphaelites, they of the garish colors and Arthurian legends and odd personal relationships. But this isn't because the Pre-Raphaelites were better artists than, say, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Rembrant and just about anybody else out there. My subjective response is personal, a pure, unrepentant enjoyment of Victorian Art. My objective response is that the Pre-Raphaelites were really pretty awful.

But the subjective and objective responses aren't always so obvious. I think they get confounded due to (1) social opinion; (2) our awareness of an objective standard. We feel compelled to give reasons for not liking things. Or for liking things. We justify our stance, illustrate that our reactions are not simply personal prejudice. (The only art where personal reaction is allowable, if not preferable, seems to be food, although I have eaten with people who have educated palates.) I loathe the book Anthem, and, moreover, I could make a fairly good case for it being an intrinsically worthless book. My subjective response doesn't disappear, but it is morphed into a desire to show that my response is worthwhile.

Along these lines, a professor of mine once claimed that Americans are natural film critics because we are accustomed to automatically weighing our reactions against social opinion and other movies we have seen (and we see so many). That is, we develop, almost by default, an objective standard. Movie-watching becomes an exercise in balancing the subjective and objective reactions. I didn't like this, and this is why.

Where the process fails is when we lose sight of our own subjectivity. The whole 70s relativity movement took this too far by insisting that worth is merely a product of environmental factors; that is, Shakespeare only lasted because white, educated men promoted him as a classic. (A rather pointless argument since it still doesn't explain why white, educated men picked Shakespeare over, say, Bob Jones from Brighton.) Subjectivity isn't useful as a scholarship tool. It is useful because it keeps us humble. It reminds us that our personal biases may be at work and that feeling really, really strongly about something isn't automatically the same thing as being right.

This confusion of the strongly felt subjective opinion with the objective view surfaces when you are talking to people who get all bent out of shape about Clarence Thomas but extol Bill Clinton, with a shrug of the shoulders over his particular pecadillos. I hear it in my office from people who "hate" Bush and Condoleezza Rice (no, I don't know why) and, for that matter, any Republican but praise to the skies the equally human, and equally flawed, Democratic contenders. (To say that I distrust the people in my office on political issues would be an understatement.) It crops up in my college with students who want to replace the bad, evil narratives of the 19th century with the correct, good narratives of the 21st century. It's a kind of Descartes approach to the world: I think, therefore I must be right.

All this leads us to:

Tendency the Second

The belief that people who disagree with us are bad and people who agree with us are good.

Naturally, this is a harder tendency both to prevent and to argue with. It arises, originally, simply, out of communal living. When a number of same-thinking, same voting, same believing people gather into one place, they begin to think that all (right-thinking) people think and vote and believe the same as them. Afterall, it's what they see and what they know. It's what they experience. The opposition becomes foreign, bizarre, wrong-headed and morally corrupt. At the risk of illustrating my own biases, this type of parochialism crops up with liberals and right-wing fundamentalists.

The difference between parochial liberals and parochial right-wing fundamentalists is that right-wing fundamentalists often have a theological reason for thinking that the opposition is wrong-headed and morally corrupt. That is, they fall back on a supposed objective standard, which, if they are moderately honest, they will compare themselves to as well. Which doesn't prevent them from being narrow-minded, pig-headed and self-righteous. But honestly narrow-minded, pig-headed and self-righteous.

Liberals of this ilk, however, have a harder time since the basis for their disgust is nothing more or less than a subjective response. I don't like your opinion, therefore you stink. I have a different opinion, therefore I do not stink. I may sound the same as you, talk the same, be as belligerent, obnoxious, in-your-face and close-minded, but I'm not the same as you because I don't think the same things.

It's the difference between judging by behavior and judging by the quality of one's soul. Ironic that religious people should depend more on the first these days and fundamentalist liberals should depend so much on the second.

The other side-effect to all this parochial subjectivity, other than a bizarre reliance on conspiracy theories, is a rejection of human fallibility and incompetence. All mistakes must be the result of deliberate malfeasance (or sin, depending on one's bent). The problem with this approach is that ambiguities, paradoxes and discrepancies become a stumbling block to understanding (no, they don't need to be) and learning, for that matter. We spend a great deal of time in my grad classes being perplexed and startled and shocked by the oddities of history. In one class last semester, the students were discussing the essays of a Native American, William Apess, who makes the argument, somewhat belligerently, that he is a better Christian than the white so-called Christians who raised him. Members of the class mused, "Well, how could he even be a Christian if the people who raised him were so mean?"

It's the "subjective experience rules all subsequent decisions" theory of the universe. I give these discussions a wide berth since I'm afraid I'll start saying things like, "What--you were born yesterday?" Or "How dumb do you have to be to be admitted into grad school?"

Perhaps, I am being harsh, but I would assume that by the time we reach graduate school, age (if not experience) would have taught us that a gap exists between our experience, our ideal and our day-to-day practice. The struggle to comprehend that gap is part of being human. The acceptance of it is a mark of maturity. That is, no theory, principle, religion, ideology, government or institution functions at its ideal. None. Welcome to Reality 101. We all deal with this failure in different ways. We don't always deal with it as well as we would like. And we don't always keep the subjective and objective separate. But only the totally subjective will believe that their sacred cows and pet ideologies are free of this disparity while everyone else's falter in the trough of corruptness.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

Abortion & Star Trek

There's an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation (second season) where Troi is invaded by a "life entity" (the politically correct Trekkie word for "alien") which wants to experience life for its own sake and decides to start, inside Troi, as a fetus (it is eventually born). It is an unremarkable episode but has one scene of merit. Riker, Picard, Worf, Data, and Troi have gathered in the conference room. The men are yammering away about the "life form" and whether it is threatening or not. Worf, the pragmatist, suggests aborting it. The men yammer some more.

Until Troi speaks up and says, "I'm going to have it so get over it."

Now, I like this scene for two reasons, both of which have nothing to do with whether or not it is militarily intelligent for Troi to have the baby. (One of the amusing aspects of Star Trek: Next Generation is how much time Picard spends trying to convince people that the Federation isn't a military organization, all while the Enterprise is arming torpedoes every other episode.)

