I Get All Philological

There's a thing about swearing that puzzles me, but I'm not going to get to that first.

First, I'm not a big fan of it. I lived next door once to a woman who had fights every single night with her boyfriend. Every single night. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. He would come over, and something would happen, and she would run after him into the parking lot, and they would scream at each other, swearing up one side and down the other. And it was unbelievably tedious. I was also getting no sleep, but I don't think I would have minded so much if they had actually yelled interesting things at each other. But it was just "&%$#" and "!@*&" and "$%#! your car" when I was hoping for accusations of infidelity and the mention of his third child by another woman and her best friend's confession of what he said to her. But nah. No juicy gossip.

The second reason I'm not a big fan of swearing, fictionwise, is that 9 times out of 10 (the 10th being Stephen King or Heathers), it isn't used well. That is, it is used by lazy writers (or young ones) as a way of avoiding the (difficult) task of writing persuasive dialog. Instead of figuring out how to make a character express his anger, they opt for swear words because (1) it's realistic (oh, yawn) and (2) it's easy.

I'll bypasss the whole realism argument (and my annoyance with fiction writers who can't seem to figure out that they ARE writing fiction). When Stephen King argues that his fictional milltown workers talk like milltown workers because that's how milltown workers talk, and he thinks nothing of it because that's how he grew up, I actually buy that argument. He is reproducing a vernacular that is as common to him as saying "The rains of Spain fall mainly on the plains" is to Professor Higgins. And the excessive use of the f* word in Heathers (as noun, adverb, adjective) is an effective and satiric reproduction of high school talk (with all the accompanying self-consciousness).

But, as I've said, 9 times out of 10 it isn't satiric or matter-of-fact reproduction, it's an attempt to bypass real dialog, kind of like in Star Trek: Next Gen; every time the crew visited a new planet and encountered a new species, they would inform Picard, "There are these monster looking creatures, Captain. They're impossible to describe." As Phil Farrand points out in his Nitpicker's Guide, they aren't that hard to describe: tall, hairy, snout-nosed creatures of the humanoid variety wearing baggy pants. The real problem is lazy script writing.

So now that I've taken care of my overall reactions, here's my problem: the philology of swear words. What I mean by that is when people object to swear words based on their origins.

The exchange goes something like:

Person #1: *&%#
Person #2: You know that originated amongst drug lords in prison who used it during torture!

Huh? What on earth does that have to do with the price of oil at Cumberland Farms?

It isn't just swear words, of course. And it's not an approach to language that I particularly understand. It might be interesting to philologists, but in terms of meaning (how the word is used; what people hear/think/assume when you use it), it is hardly relevant. Every word we speak meant something else, something more or something less once upon a time. Every word originated sideways or tortorously from another word. But if you head straight for the birth, bypassing the word's current meaning, you end up with people who want to write "womyn" instead of "woman." Language itself becomes, in some weird 1984 way, dangerous not because of what people actually hear but because of what people, unconsciously, unintentionally, are actually saying. It's that strange right-brain/left-brain thing again where everything becomes literal but in a tangential, subconsious way. So if you write "woman" instead of "womyn", you are unconsciously but literally partaking in the patriarchal ethos of Western civilization. It does not matter if your meaning and the meaning that is heard arouse no feelings about the patriarchal system one way or the other. Language becomes a matter of semiotics, not communication.

Which I'm not a big fan of. Swear words, as bad dialog writers know, have meaning that is often completely unattached to what the words originally or even concurrently mean. An expletive is an expletive for a reason. Besides, it is entirely possible that if you went back far enough, you'd find the word didn't have a negative meaning at all. And if that is the case, is it still a swear word?

CATEGORY: FROLICS

Narnia

This is a difficult movie for me to critique. First of all, I'm a huge believer in books being different from movies. I'm also a huge believer in movies portraying the individual vision of the director. I disliked the first Harry Potter but quite liked the latter two for precisely that reason. I wish Jackson had left my favorite storylines in the LTR trilogy but in general was content with his vision. I read Seabiscuit after I saw the movie and was so stunned that the movie seemed pale in comparison, but I have since developed a liking for the (somewhat different tonally) movie as well.

Unfortunately, like with many people, there's always that one book or author where it almost doesn't matter what the director does, it isn't going to be enough. The Narnia books are like that for me. I enjoyed the movie, but I felt it wasn't very much different from the BBC production, only much MUCH better special effects.

If *I* were to do it (if someone were to walk up and hand me a ton of money and lots of artistic license), I would make the kids much older, and, more importantly, I would tell the story backwards. Or sideways. The exciting thing to me about movies is that you don't have to keep the narrator's voice or author's timeline. Sometimes, producers go too far in this respect (as my brother Joe has pointed out, if a producer is going to use a book, he/she should at least like the book--rather than claiming to do a movie based on a book and then just adopting the title).

Anyway, I would love to do a Narnia story where the story is told from a different point of view to the one you are used to. The kids are really the crux of the book so we'd have to stick with them (besides, as I've pointed out earlier, I'm not a big fan of anthropomorphized animals), but suppose the entire first part of the movie had been told from Peter's point of view? You would think, as Peter thinks, that his two younger siblings are going nuts. Of course, then you would miss the great faun scene, but that could be told in flashbacks. Or the entire story could be told by Tumnus, writing down the history of Narnia. Actually, I would opt for Edmund as the point of view, which also would excise the "first contact" but some stuff has to be excised and that's the best way to do it; the point of view can change of course; more importantly, what is shown and concealed can be handled by the camera's perspective; I think the fun of the camera is to remember (as nobody ever, ever does on Star Trek) that space is three-dimensional. Which means that the camera can enter the landscape and take a position. You don't have to stick to the book's linear narrative. You can create the story and then see where you want to stand inside it.

I do suggest seeing the movie, but I'm not one of those people who thinks that people MUST see it just because it's C.S. Lewis and Narnia. On the other hand, I'd really like them to make Prince Caspian so yeah, maybe you should go see it. But that's a financial reason, not a moral one. I adore C.S but that doesn't mean the movie couldn't have been more interesting.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

The Violence of Back to the Future

With all this free time (here today, gone in three weeks) between semesters, I've been watching some of the classics of the past decades, including the first two Back to the Futures. They are quite impressive. I don't know what Spielberg is up to these days, but once upon a time, he could lay out a solid storyline.

Watching the first Back to the Future and admiring the ever amusing Christopher Lloyd, I was reminded of one of the objections to the film: that it teaches violence as a solution. I've always considered this a rather petulant objection, and I was struck once more by (1) how inaccurate that objection is; (2) how stupid that objection is.

The film is about assertiveness. Marty's dad is a wimpy guy who gets some spine and voila, it changes his future. Spielberg carries the theme into the next two films, although he changed it slightly (possibly in answer to the objectors) by making Marty's assertiveness a matter of "Just saying, 'No'." But it's the same idea in different form.

However, let's suppose that the film is a kind of Hamlet meets Rambo declaration of the uses of violence to improve life, this is such a wrong-headed message because...? I suppose when the bully starts harassing the girl, Marty's dad should have called the police, lectured Biff on his non-PC behavior, written a strongly worded article, tried a diplomatic solution. And when Biff started wrenching on his arm, Marty's dad should have called a cease-fire and asked the UN to get involved.

Now, granted, movies (well, any created thing) set up their own problems or strawmen that they then solve. Which is why evil capitalist businessmen abound in droves in Hollywood. Set 'em up, kick 'em down, shake your finger a lot. And Biff is an over the top villain, but the basic problem remains. This guy is a bully who pushes people around. A martyr would take it. A Rambo would shot his head off. In a fantasy, he would be turned into a frog. In a Disney movie, he would fall on his own sword or trip over a cliff or something. In an Anne Perry novel, he would suddenly confess and tell you all about his bad relationship with his evil father. Jean Luc Picard would lecture him about free will before blowing up his ship. The Vulcan would have nerve-pinched him. But the easiest solution is just to hit the guy. Yet the objectors never seem to stop to think about the problem as an actual problem: here's a situation, what do you do about it? Which question is, I think, the whole purpose of fiction.

I suppose what the objectors dislike is that Marty's family benefits (oh, horrors) from this punch, which, as I've noted in my (1) response kind of misses the point of the punch, or what the punch represents. It's a kind of weird literalness which insists on taking the action literally but subjectifying the result to a bizarre degree. So, the movie was JUST about the punch, but the viewers won't understand that it's JUST about the punch, they will extrapolate, in a very right brained way, the punch for use in their own lives. So viewers are too left-brained to see the punch as symbolic but too right-brained to say, "Hey, this is just a movie."

When, the fact is, standing up for yourself violently, can make a difference in the future, good or bad. The whole point of turning the other cheek, etc. isn't that the Rambo approach doesn't work. Christ was advocating an alternative for entirely separate reasons from the effectiveness of violence. He was saying, "Let it go, even though you could take the guy's head off." Which is very different from saying, "Hey, this doesn't work." The Romans believed bulldozing Palestine would solve their problems in that area, and it did. It didn't solve them for anybody else, but it certainly solved them for the Romans. (Their particular end-of-the-line came from an entirely different direction.) On the positive side, the Revolutionary War worked too. Of course, the French Revolution didn't, but Waterloo certainly worked for the British.

Back to the Futures, I will admit, I think the truck in Back to the Future I is a bit much. I can well believe that Marty's dad learning to stand up for himself and not get pushed around could result in a slightly nicer home and a better relationship between the parents and more motivated kids and a writing career for the dad. I don't buy that any of that translates into a new truck. After all, a more assertive father might have decided that Marty shouldn't have any kind of car ("Pay for it yourself, son. I did when I was your age.").

