Sweet Chick Flick

Chick flicks run the gambit from great to cute to ehhh to horrible. In general, I tend to trust the masses when it comes to movies, so if a chick flick comes and goes quickly, it was probably horrible.

But every once in awhile, a really cute flick comes out and then vanishes without much fanfare. This is true of Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. I recommend it!

The plot is very, very basic. No frills. The payoff is very, very obvious. No twists. There isn't a huge supporting cast. There's barely a bad guy.

But the story works. And the characters are likable. I happen to like Reese Witherspoon, and I recently became acquainted with Mark Ruffalo through Due South (okay, recent for me!). Both are respectable actors for their level, and a decent chick flick is well within their ballpark.

More than that, Just Like Heaven doesn't use the BIG MISUNDERSTANDING--WE WILL SPEND THE LAST HALF HOUR OF THE FILM MAD AT EACH OTHER BEFORE WE TOTALLY MAKE UP which always makes you think, "Would this relationship really survive long-term?" ("No" is the answer.)

For example, I agree with Ebert who thinks the ending of 10 Ways to Lose a Guy on the First Date is totally stupid. If two grown-ups realized that their friends had tricked them into dating each other and hey, what do you know, it worked out, those grown-up people would be thrilled! Only adolescents would be all "Oooooh, your trickery was worse than mine. Ooooh, I'm SOOO mad."

Puh-lease.

Granted, there is a built-in 10 minutes of "Will it work out?" in Just Like Heaven. But it's a natural "Will it work out?" It isn't the result of mutual sulking.

(The only exception to my rule against stupid MAD AT EACH OTHER endings is Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. It isn't a favorite chick flick of mine--I kind of detest films that use the OTHER woman or the OTHER man as the twist--but I think that Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock play so well off each other, I'm willing to overlook a great deal of stupid plotting.)

MOVIES

House and The Irony of Preachiness

These are the dog-days when I correct papers and then correct more paper and then correct more papers. I'm home much of the time and in the interests of being fair (to the students and to myself), I take breaks and watch shows.

Lately, I watched the first season of House. I noticed a few things that interested me. One of the main things I noticed was how thoroughly fleshed out the show was right from day one. I've formed the conclusion that when a producer/director has a vision--a particular way he/she desires a show to unwind--it has a tremendous impact on the quality of the show.

If, on the other hand, the show is like the technology/consulting firm I worked at which couldn't make up its mind WHY it had merged, then all you've got is a bunch of characters, a cool set, and a few ideas.

The next thing I noticed was that Wilson lies A LOT. I didn't realize this the first season because, gosh darn it, Wilson is so nice. But in his gosh-shucks way, he lies all the time. And yet House puts up with him, and I think House puts up with him because Wilson lying makes life interesting and because Wilson isn't wrong or stupid with his lies. House tends to associate himself with people who will expose him, and Wilson does that. He just does it by lying.

The third thing I noticed was that Chase is actually very, very funny. There's a scene where House decides to actually visit a patient. Foreman and Cameron are all "Wow, he's going to see a patient!" But Chase says, "I don't know who I am anymore" in this dead-pan way. It is very funny. He is also more amused by House than the others. I think this was smart writing. On the one hand, it made Chase less sycophantic than House sometimes paints him. On the first hand, it makes Chase's betrayal of House that much more awful. And yet comprehensible. And House takes it (and gives Chase grief for the rest of his life).

Moving on, I must mention Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes which I have also watched recently. It's Christmas time (not Holiday time--this is my blog; it's Christmas time), and every Christmas, I watch, "The Blue Carbuncle" from the Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett.

And I appreciated all over again how wonderful that series is. The thing that makes it so incredibly wonderful is that the directors allow the culture to exist without making big, "DID YOU NOTICE HOW CHAUVINIST THEY ARE? DID YOU NOTICE HOW IMPERIALIST THEY ARE?" comments.

In the episode following "The Blue Carbuncle," "The Copper Beeches" a young governess is offered a position by an extremely odd man. She is offered the position through an agency, and the woman who runs the agency pressures her into accepting what is clearly a bizarre/predatorial situation. The woman really should protect the young governess, but she doesn't. You feel the load of being an independent female employee in the early 20th century. But yet--and this is important--nobody comments on it. The director doesn't make a huge point of it. Sherlock Holmes and Watson never mentioned it. They take the assumptions of the culture for granted.

And yet the scene's treatment is too marked to be accidental. You feel that the director cared enough to be honest without being made preachy or nervous by Conan Doyle's material.

I feel the same way about the 1980s Miss Marple movies versus the recent Miss Marple movies, which I loathe. The 1980s versions present Christie's world intact, honestly. The recent versions put their own agenda and badly written scripts before Agatha Christie's vision.

In the novel turned movie A Murder Is Announced, for example, two older women live together. They are friends. Agatha Christie never comments on the relationship. It wasn't unusual in that day and age. It didn't come hung about with possible labels and possible inferences.

In fact, it didn't necessarily mean anything sexual at all. And it didn't necessarily not. It was an age when people were allowed a great deal more freedom with their sexual orientation than they are now. Really! (The very lack of speculation meant that Cary Grant, for instance, didn't have to declare himself. Thank goodness because I don't think Cary Grant would have known how to declare himself. He would have gone to therapy instead, and thereby, destroyed the very sexual ambiguity that made him such a fantastic actor in the first place.)

But in the recent Murder Is Announced, the two women aren't "friends" or roommates. They are lovers, and Miss Marple gets to make some very sanctimonious, very modern speeches about being true to oneself.

Now, get this: in the book and in the movies, one of the women is killed. In the 1980s version, the devastation and anger of the survivor is superb. It strikes you right to your heart's core. It's REAL.

But in the recent version, ho hum, another bad day for lesbians everywhere.

Ironic, huh?

To bring this back to House, I think Shore is trying to do the "no judgment, just showing people and life" thing. Not completely--hey, it is an American show--but to an extent. Which is rather unusual. More power to him!

TELEVISION

Modred versus Launcelot

I became interested in Camelot sometime in my early teens. I read the play about a thousand times. I don't know why it enthralled me. I don't particularly like the actual musical; I never cared much for T.H. White's The Once and Future King; I didn't like the Walt Disney movie. And I never read Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I have read parts of Malory.

But for some reason, the possible reality of the Arthurian legend fascinated me. I don't mean the feminist-druid stuff which I think is stupid; I mean, the real Dark Ages stuff with that wacky monk, Gildas proclaiming doom all over the place only nobody is listening, and there's all these Saxons moving in and, really, there probably weren't any major wars, just a few skirmishes, and it's very possible that the skirmishes were the Celts fighting each other, NOT fighting the Saxons. Because the Romans have left by this point, so the Saxons basically have free-loader rights to that "green and scepter'd isle." And boy, I just love that stuff.

(Now that I think about it, it's books which use parts of the Arthurian myth to create a separate fantasy that I like--like Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series. And C.S. Lewis.)

Then, as an undergraduate, I developed a real liking for the other (older) Arthurian legends: Gawain and the Green Knight and Gawain and the Loathly Lady (Wife of Bath stuff).

But of course, if you read anything about King Arthur (or Artos) or the Round Table, you are going to run into Galahad and Monty Python and the grail and Launcelot.

I developed a distaste for Launcelot early on. It isn't just that he has an affair with Guinevere; it's that he whines about it. The whole Lady of Shalott fiasco is Launcelot feeling sorry for himself all over the place. He forgets who he is and falls in love with this other chick (the Lady) and then remembers who he is and decides to go back to the (married) woman, Guinevere, and then the Lady kills herself and instead of Launcelot saying, "Them's the breaks" or "Boy, I was a jerk," he gets all mopey and goes off to try to redeem himself and really, it is exactly like Leonardo on the Titanic and you, the audience, wishing desperately that Billy Zane would shoot him.

I much prefer Mordred. And interestingly enough, I'm not alone. A lot of YA books have been written in favor of Mordred or from Mordred's point of view: the Book of Mordred by Vivian Vande Velde; The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein, for example.

I think there are two reasons Mordred fascinates us Mordredites:

(1) Mordred is much more ambiguous than any of the other Camelot/Arthurian legend characters. And he is placed, plot-wise, in the position of being the character who outs the well-liked but corrupt "good" guys.

Basically, Mordred is Spike.

And ambiguity is interesting. I think it is no error of human nature that the most popular Star Trek characters are those characters who are struggling to define themselves: Data, Seven of Nine, the Doctor. (House from House.) We are more interested in people who haven't figure themselves out completely yet than people who have because most of us fall into category one rather than category two.