I like it because it illustrates the problem of choice. The baby is growing in Troi; it is inside her body, and there really isn't much (absent a direct order which Picard can't give because, eh hem, this isn't a military organization) that anyone can do about it.

The other thing I like about it is that Troi chooses to let the fetus live. Which is all very proper and right for a non-military star-ship that is seeking out new life and new civilizations. I mean, hello, here's life, might as well say howdy to it.

Now, in reference to issue #1, while not a fan of pro-choice, I get a bit wiggety about a government having any say about a fetus at all. Yes, society could extend rights to the fetus, but boy, imagine that as a complication of modern life! Suppose the fetus aborts naturally--there would have to be an investigation. And suppose the woman had been exercising too vigorously the day before. Would she be accused of self-aborting? On purpose? Would pregnant women's eating habits be monitored? If they didn't eat healthily one day, would they be fined? Could a child sue the mother for damage done to it as a fetus? You see the problems: messy, legal and highly problematic. To a degree, we must, as a democratic, secular society, allow the fetus to be the property of the woman.

But in reference to issue #2, the older I get, the more disenchanted I become with pro-choice. I was never a pro-choice advocate, but during my twenties I was willing to allow for the pro-choice argument. But it bothers me more and more the failure of the pro-choice movement to admit that they are, in fact, talking about abortion (and property). And what that means and whether it is a terribly good thing for a society to be so sanguine, not to mention disingenuous, about killing brand new life.

I might be less judgmental of a purely pragmatic argument, a la Worf, but it annoys me to the extreme when pro-choicers are so self-congratulatory about the "rights" they are defending while ignoring the side-effect of those "rights." It's especially hard when many of the same people who preach about pro-choice also want me to get tearful over the death penalty, extinct plants, and vicious terrorists. Even Star Trek drew the line at letting the Borg take over the universe.

I won't go so far as pro-lifers who insist that abortions are another Holocaust. I think that misses the point of issue #1. But surely there's room in the debate for people who think that the pro-choice movement is kidding itself when they claim they speak for all women. If women really are so independent and self-evolved, yadda yadda, shouldn't they exhibit their independence and self-evolution by considering the long-range social results of their behavior?

Truth is, a lot of women do, but they aren't necessarily pro-choice.

Skipping Down the Cobblestones . . . Ah, Nostalgia

I was thinking about nostalgia today.

The problem with grad school (yes, it relates) is that you get this critical voice in your head. Not a good critical voice, mind, but a nasty, critical voice that thinks everything is a sham and that people shouldn't like TV and that nothing good every happened to anyone. It'll fade with time, but for now, it's omnipresent.

It's not always a horrible thing. I spend a lot of time arguing with it which helps me to refine my particular oppositional perspective. Until I get sick of the whole thing and think exasperatingly, "Entertainment is just entertainment." But nothing will lighten the seriousness of the self-appointment seriousees. You just have to walk away. Which I will when I graduate. So there. Nahnahnahnah.

Anyway, I was thinking about nostalgia today, and how the Harriet Beecher Stowe-like reminiscences of yesteryear were very much like my childhood. I had the big Thanksgivings and the present/tree-filled snowy Christmases and the huge backyard where we played Capture the Flag and Hide 'n' Seek. I had an Elizabeth Enright childhood.

The critical voice insists that I didn't really have all those things, I just thought I did. Really, what with pesticides in the air and the zooming divorce rate and intercity problems and Reagan as president, I must be kidding myself. Not to mention all the problems of belonging to the 70s as well as being a baby boomer product as well as being a baby boomer myself (yes, it is possible if your parents grew up during the Depression, got married in their mid-twenties and had you in 1971). I can just imagine the scorn: "Oh, you had a happy childhood while people were starving all over the world."

And I immediately thought, But I wasn't happy. If anything, I was a worried kid. And I think that here the critical voice has a point, except for the wrong reason. It isn't that I had a bad childhood. I had a rather bizarrely good one. It's that children, like pets, don't actually experience happiness. They are too busy reacting to the world around them. All that sensory input. All that change, growth, hormone spurts here and there (rehearsal for the big rollercoaster of teenagehood). The memory of happiness occurs in retrospect. Which doesn't make the memory wrong. Or right. I also happen to think that angst and unhappiness occurs in retrospect (on CSI a couple of weeks back, Sarah was describing her horrible childhood to Grissom, abusive parents, etc., and she said, "I didn't know that other people had different lives," or words to that effect. "I didn't know that all families weren't like mine.")

As we go through life, we choose, reality-show-wise, what pieces of our past to remember, to organize, to publish. Which doesn't mean those things didn't happen. The point is not that everything we experience is in the eye of the beholder, the point is that the emotions of past events (happiness or fear or dread) are thrust backwards onto those events. We identify and label the emotion content of our memories. But since we are doing this in the future, a great deal of confabulation (great word, by the way) takes place, and the emotional content becomes more of a present-day creation than a real memory.

The lost memory people would claim that this confabulation is due to repression, and there were a bunch of movies in the 40s/50s (The Three Faces of Eve, Spellbound) where people would face their repressed fears and whop bang, get better. But I'm not convinced that emotion is something that we acknowledge while we are feeling it. In Documents in the Case, Sayers has Munting say, "This proves that we think in actual words," and in Screwtape Letters (and elsewhere), Lewis claimed that the moment we begin to analyze an event or emotion, we are no longer experiencing it. Or at least, not in the same way. Emotion has no language. It's just hormones, reaction, the numbed brain, the relaxed muscles. Then the brain gets to work trying to make sense of it, trying to cope with it, thinking about it.

So, yes, probably our childhoods were neither as wonderful or as rotten as we imagine them to be. I would argue that the "everything was terrible" folks miss the boat almost as much as the "simpler, better times" folks because what matters isn't the quality of life, what matters is the use we make of it. It's no accident that during my "happy" childhood, I had little to no interest in the Cold War despite the fact that I was a kid who worried a lot. I worried about the big things, like God and death. The Cold War simply didn't measure up. Of course, it was going on. My parents probably talked about it. Other people certainly did. My friends did. But I never believed the Soviet Union was going to bomb us or that we were going to bomb the Soviet Union. And I was right.