Since, it's Christmas, I will end by commenting on the Sermon on the Mount (where the "turn the other check" statement is found). I think the purpose of the Sermon is to establish a standard, a palpable conception of moral righteousness, a center against which to compare ourselves. Do we hold grudges? Do we forgive? Trust? Do we hold by the truth? Do we stand up for our beliefs? Do we love our enemies? (And enemies includes all those people on the other side of the political spectrum and horrible bosses and faulty leaders.) It isn't about how to manage a political situation any more than the Creation vision is about how to create a world in six easy steps. Jesus made it clear on more than one occasion that he had no intention of involving himself, pro or con, in Rome's particular brand of diplomacy. He wasn't preaching about insurrections or cease-fires, he was saying, "This is the best kind of behavior. This is where you start." And he also said, "It's hard." "I came not to send peace, but a sword." "Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." And the cross and the scars and the long, dark nights before the Voice spoke. It isn't about a situation out there that we can apply labels and arguments to, it's about me and you and everybody individually. And that's more than enough to grapple with.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Rewatching LTR

I recently rewatched the Lord of the Rings, all three DVDs. It holds up surprisingly well. Just as with the books, Fellowship is still my favorite (but really two movies in its own right). I also think the war scenes in Return of the King go on forever and ever and ever and--did I mention?--ever. It would have been a better movie if the Faramir/Eowyn scenes (in the extended version) were put in instead of the excessive elephants, excessive stone throwing and so on.

I agree with my brother Joe that the lighting is wacky. I once read a review of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that stated that Bruckheimer isn't interested in character development or working out a story, he's interested in setting up moments. So in Return of the Titans, he sets up the scene at the graveyard and the "dance" scene before the game, and the scenes in the hospital. There are heroic moments and tear-jerking moments. Bruckheimer is on to something (he is the producer of CSI and Pirates of the Caribbean); people, including me, like moments.

Lord of the Rings reminds me of the comment about Bruckheimer: there's no sense of continuity, in a lighting sense, between scenes: each scene is set up for its own sake; for instance in Two Towers, the scene where the king quotes a poem before the big battle (the poem that ends, "How did it come to this."), I can never figure out where the bright light is coming from. It looks great, but it always confuses me.

In a way, the movies are rather like comic books: a frame by frame montage. I happen to like Return of the Titans ,and I like Lord of the Rings, but it is a rather different experience from watching a movie where each scene blends into the one before.

I still think the casting is stellar, the best casting I've ever seen in a movie. The movie characters and the book characters match up extraordinarily well. They don't always utilize the range of emotions that I wish they would, but they look so perfect, it hardly matters. (Which fits into Jackson's scene by scene montage idea.)

Second Seasons: The Polished Draft

Whilst I sit here, rather hopelessly waiting for my final students to pass in their papers (I don't think it's going to happen, but you never know), I've decided to ponder on the problem of the polished draft.

What I mean by this is that I have occasionally read an old story of mine and been impressed by the energy. I write better plot-lines now and smoother paragraphs and whatnot, but that old story has more verve or wildcard ideas. The first draft, so to speak, is better than the polished, finished product.

How this applies to television: I am currently rewatching the first season of Nero Wolfe, which I love. It still makes me laugh like crazy. Now, I like the second season, I think it has a lot going for it, but the second season doesn't have the same flair or verve or huzpah or somethingness that the first season has.

It isn't that, knowing the characters, the jokes have become old because, as I have mentioned, I can rewatch season 1 and still laugh. Rather, I think Nero Wolfe is an example of the polished syndrome. Season 1 is a hoot, very stylistic, excellent period piece, great acting, snappy dialog, unusual set-up, and everyone loves it so they do season 2, thinking, "We'll give them more of the same, only better" and it kind of falls flat. And I think it's that "only better" that makes the diffference. Because the off-the-cuff, sloppy feeling of the first season (the episodes are cut in the most bizarre fashion) is part of what makes it so fun.

I think this happens quite often. The fans like X or Y or Z or whatever so the producers give them X or Y or Z only better, and it falls flat because X, Y or Z worked in conjunction with something else, not all by its lonesome. For instance, sure, Buffy fans loved Spike, but you can't just have Spike. You've got to have Spike and . . . Unfortunately, sometimes the fans don't realize that they don't really want just Spike, so they clamor for Spike and get Spike but Spike isn't enough, Spike has to be Spike with someone or for some reason. Likewise, the relationship between Archie and Nero is a blast but Archie and Nero for the sake of Archie and Nero simply doesn't work.

Which isn't to say that the second season of Nero Wolfe isn't good; it just lacks a bit of the "wow-za" of the first.

Now, Monk is a show where I think the second and third seasons improved upon the first. I get the impression (I could be wrong) that the producers (of which one is Shalhoub) run a tight ship, by which I mean that the show is meant to be about Monk and it is about Monk and nobody else; all other characters are supporting characters, and there aren't that many: the captain, his lieutenant, Monk's assistant and a kid. This extraordinarily tight casting means that no matter how much the fans like, say, Monk's brother, that doesn't mean he becomes a regular. It also keeps the episodes compact, focusing all the energy on the comedy, rather than developing characterization. It's a one-trick-pony kind of show, but it does its one-trick very, very well and better and better each season.

So I guess the answer is, Ignore the fans. Because you can't satisfy them even when you think you are going to. But don't ignore them completely because, well, they play your wages. Pay attention to them but ignore their suggestions. Something like that.

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Funny Gal

Dorothy Sayers is often described in terms of her intellectual attainments (by her supporters and detractors), as falling in love with her own hero (usually by her detractors, including Ngaoi Marsh) and generally being high-falutin and academic and all that. What everyone seems to miss is that Sayers is also extremely funny.

I'm not refering to the blithe Peter Wimsey. Rather, I mean the wit behind the creation. There's a scene in Gaudy Night where Harriet attends a literary cocktail party which is so perfect (and so contemporary), I've excerpted it below:

The room in which [the literary cocktail party] was held was exceedingly hot and crowded, and all the assembled authors were discussing (a) publishers, (b) agents, (c) their own sales, (d) other people's sales, and (e) the extraordinary behavior of the Book of the Moment selectors in awarding their ephemeral crown to Tasker Hepplewater's Mock Turtle . . . A very angry young woman, whose book had been passed over, declared that the whole thing was a notorious farce. The Book of the Moment was selected from each publisher's list in turn, so that her own Ariadne Adams was automatically excluded from benefit, owing to the mere fact that her publisher's imprint had been honored in the previous January. She had, however, received private assurance that the critic of the Morning Star had sobbed like a child over the last hundred pages of Ariadne, and would probably make it his Book of the Fortnight, if only the publisher could be persuaded to take advertising space in the paper. The author of The Squeezed Lemon agreed that advertising was at the bottom of it . . .

"But what's Mock Turtle about?" inquired Harriet.

On this point the authors were for the most part vague; but a young man who wrote humorous magazine stories, and could therefore afford to be wide-minded about novels, said he had read it and thought it rather interesting, only a bit long. It was about a swimming instructor at a watering-place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through watching so many bathing-beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So then the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Aquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encasing shells. But of course a lot of things came into it--it was one of those books that reflect the author's reactions to Things in General. Altogether, significant was, he thought, the word to describe it.

Harriet began to feel that there might be something to be said even for the plot of [her latest mystery]. It was, at least, significant of nothing in particular.

This is smack dab in the middle of a rather more serious book than usual for Sayers and has nothing, really, to do with the rest of the plot. I think it's hilarious, especially the Book of the Fortnight bit and the stuff about "one of those books that reflect the author's reactions to Things in General." This sort of scene is actually more typical of Sayers than not, although she is usually more circumspect. If you listen closely to her dialog, there's all kinds of wacky stuff going on. And yet no one seems to notice.

I suppose if anyone did notice, her supporters would say she was "witty" and her detractors would say she was "flip" or "snide"--once again, artistry (or craftmanship) gets reduced to a label. So much seems to be invested these days in deciding the merits of a work rather than in actually enjoying it. C.S. Lewis once complained about students who insisted on taking everything they read so seriously, they couldn't appreciate that Jane Austen was funny and Chaucer wanted to make people laugh. Such works aren't even analyzed for whether they were well crafted or not, just whether or not they are ideologically "significant." So Sayers ends up being serious rather than funny when she was usually, for most of her books, more funny than serious.

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Models

Okay, I don't want this to sound catty. Because I don't mean it to be. I think beautiful people are enjoyable to look at. I think beauty is an asset. I also think beauty can make life difficult so I don't necessarily buy into the idea that beautiful people have easy lives. Nor do I buy into the idea--however tempting--that beautiful people are automatically shallow. Beauty has merit, as Michelangelo's David and Grace Kelly prove.

Okay, that being said, there's been a lot model stuff about lately, and I find it odd that, well, really, the models aren't what I would call drop-dead gorgeous or anything. I am talking about the women. The men on television right now all tend towards a specific type. It happens to be a type I have a yen for (Supernatural brothers, Wentworth Miller: more stocky, harsh-featured blokes--think Sean Bean and Ted Levine--than pretty boys although the younger Supernatural brother is borderline) and so I notice them (I preferred older Angel to younger Angel, for instance. I also really like Nick from CSI with mustache--I'm not a big mustache/beard gal, but it really works on him). And, too, there aren't, to my knowledge, any Victoria Secret male models. So I'm referring to the women, and they seem, well, very pretty--don't get me wrong--but mostly the kind of girls I went to High School with. Rather ordinary looking in a perfect-features kind of way. But not striking.