(2) If you root for Mordred, you inevitably don't root (that much) for Launcelot, and Launcelot is such a great guy to hate. Launcelot is the quintessential spoiled kid who goes off to college or prep school or wherever and gets into trouble with some other spoiled kids. He may even be the ringleader, but it will never be clear; he will never own responsibility. And then they all get into trouble, and the other kids may even get expelled, but Launcelot goes and cries and says how SORRY he is and how he never meant it to get out of hand and isn't it too awful and it wouldn't have gone so badly if it hadn't been for that other guy (who told on them).

I've written two Mordred stories myself. In both, he is not dissimilar to Vivian Vande Velde's portrayal of Mordred as extremely tight-lipped. (My Mordred is less heroic.) If I remember correctly, Wein's Mordred is seriously dysfunctional and kidnaps his half-brother. But he is still the protagonist.

So reason #3 for being a Mordredite must be: he supplies so much great material!

BOOKS

The Non Either/Or of C.S. Lewis

Recently, Philip Pullman made a series of negative statements (or someone said he made a series of negative statements), about Christians and C.S. Lewis, and people have been forming camps.

I'm not going to talk about that.

However, you can read my brother Eugene's insightful analysis of the issue on his blog.

Since C.S. Lewis' name has been bandied about during this kerfuffle (not really a kerfluffle, but I like the word), I decided to post about C.S. Lewis.

Based on the plethora of books I have read by Lewis and about Lewis, you might imagine me a no-holds-barred Lewis aficionado. And, well, yeah, I kind of am. But over the years, I've also formed the conclusion that Lewis was not someone I would enjoy having over for lunch. For that matter, I don't think Lewis would have enjoyed coming over to lunch at my place. As Eugene says on his blog, "I also have the feeling that the eccentric Lewis was in person--like Einstein--a less agreeable person than his hagiographies make him out to be."

And I can't say that I even agree with all of what Lewis wrote. In fact, if you parse it out, you might discover that I disagree with over 1/3 of what the guy actually said.

So why IS he one of my favorite writers?

I've decided that even though I'm not as pessimistic or as Anglican or as wacky Edwardian as Lewis, underneath all that stuff, we share a fundamental viewpoint. It is a viewpoint missing from academic discourse. And occasionally religious discourse. And well, just about everywhere, if I'm honest. The best summary of this viewpoint comes from (yet another) book I'm reading about Lewis:

Everything he desired was an object of imagination; everything he believed was an object of reason. (Cunningham, 68).*

Lewis was both a logical Englishman and a dreamy, romantic Celt (his own generalizations, not mine.) And he reached a point in his life where he allowed both facets of his personality to exist simultaneously.

To me, this kind of approach is like finding a safe harbor. I sit in classes, I tutor online, I go to church, and I feel like I'm surrounded by people saying, "You must be one or the other!"

"You must accept jargon and touchy-feelingness as evidence or you must be an advocate of dead-white patriarchal males." "You must advocate rules and structure, or you must advocate creative, out-of-the-box thinking." "You must be an hoity-toity intellectual, or you must be spiritual."

I can always find people in these environments willing to give up the either/or. (And I personally believe that Mormons, whether they want it or not, find themselves at the smack-dab center of these either/or tensions. Stick grace, works, agency, democratic ideals, a heirarchal church and final judgement, continual progression, Joseph Smith, salvation of the dead, the temple, and, hey, the Protestant work/education ethic into one mix and viable either/ors just don't last that long.)

Nevertheless, there seems to be a strong human proclivity towards either/ors, or maybe it is just easier to discuss human behavior in those terms. I don't know. But I do know that Lewis is a huge comfort to me. Behind everything that he writes, no matter how daft, is this mind that won't reduce everything to logic or to gushy feelings or to jargon and politics or to relative experiences. He just won't give it all up to one side or the other. It's such a relief!

I also admire Lewis as a writer, which is kind of a different issue. I have this fall-down-on-my-face-oops-not-suppose-to-worship-idols response to writers who can communicate as easily as Lewis. I find Lewis' writing superhumanly fresh. I know he can be didactic, but I never notice because, golly, the writing just flows. I think a lot of us desperate writers start with ideas and images in our heads, and we then struggle to get them out in ways that sound right. Although Lewis states that he started his Narnia books with images, I think the man thought in words. Language wasn't a tool for him; it was the way his synapses worked.

He also had an uncanny ability to understand human fallibility. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he creates and explains Edmund's betrayal in a way that underscores the humanness of Edmund's betrayal (and he does it so easily, you hardly notice). Edmund isn't being evil or wicked or demonic or beyond the pale. He is being human and petty and prideful and self-protective (the part where he lies about being in Narnia with Lucy is heart-stabbing and yet, and yet, it goes on every day in your average Junior High). Edmund's petty, spiteful, self-absorbed behaviors have horrendous consequences. Maybe, they wouldn't have quite the degree of horrendous consequence in the material world (instead Edmund would grow up and turn into a horrible, self-serving manager whose co-workers detested him), but in the world of myth, a hero's behaviors must have horrendous consequences, and Lewis believed (as I do) that the end game of earthly religion is myth come alive.

*The book is C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith by Richard B. Cunningham. It is about C.S. Lewis as an apologist. Don't be mislead by the title. It is not about Lewis' contributions to Christianity. Instead, it is a fearfully academic book about apologetics--I get through about three pages every Sunday.

BOOKS

Near Miss

I'm always fascinated by near misses, movies that almost become huge artistic or cultural successes but don't. I consider The Illusionist to be a near miss, and I've been trying to figure out why. It has all the right ingredients: a love story, a mystery, adequate acting on the part of Norton and Biel and very good acting indeed by Giamatti. Wonderful atmosphere. Great effects. So why did it leave me cold? And why, although people tend to prefer it to the Prestige, did it not take off in a big way?

WARNING: SPOILERS:

I think the main reason is that the movie asks us to sympathize with the lovers (Norton and Biel). I think this was a huge mistake. If the story had remained Giamatti's completely (as I think the short story must be), the film might have been artistically, if not popularly, acclaimed. Most of the story is Giamatti's but the powers-that-be couldn't stop themselves from giving us the lovers' point of view and hoping we would commiserate.

Well, I didn't. I'm sorry; I don't care how horrible the prince was supposed to be (and I never got any real proof of his horribleness), setting up a guy to take the blame for something he didn't do is still, well, setting up a guy to take the blame for something he didn't do. It was, in fact, a murder plot worthy of Agatha Christie since if the prince didn't kill himself, his father or the people would.

Yuck. I couldn't feel any sympathy for the lovers. I didn't care. I hoped she would die of consumption within a year--take that, you mindless, self-indulgent, murdering jerks.

BUT if the story had remained Giamatti's entirely--if the whole object had been the chief inspector's reaction to the illusion; if, that is, the audience had not been asked to care whether the lovers got away or not but only if the chief inspector came through with his dignity, I think the movie would have been far more creatively satisfying.

This approach could have worked since Giamatti and Sewell (the prince) played very well off each other. (And with the new approach, the chief inspector and the prince would have become the core of the story.) Sewell is one of those scene-chewing actors, and Giamatti handled the scene-chewing with aplomb. In fact, the final scene between them before Sewell kills himself was so awesome, I sat there going, "Why couldn't we get more of this? It isn't Sewell's fault he can outact everyone in sight!" (Although, in fairness, I think the acting, Giamatti apart, was fairly even; Biel may be the weakest link, but she's lovely enough that it doesn't matter, and Norton isn't so outrageously talented that he looks odd next to her. I realized, after the movie started, that I'd gotten Norton confused with Jeremy Northam, who probably would have outacted Biel. I don't require great acting in my movies, but I do require balance.)

Lady in the Water had its own near-miss problems, but at least Shyamalan let Giamatti carry the story. Point of view really is everything.

MOVIES

One of the Dumber Arguments I've Heard

At the risk of being radically misunderstood, I must comment on an argument that I have run across many times regarding homosexuality.

The radically misunderstood part is that my comments have nothing to do with homosexuality itself. I don't intend to address homosexuality per se at all on this blog. If you want to witness people calling each other names go to some political pundit's blog.

But I am an English teacher, and I get tired--oh, so tired--of illogical arguments. And I consider this particular argument to be illogical.

So, here we go: I recently picked up Neal Boortz's book Somebody's Gotta Say It. He's a libertarian. I'm a libertarian. Why not? I became rapidly disenchanted. There's a few too many assumptions floating about the book, which is probably why I don't read books by pundits in the first place.

This particular assumption goes something like this: Homosexuality is not a choice (this is the claim part of the argument; it can be refuted or supported) because no one would choose to be ostracized by society (this is the silly part of the argument).

No one would choose to be ostracized by society.

Really?

Oh, yeah?