Twenty-five odd years later, I still refuse to do a Chicken Little and freak out over THE END OF EVERYTHING, THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD, THE HORROR, THE HORROR. That particular fear has never worked as an escape hatch for me. I'm still going to have to pay my bills tomorrow, darn it. Which is why I make a lousy environmentalist.

So, just to drive the "it's all in the environment" people nuts, did my childhood reaction to the Cold War influence my later reactions in life? Or rather, did I develop these reactions by choice and then use my childhood environment to explain them? (Just for the record, I consider "it's all in the genetics" to be a variant of "it's all in the environment.") That is, how much of our free-will do we dismiss because we don't want to face the fact that everything we do is ultimately by choice: the lives we lead, the places we end up, the attitudes we develop, the bad and good things that occur to us? Wouldn't it be terrifying to learn that, in fact, the life we have is all our self-creation, like a piece of sculpture or art? Something we have crafted based entirely on our personal desires, even the bad stuff? I don't mean this in the "we should be responsible for our actions" sense. We should, but right now, I mean this in the "we get what we want out of life" sense. If we think life is a big, chaotic mess, it becomes a big, chaotic mess. If we think we are beleagured victims who have been hurt by others, we become beleagured victims. Not because we see ourselves that way but because we actually, non-relatively, mold ourselves into being what we imagine.

Or not, as the case may be.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

Harry Potter Oh, Why Not?

Hey, this is a popular culture site. I have to write about it!

I haven't read Book 6, or even started it, mostly because I'm still stuck halfway through the last one. I've written earlier about my difficulty with unending series and even knowing that Harry Potter ends at 7 doesn't help me much. 3-book series are about my max. And then I just get tired of feeling compelled to keep up with the various plot lines.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who thinks that the Harry Potter books are terrible and that Rowlings doesn't deserve to have all the money she can lay her hands on, but then capitalism doesn't bother me, and I don't believe people buy stuff unless they want to. I think there are a number of better written books out there, but I think that Rowlings' writing has an immediacy that explains, and justifies, if it needs to be justified, its popularity. But then I've also let a guy explain the Wheel of Time series to me. I didn't want to read it, but I didn't mind hearing about it.

All that said, the news that someone "much-loved" dies in the latest book (and yes, I know who it is) does not encourage me to run out and buy the book. Even if I didn't know the victim, reading 600 odd pages just to find out wouldn't be enough inducement. I don't object to Rowlings creating darker and darker books. It's her series, and I think she has a point: this is the battle of good and evil. I just, well, don't much care for books that slather me with heart-tugging grief.

It isn't that I mind a good cry. Every time I read Passage by Connie Willis, I bawl my eyes out: at the part when the teacher finally remembers what he has to tell the main character and at the end. Every time. Without fail. And I love that book. It's just that Rowlings has spoken (or people have spoken for her) about killing off various characters as "oh, I have this difficult task ahead of me, it's so terrible that I have to write this" which is precisely the kind of writing that I distrust. I believe that a writer is fully in control of her text. Fully. None of this, "But the muse spoke to me" stuff. You don't like the way the muse is speaking? Get a different muse. Yes, a certain set-up compels a certain ending, but you can change the set-up. As much as you like. It's your story. You're in control. You make it what it is. Nobody takes over. You think that, you're kidding yourself.

With that in mind, I get suspicious over deaths in fiction. At some point, death crosses the line from necessity to manipulation. It stops being the natural outcome of story and becomes a plot tool of surprise and shock, like prescribing a daily dosage of fun, then suspense, then grief. Which isn't de facto bad writing, and I won't answer for Rowlings' reasons for the last three deaths in her last three books. But, as I've said, I get suspicious. (Like people who told me that I had to go see Beaches because it would make me cry. Uh, no thanks. I don't need a dosage of squishy grief today. I'm perfectly capable of finding squishy grief just by being alive.)

But, as I've said, such prescription of emotion isn't de facto bad writing. Aristotle made THE argument in favor of catharsis. Genres like horror depend on it. And many poeple like a frisson of something or other to get them through the day. It just seems to me that if that frisson can't be delivered without killing off major characters, then something is terribly wrong.

Books Where Death Isn't Just A Plot Dosage of Grief

1. Passage by Connie Willis
2. Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
3. Narnia Books by C.S. Lewis
4. Doomsday Book by Connie Wilis
5. Penhallow by Georgette Heyer (one of the saddest books I've ever read)
6. Runner by Cynthia Voigt
7. Shakespeare's Plays
8. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
9. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10. Riddlemaster of Hed by Patricia McKillip

CATEGORY: BOOKS

CSI's Top 10 Instructions to Criminals

10. Don't cheat rich, powerful casino bosses (especially if one is a CSI's dad).

9. If you think you haven't left evidence behind, think again.

8. Bugs are CSI's friends.

7. If you kill your wife and hide her in the boiler of your basement in a city in the desert, you will probably be found out.

6. No, we aren't cops, we just act like we are.

5. Rental cars are never cleaned properly—don't count on them.

4. Never dress up in a fur costume on a country road at night.

3. Stealing dead bodies is a crime, even if it's the dead body of your best friend.

2. For the victims: Don't strike up e-mail conversations with criminals while they are in jail and then agree to meet them in dark, dangerous locations even if they are so very, very nice.

1. Never spit on a CSI.

CATEGORY: TV

Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen: Plot & Story

Jane Austen's novels are sometimes described as romances. As a Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen fan, I disagree with that designation.

Reason One
In Austen everyone suffers from the "everybody on the make" syndrome. Listening to Pride & Prejudice, I was struck, moreso than I have been in the past, by the hardheadedness underlying all that sensibility. Elizabeth gets angry over Darcy's interference with Bingley & Jane, but her anger is undercut by the fact that everybody is interfering with everybody all the time. Her aunt gives her advice. Elizabeth gives her sister and Charlotte advice. Charlotte gives Elizabeth advice. It's just an orgy of opinions. What is comes down to is: everybody wants love but nobody wants to be poor.