Now, to give you an idea of what I mean, I consider Jeri Ryan (7 of 9) to be a truly gorgeous woman. And also unique. A little unusual. I always recognize her. And if you've ever seen The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (which I watched recently), the woman who plays Sheila Fentiman is classically lovely--in a Kate Winslet kind of way--and noticeable. But the models turning up lately--I can't tell them apart: oval face, straight nose, long hair, wide smile, slightly pouty lips. Same same same. And I wonder, because I haven't the faintest idea, is this a current tread? Has the model industry always been like this? Or are models more in demand now so the pool is wider? Has the industry veered away from the admittedly startling Angelina Jolies? Is it a politic decision--choose a type that everyone thinks nice (because the biologists have shown that people do respond to a particular blending of features) rather than someone who shocks? Or, like the men I mentioned, do most unusually beautiful people just end up on T.V.?

Take Katherine from CSI: Las Vegas--she's getting older now, but you can tell from her bone structure that her looks aren't just makeup and glamour laid over rather ordinary prettiness. When Teri Hatcher pulls her hair back, you can see she's got the same underlying quality. "Willow" still has the most beautiful eyes of any woman on T.V. And I think that Kari Matchett is one of the most stunning (and unique) women on television (Nero Wolfe regular, now on that ABC show, forgot its name).

Of course, television has its own penchants. The women of House and Bones all share a similar look: small-boned, finely drawn features. (Rory from Gilmore Girls is starting to get the same look.) Gorgeous but you've got to think modernist school rather than Rubens. (They are also more the types who grow on you--you become aware of how stunningly beautiful they are over time.)

Maybe, with TV, it's that there's a difference between looks and presence, and if you've got presence, you go into show biz. But maybe that's not fair to the modeling world which is very high pressure. Maybe, with modeling, it comes down to whether you can wear the clothes (such as they are), in a back-atcha kind of way, rather than whether you can act or sing or whatever. But these models don't strike me as even having that Julie Andrews "here I am" quality. Julie Andrews is a lovely but certainly not drop-dead gorgeous woman. But good grief, whenever she shows up on anything, she effortlessly carries the scene. She's got that regal bearing and ageless features. But maybe that's a different kind of beauty. After all, of the Star Trek gang, Nimoy and Lenard aged the best in that craggy old guy way. And Brent Spiner has the sexiest back in all of television, shoot all of showbiz. Really--the guy's face is pleasant to look at it, but watch old Star Trek: Next Generations, and his physical build just blows you away. Someone figured it out, because, unlike Picard (who they started putting in jackets--which looked good) and Riker (who just kept doing that burly big guy thing), someone tailored Brent Spiner's uniform to show off his exceptionally fine physique.

Which is getting away from the topic. Except I really have nothing more to say. This is just a rambling series of queries. Which I shall place under "Fares and Festivals," partly because I have very few posts there and partly because, although my references are mostly from television, the issue is a broader, cultural one. What is beauty? Does it change? In what way? And so on and so forth . . .

CATEGORY: FARES

"Lodging"

One of my short stories, "Lodging" was just published by Talebones magazine. This makes nine for the published short stories (eleven altogether, including on-line publications). "Lodging" is a sort of sequel to "Golden Hands" (the second story I had published), but with a completely different set-up. So it isn't really a sequel. But I had to bring the ghost of "Golden Hands" back to haunt the prince. Even if he is a totally different prince. And she is a totally different character.

Such much for the vagaries of fictional composition.

Out of respect for the copyright laws upon which my contract depends, I will not be posting this story. But you can see my name on the Talebones website!

The Oddness of Dr. Phil

I rather like Dr. Phil. I'm not a huge fan of talkshows in general, but I don't particularly mind them in the "universe is coming to an end" kind of way. In college, society is always about to implode due to reality television or Oprah or the "dumbing down of America" or whatever. I think this is hokey. What amazes me about Dr. Phil isn't the host, what amazes me are the guests.

When I used to listen to Dr. Laura, I felt similarly about her guests. Why are these people calling up so they can be yelled at? I would know within three seconds of any call what Dr. Laura was going to say. But it seemed like every guest was surprised--THEIR circumstances were different! Followed by another five minutes of the guest saying, "Yeah - but -" and Dr. Laura laying down the law. Why do people expose themselves like this?

However, radio is somewhat person-less; there's a literal AND figurative facelessness--but on T.V., there are the guests, don't ya know, all faceful and angsty and THERE.

And to make it even weirder, you have people like the lady who wishes she could "let herself go" in bed and the woman who doesn't want her neighbors to know how imperfect she is and people who are ashamed of their looks (actually that was on Oprah)--anyway, people who declare that nothing on earth will get them to reveal themselves to others except . . . they are on T.V.! Go figure. (It's hard not to suspect that the beautiful people who fear being looked at are just vain egomaniacs.)

I've decided that for many people, T.V. isn't real or is so glamorous it overcomes any reservations. But I actually go more with the first--that the little actress/actor in all of us kicks in on T.V.: a distance develops between the audience and the people on stage. And, as well, there's a hope that this--THIS appearance--will fix them, which is a debatable point. I once knew a therapist who believed that counseling was useless until the person/family was ready to change because otherwise, it was just a lot of talk. So, I suppose Dr. Phil's guests could see their attendance on the show as the last hurdle, the decision that now, finally, things will get better; and I suppose other guests just like their ten minutes of fame and will return to the same old same old patterns.

CATEGORY:TELEVISION

Lois & Clark

Lois & Clark: The Further Adventures of Superman has got to be the most unself-conscious show I've ever watched. I didn't see it back when it first aired so I'm watching it now for the first time. It's a hoot! Pleasantly so. What amazes me is the "whatever" factor. Every show has a plot, sort of; if they want to throw in funny lines, they do; if they watch to throw in kissing, they do; if they want to throw in hokey acting, they do.

It isn't deliberately unself-conscious or deliberately formulaic or deliberately anything, as far as I can tell. It isn't like watching Smallville where the plot is entirely haphazard but you still feel that the writers take themselves very, very seriously. Lois & Clark isn't even deliberately non-serious. It's all very Zen-like.

It is helped by the fact that Dean Cain is not a great actor and Terry Hatcher is little better. John Shea is better than them both but after about ten minutes in the pilot, Shea obviously decided to go for over the top villainy. He has that voice (sort of deep and rumbly) that gives anything he says extra cache, and he uses it.

One of the main reasons I think the show works is that Dean Cain and Terry Hatcher are good-looking people (they make, as the saying goes, "a striking couple") but not so devastatingly gorgeous that you never buy into the premise that these people can have normal lives and relate normally to the people around them. Of course, the whole Clark not looking like Superman thing is silly. But the writers know that. Of course it's silly! Ha ha! So suspend your disbelief already! (There's a scene in the pilot where Clark removes his glasses and says something like, "People won't know who I am. See--" and his parents kind of make these, "Uh huh, whatever honey" replies.) We are having fun, the writers seem to be saying, so much fun we don't care whether you (the audience) are having fun or not. This type of writing approach is rather refreshing.

The other thing I like about the show is that unlike the Superman movies (at least, the first one, which I rewatched recently) Clark IS Clark. In the Superman movies, Superman is Superman with a Clark disguise. But Clark of Lois & Clark is intrinsically Clark--he just happens to have powers and so adopts a Superman disguise. It may sound like nitpicking, but it actually makes a huge difference. In the Superman movies, Superman woos Lois as Superman, but Clark of Lois & Clark woos (and becomes good friends with) Lois as Clark. In fact, sometimes, I think the writers forget that the show is, eh hem, about Superman, not about this particular reporting team. Oh, yes, they seem to say, uh, throw in a Superman scene here.

And the show can be downright hilarious, usually in a comments-in-passing kind of way: a character says something, and you go, "Wait, huh?" There's this scene where Lex Luther marches around a room where he has all these artistic artifacts: the missing arms of Venus, the Boy in Yellow. The script doesn't even stress it. He just mentions the artifacts and goes on, and you're sitting there going, "What? What? Did he just say what I think he said?" (In that same episode Shea and his butler are discussing Superman's globe: "It's better than cable," one of them says. "In the future, every household will have one.")

What makes it so bizarre is that unlike Buffy and Angel, the humor--like everything else--doesn't seem to be deliberate. Nobody seems to be using humor as commentary or to create a certain type of show. It's just . . . there, available, okey-dokey, let's use it!

Which, all in all, makes the show extremely relaxing to watch.

CATEGORY: TV

Christmas & More About School

I love Christmas. All of it. Carols. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Tacky Christmas decorations. Elevator music. Crowds. Lights. I don't much care about being stuck in airports overnight. But otherwise, I'm a big fan of just about everything to do with Christmas, spiritual and commercial.

I mention this because I get tired of the either/or mentality attached to so many things in our culture (like Christmas). I don't know where it comes from; I've run into it more since I returned to college (alongside phrases like "exclusive" and "hegemonic"). Not accepting an either/or mentality means you are naive since you don't grasp how truly divisive and class-oriented and exclusionary everything is. It's all rather pompous and tiresome.

I can't blame it all on the academics. I run into it other places as well. I can remember, several years ago, listening to some talkshow host going on about the horribleness of Disney, and how exposing children to Disney will damage them for life. This is a theme you will hear from conservatives and liberals. Disney is corporate and sexist and monolithic and the characters wear skimpy clothes.