This is not the first time I have encountered this argument; it always astonishes me. Even when I was in my 20's and supposedly more naive than I am now, I never could give credence to this argument or take seriously the people who proposed it.

My first thought is always, Uh, what about the history of, I don't know, the human race?

The fact is people have been making choices that ostracize them from their societies, families, cultures, and planet earth since, well, since the first scientist made a claim that annoyed his government and the first hippie went over the proverbial wall and the first artist sat around going, "I'm not going to hunt bison. I'm going to paint them."

The Impressionists ostracized themselves from the powers that be in the arts--until they singlehandedly created the picture postcard industry. (Okay, not really.) Thomas Hardy ostracized himself from British society when he published Jude the Obscure (although it could have just been Hardy's personality; he ostracized himself from his wife as well). Tons of religious leaders (including Joseph Smith) ostracized themselves from 19th century American society with their unique sexual practices. And then there's all those people who have changed their political parties or their religious affiliations or, gosh, their dietary habits and ostracized themselves from their families/friends/societies.

According to the "No one chooses to be ostracized" argument, the chick from My Big Fat Greek Wedding would never have even contemplated marrying a non-Greek since the moment she did WHAM! possible ostracisim.

Now, you could argue that the chick from My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't suffer very long from her decision but what's the rule here? If people don't suffer long, it must be choice, but if they do suffer long, it isn't?

The second possible refutation would be, "But, Kate, most of your examples are edgy, culture-changing personalities. What about ordinary people who just wish to live within the status quo?"

Well, I believe that even ordinary people who want to live within the status quo are desirous of an identity. You don't have to be a teenager or Picasso to define yourself by what you are not or by what will meet your desires.

Again, I am not going to argue here whether homosexuality is right/wrong, choice/non-choice. I simply don't believe that since people don't like negatives, every negative effect in their lives is therefore not the result of a personal choice. I realize that many people don't anticipate negative effects. But there are still many, many people in this world who anticipate the negative and still make the choice.(For several years after breaking with the Catholic Church, Martin Luther suffered intense psychological depression; he believed he was hounded by the devil--how's that for a negative effect?)

To go to the furthest extreme of this argument, let's take drug or gambling addicts. They ruin their healths, go into debt, lose their jobs, disappoint their families, and, possibly, undermine the fabric of society, yadda, yadda, yadda, and what, you think they did it because they didn't get a buzz? It just kind of happened to them?

Here's my stance: I think discussions about human nature would go a lot better (meaning, from my perspective, make more sense) if all arguments would start from the proposition that culture is not the final determinant for how a human being will behave: destructively or not.

FARES, FESTIVALS & OTHER FROLICS

Getting Snarky About Television and Anti-Television Silliness

I'm rereading Kathleen Rooney's Reading With Oprah, a book that I read about the time I wrote my thesis and which I found enormously helpful. Rooney creates a scholarly and surprisingly objective response to the OBC phenomenon and its fall-out. In general, the book is an attempt to understand the patterns of high and low culture in America or, rather, the perception of high and low culture in America (I think the latter is more probable than the former, personally, since my experience is that most people read/watch whatever they want. Unfortunately, I think Rooney may have been influenced in her writing by the academic tendency to define problems into being and then be shocked--shocked!--that such problems exist).

In general, the book makes some valid points, and I recommend it; however, half-way through, Rooney finds it necessary to explain to the reader why she thinks OBC failed in its objectives (before Oprah herself cancelled the televised version of the club). It is here that Rooney's argument falls to pieces, and it falls to pieces because Rooney doesn't understand television.

Rooney claims that the problem with OBC (which in general, she is very generous towards) was the format--i.e., no matter how good the books, the format of television would have produced a flattening effect whereby interesting/well-rounded novels were reduced to a few applicable labels.

I read that and thought, Has Rooney never attended a graduate-level class? Or a non-televised bookclub, for that matter? Girl, I hate to mention it, but that's par for the humanities course. (Interestingly enough, the bookclub I now attend, which is composed mainly of ladies from my church, is far less reductive [to borrow Rooney's term] than most bookclubs, which just proves that reading and analyzing scriptures all your life has its payoffs).

Now, granted, Rooney has a point. I've never been a fan of the packaged-this-is-your-life approach to literature but my dislike of this approach extends beyond Oprah. I have argued many times--in my thesis and elsewhere--that if you want an in-depth, passionate discussion about a piece of art, go to the fans (book and television). However, in order to bolster her argument, Rooney proceeds to make the extremely reductive argument that television is, by its very nature, stulifying and simplistic.

"[A]t this point," she writes, "one must do more than announce that TV flattens the complexity of things (which you'd have to be a fool to deny that it does) and leave it at that" (my emphasis).

Well, I guess I'm a fool, but I'm a fool who knows a lot more about television than Rooney does. (She goes on to produce several run-of-the-mill arguments: television is aimed at the lowest common denominator; it infantilizes viewers; it destroys the imagination: all this because of its commercial nature . . . Since up till this point in her book, Rooney displays a passing appreciation for the commercial nature of publishing houses, her sudden dislike of commercialized art sounds a little, uh, choosy.)

In any case, for someone who tries very, very hard throughout the beginning portions of her book to be a non-snob (although her dislike of genre fiction kind of gives her away), this "television is simplistic" argument kicks Rooney way off her egalitarian pedestal.

And it is impossibly stupid. The issue is not "Is television complex?" or "How can television be complex if it makes money!?" the issue is "TELEVISION ISN'T BOOKS!"

The latter statement would have given Rooney enough ammunition. If she had said, "The two mediums are incompatible: the kind of well-roundedness achieved by literature is not the well-roundedness aimed for by television," that is perfectly sane and defendable. There was no need for her to decide that television in its entirety is simplistic, etc. etc.

Such arguments are easy to refute: books flatten reality all the time. Reproduced dialog and in-depth descriptions as well as plots encapsulated in 500 pages are all contrivances and not how things occur in real life. At least with television, you have a constant stream of sensory perception (sight, sound) while with books, all you have is words on the page which don't make your imagination work at all . . . .

And on and on and on.

Since I like both books and television, I won't bother. The point is, however, that if the standards of one medium are held against the other, both will appear flat, overly stylized, and fake. It is frankly stupid to look at television as a failed reproduction of what literature (the true art!) is attempting to do, just as it is pointless to look at novels as a failed reproduction of something that television is attempting to do. (And while we are at it, why not bring poetry into the mix? Wheelbarrows in the rain: how reductionist is that! Oh, wait, maybe poetry shouldn't be held to this particular standard . . .)

And can we please get over the whole "television speaks to the lowest common denominator" argument? Seriously, has Rooney EVER watched the Simpsons?

I've been rewatching CSI: Season I and have been amazed, all over again, at how well-written the first few seasons are. I'm always impressed by seamlessness (one reason Tolkien impresses me): people who write well enough to make it look easy. (I think good art always looks easy from the outside. Bad art appears clunky and mannered and "look at me"!) I'm not just referring to the repartee on CSI but to the ordering of the scenes, the use of external, visual clues to move the plot forward, and the strong characterization of minor characters like Hodges, Ecklie, the coroners, and Greg.

Not to mention the acting, the editing, the directing, and a myriad other choices made by the producers.

"Ah, yes, Kate," my peers in college used to say, "but you are searching for those things; you are intellectually trained to look for them."

Sure, and I'm also intellectually trained to look for nuances in War & Peace, which doesn't alter the fact that is possible to read War & Peace purely for the plot and come away with no particularly in-depth reaction than, hey, a bunch of people died and a bunch of people got married.

The first point being that the things I notice in CSI are there to be noticed, which means that the writers are as smart as me (and much, much better at streamlining texts). In fact, if you watch a lot of television, you begin to realize how well-grounded the writers are in their culture. Television writers insert popular culture, film, and show-based references throughout their scripts on a constant basis. It's a little unnerving after a while. (All these writers holding private conversations with each other through their scripts!)

If the people who dislike television are incapable of seeing those things, well, hmmm, could it be that from television's point of view, they are untrained and uneducated? Well, well, that sure does change the stakes, doesn't it?

The second point: If a thing is made with intelligence, one can find intelligence there, and television is very, very, very intelligent.

Take, for example, my favorite episode of House, the second to last episode of season 1. In one episode, you have three plot lines running simultaneously plus an overarcing plot line, which is House's issue with his ex-girlfriend. On top of that, you have the introduction of several temporary characters (the students in the class) who, for the purposes of the story, must make an instantaneous impression on the viewer. There are a number of backflashes, not to mention the editing (which is always excellent with House), the acting, the lighting, the dialog, and the camera shots. Not to forget the music.