Now, the most respectable of romance novels, such as Georgette Heyer's, try to capture this on-the-make quality of Regency life. Georgette Heyer, who did a large amount of research on the dress and setting of the period, never marries her lords to peasant girls. She's no more democratic than Austen, and there are some Austenish ziggers in her comedy, although in general her comedy is lighter, fluffier and less consequential. In truth, Heyer's writing can be very funny, but she was less concerned with underlying causes and more concerned with writing a sweet story. Everyone is on the make but somehow that fact never rises to the surface. Heyer keeps it carefully under control. Lovely young ladies turn out to be heiresses. Handsome young men turn out to her heirs. Supposed changelings turn out to have Viscounts for fathers. Don't worry. There's no angst here.

Reason Two
This brings us to the other difference between Austen and romances, and it is, I think, the major one. Austen is about story. Most romances are about plot. Plot is the line of story: this happens, then this, then this, now this. Story is best described using a Stephen King image. He describes the process of writing as uncovering a skelton. The story is already there, whole, intact. It just needs to be brought to the surface. With plot, the end is always a twist, a change of fortune, the turn of the wheel. In Heyer's These Old Shades, the non-changeling changeling gets captured by her despicable father, rescued by her saturnine lover, presented to all of Paris, confronted with the supposed fact of her illegitimacy at which she runs away to save her lover from her supposed bad reputation. She is finally recovered by her lover and restored to all her rights and privileges (I'm using lover in the old sense of the word; this is Georgette Heyer; nobody sleeps with anybody until they are married, although the dandies and members of the ton always have had mistresses that occurred offstage and long before the plot began).

Now, in all honesty, this is a whole bunch of fun. But it isn't the same as story. With story, the ending is incipient in the beginning. There's inevitability about it. No twist is necessary to bring about a particular ending. The ending already exists, inviolate, known (although not necessarily revealed yet to the reader). The parts of the story hold together like a statue, a shape. As one reads, one gets a sense of an emerging totality.

Take Elizabeth and Darcy. I wrote earlier about how Darcy & Elizabeth loved each other for who they were, rather than what feats of flirtation they performed (my sister Beth reminded me that Darcy was attracted by Elizabeth's "bright eyes" and Elizabeth was impressed by Darcy's management of his estate). On the other hand, both Elizabeth and Darcy undergo an enlightenment, a point when they reorganize their thoughts and feelings. Elizabeth is angered, then humiliated and aggrieved by Darcy's letter. Darcy is angered, then embarrassed by Elizabeth's accusations of "ungentlemanly" behavior. But the argument has been coming for a long-time. The mutual feelings of attraction (I side with those who think that Elizabeth was always attracted, or at least interested in Darcy) and irritation have been growing for awhile. Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley isn't contrived. Since, as Beth points out, Darcy's property is an extension of himself, Elizabeth's arrival there is, on a metaphorical level, simply one more piece of the relationship pie. Darcy's intercession with Wickham & Lydia isn't a lucky chance. It is forecast by Darcy's behavior at Netherfield Park where he purchases reputation at the expense of Lydia's future (who might not matter but Elizabeth and Jane certainly do), behavior he must rectify.

This quality of inevitability is true of all Austen's books, including, especially, Mansfield Park. Much praise has been heaped up concerning Mary Crawford's wit with the follow-up implication that Austen herself admire Mary Crawford and that Austen only removed Ms. Crawford from the book as a kind of plot contrivance. But Edmund's disillusionment is a long-time coming. The wit of Elizabeth is not, contrary to speculation, reworked in Mary Crawford or, if it is, Austen was older and wiser and knew that wit can be a mean-spirited tool when used by superficial and self-absorbed individuals. Edmund's disillusionment is there from the beginning and no twist needs to bring it about. Austen's interference is only to remove his blinders before he proposes. (And since the said removal comes through Henry Crawford's behavior, it too was foreseeable.)

Conclusion
I'll go so far as to say that all great works have story, rather than just plot. However, plot isn't a bad thing. My abilities as a writer, with a few lucky exceptions, extend about as far as plot. Better to have something happen, after all, than just profound navel-gazing. Still, in the end, story reigns supreme.

CATEGORY" BOOKS

Character v. Plot: The Catch-22 of the Television Series

The reason most shows falter after two to three years, I think, is that story gives way to personality.

It kind of has to. The whole point of TV is to keep people watching and while the people in my college gasp in horror over such crass comsumerism, it's a respectable motivation. People who are bored don't watch. People who aren't being diverted don't watch. Not being bored and being diverted seems a fairly good definition of entertainment to me.

In the first season, and sometimes the second, this means that the writers pull out all the stops. They give you every single burning building, trapped in another dimension, time wrapping, wrongfully accused, meet up with old friend/lover/villain, identity theft variation-on-a-theme plot line that is out there.

Which leaves one going, "Uh, what about season three?"

What happens in season three is that plotlines based on the characters take over. This doesn't work in season one because the audience does not yet care whether Bobby's wife leaves him or Judy's husband is a drug addict or Samantha really, really wants a child. But by season two, the viewer has become invested in the characters' welfare. From the writer's perspective, this means they can put the character in danger and voila! that's enough to keep the tension going. (This is how soaps work.)

Star Trek: Next Generation, bizarrely enough, started doing this early on. I've been rewatching the DVDs sort of in order. I started renting season 2 (Netflix) and getting season 1 out of the library. What surprised me was that despite the totally hokey plots of season 1, they were far more action packed than the season 2 episodes I've watched so far. Season 2 is surprisingly talky and personality-centered. Since many times this involves watching Brent Spiner do comedy, I don't mind especially. (That's him in the picture.) And I think this early focus might explain Star Trek: Next Gen's popularity. Sci-fi, by necessity, has to focus on plot, and, like cop shows, it's kind of okay to do the same story over and over and over. They meet aliens! Someone dies! Whatever, it's the same story. But you can't churn out seven seasons without creating some attachment to the characters and eventually attachment to characters is what keeps a show going.

Take the final seasons of Buffy, for instance. Shows like the dream episode simply wouldn't have worked earlier on. Even "Band Candy" (season 3) wouldn't have worked in season 1 since part of the great joy of "Band Candy" is watching Giles, who we already know very well, acting like a hulking, belligerent teenager (and he does it magnificently; that's his real accent, by the way). The latter half of Mash was more about Hawkeye and crew than the Korean War or medicine.