I rolled my eyes. I watched Disney as a kid. And listened to Disney records. I also read Grimm, Perrault, Lang, Andersen (who I don't care for) and a host of other fairytale collectors/writers. Why choose? Why limit yourself? I certainly don't eat only hamburgers or only pasta--if I'm going to read fairytales, why deliberately limit my understanding and then get all angsty over it?

I feel the same way about the people who think you have to choose between the spiritual aspects of Christmas and the commercial aspects. And people who think that you can't like pop culture and classics and Elvis Costello and Shakespeare and T.V. shows at the same time. Who are these people?

They do exist. In one of my academic classes right now we are discussing "those people" (the great and terrible THEY!)--cultural arbiters who create canons and cultural programs. But instead of trying to understand the arbiters' motivations, their intent, their mentalities, we label them "hegemonic," "exclusive," "imperialistic" and well, that takes care of them now. But we ourselves never get behind the labels and the either/or mentality, never try to understand such cultural arbiters at the same time we are trying to understand people who resist the arbitration. Yesterday, we discussed Oprah's bookclub; the professor seemed more bothered by the idea of Oprah "arbitrating" a "classic" like Faulkner than interested in what Oprah's motivations might be, placing those motivations in their particular context and discussing whether, in fact, those motivations might be meritorious. We received no historical background to the rise of "middlebrow" culture (some of which I happen to know since I'm researching it for my thesis); placed nothing in its time frame; did not address the issue of personality development versus character development (thank you, Joan Shelley Rubin). Instead, it was more linking-things-together-and-insisting-on-similarities. (This is the class where I get accused of relativism if I want to avoid linking stuff up and accused of Jungian universalism if I want to insist that good literature actually is good.) But then, we spend a lot of time in this class coming to terribly profound conclusions like, "We are affected by our culture when we read books!"

I'm back on academe again. Either/or-ness isn't just an academe thing, although in general, academe does seem to be more obsessed with drawing neat lines between things than any body of people I've ever meant. Perhaps these people have always existed, and they are attracted to the academic environment because it enables them to draw lines around things. I suppose fundamentalists may be attracted to fundamentalism for the same reason. And extremists on both sides of the political continuum. But it does seem ironic to me that the people who beat their brows over Western civilization are so unwilling to construct a different framework for examining things. The language may have changed since the 19th century, but until we abandon our desire to label the past, we will simply be reissuing similar orders in a slightly different accent.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I liked it. Although I will need to see it again to figure out if it hung together. Like the book (which I admit I barely remember), it is much more concerned with the increasing teenagery-ness of its principle characters. Unlike the book, it is tight enough plot-wise that the self-absorption, in-fighting and teenage angst doesn't get in the way of the plot. (Too much.)

In fact, I liked the teenagerhood stuff more than I liked the plot. One of the criticisms I remember hearing about the book is that Harry mopes around for so many chapters not doing anything. Which is understandably ennoying when you are reading, and he's still moping as much in chapter 7 as in chapter 3. But in the movie, Harry's moping is so real, so 14-year-old-ish, so completely believable, that it is rather touching. It's a great setting for exploring teenage behavior (rather like Buffy: the Vampire Slayer). I've always felt that the twins, for instance, were massively underused. In this movie, even more so than the last, you get to watch teenagers, including the twins, act like teenagers. Harry and Ron's "I'm sorry" conversation is quintessential male adolescence: it gives you shivers of nostalgia--for about two seconds until you remember that you would rather be dead than live through the teenage years again.

One of the things that is somewhat different from the book is Harry's utter reluctance to participant in the championship (if I remember correctly, he had mixed feelings in the book). It still raises the question of what on earth do these insane adults think they are doing exposing these kids to so much danger? But the movie raises the issue of adult culpability to the level of metaphor. The movie is really, in a way, about growing up--your friends change, you change, hormones enter the picture, emotions get overwrought, you find yourself in situations where you are shorter, less clever and more vulnerable than everyone else. The end scene (which I won't relate) gives Harry a positively heroic maturity.

And kudos to Daniel Radcliffe who evinces a quality of raw emotion that was missing in the other films. One gets the feeling that Harry is just tired--tired of the fights, tired of Voldemort, sick and tired of protecting people. It also emphasizes that Harry's gift--the reason we bother to read about him at all--is not his intelligence or even his broomstick riding. He isn't particularly chivalrous or honorable. He's just decent. Mostly decent. He's everyguy.

The movie, by the way, is exceedingly dark. I agree with my brother Eugene (see www.eugenewoodbury.blogspot.com) that Rowlings' emphasis on being "real" by killing people off in each book means she has to keep raising the stakes so that a bigger, scarier, yuckier death has to happen in every book. (This is not, by the way, particularly good writing: C.J. Cherryh never has to resort to it.) One of my other siblings once suggested that Goblet of Fire should have been the first book, rather than the book everything was leading up to. That being said, if the movie Goblet of Fire is taken by itself, rather than as one more saga in the "oh-is-it-dark-enough-yet?" Harry Potter plotline, the horror works. (Although, again, it is NOT for little kiddies.) The filming is not as atmospheric as in the last, but the movie does move a great deal quicker than the first two (and has the merit of feeling like a movie rather than like a filmstrip as the first one did).

All in all I recommend it.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Sunday Philosophy Club

Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club books cannot be read as mysteries. If they are read as mysteries, they will disappoint. You might call them "problem" novels rather than mystery or detective novels.

The books have the same gentle, almost whimisical, atmosphere as the Precious Ramotswe books. McCall Smith has a way of evoking large settings through the emotional insights of his characters (rather than through blatant description) so that the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels always give me a sense of vast skies and hot days and slow-moving cattle, even when McCall Smith isn't describing the vast skies and hot days and slow-moving cattle.

Unlike the Precious Ramotswe books, the Sunday Philosophy Club books take place in Scotland (Edinburgh) and have a European feel to them (more European than British, interestingly enough), although I always get a sense of sun peeping through uncertain rain clouds (which seems more British than European). And the Sunday Philosophy Club books don't really have set-up/pay-off mysteries. The Precious Ramotswe books usually do have a few puzzles--if no complex, Agatha-Christie-like corpses. I found this lack of crime a tad annoying at first, and I still feel that the books are wrongly genre-lized in the libraries. I have found, however, that if I read the Sunday Philosophy Club books as gentle dissertations on the oddity and complexity of human problems, I'm fairly well satisfied. They are the kind of books you can read before you go to bed (and I am usually opposed to the use of literature as a sleep-inducer) or while you are eating. I don't mean to imply that the books are boring. They are, rather, very soothing, like having a quiet, yet absorbing conversation with a very relaxed orator (who might even speak with a faint Scottish burr).

CATEGORY: BOOKS

My super ironic life

In the bizarreness of bizarro land, the most devastating criticism that you can make in the academic environment is that someone is being "relativistic." Which is fascinating in a "huh, where'd the sixties go?" kind of way. Relativism got "dirty" when academics realized that not only can you use it to defend feminist/Marxist deconstructionalist intepretations (of just about anything), people in Kansas can also use it to defend "intelligent design" (creationism). Which is seriously amusing, when you really think about it.

I mention it because I've run up against the accusation of relativism this past semester. This is due mostly to the fact that I am much more vocal this semester than in previous semesters about my distaste for what I call dot-to-dot formulations (and what I've heard called "mechanistic constructions"). Basically, dot-to-dot formulations means listening to someone use the word "ideological" about twenty times in the same sentence about the same topic.

I complain about this. I made it to my 34th year without hearing people use the word "ideological" twenty times in the same sentence, and I figure it's academic speechifying (rather than a real effort at communication). That is, it's a nifty way of trying to catalog and quantify a bunch of stuff that happened way back when. And it's a nifty way of creating a dot-to-dot formulations. "After all," says I, "it's us looking back at something and labeling it."

"But," is the answer, "that's what ALL historians do."

"But," says I, ignoring yet another generalization that may be completely ungrounded, "it prevents us from really looking at what's going on because we're so busy labeling stuff."

"Well," I am told, "you are being relativistic."

This exchange has become fairly standard since I've begun to verbally balk (hey, it's the end of the semester; all my serious brain cells have been used up; when all my serious brain cells get used up, my mental eyeballs start rolling all over the place), anyway, balk at this continual tidying of the past.

So, I'm relativistic. Except that I'm not. And I've determined that the problem is that my professors are so fixated on teaching the whole "history is a narrative" concept, that my balkings are just a huge nuisance.

The whole point of the "history of a narrative" concept is that the history that we tell each other is not necessarily the TRUTH. The TRUTH is out there; the story we tell utilizes facts and events and opinions about true events, but it's a selection (we can't capture everything that happened) and for that matter, what we are utilizing may not have been written down correctly or told correctly to begin with. My professors think this is REALLY IMPORTANT. They also think I should be shocked, well, not shocked, but surprised that people (like the Colonial Revivialists and such) have been allowed to get away with this selection process for so long. I think it's just human nature and a survival mechanism and my professors do it too, but, eh, everybody loves a conspiracy.

Don't get me wrong. I think understanding "history as a narrative" is important, but once you figure it out (which I did well before I left undergraduate school), it is kind of tedious to keep going on about it.