And all of it is seamless and self-contained; the set-up is paid-off (at several levels). The episode never jars; it never comes across as clunky. Television can. This episode doesn't. It is truly artistic. Again, one definition of good art could be art-that-makes-you-notice-all-the-hard-work-the-writer-did-and-instead-of-letting-you-enjoy-the-creation-calls-attention-to-itself-on-a-constant-basis. That would not be my definition, but then I don't read the same kinds of books that Rooney does. (In all fairness, Rooney might agree with me, although she does prefer books that "put [readers] through the paces of moral awareness, affiliation, and disaffiliation . . . they encourage us . .. to grapple with ideas and situations different from our own," all of which I find frankly tiresome. I don't, by the way, consider myself to be a lowest common denominator.)

To return to House: this intelligent, sophisticated, multi-layered episode is simplistic? Based on the lowest common denominator? According to whom? By what standard? Because it prevents people from (to quote one of Rooney's experts) "being able to imagine any social order different from the established one"? Does any novel do this? Does any good novel do this? Does any oevure beyond the purileness of Ayn Rand attempt to do this?

Again, the complexity is there. That doesn't mean people go looking for it (although a lot of fans do). By the same token, people don't necessarily go looking for complexity in Jane Eyre, Shakespeare, Catcher in the Rye, or Moby Dick.

When Rooney claims "[Its pervasiveness] is what makes TV's anti-imagination effect so frightening: no one is safe," she means the absence of the kind of imagination she and her experts utilize and applaud. Television provides plenty of imagination, just not the same kind of imagination as one gets from books. But I suppose that concept is just a tad too complex for book-readers to understand.

Bourne Ultimatum

I've been a big fan of Bourne since the first movie. I went with zero expectations and came out going, "Holy cow!" Both the first two movies have held up very well in subsequent rewatches. So I was excited for Bourne Ultimatum but also wary. Third movies tend to awful (witness Return of the Jedi and the third Spiderman).

Well, it wasn't awful. But it wasn't great either. After much pondering, I reached the conclusion that the reason wasn't the plot or the action sequences or Matt Damon. The problem was the lack of a strong antagonist and a strong alter-ego.

In both the first and second movies, Bourne has both a strong antagonist and a strong alter-ego. The antagonist is the mastermind behind the current movie's CIA operation. The alter-ego is what or who Bourne would be if he hadn't woken up/broken his training.

In the first movie, the antagonist is Chris Cooper, one of my favorite actors, and a guy with effortless charisma. He has a number of factors in his favor, including his grim resolve, his investment in Treadstone, his disgust towards his superiors, and his lack of fear (he doesn't fear Bourne, for one thing). Bourne's alter-ego is Clive Owen, who also bubbles over with charisma. His scene in the field outside the farmhouse with Bourne is powerful. His characterization as the "hit man" that Bourne used to be is vital to this and the later movies, especially since the Professor (Owen) is willing to give Bourne information.

In the second movie, the antagonists are the cool Joan Allen and self-protective Brian Cox. Together they create a tense-filled opposition to Bourne's endeavors. His alter-ego is the utterly talented Karl Urban. Karl Urban as Bourne's alter-ego is interesting. He is what Bourne would be without the drug enhancements and extra special military training. He is as smart as Bourne and as quick-witted. Bourne's decision at the end to not finish Kirill (Urban) off in the car is his acknowledgement that Kirill is as much a professional as Bourne was supposed to be (although I have to admit, I don't really understand "good" guys who have car chases where an unbelievable number of people might get hurt). Karl Urban is also charismatic.

But the third movie has neither a strong protagonist or a strong alter-ego. Joan Allen has been reduced to playing Bourne's second. David Stratharin does a masterly job as a self-contained, nasty character, but Bourne really needs an antagonist who can chew up the scenery, not live inside his part. The two actors who actually could chew up the scenery--Finney and Glenn--are given very minor scenes.("Why?" one asks. "Why? Why? Why?")

And there is no one alter-ego, just a number of possibles.

The movie proves that unless you've got a decent bad guy, you are reduced to a lot of cool action scenes and some good dialog. The good guy can't carry the movie alone, no matter how hard he tries. It isn't that the bad guy and good guy must be in constant communication (a la Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman), just that the bad guy must be out there making life difficult for the hero. Joan Allen never meets Bourne in Supremacy, but her cool intellect is there, searching for him. The hero must matter to the villain. Otherwise, the hero ceases to matter to us.

MOVIES

Types and Stereotypes

I have been thinking lately of types and stereotypes. When I write, I basically use the same people or the same kinds of people over and over. This is because what interests me is not the itty-bitty idiosyncratic nature of character but rather how human nature plays itself out in particular situations. I suppose this is why I write fantasy and science-fiction.

I tell myself that I'm just doing what Shakespeare did. Yes, well, eh hem, let's take it as read that I'm not exactly in the same class. But I think the argument that Shakespeare created more type-oriented than character-oriented people is a legitimate argument. Granted, Hamlet is a fully realized character with his own bundle of idiosyncrises but at some point, the character hits the type and becomes universal.

(I will say right now that it is likely that geniuses, i.e. really, really good writers can do both: create complex characters and types simultaneously.)

My reference to Shakespeare as a defense is due to the oft touted idea that all good writing is character-driven (which is probably true) and that all good characters are complex characters (which I think less true). Complex characters have names and backgrounds and hobbies and tics. If they are romance characters, they have hair and eye color, not to mention a complete wardrobe. If they are angsty/"realistic" characters, they have dark pasts and foibles and unrelenting grief.

I'm probably going to talk myself into a hole on this one since I really admire writers like C.J. Cherryh who, particularly in The Foreigner series, create emotionally real and complex characters.

But let's step back from the whole issue for a sec. Because I think that (1) good writing can rely on types; and (2) types and stereotypes are not the same.

Tolkien relied on types. Agatha Christie relied on types (and she didn't apologize for it). I mentioned earlier that Shakespeare relied on types. For some of her funniest passages, Sayers relied on types (I think Sayers is a very misunderstood writer; she is much more humorous than she is given credit for).

Types are not the same as stereotypes. I've been struggling over the difference for awhile now. It's one of those porno things: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." I've decided that the difference is the universal quality. Types can move between cultures. Miss Marple is very English, but her type is still recognizable in her descendents, Mme Ramotswe and Mrs. Pollifax.

A stereotype, on the other hand, is a cliche specific to time and place. Ngaio Marsh claimed she was using characters (unlike Christie), not types in her mysteries when actually she was using stereotypes. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy Marsh, but I don't think her characters are transferable beyond a very specific time and place. Alleyn belongs specifically to his upperclass English milieu and there is little of him that survives beyond it. He is a collection of time/place-based cliches: the reticient, fastidious, upperclass British detective working amongst worshipping subordinates in the 1940s to 1950s.

Sayers used many of these same cliches, but then she freaked out the mystery writers of her day by giving Wimsey character. (Oddly enough, I think that Tey, like Sayers, created a fully realized character in her detective; the difference between Grant, Tey's detective, and Wimsey, Sayers' detective, is that Grant is very sparsely detailed. But he is neither a cliche or a type.)

To go on to fantasy/science-fiction, in the creation of Frodo, Tolkien created a type. As did Lucas with Luke and Hans in Star Wars. As did Whedon in Buffy (actually, there you see a deliberate reversal or play on types). But the dramatis personae of Eragon, which I mildly enjoyed, strike me as stereotypes. As did the roles in Titanic, who struck me as "fantasy" stereotypes in the nastier sense of the word.

Not that stereotypes are always ineffective. In the Monk episode "Employee of the Month," almost all of the parts are stereotypes: the inept stock boys, the weedy manager, the disgruntled retail worker. The stereotypes are so accurate, so right-on, they are hilarious, but they are hilarious within a very specific time, culture, and place. A type, like Monk himself, has more universal qualities. Monk IS the Sherlock Holmes of his time and place and therefore, carries within him the universal qualities that made Sherlock Holmes also universal.

No real conclusions here, just a healthy respect for the use of the type. Not all figures in a drama have to be deep and personal and idiosyncratic to work. There's place for types and even, within a short life-span, stereotypes in fiction and television and movie scripts.

WRITING

Audience Studies, Inc.

In writing this post, I am joining several bloggers who have posted about Audience Studies, Inc. Thanks to said bloggers for helping me track down the information posted here.

I recently joined the odd 400 people or so who agreed to watch a sit-com and then report back to Audience Studies, Inc. I was wary when I took the initial call but agreed, mostly because, as I told the young man on the phone, "You can always get my address out of the phone book."