The only problem with this people-intense approach is that plot is ultimately what runs the machine. Mash faltered and died (especially with the loss of Radar). It all comes down to story, really. Yes, there are shows like 7th Heaven and One Tree Hill and such that run basically on "what will happen next to so and so" (and I'd like to add here, in a random tangent, that there are few things that bug me as much as that manipulative mother on 7th Heaven; I like the actress; but I can't stand her Camden character). But story is still the power source. CSI, Law & Order, Star Trek, all those shows are aggressively popular because they deliver a story. Even reality shows are cut and pasted until some kind of plot emerges. (This week, Gary and Vanessa fight over food rationing!) Once all the stories have been used up, people are all that is left.

So,I don’t blame the writers for switching focus. They're just trying to make a living, and hey, I can always change channels. And sometimes it works. Take Monk, for instance. There are only so many detective plots out there, and there are only so many "what crazy thing is Monk doing today" ideas; to cope, the writers have focused more and more on using the marvelous comedic powers of Tony Shalhoub and Ted Levine. The second episode of season 3 is one of the funniest episodes of Monk I've seen. I keep thinking, "They can't top that," and then they do. (When Monk thinks he is locked in the panic room and Ted Levine is shouting instructions to him through the hole in the door is one of the dumbest funny things I've seen. Who would have thunk? Oh, yes, and the monkey. The monkey is great.)

Star Trek developed the Borg (getting one villain and keeping it is always a good idea). CSI: Las Vegas split their team up which I'm not sure worked, but it made for an effective near last line of the last episode. (Lot of work for one line, but hey....) Whedon's coping mechanism is usually to keep adding more and more and more characters, which doesn't really work, but it keeps things interesting. (Although I thought the last two seasons of Buffy and Angel were both pretty bad; Whedon-bad which means they were still rocking, but not so hot compared to the earlier seasons.) NCIS actually killed someone off. Which I didn't see coming, even though the TV ads told me it would happen, and it shocked me to my core. (But is she really dead?) So next season, the characters can HANDLE THEIR GRIEF, etc. etc. for twenty trillon episodes.

In general, I prefer plot & story to character development, but I do like to like the characters, at least. I could never get into Enterprise because, despite liking Scott Bakula, I didn't much care for any character except Trapp. But I like all the Star Trek: Next Gen characters, even Troi despite her silly lines. I adore Nero Wolfe (season 2 is coming out; it's coming out!) characters, which is a good thing since sometimes those plots are totally convoluted. The dialog between Wolfe and Archie goes a long way towards making the show work. I prefer CSI: Las Vegas to the others, mostly because I like the supporting characters; that is, I like Grissom and Caruso (lovely voice that guy has got) and Sinise but I don't much care for the supporting characters on Miami and New York. But I really like Warwick, Nick, Sarah (even Sarah, who is a basket case if ever I saw one) and Katherine and Greg, of course. Even Hodges and Eckley, who may be a bureaucrat but was right about Grissom screwing up as a manager.

So character does matter. But it can't carry plot forever. Even on a good day.

P.S. Plot and story are somewhat different things, but that's another post for another day.

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Speaking of Anthem

Speaking of Anthem by Ayn Rand, here is my review from Amazon.com.

This is a completely unfair review to make. I'm not a Ayn Rand fan, and I usually try to avoid reviewing books whose authors I am more or less ignorant about and uninterested in. That said--and all readers having been warned--this is one of the few books I have ever read in my life that I completely and utterly and absolutely loathed. If I ever had the slightest inclination to read The Fountainhead, this book squashed that interest to ant-like proportions. I found it narcissistic, chauvinistic (even by my relaxed "Hey, patriarchy has some good points" standards) and bovinely incompetent in its logic. The hero's solution to his anti-individualist society--creating an "I'm the only individual that counts" society (in other words, ANOTHER anti-individualist society)--plumbs the depths of idiocy. I've been told that Ayn Rand did better than this, but I can't bring myself to find out.

To play fair, other reviews are much more positive so keep reading if I've thoroughly annoyed you.

It really is just about the stupidest book I've ever read, and I'm the kind of reader who thinks things like novelizations have the right to exist. I mean, books are great. All kinds of books. But Anthem is a sorry excuse for killing a tree, or a shrub for that matter. It's just SO bad.

My reaction isn't that unusual. Based on the reviews, people either love, love, love the book or hate it. Now, I could almost see liking it (I probably would have liked it as a teen for about two seconds). I just don't get loving it: religiously, as if it's the best book ever written, the most wonderful, insightful, inspiring book ever. I mean, huh? Try the Bible, people. If you're an atheist and The Book of Job doesn't turn you on, try Kafka (I don't know if he was an atheist, but he is very depressing about communal living). If you're still an atheist and think the Bible is the opiate of the masses, try A.E. Housman. If you're anti-corporate, try Feed by M.T. Anderson. If you really want to understand the horrors of communism, try Solzhenitsyn. If you really want to dig into the moral angst of the individual, try Crime & Punishment. If you want something big and hairy and life-shattering, plow through War & Peace. If you want to sink your teeth into the horribleness of mass hysteria, pick up Lord of the Flies. If you want someone to tell you how great the individual is and how horrible the State is, watch Borg episodes of Star Trek. If that is too vulgar and mass culture for you, read Jane Austen. She was invested in the problem of individual integrity, and her novels are classics so you can feel noble and high-falutin while reading them. Austen herself wasn't noble and high falutin, of course, so beware the stern, satirical and non-self-pitying voice.

If you prefer warm and fuzzy to stern and satirical, there's always Dr. Phil to bolster your individualistic ego. If the particular warm fuzzies you are looking for have to do with the masterful, egotistical hero of Anthem, I suggest The WWF, which has the merit of never, ever taking its masterful, egotistical men seriously. Then get Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer out of the library. She doesn't take her masterful, egotistical men seriously either. If you insist on so-called "classic" literature about masterful, egotistical men, there's always Lady Chatterley's Lover. It's a really dumb book too, but at least it is better written. (Actually, the best masterful man of literature is the lover/bad guy/husband of Pamela.) Try Jane Eyre, try Alcott's The Long and Fatal Love Chase. But do not waste your time on humorless, unintelligent dreck like Anthem.