But my professors aren't concerned about me. They are all bent out of shape about all those IGNORANT, partially educated, GULLIBLE, victimized by their high school teachers, UNKNOWLEDGEABLE, dunce-like people out there who believe what they see on television and believe what they are told in museums and believe all those myths about Americana. THEY MUST BE SAVED. It's very Calvinistic. (And I'd like to note here that my professors--and a fair number of the students--really do believe that outsiders, people not in our program, are like that; seriously. It's one of those non-debatable assumptions. Now, I'm a religious person; I attend an organized church, and I'd like to say that I feel much more pressure to adopt certain attitudes about "the other" at school than I ever do at church.)

Fact is, I make a lousy Calvinist, besides which I already know all this "history is a narrative" stuff. I also took a class on Ideology in Literature when I was a senior at BYU, and then, well, I got over it. (At the time, I called it the "house of cards" syndrome; the desire to come up with a theory that explains EVERYTHING but which has to be continually discarded because, of course, it doesn't explain everything and because, too, theories tend to be dry and formulaic and miss the feeling or character or balance of an event. I ran into the "house of cards" syndrome when I was trying to come up with a theory that explained what makes a good book and what makes a bad book, and I had to keep changing the theory because there were too many exceptions. On the other hand, I'm a huge fan of "M" theory. If there is a theory of everything, I think it is like string theory: it will make the universe a bigger, more complicated, more wonderful place, rather than not.) In any case, I don't believe what my professors tell me anymore than I believe the television, high school teachers, or museums.

Don't get me wrong--I'm in a good program, and this semester has been much, much better than my last semesters, partly because I figured out that my professors were trying to SAVE me and decided to go ahead and not be saved; partly because I'm in elective classes which tend to be less heavy-handed than the core classes and partly because the students themselves seem less prone to ideological theorizing. And partly, because I finally figured out that most people are just there to get the class done. I'm the only one worried about the long-term consequences.

Which is super ironic, when you think about it.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

Election Day

Since it is Election Day, I thought it would be appropriate to publish my diary from the 2004 Election. I usually watch the conventions and the debates for the Presidential election. This diary is of the conventions. I should mention that some of my opinions have modified (after the debates, my opinion of Edwards went down considerably), although my aesthetic reactions are pretty much the same.

The posts are so long, I have split them into Convention Days: Democrats; and Convention Days: Republicans.

CONVENTION DAYS

Criminal Minds

I had class off last night and was finally able to catch a full episodes of Criminal Minds. Overall, I was impressed. It's not a terribly unique show. Bad guy. Lots of talking. The kill. The confrontation. But I have a penchant for "neat but not guady" storytelling. I also have a penchant for neat and gaudy storytelling. What I don't like is blathering plot lines. Criminal Minds doesn't blather.

I was impressed by Thomas Gibson. I liked him as Greg in Dharma & Greg, although I got the impression that as Greg, Gibson just kind of acted himself. He may still be acting himself in Criminal Minds, but he achieved a darker, less friendly-guy persona without too much difficulty.

The one bewildering thing about the show is the enormous cast. There's nearly seven major players wandering around the screen at all times. Kind of like Boston Legal with the difference that Boston Legal is really just a restoration comedy between Shatner and Spade with a supporting cast. Criminal Minds looks like being an ensemble cast.

Ensemble is okay to a point, but you still need a reference point (like Mandy Pantakin). I think this is the trouble with CSI:NY. Gary Sinise (who I admire) is so retiring, he doesn't serve (as Caruso does) as a focal point. And then there is Dr. House who most certainly does. And the (obviously) canon couple on Bones (watching Bones is just a bit like watching the canon couple in the Thin Man movies).

Speaking of House and Bones, I would like to thank Tuesday night for giving me the chuckles TWICE: in Bones, the line (these are approximate), "What? You wanted to listen to the crazy psycho speech?" and Wilson's line on House, "Now that is superior television," while Forman nods agreement.

CATEGORY: TV

Melusine

I recently turned in a major research paper (which will ultimately become the first chapter of my thesis) so I have a bit of a breathing space. (For two weeks until the whole reading-paper-reading-paper stuff starts up again.) In that breathing space, I read the book Melusine by Sarah Monette.

And I liked it. It is definitely book one of A SERIES. At least, it had better be considering how many threads she left hanging. It is a rather uneasy book; the first part of the book is extraordinarily well-crafted; the middle of the book wavers about until it rushes, discarding characters left and right, to the end.

The book is told in alternating first-person: Felix (a wizard with a history in the bad part of town) and Mildmay (the principle narrator; a thug from the bad part of town). Felix is off his head for most of the book, and the off-the-head scenes are believable. Felix is also carrying a lot of mental baggage, which is also believable. (And evocative; the writing is good.) That said, Mildmay has the far stronger voice in terms of character. When he talks about Felix, Felix's character also comes clearer. I think the writer was right to keep both narrators, but the difference in strength adds to the uneven feel to the book.

Around the middle of the book about five story strands are added and never finished. Since the book is 421 pages long, I don't see that any of them were necessary unless they were for book 2 (and 3 and 4); if so, I wish some kind of acknowledgement had been made at the end of the book. "Set-up and pay-off" my playwriting professor used to say, and even if payoff isn't going to come for several books, I should at least know that it is still in the cards. We never even learn what the bad guy's motive is.

Nevertheless, I approve of this book being published despite its unevenness because the set-up is so good. It's world fantasy (or, which is rather more popular, city fantasy) where the reader is thrust into a fully-developed, complex civilization on page one. Monette uses the usual world/city fantasy elements (although there are no elves, thankfully; not that I mind elves, but I get tired of the constant array of man-elf-dwarf, etc. This is mostly just a bunch of people). Monette's ability is not that she has created something totally new (check out Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and C.J. Cherryh's Angel With the Sword) but that the reader believes in the world. Which I don't always. But I believe in this one.

And the characters are more than a little appealing. I'm a big fan of honorable-men- supporting-each-other-through-thick-and-thin fiction. I like Prison Break even though I don't really like the morality at work (I'm not sure one person's life is worth all the deaths and grief and anguish and taxpayer's money that Michael Schofield is expending. The only thing that keeps it working is that Schofield obviously didn't anticipate the problems that have occurred, and now he is in too deep. On the same note, one reason Batman is a preferable hero to so many others is the underlying acknowledgment that he is a vigilante and that there are problems attending such a stance.) In any case, Melusine comes up trumps in this area, and they are some nice subtleties of characterization . . . that are also left hanging; but, hey, at least they are there.

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Streamlining History

I'm sitting in class--any class--and a topic or text is introduced. Usually a text. This text will eventually become the spring-board for the day's discussion. It happens in this way: judgment is passed of the author or of the text. The judgment is the judgment of partially informed grad students who are reacting to the text from within their own personal ethos (as Wayne Booth would say), which is very normal.

At some point, and sometimes I can see it happen and sometimes not, that judgment gets attached to the text itself or, more likely, to the author's motivations. Which is unfair, if understandable. I don't like it, but I don't get hot under the collar until the author's motivations (which are, remember, actually a constructed judgment) are extrapolated to form a theory of effect and causation. A perfectly legitimate judgment has been formalized into a completely imaginary construction of a historical event or person.

From the deconstructionalist point of view, this is all okay. Language is subjective anyway so why shouldn't we develop imaginary theories based on imaginary motivations that are linked to our own personal judgments? No problem at all, so long as you don't confuse the three things. Which is what ends up happening. The class' theoretical construction (based on theoretical motivations based on personal judgment) does not mean that we have gotten any closer to understanding what Harriet Beecher Stowe or the Purtians or Noah Webster or the colonial revivialists were really like. The discussion we are having is not about them, it is about us. This is a modern discussion by modern people who are using historical personages to further their modern opinions and modernized ideologies.

It's basically an effort to avoid deconstructionalism. Frankly, finding boxes within boxes can get a bit dull after awhile; most academics don't like to go too far down that path. Which is fine with me. But they want to have it both ways: the ability to deconstruct a historical personage as if language is a non-definite, exploitable (for the business of creating theories) entity as well as the desire to have said deconstruction taken as something close to reality. Which it isn't. If you accept reality. If you don't, your position here won't make any difference anyway.

Which doesn't mean that authors don't intend things. Stowe did intend to improve women's position in the home by improving the image of the house and housework. She says so. But it doesn't then derive that Stowe's intent is the same of our judgment of that intent. Or that any kind of linear cause and effect can be derived from our judgment of that intent with any degree of success.

When it comes down to it, it's this tiresome business of streamlining everything, creating literal, one-way effects from author to ideology to long-term consequences of that ideology. Which seems sloppy to me, oddly enough. I am, rather naively, unendingly surprised at the academic world's ability to dissociate itself from what it is doing. I've sat in several classes where the students and teachers have criticized (mocked) groups or political parties or people (or high school teachers) who believe in "original intent," a reality at the back of all the facts and texts and deconstructions: oh, they are sooooo gullible, hee hee hee. And I've looked around the class and thought, "You've paid $700 to sit in a hot, dusty room with 15 other people forcing texts and historical personages into steamlined, linear, motivation-to-ideology-to-theory-to-causation one-size-fits-all realities, and you think other people are gullible?" At least, I know I'm crazy.

But it makes me tired.