(That poor young man--I don't think his heart was in the call; when I questioned him as to Audience Studies, Inc.'s resume, he said, in a very embarrassed voice, "I can give you a 1-800 number to call." The young man knew, as I discovered, that Audience Studies, Inc. only communicates what agrees with its "story." )

So, Audience Studies, Inc. sent me a DVD as well as two booklets with pictures of products. And I immediately figured out that Audience Studies, Inc. wasn't interested in learning about my reaction to the sit-com; it was doing product research.

Now, I have no trouble with product research. If Audience Studies, Inc. had called me up and said, "We're going to send you a failed CBS pilot from 2005 that we purchased for a nominal fee as well as a bunch of ads and commercials and frankly, what we really want to know about is your reactions to the ads and commercials," I would have said, "Oh, sure, that's sounds interesting. Go ahead." I like commercials.

What is bizarre about this whole thing is how completely Audience Studies, Inc. has created a fake story in order to try to get (supposedly) unprejudiced reactions to products. First of all, the company goes to the trouble to obtain the sitcom (why it doesn't simply create its own is beyond me--the episode was so bad, at first I thought it was a basement production, which kind of impressed me. But the episode I was sent, which I turned off five minutes in because that's what I really do with bad sitcoms, was from "The Rocky LaPorte Show." Don't blame Rocky. It was the dialog and plot that stank.)

Secondly, the booklets of products are printed as "Prize Booklets" complete with "Prize Entry Forms" that you are supposed to fill out (multiple choice fashion) and just coincidentally keep by the phone for when Audience Studies, Inc. calls.

Thirdly, the "Program Evaluation" is not in any way designed to solicit survey responses. It contains questions like "Which character did you like best?" "What parts of the show or the idea should be changed or updated?" No survey company of this type would ask such open-ended questions!

I can't figure out whether Audience Studies, Inc. honestly believes that people won't see through this charade or whether people honestly don't see through it. All the bloggers I read had seen through it, but then bloggers already show a degree of media awareness and saavy. (Which is why they are susceptible to viewing the sitcom in the first place.)

Again, the irony is that I'm a big fan of market research, and I would have helped a request in that area. But I draw the line at so much icky snake-oil salesman patter. Either cough up the dough for a non-failed pilot, people, or come up with a better schtick.

FARES

CSI Characterization

I recently rewatched CSI: Las Vegas, Season 2. I was able to get the entire box set through my local library (plug for local libraries!) and subsequently watched all 24+ episodes over two weeks.

Watching the entire season reminded me why I liked the show so much when it first came out. (It isn't that I dislike the show now; the fact that I rarely watch CSI: Las Vegas these days has more to do with the fact that the only channel I get clearly is Fox, and I don't want to fuss with manipulating the antennae back and forth. And yes, cable is one of those things I refuse to get.)

What has struck me watching Season 2 is how on-target the Las Vegas characterizations were right from the begining. CSI: Las Vegas is one of the few shows I watch where I like every single one of the scoobies, and their characters function correctly in every single episode.

Now, I want to be clear here. CSI, like Law & Order, is not a DEEP and PROFOUND show. Both shows are very plot-oriented, and the plot is thirty minutes of action to twenty minutes of visuals; there simply isn't space for insightful characterizations. Characterization rests almost entirely on tone of voice and body language. One reason I admire Chris Noth from Law & Order so much is that he does so much with so little. I don't mean he overacts, but he adds these little smiles and grimaces and eye-rollings to his scenes that give him depth even though the depth is largely superficial.

This type of characterization reminds me of the Iliad and the Odyssey where people are constantly characterized by their most remarkable features: gray-eyed Athena, wise-guy Odysseus, lammo Achilles, etc. This is characterization at its most basic: just keep reminding the audience what THIS character is supposed to be.

So, on CSI: Las Vegas, Warwick is the rock (and resident holder of all sex appeal), Nick is the damsel in distress, Kat is the beauty with brains, Grissom is the cool geek, Sarah is the troubled, feminist youth, and Greggo is the CSI wannabe, who, if the show wasn't strictly heterosexual, would be paired with Nick. (The writers used this undercurrent effectively, by the way, when they made Greg's reaction to Nick in Season 2 pure and simple hero worship. It is done unabashedly, and it works well as a counterbalance to the crazy cable guy who also wants to emulate Nick. And it's a nice change to have complicated emotions OTHER than sexual interest displayed on the television screen.)

About Nick being the damsel in distress--for those of you who have watched Buffy, Willow was usually the damsel de jure in early episodes when she was always being captured and, subsequently, rescued. Whedon was quite unapologetic about it--it didn't make Willow weak, and she was so darn good at evoking sympathy with her big, soulful eyes.

Nick doesn't look soulful, but he is the character that the others consistently rescue. I love this. It is such perfect casting. Just as being rescued didn't make Willow weak, being rescued doesn't make Nick unmanly. He is THE nice guy on the show, the good guy, the Xander of CSI. Kat or Sarah could never be the damsels de jure because CBS cares a lot more about feminist strictures than Whedon (until the end of Buffy, that is). By making Nick--the guy we all like--the rescuee, the rescuers can still do all the work, and we don't think any less of Nick for the result.

As for Grissom, I really admire William Petersen. I have a feeling that the integrity of CSI:LV has been perserved as much as it has been (in the face of CSI: Miami) due to Petersen's efforts (he is a producer on the show). He never tried to make Grissom a sex magnet which wouldn't have worked anyway because William Petersen is stocky middle-aged guy to his very core. In any case, Grissom as sex magnet isn't necessary; the storyline between him and Sarah was foreshadowed early on when Grissom was still weird bug guy. Sarah being Sarah, the attraction between them is entirely believable. Sex magnet or not, Grissom's character holds the show together, much in the way I think Michael Moriarty held Law & Order together for four seasons. (I just can't adjust to Waterson--nothing against the actor; it just isn't the same.)

As for Kat and Sarah--they are very pretty women, but unlike the women on the other CSIs, they come across as naturally pretty. For example, Kat is a model-beautiful woman, but she is aging, and she looks it, and her character knows it. And Sarah looks like every single pretty hippie college student I've ever seen in my life. They don't seem excessively glammed up, and if they are a little camera-ready, well, pretty people can work in law enforcment.

Altogether, CSI: LV's characterizations have a patina of reality that CSI: Miami doesn't have (but then I don't think CSI: Miami really cares. I don't know what CSI: NY thinks it is doing. I love Gary Sinise, but the show is Boring with a capital B. I have high hopes for Fox's New Amsterdam, by the way).

Coupled with the characters' patina of reality is a truly odd kilter that, again, I put down to William Petersen. When Grissom starts rambling on about bugs or Maslow's heirarchy or other bits of unexpected trivia, he steps into the presence of those other odd but great detectives--Sherlock, Monk, House--television hits classic territory and survives.

TELEVISION

Why Romances are Good

I think romance is an unfairly reviled genre. That is not to say that romance films and novels don't have their share of awful examples, or that romance novels and films don't make their share of blunders.
"Where Romances Go Wrong" discusses those blunders. Before that, I want to defend the genre. I won't be criticizing it later because I think it is stupid. I will be criticizing it because I think it could be better.

The first argument against romances is that they are "escapist." I consider this the dumbest of the arguments. ALL writing is escapist, even so-called "realistic" fiction. The moment we pick up a book--fiction or non-fiction--we are "escaping" from the world around us.

That does not mean that we shut off our brains or that the world of the book becomes more or less important than our surroundings or that what happens in the book has no personal relevance to our daily lives. Whatever goes on while we read is very individual. People who read "true life" or "realistic" or "sad" (which is usually what people mean by "realistic") stories are not automatically more in touch with reality than people who read fantasy or "non-realistic" or happy stories. Lots of people read horror not because they think the events in the books will happen to them but to create a distance between themselves and the events.

It is possible, of course, that some people read sad stories because their own lives are sad. It is also entirely possible that many people read sad stories because their own lives AREN'T sad. The point is that there is not an automatic connection between the type of books one reads and the type of life one inhabits.

The second argument against romances is bound up in the first: romances are unrealistic. Now, I believe that what people really mean when they say, "Romances are unrealistic" is that romances are CONVENIENT. I will return to this business of convenience in the next post. But first I'm going to deal with the issue of "unrealism." Setting aside the issue of convenience, the censure "unrealistic" to far too many people means a happy ending. Romances end happily; therefore, they are unrealistic. There's some weird human assumption that insists that happy events and endings are somehow not as true-to-life as unhappy events and endings.

C.S. Lewis illustrates this weird human assumption in one of his apologetics. He compares the birth of a child to war. He points out that when one is talking about the happiness surrounding birth, literal-minded we-like-relativity-because-we-can-use-it-to-make-everybody-else's-lives-miserable types will say, "But that's just subjective" or "That's just your emotions" or "That's just what our patriarchal, pro-child society has taught you to think."