Amazon.com reviews and one of mine: My Brother Louis Measures Worms

The following is a review I wrote for amazon.com. Unfortunately, amazon.com reviews more often than not turn into tabulations against or in favor of the book. That is, rather than voting on whether or not a review has been helpful, people vote on whether or not they agree with you, which isn't the same thing. My review of Ayn Rand's Anthem is 9 to 8 (9 "helpful", 8 "not helpful") but since all I do in the review is blast the book, I think the 8 have a point. On the other hand, my extremely complete review of Richard Evan's Lying About Hitler (about Holocaust denier, David Irving) is 33 "helpful," 15 "not helpful." My bet is that my review is one of many that have become silent battlegrounds over the issue of Holocaust denial. As you can see, the Holocaust deniers are losing.

No one has voted at all on the following review, but I wrote it because the review before mine was so negative (and for such a bizarre reason; the reviewer was upset by "the use of obscenities . . . and the preoccupation with pregnancy") and had way too many "helpful" votes! I couldn't vote "not helpful" since even though I didn't agree with the woman, she had listed her objections clearly and honestly. So, in my own little effort to bring in a positive vote, I wrote the following:

This is one of the funniest--and sweet-hearted--books I have ever read. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a better book, but My Brother Louis Measures Worms also by Barbara Robinson is the book that I own and have read over and over and over again. It takes place in the kind of timeless neighborhood that I grew up in, where kids spend all day outside, coming in only at dusk. I don't know if neighborhoods exist like this anymore . . . so reading My Brother Louis Measures Worms may be a stroll down nostalgia lane. In many ways, it reminds me of the movie The Sandlot (the original, not the latest version) which captures to perfection my childhood memories of playing baseball with my brother (Daniel, not Louis).

The book's family is eccentric but not unbelievable. Robinson has the ability to create likeable and realistic (and intact) nuclear families without crossing the line into syrupy cliches. The book is split into short stories (that follow a consecutive timeline) and every scenario conveys the positive--if sometimes bewildering--aura of a happy childhood. My favorite story is probably the mother getting lost by following the wrong cars to flower shows but the story about the dog who comes and stays forever reminds me of my dad (who has never cared for pets).

Recommendation: It's not as classic as The Best Christmas Pageant Ever but is better than The Best School Year Ever. Buy it!

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Shatner, Nimoy & Kelley

I watched Star Trek IV Voyage Home on Monday. It felt July 4thy in some way, not sure why. (Doesn't Star Trek always?) As part of the Special Edition DVD, there were uncut interviews with the three big guns; I think they were practice interviews. You couldn't hear the interviewer, and there were a lot of starts and stops as film was changed or questions were revised, and none of the men were pumped up the way they would be for a live interview.

Anyway I came to some conclusions:

First, William Shatner is a lot smarter and a good deal more reserved than his persona. I always pictured William Shatner as being rather like Tim Allen's character is Galaxy Quest (excellent movie by the way): so invested in his persona that it's hard to tell the difference between the character and the actor. Not so, and my opinion of Shatner's acting ability went up. His depiction of the bumptious, over-confident Kirk is deliberate, not accidental.

Shatner has also had classical training: Shakespeare, etc. I'll talk more about this later, but it was clear from the interview that he considered Star Trek IV a bit of lite fluff (which it is, but Shatner was much more dis- missive). But then it is clear from the interview that he hadn't yet made peace with his Kirk-self. All in all, the interview confirmed my opinion that Nimoy understands Shatner a great deal better than, for instance, Takei (who is one bitter guy if you've read his Star Trek autobiography).

Nimoy was Mr. Gregarious. Actually, whenever I've seen interviews with Nimoy, he is Mr. Gregarious. That whole cool, detached Spock thing is a bit of a front. His interview was much lengthier than the others. He got a little tired of it by the end. (How many times can you ask, "So will the fans like the movie?" in different ways? Shatner got so sick of it, he was practically curt.) The most cool thing about Nimoy is that he is a true gentleman; he has never descended, like some of the Star Trek gang, to rudeness towards the fans or to the other actors. He has tut-tutted the studio a bit, but as far as I can tell that's par for the course with studios.

Now Nimoy, like Shatner, has worried about his acting career being co-opted by his character: that green, pointy-eared man from Vulcan. But by the time he directed Star Trek IV, he'd obviously made peace with it. He wrote the I Am Not Spock book in 1976, I am Spock in the mid-90s. At some point, he realized, okay, this is my career, and hey, the Vulcan isn't a bad guy to be.

But Shatner's interview revealed a deeply unhappy man, who didn't want to live this same role over and over and over. At one point the interviewer said, "You come across as an ensemble cast." "Thank you," Shatner said, "because, of course, we aren't really. An ensemble cast is like the National Theatre in London where the cast lives and works together on pieces on a continual basis. We just come together every two to three years." In his rather nasty book, Takei accuses Shatner of being pompous and vain, etc. etc. because he won't show up to every single Star Trekky thingy with everybody else. My initial thought was, "Hey, the Vulcan likes him. Shut up, Sulu." My second thought, on seeing this interview, is that Shatner is far more reserved and far more reluctant to "be" Kirk than he has been painted.

I think, though, that Shatner has made peace with Kirk. He wrote a book about Star Trek conventions in 1999. He'd been very contemptuous of Star Trek conventions for a long time, but he finally decided to take another look (he was probably offered a contract to write a Star Trek memoir by a publisher). So he dressed up (disguised, which should tell you something) and went around convention halls and talked to people. The book is very upbeat. Since he has gone on to author some Star Trek novels, I'd say his anti-Trek feelings have been replaced by, well, acceptance at least.

The last interview was DeForest Kelley, who is a total kick. The interview reminded me of Jonathan Frakes (ST:NG's Riker) who pretty much declared, "Hey, this is as good as I am. I'm lucky to have this career," and married a model and started directing TV shows. Kelley comes off exactly the same way. He is a Hollywood careerist. That is, he works for Hollywood: heavies, background, whatever. There's no angst. I doubt he even cares if he can act. It's a job. This job turned out better than most. Well, what do you know!?