I have, consequently, taken refuge in reader-response theory, not because I think it doesn't contain its own amounts of silliness but because, within the academic world, it's the only legitimate defense available to this deconstructionalism-without-deconstructionalism approach. If I say, "Texts don't have that much influence," I'll be dismissed as reactionary and gullible. If I say, "Ah, yes, but as a reader deciphers a text, the text undergoes a process of filtering, unconscious association and communal application which is further influenced by the reader's character and experience" (which is pure Holland, by the way), I have stumbled on an accidental truth (it's all very religious, which is even more tiresome, since I already have a religion). The only difference then lies in my personal belief that the reader's experience does in fact matter more than the social implications of the text. Which is a fairly big difference. I believe the reader is more pro-actively invested in taking what he/she wants out of the text than in being influenced by that text. Which means, if I'm right, that you can't blame the connection of women with the home all on Stowe (or writers like her), you have to accept that maybe people actually want to believe that particular idea and that the "want" stems from something other than cultural influence. Which in my program is like trying to argue in favor of extraterrestrial lifeforms or the worthwhileness of television. You just don't go there. (Or argue for the meritoriousness of Christianity--you REALLY don't go there. We're talking Grinch, ten-foot pole territory.)

Which means I spend a lot of time writing papers where I try not to go there. The result is papers that don't really say anything since I'm not going to say all that garbage about texts being tied to ideologies because, reader-response or not, I think it's pure fantasy, and I refuse to make up pure fantasies about dead people and then pretend that that's not what I'm going. Which is why I prefer to write fiction. It's just more fair.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & TEACHING

Odds & Ends

So CSI: Las Vegas is having a weird start to their season. I can't figure out if they are deliberately extolling the pointless-crime theme or if it is just lame writing. Whatever, I like my television to have a point.

I'm saddened that I can't watch Wednesday night's Criminal Minds. Mandy Patinkin! And the guy from Dharma & Greg! But I have class that night. I saw the first episode and liked it. Maybe this summer . . .

I have a theory that you can always tell when an actor/actress has kids, even if they are trying to play someone who is bad with kids. So kudos to Tony Shalhoub in "Mr Monk and the Kid" for believably playing someone who is unaccustomed to children. (Shalhoub has two kids.) Keep your eye on Hugh Laurie. He has three kids himself, but is supposed to be a kid-less misanthrope. I bet he gives himself away. This is why Hugh Grant is so good. He really is lousy with kids.

Speaking of Monk, isn't Ted Levine sexy?!

I watched Commander-in-Chief again. It's fun. But she's got to stop saving the world. The ambiguous Donald Sutherland character is carrying all the drama right now.

I confess to a sneaking liking for My Wife and Kids. It's a kind of Home Improvement, only more conservative (in terms of husband and wife roles). The show even has a "Wilson," the genius child from next door who doles out advice.

I prophecy that Out of Practice will last but Twins won't. After seeing the third Bones, it has a good chance of lasting (Boreanaz saying, "This is my space; that is your's. This is all mine," was well-done comedy. The man has talent; it just needs to be used right.) Good replacement casting on NCIS. Cold Case appears to have, thankfully, dumped the soap opera line, at least temporarily. (It's a very romantic show, though.) Ghost Whisperer will probably last but not because it deserves to. Unfortunately, despite the awesome Brent Spiner, I can't get into Threshold. How Numbers held out is beyond me.

Watched a brief scene of Boston Legal. I must say that Spader and Shatner are hilarious together: like watching two wits from a Restoration comedy. By the way, everyone on that show looks related. Everyone.

I get all sociological: I've wondered if the new influx of brother shows is a way of casting two males leads without having to imply a homosexual relationship. Ah, the good old days of Holmes and Watson, Kirk and Spock. On the other hand, maybe it is a way to imply a loving relationship between two unrelated actors who are playing related characters--the network can play up the homeoeroticism without having to worry about political correctness (in either direction).

You can tell I've been a grad student too long. Speaking of which, my professors still want me to extend ideological theories for more than one paragraph. *Sigh.*

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Commander-in-Chief: Yes, I Watched It

I watched Commander-in-Chief Saturday night. It's the new ABC show starring Geena Davis as the United States V.P. who is catapulted into the President's seat when the top dog snuffs it. The idea, I think, is that she's a woman, and she's brilliant, yadda yadda, but she wasn't seeking power.

Here's the good stuff:

I like Geena Davis.
I adore Donald Sutherland (talk about scene chewing) who looks like becoming, I can only hope, Mr. Giles to Davis' Buffy.
Geena Davis' character is an independent.
Geena Davis' character is believably tough.

Here are the problems:

The movie opens with the V.P. being fetched out of an assembly. I've said it before (maybe not on this site), I'll say it again. It may or may not have been a slam at Bush (those 7 minutes in the classroom), but I think walking out of an assembly while kiddies are still singing is just rude. I don't care how big and powerful and important you are. It's rude. The guy with the brain clot back home still HAS the brain clot. The bad stuff isn't going to stop just because you get up and walk out, all important-like.

There's some kind of weird, ritualistic idea going on here: that if the politician would only react in 10 minutes, no 5, no 3, no 1, no 20 seconds, the terrorist-driven planes would disappear and the waves would wash back into the Gulf and the brain clot would dissipate even as we are speaking. Sure. Yeah. Right. Give me a break. Politicians, get over yourselves. Silly people who criticize politicians for things like sitting in a classroom for x minutes (and who expect politicians to be all-seeing, all-knowing, and omnipotent), get over your superstitions already. Presidents aren't magic. It's not Merlin to the rescue. It's a guy in a suit who works alongside other people in suits who rely on information from other people in suits who think that other people in suits know what they are doing even if they don't.

Problem 2: I don't think scaring an ambassador from a foreign country into complying with your wishes is terribly smart. It works on television, sure, but in real life . . . eh. Foreign affairs aren't that easy. I thought it would have been much more interesting if the scare tactic had backfired, and the new President would have had to make the hard decision of whether or not to go to war over a diplomatic incident. There's a mighty large group of people out there who really do believe that this kind of grandstanding works--that you don't have to go to war and lose lives and make the tough choices in order to win, you can just play mind games and make great speeches. But it doesn't work like that in the real world.

There's a Star Trek: Next Generation episode that illustrates this. Now, Star Trek: New Generation is not known for its profound plotting. Voyager gets the closest to combining the adventure story aspect of Next Generation with the no-easy-solutions of the socio-political Deep Space Nine. (Although Voyager usually gives up about ten minutes to the end and just winds everything up with a sudden plot twist.) But there is this Next Generation episode where Picard has been sent into Cardassian territory to bring back a rogue Federation captain who is blowing up Cardassian outposts. And Picard has to invite on board a bunch of Cardassians, one of whom is played by the same actor who ended up playing Gul Dukat, which means that he is really, really good at playing an ambiguous slimeball.

The Federation has informed Picard that they can't afford a war. He has to bring the rogue back. And he does, and in the process, he has to make some really difficult choices. And it turns out that, what do you know, the Cardassians are re-arming. But there isn't anything anybody can do about it. Picard warns the Gul Dukat character, and it's an effective scene, but you know and Picard knows and the Cardassians know that it doesn't make any difference. And if you are familiar with Star Trek, you know this is the beginning of the Marquis, where Federation members will go rogue to fight the encroaching Cardassians because the Federation itself can't afford to start another war and are too fine-spread anyway.

And the uncertainty is allowed to stand at the end of the episode (and you get to hear Colm Meaney sing an Irish song). It really is one of their most effective episodes.

The British do this sort of thing even better. Yes, Prime Minister works because the Prime Minister never wins. Well, occasionally. Sort of. But never really. And it isn't just because of Humphrey, the civil servant. It's because, well, it's government. Governments don't fix things, hey, presto fashion. It's not that easy, first of all. And it's a bureaucracy, second of all.

Which is why people who get excited about having a "smart" president ("He's so smart; he really thinks about stuff!") are kind of naive, me thinks. I always thought Kerry was a bit of an idiot, personally, but even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been sold on the idea that "smartness" equals a peaceful, prosperous nation. What people who want "smart" presidents are thinking is that smart presidents will be able to do all these clever, grandstanding things (like on Commander-in-Chief) and fix stuff. But in the real world, people aren't impressed by articulate speeches and don't care much for someone else's logic and aren't going to stop to be managed or manipulated or "understood" in their geo-social-political context, etc. They just do what they want to do, and they don't always react along given "smart" lines.

Cunning, now, I don't mind cunning.

Hopefully, for the sake of Commander-in-Chief, the writers will realize this. Although, I'm not sure it matters. Maybe, Americans want their political fictions to be fantasy.

CATEGORY: TV

The Romance of the The Village

I quite liked Shyamalan's The Village. I guessed the "secret" but then, unlike Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, I don't think the secret/twist was really supposed to be that much of a secret. Shyamalan says himself that after he heard the music (beautifully orchestrated with a lovely solo violinist), he decided to cut the movie more for the romance than for the horror/shock.

And that's what I like. The whole mileau--village, Ivy, her father, sister, Lucius-were entirely believable as a real (if idealistic) community. 19th century living was never that innocent (although a surprising number of people seem to think that it once was), but the ease of the villagers with each other, the hint of backstory (not just in the "towns" but in the village itself) of many years together came through strong. This is one of Shyamalan's greatest abilities: to convince you that families and communities have real, ongoing relationships. In the DVD documentary, a number of the actors remarked on the closeness they felt during the shooting. Unlike many movies, The Village was shot all in one location. And I do think that Shyamalan's ability to get extremely good, sometimes high profile actors is due to his creating a pleasant work environment. Sometimes, audiences forget that to the actor this movie was a 9-5 (or 6-10) job, and if you don't like your boss or your boss (director) is a jerk or the other actors are jerks, it can be a very, very long 6-10 hours.