But if one mentions the trauma and horror of war, the miserable ones will instantly agree that yes, absolutely, "That is what war is REALLY like."

Anything good is relative. Anything bad is "reality."

Balderdash! say I. Emotion is emotion, good or bad or otherwise. Granted the sappy sweetness of Hallmark cards can grate after awhile. But the angst-ridden chest-beating of the miserables isn't much better and a lot less hard to ignore. Unhappy endings are no more likely than happy ones and although everybody dies, not everybody invests death with terror, foreboding and glum faces. The tendency to do so is as much an emotional construct as smiling glibly, quoting bad poetry and making everybody watch the end of Ghost (good movie, by the way). Dead is dead. Life is life.

I'm not saying that death and murder and war and a thousand other tragedies are supposed to be met with a shrug, any more than I am implying that birth, weddings, new jobs, great movies, good books, a new dress, a nice walk are supposed to be met with a grumpy "whatever." To move this from relativity into the territory of 18th/19th century classicism, I'm enough of a Jane Austen fan to believe in appropriate responses to appropriate events. And I believe those appropriate responses are, to a degree, taught. The body reacts. But the how of that reaction depends on our nature, our nurture and our choices within the confines of a civilized society. (And I happen to believe in civilization which separates me from the miserable types.)

If emotions are just emotions, and the "how" of emotions is taught, then writing books where people get married and are happy is no more or less "real" than writing books where people get divorced and hate each other and fight over the kids. In fact, I've read plenty of the latter that struck me as ridiculous beyond belief--everything was so CONVENIENT (more of that later).

Which brings me back to romances. One of the things I like about romances is that they are constructive. I've written earlier posts about how much of a cop-out I consider death (and instant breakups) in a story. I've killed off characters myself, but in general, I prefer to keep them alive because in general, I prefer to work out how my characters are going to solve a story's particular problem. To a degree, that's the fascination of fiction for me. I've always wanted to know what will happen next: after the prince kills the dragon, after Beast turns into the prince, after Cinderella fits the shoe onto her foot, after Rahab helps the spies. Getting there can be fun but how everything is going to work out later is part of the fun too. So it isn't that death and divorce aren't likely; it's that they are so dull.

Romances usually end with marriage. Romances don't ask, "What happens next?" What they do ask is, "How do the hero and heroine solve the problem which is keeping them from getting married? How will they overcome their pride or prejudice or whatever?"

That's not dull.

Where Romances Go Wrong

I believe that the main reason romances are so often criticized is because they are too often convenient. I've been reading Christian romances lately. Christian romances have their own particular motifs, but they also follow the traditional romance format. And part of the traditional romance format is to create odds that the couple must overcome. And sometimes the overcoming is a bit too easy.

The particular Christian romances I am reading are evangelical, meaning that divorce of the unhappy couple (so that the happy couple can get married) is frowned upon. This type of solution is rather distasteful, and most romances avoid it. However, the alternative is so outrageously convenient, it becomes hilarious after awhile.

The alternative? All the inconvenient people die. Slews of them! They drop dead like insects in one of those zapper things. Horrible husband--zap! Horrible wife--zap! Watch out: there goes another one.

Jane Austen never did that. And she lived in a time when it was far more likely for people to die at the literal drop of a literal hat. But she doesn't kill off the dastardly Wickham. She doesn't even kill off the flightly Lydia. She doesn't kill off the horrible father in Persuasion. She doesn't kill off the snide chick in Mansfield Park. She doesn't kill off anyone in Northanger Abbey (who isn't already dead before the book begins). I believe someone conveniently dies in Sense & Sensibility, but it was her first book, and she doesn't kill off the real villainness, Lucy Sharp (although she does marry her off conveniently; again, it was her first published book). Nobody dies in Emma or in Pride & Prejudice. People are left unhappily breathing to work their way out of their problems.

Jane Austen also didn't create wholly bad characters. Most of her "bad" guys are weak, silly, intrusive, greedy, self-serving, but rarely evil personified. Evil personified is a convenience of too many romance books. The Christian romances attempt to solve this by occasionally having bad guys get saved. True to form, Jane Austen rarely did this. Wickham may be sorry that he married Lydia, but he goes right on trying to charm everybody in sight despite the fact that everybody in sight knows what he did. The bad-tempered father and daughter in Persuasion never really grasp what happened. General Tilney in Northanger doesn't change one wit. Willoughby in Sense & Sensibility is only sorry that he couldn't marry for both money and love. All the unhappy people in Mansfield Park stay unhappy. (And the ambiguous people stay ambiguous. It isn't my favorite of Austen's books, but I do think it is her best.) And Emma only contains self-serving people, not bad ones.

For Jane Austen, change always centers on the hero and heroine. They are the ones who react, change, grow, learn from the experiences around them. In real life, of course, everyone else would be reacting, changing, growing, learning, but one of the conventions (not conveniences) of fiction is that we watch the world through a few eyes, not through the experience of humanity as a mass (no, not even Tolstoy could do that).

This business of change, however, brings us to another romantic convenience: instant change. In romances, the change is often a moment of recognition: the hero or heroine recognizes his/her true feelings. Darcy undergoes this when Elizabeth taunts him, saying that a "gentleman" would not have proposed to her by criticizing her family.

However, Darcy DOES NOT have that moment of revelation, and then, hey, presto, everything is okay. In fact, Darcy writes his "angry" letter to Elizabeth first. (Darcy later apologizes to Elizabeth for the letter, but she responds that although it started out angryish, it ended graciously). His pride is hurt. He has to process his reaction to Elizabeth before he can admit that he behaved badly.

In too many romances, the moment of revelation is instant, unprecedented by any believable set-up and resulting in almost immediate pay-off. The Christian romances I'm reading are particularly annoying here. The moment of recognition often occurs when the hero or heroine is saved (therefore, making said hero or heroine worthy of love). Now, I will admit that my "eerk" reaction is not just due to the convenience. As a Mormon, I don't believe in one single moment of grace, prior to which a person did not accept the Savior and after which, did. I think people just struggle along and that one's life is an accumulation of choices. I don't really buy into the idea that everything leads up to one moment in time, before which a person would go to hell, after which the person would not.

However, that's my personal philosophical reaction. Instant revelation also bothers me as a writer and a reader. Based on my brother Eugene's comments concerning Mormon romance novels (see his review of The Last Promise at his blog), this business of the instant fix/snap-judgment is not just an evangelical problem. I doubt it is just a religious problem. I would guess that it comes down mostly to bad writing. It's HARD to be constructive. It's HARD to work out problems intelligently. It's HARD to set up change and then pay it off effectively. That's why we Janites worship Jane Austen. She went for the happy ending, but she didn't do it easily!

Now, I am not talking to the writers of romances who are just trying to churn out formula, so they can make a living. Hey, more power to ya, folks. I am talking to those people who want to write character-driven romances* and write them well. In a way, I'm calling for the return of the respectable romance.

*Romances fall into too categories: character-driven and "world romance."

I use the term "world romance" to correspond to "world fantasy," novels which are more about the world of the characters than about the characters themselves.

In "world romance," the story centers on the hero and heroine overcoming obstacles in their personal lives before they can meet. In chick-lit, the story centers on the heroine's friends, how often she goes shopping, what she does in her church/work/volunteer group, etc. etc. etc. It's Sleepless in Seattle (don't meet until the end) versus You've Got Mail, While You Were Sleeping, and Lakehouse (ongoing relationship, no matter how strange).

I prefer the character-driven romance (You've Got Mail) to "world romance" (Sleepless in Seattle). I have very little interest in world fiction generally (Tolkien being the huge exception), and so can't comment much on it. Hence, all my comments are directed at the character-driven romance.

Here are some character-driven romances (from all genres):

Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington
Jane Eyre by Bronte
Jane Austen (debatable: see You Know It is a Character-Driven Romance If . . .)
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Queen of Attolia by Megan Turner
Georgette Heyer (though many of her romances are "world romances," Devil's Cub and Venetia are more character-driven)
Fifteen by Beverly Cleary
Blood & Chocolate (THE BOOK!) by Annette Curtis Klause
Serpent of Time by Eugene Woodbury
Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (not one of her best mysteries, but one of her under-appreciated novels--Wimsey's character is better delineated here than anywhere else)
Glass Mountain by Cynthia Voigt
"Straw Into Gold" from The Rumplestiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde
Samantha and the Cowboy by Lorraine Heath
Changeover by Margaret Mahy (and kudos to Mahy for subtitling it "a supernatural romance")
The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White
Howl's Moving Castle (the movie) by Diana Wynne Jones
Romances by Lisa Kleypas

Analysis of Education Course

I took an education course this summer that I recently, as in just, finished (I am hoping to get certified sometime in, oh, the next twenty years). Education courses are often villified as boring, stupid, wasteful, and unimaginative. I will admit that the main textbook for the course was mind-numbing, and I do not think I would have benefited from taking the course on-campus. However, I took the course on-line. The professor was excellent, and the assignments were extremely effective. I have made several changes to my lesson plans based on what I learned. And I learned things I didn't know, or at least things I wouldn't have bothered to find out about if I hadn't been forced (like rubrics).