So that's the interviews. As for the movie, the text commentary is great although the fact that it is text is a bit annoying. I'd rather the commentators had spoken. But the commentary was the kind of thing I approve of: info, facts, tid-bits, bloppers, a little humor. None of that rather pointless "Uh, look Bob, do you remember that part?" "Oh, sure, Gary, yeah, yeah, I do."

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Shock Tactics versus (True) Freedom of Speech in Academics

I recently decided to take the rest of the summer off and start up my college work again in the Fall. I found the idea of returning so soon depressing in the extreme. (And I've got a family reunion coming up.) Whether distance from the academic environment has made me more objective or hardened my response to that environment is difficult to say. Probably a mixture of both. But I can now recognize patterns that escaped me when I was attending class day in and day out--getting reading done, writing papers and fiercely disagreeing with various opinions and approaches.

A common pattern for a class discussion goes like this:

Class begins with a discussion of a non-fiction text/document. The text's unreliability is then raised, specifically how the text is actually a narrative constructed by its writers to meet the needs of an audience--the narrative of the pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, for example. In other words, the text may not be 100% historically accurate. 

My personal feeling is that grad students should know, by the time they enter grad school, that narrative, reality and belief are not seamless threads that match in every particular. Nevertheless, the difference between the text/narrative and the reality (or, rather, the facts as we know them) is raised at which point some students are shocked and some are appalled while others are offended and ever so surprised because presumably they were born in a bubble on Mars without any human contact until the last fifteen minutes.

The class then moves on to discussing what the narrative says, and things are fine until the difficult question of "why" is broached.

"Why is the text/narrative different from the reality?" for instance. Or, "Why has this particular narrative been perpetuated?"

Now, I have a problem with this question because I think the only way you can know the answer is to ask the writers or the "perpetrators" or the publishers or the supporters of the narrative. The idea that a bunch of grad students sitting in a room postulating theories will arrive at THE cause of this rather ordinary day-to-day handling of history is, to my mind, rather unlikely. That kind of speculation is fine for late night conversations with one's friends (or e-mails with one's family, or one's blog, for that matter!) but a waste of money otherwise especially since the modus operandi in these cases is to completely ignore the writer's perspective and biography. Not to mention, there is often an awesome and guileless lack of recognition that we grad students are currently doing exactly what we are criticizing (that is, we are reducing the text to a message rather than reading the text).

Economics is often proposed as THE cause for the text-cum-narrative as well as class structure (hello, Marx), religion, race, gender; just about anything except choice and free-will is tossed into the vague postulatory cesspool. In the way of such discussions, it can be fun and interesting if non-productive.

Yet at some point, the conversation shifts, no matter how much the professors move to rein it in (and to their credit, they often do), towards, "Who can we blame?"

It is inevitable, I suppose. Marx, in particular, is an ideology that demands a leveling of blame, and it's so easy to blame the rich since precious few of us consider ourselves rich to begin with. So the wealthy are blamed and capitalists and Christians and the fundamentalist Right, if anyone can maneuver them in there.
  
By the end of the class, the students are split into three factions.

The first faction is hell bent for leather on blaming somebody. Perhaps it gives them a sense of satisfaction to have the enemy pinpointed. Perhaps they think it solves some contemporary problem (since most contemporary problems are as complicated as historical ones, this is wishful thinking). They may have an axe to grind. Quite often, they have mistaken blame and debunking for learning, which it isn't. (I call it The Shock Method of Teaching, and I think it is the single stupidest teaching method ever invented, not to mention the laziest.)

The second faction doesn't want to blame anyone. However, they're not sure how to move the conversation away from the issue of blame, partly because they think the issue of "why" is important (and the only way to truly move the conversation is to stop fussing about "why") and partly out of fear or respect or wariness of the first group. Words hover but are never spoken: "censorship," "bigotry," "prejudice." It is just as well, I think, that these words are avoided.

While the third faction keeps silent, either from boredom, disinterest, shyness, or a wish to avoid the desultory crossfire.

I normally side with the second faction until the complete pointlessness of the exercise hits me and then I relapse into a brown study. The language of blame never varies, and yet, as I grow older, it begins to unsettle me how easily this language is used to demonized flawed conservatives at the same time as it justifies terrorists as if the sins of both were equal in severity.

But political correctness is not the object of this post. I am not addressing "freedom of speech" in the sense of "the freedom to say what one wishes without reprisals" but "freedom of speech" in the sense of how much language can say but so often doesn't. It seems to me (in retrospect) that the relatively conservative Christian environment of my undergrad school, BYU, had more to say about more things than the supposedly liberal, agnostic environment in which I now participate, and I think the "why" of that difference resides in this business of narrative: how text, reality and belief don't always match up. One of the assets of a theological training (however superficial) is that one learns this basic fact of life fairly early on (and fairly aggressively). Granted, there are plenty of people who ignore it. But religious training is, to a point, an attempt to handle the paradox of faith and materialism, the problem of textual truth against the problem of historical veracity. (All of this dealt with through the mindfield of personal experience.)

Once it is accepted, once one acknowledges that the text may or may not adequately reflect the historical reality, once one overcomes the adolescent desire to assume that all narratives--because of their distance from the facts--are lies, the questions and issues become so much more interesting:

• What is the author trying to say? (Personally, I think just trying to figure out what the author intends is enough for a whole class.) 
• Why does the the author say he/she wrote it? 
• Why do other people say she/he wrote it? (This is not about why we grad students think the author wrote the narrative, it's about us learning everything we can about the text.) 
• What kind of symbolism is operating in the work? What motifs? 
• How do those motifs speak to the human spirit? (And do they speak differently to different cultures or similarly?)
• What long-term impact has the narrative had? How is it reflected in our culture? 
• How are our own narratives/texts similar? 
• What have we learned from the text? 
• Has our understanding, our compassion, our love been increased? 
• What other authors have used this work? How did they respond to it? How did they disagree with it? 
• Does the work capture any aspect of historical reality? What aspects of historical reality does it get right? (A much more interesting question than "What does it get wrong?") If it gets the "facts" wrong, does it get the "feeling" right? (A really difficult question; ask yourself, Which Harry Potter movie captures the "feel" of the books the best?) 
• What research went into the work? 
• If society has "debunked" the text, have they gone too far?