Back to the romance, I thought Ivy and Lucius entirely believable within their context and between each other. They were sweet without being sappy. Joaquin Phoenix is a mighty fine actor, although from Shyamalan's comments ("He doesn't want me to tell you, but I wrote the part for him") one gets the impression that this character was rather close to Joaquin's actual personality. He made the cane for Byrce (Ivy) himself and was, apparently, most bashful when he presented it.

After the romance, the movie does falter. (WARNING: I give away plot points.) The deux machina of Noah finding the costume in the floor of the quiet room was, well, just silly. It was less silly the second time around because I accepted it as a deux machina. Still. The argument William Hurt has about guilt could have taken much further, and the real problem (face it, without proper medication, these people are going to perish from some minor disease in only a few generations) neatly shelved.

I also thought Shyamalan could have gone further with the initial argument: that escaping from the "world" doesn't prevent pain and anguish from occuring. The problem is, I don't think Shyamalan himself was sure what his point was; he wanted to write about the subject, he just didn't know what to say about it--is it good for the village to continue? Bad? Is there such a thing as innocence? Can it be captured in earthly terms through escape? Can it be captured by a lie? Is Noah's death, in fact, murder by the Village elders? (Yes, I say.) Exactly how long does the village have until it burns a witch? (About ten more years, unfortunately. If you study colonial America, you realize that Nissenbaum and Boyer [Salem Possessed] and James Madison were right: enclosed communities fester with the same resentments year after year after year. A community needs to be big and diverse to prevent witch trials.)

I think Shyamalan is enormously gifted. His ability to create suspense over small events is truly awesome. In The Village, the scene where the young security guard retrieves the medicine (by the way, that's Shyamalan at the desk) got me more worried and strung up than any other part of the movie.

But I do think Shyamalan needs to rethink his game plan if he's going to go on. He has the talent, the ideas, the visual eye, the whatever, and I've thought all his pieces fine works. But he's treading water, and he could do better.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Hallelujah

If you read this blog, you will know that I don't publish many posts about music. When it comes to music, I belong to the "I may not know much about it, but I know what I like" category of listeners. I do not, that is, consider myself to have an educated ear.

What I mean by "educated" is not, in this particular case, being school taught/trained; I don't mean that in order to appreciate music, I need to attend classes or read lots of books. My father--who would really prefer not to know the background to certain operas--has, I consider, an educated ear. But this example may be misleading since I don't mean "educated" to refer, either, to a particular kind of music.

Rather, I perceive someone with an "educated ear" to be someone who listens to a lot of music, much in the same way I watch a lot of films and television and read a lot of books. And this isn't something that I do. I usually listen to books on tape at home, although now and again I stick in a music CD (or tape).

Now that I've said all that, I'll tell you about my favorite song: Rufus Wainwright singing "Hallelujah." In the first Shrek movie, it's the song that is sung right after Fiona leaves and Donkey and Shrek fight. It was on House two weeks ago during the season premiere, right at the end. (And I'd like to say that music on T.V. has vastly improved over the last five years.) It was sung at the end of, I think, the first Without a Trace season (before I stopped watching the show; I have a real problem with Anthony Paglia's character, for some reason. He just grates). And everytime I hear it, I want to burst into tears. Especially, if it is used in the right moment about the right stuff.

An example of using songs at the right moment about the right stuff would be that Rolling Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That is a serious case of a song that must be used appropriately. Using it to introduce a reality/makeover/game show (seriously) is just too too ironic, like having someone sing, "The sun will come out tomorrow!" in the middle of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The chorus of the Rolling Stone song is sung at the end of the final episode of House, Season 1. There's this great shot where House throws one of his pain pills into the air. (The entire show is really about House coming to terms with his leg). The combination of song and image is total perfection.

So, I guess, if I were to describe my music preferences, they would be: soundtrack.

CATEGORY: FARES

Imperialism

One of the bonuses of attending college is that occasionally the assignments supply a blog entry. I was assigned to look up the history of a word, using the Oxford English Dictionary. My research follows:

The word "imperialism" is used almost incessantly: about the war in Iraq, about Puritans, McDonalds, pioneers, trade agreements, environmental issues, culture wars. The word alone produced 5,632 responses in the Academic Search Premier. (For the sake of trivia, Google produced 641,000 hits.) It appears in articles on narratives, George Orwell, humanitarianism, archaeology, television, linguistics, soccer, architecture, Victorian shoppers, and detective novels. Article titles proclaim, "Naked Imperialism," "Closed-Door Imperialism," "The New Imperialism," "Female Imperialism and National Identity," and "Justice and
the Return of Imperialism."

I confess to a jaded response when I hear the word. It is applied so frequently and across so many topics that I no longer register it as anything more than an indication of the speaker's mood. "Oh, I guess they don't like that," I think. "They blamed it on imperialism."

So, I went to the dictionary to discover if the term ever did mean anything other than, "I hate whatever or whomever I am discussing."

It did. In 1603. Or rather, "imperialist" meant something. (Note: the word "imperial" is older than both "imperialism" and "imperialist" and appears to have been used mostly as a proper noun.) "Imperialist" referred to "an adherent of the (or an) emperor (usually 1600-1800, of the German Emperor); of the emperor's party." That is, the word once denoted a particular (proper noun) faction or group. Imperialists would have been troops or bureaucrats working for the Hapsburg emperor, who was historically linked to the Holy Roman Empire. The term was used accordingly until about 1670, when it seems to have disappeared until it surfaced in 1800 alongside "imperialism."

Ever since, both words have been used as bludgeoning tools.

To return to "imperialism," the word itself has an innocuous definition; innocuous, that is, if you don't consider words politically pulverizing in and of themselves--not that is until people throw them at you like flying piranhas and accuse you of single-handedly deforesting North America because you belong to an organized religion. The first definition is "An imperial system of government; the rule of an emperor, esp. when despotic or arbitrary" followed by the second definition, "The principle or spirit of empire; advocacy of what are held to be imperial interests," at which point the Oxford English Dictionary gets coy and admits that the word is often applied to America, American people, their rule and influence as well as their "acquiring and holding distant dependencies, in the way in which colonies and dependencies are held by European states."

Now considering the linkage with words like "despotic," it isn't surprising that "imperialism" doesn't have much of a positive connotation. What is surprising is how infrequently it has been used to actually refer to emperor-run systems of government. It was used censoriously about the (ancient) Roman Empire in 1861 and negatively about France in 1870 (Bonaparte was currently in power). But mostly, it was been directed at constitutional or democratic governments. In 1858, it was used to refer negatively to the British Empire. In 1873, Britain was excoriated again; in 1881, the Tory government, in particular, was reproved with the accusation of "imperialism."

At the end of the nineteenth century, "imperialism" went through a brief renovation. Americans, who don't much care for other people's bandwagons, no matter how much they like their own, decided to give the word a positive twist. In 1899, "imperialism" was used to refer to the American "empire of industry." In the same year, "sane imperialism" was differentiated from "wild-cat imperialism."

And then socialism came along and the word was reduced to an epithet once again. In 1918, 1939, and 1957, it was used to reproach the West. The cousin-word to imperialism, "imperialist," showed up in a 1967 reference to "imperialist-minded businessmen . . ." The West countered occasionally. The 1970 World Book Encyclopedia, which is far less coy than the Oxford English Dictionary, states under Imperialism, "Russia used communist subversion to gain 'satellites' in Asia and eastern Europe, but claimed that Western moves were 'imperialistic.' This claim won wide support among the peoples of Asia and Africa who oppose colonial imperialism, in spite of Russia's imperialistic actions." This is fairly tepid stuff when compared to Communist accusations like that of 1973: "a typical Western imperialist plot."

"Used disparagingly," explains the Oxford English Dictionary, which is something of an understatement. Unlike other words whose meanings vary over time (from positive to negative to positive) or who gain or lose sub-meanings, "imperialism" and "imperialist" have always been used, more or less, as verbal weapons. They are the signature of ultimate disgust: "It's so
imperialistic." Three hundred years from now, the words may even show up on a list of swears, completely devoid of all meaning (as they have already become to me).

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

The Oddness of Smallville

I watched the first Smallville episode late, late Saturday night and realized why I've never been able to get into the show. I'd like to; I think it is a cool idea. But I can't.

It was possibly the strangest plotted episode I've ever seen. There's that probability concept where a million monkeys typing in a room can produce the works of Shakespeare in a thousand years or something like that. That's how I feel when I watch Smallville, like the monkeys just decided to have the characters do THIS. Now, THIS. Now, THIS. Clark gets into an argument with his father, then goes to the graveyard, then has a long conversation with Lana, then returns the keys to Lex, then we see more of the dangerous kid with the electrically powered body. Now, Clark sees the wall of weird stuff in Smallville High School. And he saw the space capsule he arrived in, but he certainly isn't doing anything about it.

Very weird.

Also, my credulity is strained by his being a sixteen-year-old. Or a teen at all. I'm willing to believe that Clark is big for his age (cause he's a superhero and all), but the fact that no one seems to notice that this devastatingly handsome, hunky, 20-year-old looking guy is waltzing around High School strains the imagination. At least, on Buffy, they all kind of look the same. (Actually, Whedon's casting for Buffy was extraordinarily astute; teenagers are a lot weedier, a lot younger and lot more gauche than T.V. teens, but Buffy "teens" manage to bridge the gap between real teens and faux teens very effectively.)

Lex, on the other hand, is a believable 21-year-old, however power-crazed. He is possibly the most interesting character on Smallville (love those ambiguous villains) but there just isn't enough of him to make up for the haphazard plotting and the much too beautiful man. Christopher Reeve, however handsome, had the ability to blend when he needed to. The actor who plays Clark just isn't blendable. And for a superhero, that's kind of a problem. (Note to producers: think Tobey Maguire.)