I still have a number of reservations about the philosophies behind the course, which I talk about below. My reservations can be summed up by a line from Diana Trilling (written in 1981!): "[T]he young are only as virtuous as they grow up to be and . . . the educational process doesn't improve their future prospects by flattering their present moral capacities." Add "writing and grammar" after "moral" and that's exactly what I believe.

My research paper for the course can be found at Papers. It deals with language transfer issues in grammar courses.

Now I'm ready to teach in the fall!

**********************************************

"Educating the Exceptional Student in the Classroom" has been an insightful class. I still have mixed feelings about the philosophies of inclusion, accommodation and differentiated instruction; however, I find the processes embedded in these philosophies very helpful.

As I stated in my first reflective paper, I admire the principle of inclusion. Through this course, I have realized that inclusion does not mean lowering standards or giving students a free ride, but I still wonder if the demands of inclusion may lead to lowered standards. Teachers will spread themselves too thin. In an effort to meet everyone's needs, fewer and fewer demands will be made. As I suggested in my first reflective paper, collaboration can ease the burden of multiple needs, but collaboration itself involves extra work and (often unavailable) time. Without a structured plan (which, to be fair, the IEP requires), accommodations, rather than being temporary aids, can become barriers—engrained into the classroom culture and anticipated/expected by students.

My worries stem from my experience as a college adjunct. I am often unsettled by how much accommodation my students expect and how unready they are for working life or, even, academic application. When I, following procedure, release them from certain obligations, I wonder, "Am I really helping?" Or, rather, am I making the transition to "the real world" that much harder? In the "real world," grammar mistakes turn off potential employers; deadlines must be met; continual absences result in being fired; fellow employees don't fill in the blanks or do our work for us.

I'm harking back to my initial reservations regarding IDEA. Where is the line between assisting someone and preventing that person from individual growth and personal understanding? In a conference for English teachers, one professor remarked that some of her most fruitful learning experiences occurred when she failed. How, she wanted to know, can we give students similar experiences? (And where is the line between forcing kids to fail and allowing them, for their own good, to fail?)

Again, I do not believe that the philosophies of inclusion and accommodation automatically prevent learning and growth. Scaffolding, or modeling, provides a student with completed steps that are removed as the student progresses. If I want to teach students how to recognize and correct run-on sentences, I should first "model" a run-on sentence and show how it can be corrected. Eventually, the students will no longer need the model. That is the ideal.

Students suffer if the scaffolding is never removed. Likewise, students suffer if they are never required to process information outside their learning styles/comfort zones. Fewer and fewer of my students have been drilled in grammar (the older ones, yes; the younger ones, no), such as sentence diagramming. As I discuss in my research paper, grammar drills are not (necessarily) the best way to learn a language, but, in the absence of other approaches, they are better than nothing! I wonder if the current emphasis on context (provide a reason and application for every skill) has produced students without any groundwork in basic skills (and consequently an inability to build on those skills). Is my students' lack of readiness typical of twenty-year-olds or is it the result of inclusion, accommodation, and differentiated instruction applied inaccurately and/or hurriedly by overworked teachers? I don't know the answer.

Despite my reservations, I admire the intentions of inclusion, accommodation, and/or differentiated instruction; not all kids learn the same or at the same rate. Teaching is a creative process that involves constant re-evaluation: Is this lesson working? Could it be better? Who will understand it? How many students will it reach? Ultimately the teacher's job is to communicate, not simply to present information and hope the students got it. From this perspective, "Educating the Exceptional Student in the Classroom" has been helpful and enlightening, not to say engrossing! I particularly enjoyed the assignments that involved problem-solving. Analyzing extant lesson plans forced me to imagine a classroom of multiple responses and abilities. Creating my own lesson plans forced me to tweak old ideas, to examine how a lesson flows and where I can involve students more. Professor Soderstrom has also modeled approaches that I find useful, such as the outcome rubrics. I have always found it difficult to communicate progression and achievement to my students. The rubric is a possible solution.

The lesson plans also provided a useful model. I now use the same layout for my grammar and composition lessons. The "Pre-requisite" section helps me pinpoint exactly what each lesson should build on. If I haven't covered the pre-requisites, perhaps I should alter the lesson plan! I also enjoyed creating the WebQuest. I devised an interactive document that I hope to use when I teach on-line this fall. Again, the activity involved problem-solving: Can students follow the quest? Understand the main points? Are the websites accessible? Readable? Usable?

In the final analysis, I consider usability the key factor in teaching. Usability is also the aim of inclusion, accommodation, and differentiated instruction. Does a lesson enable the student? Does the student have the necessary skills to succeed? In the past two years, I have seen a welcome change in English composition courses in terms of usability. Rather than focusing on output and literary writing, the focus is now on portfolios, revision, and clear communication. Today's employers don't always require literary analysis, but they do require professional prose.

From this angle, I am entirely in agreement with the philosophies covered in this course. I only hope that I and other teachers can employ the philosophies responsibly.

HISTORY & LEARNING

Respectless Television

I've been thinking about the last episode of the last season of Bones for awhile now. It bothers me so much, I have to write about it.

In the episode, a mother is dying from AIDS. She believes she will no longer be able to care for her mentally retarded daughter. So she kills her. At the end of the episode, Bones goes to prison and tells the mother, "I understand--your motive was love" or words to that effect.

At that moment, I lost all respect for the writers of the show. Which upset me, since up to that point, I'd considered Bones one of the better written shows on television. But there are a few things I can't stand, and I'm afraid the above plot (as well as Bones' reaction to the above plot) is one of them.

I'm not a politically correct kind of person. If I was, I would have referred to the daughter as "a young person with mental disabilities." Having made that disclaimer, it astonishes me how morally purblind television can be about "children with disabilities."

Let's take a look at Booth and Bones' reaction to a child with "normal" abilities. An ambitious mother encourages her "normal" nine-year-old daughter to compete in beauty pageants--veneering her teeth, buying her a corset. Booth and Bones are appalled, and rightly so. The crazy, ambitious mother argues that her daughter LOVES competing; why should the mother withhold something so fun? I've heard non-fictional mothers make this kind of argument on Dr. Phil and wanted to smack them. When I was nine, my idea of fun was dumping two pounds of sugar on my Cheerios; that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

Anyway, Booth and Bones are appalled and angry and snotty to the crazy, ambitious mother. And they don't change their minds when it turns out that beauty pageant pressure was largely to blame for the girl's death. (By the way, the scene in that episode where Bones teaches anthropological heirarchies, with pictures of skeletons, to pre-adolescent girls is great.)

We turn now to the last episode of the season: the primary caregiver of a mentally retarded daughter decides to kill her daughter. So the mother is a sicko. She decides to commit murder because her daughter couldn't possibly have any kind of life without the mother around, which makes her an egotistical sicko. She believes there is no other way to help the daughter. Murder is a probable and plausible solution to this woman. Which makes her an egotistical, sociopathic sicko.

This is love? This is any sane person's definition of love?

Granted, the kid would probably have been stuck in a state-run institution and granted state-run institutions don't have the best reputation. If I remember correctly, I believe there was a chance the kid would be put into the care of a rather nasty individual. And that's all very bad. But let's look at this another way.

The caregiver of a boy with "normal" abilities is going to die. The seven-year-old boy will be put into foster care. The caregiver decides--out of "love"--to kill the child to spare him from the horrible foster care system.

Okay, now, doesn't that make you want to barf?

So, why is it different when the kid is mentally retarded? Why is it okay to poison and/or push mentally retarded kids onto railway tracks (same plot: Cold Case episode)? Because mentally retarded kids couldn't possibly have or want to live like everyone else? Because their desires can't be easily assertained, so the primary care giver must know best? Because mentally retarded kids never recover from the deaths of primary caregivers? Because death is better for mentally retarded kids than institutional living or even life under rotten conditions? Could it be that the writers believe mental retardation is worse than death and the only thing that makes it okay is the wonderful caregiver?

Politically incorrect questions, and House can ask them because he is honestly trying to understand the underlying moral reasoning to people's behavior. But the Bones' writers weren't trying to understand any underlying moral standard when Bones got all compassionate with the egotistical, morally-depraved mother: they were just falling back on a fictional cliche that is too superficial and stupid to be believed.