There is no need for shock, for debunking, for alarm, for offense. Those high-profile emotions have little to do with understanding, compassion, love, tolerance. They do not lead to a larger view of the world, of history, of people, of life. They encourage rutted reactions: the clasped heart, the head-clutched swoon. Learning is lost in the epiphanies of reaction. And possibilities of speech are lost in overused paths of speculation and blame.

May the true freedom of speech never be lost.

July 4, 2005

The Non-Repressive Nature of C.S. Lewis

There are two movie versions of Shadowlands, a book by Brian Sibley about the marriage of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. The 1985 version, starring the excellent Joss Ackland as C.S. Lewis and Claire Bloom as Joy Davidman is far superior to the 1993 version starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. The 1993 portrayal of Lewis is grossly misleading.

The fault does not lie with Anthony Hopkins. In an interview given when the movie came out, Hopkins tried to explain that Lewis was not repressed, that he was not some Christian conservative, woman-phobic, frigid Oxford don. He was a conservative Christian with, as far as I can tell, indifferent politics (if anything, he was probably vaguely socialist). He had lived most of his grown life in a household with an older woman who may or may not have been his lover during his youth. He fought in WWI (and was wounded by friendly fire). He drank beer, talked loud and loved hiking. He was an excessively energetic, opinionated, confident Oxford don (who later moved to Cambridge). He could be as dogmatic and self-important as any college professor but he was ruthlessly honest with himself and, more importantly, had a great sense of humor. A colleague once described him, I hope I get this right, as the most unself-conscious self-analyst he'd ever met. Or something like that. Lewis could be devastatingly critical of himself, but he took the Christian injunction to "lose himself" seriously and subsequently, talked as little as possible about himself. He was incredibly generous (much more generous than people realized at the time). He claimed to not get along with children, but when he dealt with them, he treated them seriously. When Joy Davidman was diagnosed with cancer, Lewis not only insisted that she know her condition (atypical for that day and age) but that her boys be told as well. (His own mother had died of cancer--suddenly, in Lewis' eyes.) He had a huge correspondence, much of it with women. He was a multifaceted man who had a nodding acquaintance with the majority of the Christian sins. He often defined himself as a "Christianized pagan" since, despite being confirmed into the Anglican fold as a child, he never truly believed in God until his adulthood.

And yet the 1993 version of Shadowlands portrays this in-your-face, boisterous, paunchy man as a repressed guy who is only drawn out of his sheltered life by a brash, American woman.

Now, Joy Davidman was brash. By the time she meet Lewis, she was an ex-communist, married Christian Jew, mother of two young boys. Her husband was a philanderer who had a tendency to get drunk and hit his kids. Joy Davidman kind of worshipped Lewis, at least at first, and she came to England to seek his advice regarding her marriage. Many people believe that she set her sights on him even before she set foot on British soil. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I do think Joy knew what she wanted, and once she met Lewis, she knew she wanted him. He was a little less sure. (On top of which, Joy really bugged his donnish friends). But the growing friendship of Lewis and Joy is easily understand if one realizes that Joy's brash, outspoken nature didn't "release" Lewis' inner self. She was like Lewis. What Lewis got in Joy was the kind of give-and-take, argumentative, highly intellectual, witty conversation, replete with stingers, that he had usually associated only with his male friends. With Joy, he got all the pleasure of loud, obnoxious opinions plus warm fuzzy sexual attraction to boot.

My opinion is that Lewis (somewhat shell-shocked by his life with the shrewish but to be pitied Mrs. Moore) didn't see the point of marriage unless it was with an equal. He was a bit of a misogynist (which isn't exactly the same thing as being a chauvinistic or being repressed) since he didn't believe that the hearty, give-and-take equality he liked was possible with a woman, and I have to confess that on paper the marriage of Lewis and Joy looks odd in the extreme. I mean, what are the chances? But there is no doubt whatsoever that despite the shaky ground on which the relationship started, he was passionately in love with Joy when she died, and it is to his enormous credit that the man who had extolled the necessity of accepting life's pain with life's good ended by determining that all the pain of loss was worth the love he had enjoyed. The point of this post is that the capacity to do so was not something Joy created in Lewis. He always had it.

The 1985 version also more faithfully details Lewis' religious crisis after Joy's death. The 1993 version winds down with Lewis' doubts (oh, he loved her SOOOO much, he even doubted God). But Lewis himself claimed that it was only as his self-obsessive grief subsided that he remembered Joy accurately and could ask himself "Would we call the dead back?" Lewis advocated something that I think gets lost in most analysis of his writing: he believed that passionate feeling, spiritual or otherwise, can accompany a cold, clear intellectual response. He was suspicious of overfrought nerves and blustering emotion, and it is only our post-70s goopy self-love that labels such suspicion "repressed." As Dr. House points out, what's the point of all the emotional upheavel? it won't get the patient better any faster. (In other words, you can care deeply for something or someone without throwing tantrums and drowning in emotional goo.) "She smiled [on her death bed] but not at me," Lewis wrote and for a man completing a journal about the loss of an adored wife, it is a remarkable statement.

There are many people who believe that religion is some kind of safety net, protection, comfort zone for believers. The stunning thing about A Grief Observed (Lewis's journal after Joy's death) is that his reconciliation with God was not accompanied by any particularly comforting beliefs. He repudiated entirely the idea "this is what she would really want" and in so doing faced the reality of Joy's death more honestly than those people who insist that the dead live on in our thoughts, we can live for them, blah, blah, blah. Although Lewis believed in Joy's eternal soul and that he might meet her on the other side, he accepted (in accordance with traditional Christianity and, for that matter, his marriage vows) that she would no longer be his wife in heaven.

For Lewis, true belief and true love stem, eventually, from honest, clear-headed acceptance. He never bought into the "there are no atheists in foxholes" argument. So you get all emotional in a crisis, so what? It was when the head has cleared, when one stops pounding the door, when one is quiet and at peace and the richoeting, self-important emotions have died that God speaks. It's a refreshing view in face of the demands for constant emotional highs that occur in our current political and religious landscapes.

The 1985 version captures all this much better. I highly recommend it, although Debra Winger's depiction of Joy is probably more accurate than Bloom's.

CATEGORY: MOVIES