House and Bones

Season premiere and series premiere. House was, as always, spectacular. Setting aside the superb acting of Hugh Laurie, not to mention LL Cool J, the script, as usual, was excellent: well-written, well-structured. Although the subject is quite different, House scripts remind me of Whedon's perfect set-up and pay-off. They also prove that popular television can have layers (according to my thesis, viewers will give it layers even if it doesn't have them). House's "grief" list worked on so many levels: for Cameron, for Foreman, for House, for the prisoner. Yet, thankfully, without being spelled out. Show don't tell! Show don't tell!

House is one of those shows that I think improved over its first season. Not that the early Houses weren't good, but the pace, Laurie's sense of the main character, the scripts, with their interwoven themes, evened out over 22 episodes. The shows feel more solid, and the individual episodes hang together nearly without flaw.

Bones is, unfortunately, competing with about a billion other cop/forensic shows. And that isn't counting cable T.V. It has a good premise. David Boreanaz plays the same character he played on Angel and Buffy, except this guy can walk around in sunlight. He plays the gruff guy with a heart who will defend/protect the (shorter, slighter) heroine, who also happens to be good at martial arts and have a chip on her shoulder. Well, well, well. I think the characterization is deliberate. At the very end of the episode, Brennan asks the FBI man (David Boreanaz), "So, what, you think there's some kind of cosmic balance sheet out there?" Now, if that isn't deliberate . . .

It could last. The writing is okay. The scoobies are fun. It's in with a chance.

CATEGORY: T.V.

Tey's Grant

Josephine Tey is a mystery writer. I admire her greatly. Her writing is sardonic in the extreme (although not quite as steeped in sang froid as Catherine Aird). The best description of her novels is a comedy of manners. She has a number of cryptic things to say about newspaper reporters and novelists. My favorite of her books is To Love and Be Wise in which she lightly, but elegantly, satirizes modern novelists in a small village, including the super profound novelist, Silas Weekly, who writes about manure and adultery and corruption in rural locations. A character remarks that the literary press adored Silas until he became popular, when they decided he was old hat.

Anyway, what I like best about Tey is her detective Grant, and the reason I like Grant (Alan is his first name) is that Grant is imperfect. I don't mean imperfect in the "let's deconstruct his flaws" sense, I mean imperfect in the sense that Tey herself stands apart from Grant. She doesn't defend him. With Ngaoi Marsh, one feels that Marsh is always trying to convince you what a truly nice guy Alleyn is. Christie is more detached from Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, but in terms of detection, they make no errors. And Sayers was invested in explicating Wimsey's personality, which is entirely appropriate to the kind of novels that she wrote. But Grant is simply just, this guy, ya know (as somebody says of somebody else in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). He might be her next door neighbor. Maybe her cousin.

He is fully admirable, being intelligent and diligent. Like Alleyn, he is looked up to by his sidekick, but Grant comes right out and admits that he likes a little adulation. (Alleyn has to pretend that he isn't being worshipped, which must be a strain.) Grant himself is also rather detached. His cousin, Laura, can never get him to marry, and Grant misses several opportunities simply because he isn't paying attention (he isn't absent-minded; he is too self-absorbed). Anyway, Grant doesn't want to get married. He is more Archie Goodwin than Wimsey. His female love interest (sort of) is Marta, an actress, who doesn't want to get married either and scares men. She latches onto Grant, probably because he has no fear.

In fact, Grant has tremendous confidence. He is somewhat prideful, not in the "I'm better than others" sense, but in his sureness about his own abilities. He has a "flare" for odd situations, but he isn't even remotedly the insightful, thoughtful, concerned, all-knowing, tortured detective of so much detective fiction. You get the impression that he is a bit self-centered, that he knows and doesn't care. Yet he isn't dislikable. And I think that is a remarkable feat of fiction writing.

Tey books in order of my preference:

To Love and Be Wise (Grant)
Daughter of Time (Grant)
Franchise Affair (Grant has a cameo appearance)
The Singing Sands (Grant)
Brat Farrar
A Shilling for Candles (Grant)
Man in the Queue (Grant)
Miss Pym Disposes (I don't like this one: too sad)

CATEGORY: BOOKS

The Wonkas

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not one of my favorite books, Roald Dahl not being one of my favorite authors. After watching Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, however, I was so non-plussed by the film that I read the book and watched the earlier version with Gene Wilder. And I came to the conclusion that the earlier version is much closer to the book than Burton's version. In fact, I'm not altogether sure what Burton was trying to do.

The most marked point of Dahl's book is the idea of candy. The plot is supposedly a child's dream come true: entrance into the greatest candy factory in the world, a garden made of candy and so on and so forth. I was never enamoured of the idea, mostly because I don't like hard candy. If it had been the greatest cake factory in all the world . . .

In any case, the earlier version focuses on satisfying that dream. There is a plot: all the other children are horrible and Charlie is wonderful (I think it is interesting that the greedy children are disposed of first; the more complicated and aggressive Veronica is disposed of third and surprisingly enough, the violent, TV-corrupted yet daring Mike TV is saved for last. In my version, I would turn Charlie into a corporate wonder who decides to utilize Veronica's pushiness and Mike's brashness by making them vice presidents, but then, I'm somewhat less cruel than Dahl). The earlier movie sacrifices the family aspect of the story (no dad) to emphasize Charlie's intrinsic integrity.

The newer version correctly places Charlie's family loyalty at the center of the tale, adding the correlating (but non-book inspired) story of Wonka's dentist father. Unfortunately, this gives the movie a lopsided feel. The beginning parts of the film are excellent, and the boy who plays Charlie (Freddie Highmore) is an actor to keep your eye on. (He plays Peter in Finding Neverland.) The story of Wonka's dentist father is pure Burton, with a hint of Dahl. Unfortunately, after all that, the factory portions seem, well, rather pointless. There is no joie de vivre in Burton's version, none of the loony Monty Python-like joke-making of the 1971 version. Oddly enough, it isn't even as bizarre as a Burton film. (See Beetlejuice.)

In fact, it's really a movie about Freddie Highmore as Charlie and Johnny Dep as Willy Wonka. Which actually makes it worth the theatre price. Freddie Highmore is a talented child who completely sidesteps the sweet-innocence persona and remains likable. Thank goodness. In the 2004 Five Children and It (which is, more or less, the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe combined with E. Nesbit), Highmore portrays a sturdy brat who keeps the audience's sympathy--just barely but he does it. A little older and he would have made a magnificent Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Johnny Dep is well-worth watching in just about anything and is becoming progressively more and more well-worth watching. There are few actors in this world who could pull off the Willy Wonka that Johnny Dep depicts while keeping the audience invested in Wonka's fate. This Wonka is not the quixotic Gene Wilder (whose Wonka was much closer to the book version), this Wonka is J.M. Barrie, except that Dep's J.M. Barrie from Finding Neverland was played more like the quixotic Gene Wilder (with a much too real accent; so Dep is good, but good grief, he didn't have to be that good!). Dep's Wonka is the true boy-who-never-grew-up. Dep has captured the ageless, emotionally stunted and altogether unsettling persona which unnerves people about Michael Jackson (possibly why the connection between Dep's performance and the singer has been drawn). Dep's mastery of this character must be appreciated. It just doesn't have much to do with candy.

My assessment is that Burton took on a script that he had little interest in, a setting he had even less interest in, but the bare bones of an idea that he had a great deal of interest in. From that, he created a showcase for the impressive talents of Highmore and Dep. Since, as I mentioned, I never cared for the book, I don't consider this a loss. I don't regret seeing the movie in the theatre, and I will watch it again on DVD.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Prison Break

I liked it, although I doubt I'll keep watching it.

I liked it because it was, to be upfront and obvious, cool. I have no idea how plausible it is and don't much care. I liked it for the same reason I like watching Jason Bourne and Batman: very, very smart guy--who thinks ahead--behaves in a levelheaded, yet crazily masochistic way to get his brother out of jail, and he does it in a cool, smart, masochistic way. The whole tattooed blueprint thing was kind of silly but incredibly awesome at the same time. (Although my instant thought was "Yikes, do they make the actor get all that makeup on everyday?" But my reason reasserted itself and pointed out that in the premiere we never see Michael Schofield's chest and back more than once. All the other times, he refers to the tattoo on his arm. Answer: no, he doesn't put the makeup on everyday, however it is done.)

The conspiracy stuff looks pretty lame but again, the plot is not what is so cool about the show. What is so cool about the show is the slow, cautious, cunning brain at work. I prefer the Bournes and Schofields to the James Bonds of the action world. Bond is all glitz and glame and big tanks. He's got the suit and the car and the style and the women, yadda yadda. I prefer desperately insane heroes with photographic memories personally.

I won't watch the show since it is one of these "gotta make you watch every week" types. I prefer House which, despite having a story arc, allows you to miss an episode here and there. And all House episodes are contained, more or less. With Prison Break, my original assumption was that Michael would get his brother out during the premiere and then the rest of the episodes would be about him surviving intelligently in prison. But it's all going to be about the silly conspiracy and Michael saving his brother (sort of 24ish--what will they do next season? Michael Schofield stays in, of course; he will sacrifice himself so his brother can escape, and then . . . he works to get someone else out?). Anyway, I really don't like being hooked on things. But it was a cool premiere. (For you Buffy fans, Michael was one of the swimmers in the episode "Go Fish.")

CATEGORY: TV