What will they do next season? Have a mentally retarded child molested by a pedophile, and then have Bones go to the prison and tell the pedophile, "Oh, yes, I understand--you did it out of love"? You can bet Bones wouldn't say that about a pedophile of a "normal" child. But I suppose the comparison isn't fair. After all, in the hands of the right writer, murder can be made to look as sweet and innocuous and heart-wrenching as sending a kid off to day camp. I wonder if Susan Smith's kids feel the same way under all that lake water?

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Nice Humor/Mean Humor

My brother Eugene recently had a guest post on The Motley Vision, "On Humor and the Literary Novel." A question was posed in the comments about why some "mean" jokes make us wince while other "mean" jokes make us laugh. In other words, why does just about every character on Everybody Loves Raymond make my skin crawl but Cox and House don't?

I've pondered this question for awhile, and here's my answer!

I think the difference lies in the intent of the joke (sarcastic diatribe, insult, pun, whatever). I don't mean the intent of the joke to the jokee but the intent of the joke to the audience.

In most of Everybody Loves Raymond, the jokes are made to make the jokee wince with embarrassment. More than that, the intent of the joke is to make the audience complicit in the jokee's embarrassment. The joke is the embarrassment.

Shakespeare, who did everything, employed this kind of joke (as well as all the other kinds). The treatment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night is precisely this type of humor. The joke lies in Malvolio's embarrassment. Which is why, I think, that particular part of Twelfth Night is rather problematic. However, that's just me. There's plenty of evidence (reality TV shows, Three Stooges, Roman games) that human beings enjoy watching other human beings suffer.

That being said, I also think a lot of people feel as I do and prefer the non-embarrassing joke. In Scrubs, for example, Cox belittles J.D. with his "Mary Janes" and "Buttercups," but the intent of the name-calling is not to embarrass J.D.--that is, not to embarrass J.D. before his audience (us). This works partly because J.D. is the narrator and therefore controls the audience's perspective. If he wants us to see him humiliated, there must be a reason. It works also because J.D. doesn't embarrass easily. Finally, it works because, if you've watched the show long enough, you know that Cox adores J.D. (and that Cox and J.D. are actually very similar; I didn't realize how much until the episode where Cox talks about seeing himself sitting on a throne while a conversation is going on--"He's J.D.!" I thought although J.D. is fundamentally kinder and less angry-guy).

This same principle is at work in House. In my post on Cox, Becker & House, I make the argument that everything House says is intrinsic to his personality. He doesn't belittle his interns to make the audience laugh; he belittles his interns because that's how House deals with life.

The point being that in both House and Scrubs, the jokes are not at the expense of the jokees. In fact, the jokes often backfire unto the jokers.

In a tangential kind of way, I think this same principle applies to sex jokes. I almost always wince when American comedians tell sex jokes. Said comedians are almost always aiming for result #1--make the audience wince or laugh with embarrassment. The jokes aren't even funny; they just make people laugh because the jokes are "daring."

In contrast, British comedies like Red Dwarf and Black Adder and Vicar are replete with earthy humor, but the humor is not used to embarrass the audience and rarely to embarrass the characters. Jokes about sex seemed to be used more for their useful metaphorical content than anything else. Consequently, I find them far less leering and salacious.

Or, as C.S. Lewis wrote in Screwtape Letters (see my post about C.S. Lewis' non-repressive nature), sexual humor gives rise to incongruities. There are people who tell sex jokes because they want to talk about sex (American comedians), and there are people who tell sex jokes because they want to use the incongruities (Monty Python and all those guys). So I have never seen any comedy with Ben Stiller, and likely never will, yet I think the beginning of Monty Python's Meaning of Life where the teacher gives an in-depth sexual education class to a bunch of TOTALLY BORED teenagers is absolutely hilarious and far less "dirty" (for lack of a better word).

FROLICS

Great Dogs

I'm not really into animal movies. See my post "Animals That Talk" about why. But I have a soft spot for two TV animals: Eddie from Frasier and Diefenbaker from Due South. In both cases, the dog is used to illustrate character and actually makes sense within the context of the show.

Eddie is Martin's dog. He is also one of the most expressive animals I've ever seen on the screen. I've developed quite a partiality for Frasier. What I like the most is that both Frasier's point of view and Martin's point of view occupy the same space. Although both the intellectual, snobby son and the down-to-earth cop father are played off each other, I never feel--as I do with Everybody Loves Raymond--that they are played at the expense of each other. No one is the bad guy.

Martin, played by John Mahoney, is a great character, and he has a great dog. The dog is used as a plot device and as a joke device. Again, the dog (it is actually two dogs over the 11 seasons) is very talented. He reminds me of The Thin Man dog: Asta.

Like Asta, Eddie and Diefenbaker are constantly on the set. I suppose dogs are easier to handle than kids, but I alway roll my eyes when television mothers have kids and then the kids MAGICALLY disappear for the next, oh, six or seven years. Of course, one isn't supposed to *gasp* mention Murphy Brown, but, well, Dan Quayle was right there, wasn't he? The kid showed up something like 12 times in ten years. Easy to be a single mom under those conditions.

Eddie and Diefenbaker, on the other hand, are constantly at hand. Eddie has to be walked. Diefenbacker rides around in the back of Ray's car. With Diefenbaker especially this is impressive since, unlike Eddie, he is often filmed outside. The directors never forget to include him in shots. I watched an episode recently where the car was driving away. It was likely driven by stunt men, and I figured, "They don't need to include Diefenbaker. They could just say that he was lying down." But no, just as the car turned the corner, Diefenbaker's head popped up. That is cool.

Diefenbaker is also used to illustrate character. He is a deaf wolf who was brought to the non-wilds of Chicago by his Canadian Mountie master, Fraser (played by Paul Gross). Fraser talks to Diefenbaker all the time, responding to Diefenbaker's presumed comments. There's an ongoing joke that Diefenbaker saved Fraser's life once and now he makes Fraser "pay and pay and pay."

Diefenbaker is not as cuddly as Eddie; after all, he's a wolf. But this also serves to elucidate the varying characters of the dogs' two masters. Martin is friendly, old-fashioned, protective of his dog and his sons (no matter how exasperated). Fraser, the Mountie, is kind but also somewhat reserved and aloof. At the end of the first season, there is a heart-rending scene where Fraser believes he must shoot Diefenbaker because Diefenbaker has become a menace to society. Paul Gross doesn't have Fraser cry or even rage. He does a series of confused double takes which are more painful to watch than any great emotion. So he loves Diefenbaker, but he isn't going to smother him in kisses.

And the dog--I don't think it is really a wolf although later the show implies that he is a mixed breed (maybe dog and wolf experts complained)--trots along with Ray and Fraser with interest but without any "all over you" ebulliance. Eventually, you start to believe Fraser's assessment of his own dog!

I also have to give kudos to Newbie's stuffed dog in Scrubs. There is one episode where J.D. keeps moving the dog to scare Elliot. For some reason, it makes me laugh like crazy.

For more great animal TV, check out Creature Comforts, the British version. It is hilarious! And very off-kilter.

TELEVISION

Photos 2007

2007 photos can be found here.

Fellowship and Keeping People Together

I am re-re-re-listening to The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It has always been my favorite of the three books although I have to agree with those reviewers who claim Tolkien didn't really know what he was up to in Fellowship. The book is uneven and has a "feeling his way" cadence to it.

However, without pretending that Tolkien actually knew what he was doing, I think the book works for the trilogy. First of all, it exposes the reader to the Shire, giving Frodo a concrete part of Middle-Earth to risk his life for. Secondly, it establishes a progression of danger/risk. The riders are much more dangerous when they are closer to Mordor (I never had any trouble, even as a kid, understanding why the riders are more fierce and harder to resist near Mordor; I never had any trouble understanding the power of the ring either and how its hold grows over time. Reviewers who quibble over these points mystify me. The ideas just aren't that complicated).

I confess, however, that I like Fellowship most after Frodo reaches Rivendell and the fellowship forms. I've always preferred that aspect of books or movies. My favorite part of The Fugitive is the on-going banter between Tommy Lee Jones and his crew. I don't really care about anything else. I don't know if this is a "gal" thing or not: if I am being particularly womanly because I like to watch people co-existing in a friendly, non-violent fashion. I don't think it is particularly womanly since I don't care for soulfulness; still, give-and-take comradeship is one reason I enjoy Star Trek: Next Generation, why I watch All Creatures Great & Small (although Robert Hardy has a great deal to do with the latter), and why I love the parish council scenes in Vicar of Dibley more than the other scenes. It also explains why I lose interest in a lot of movies/books/television shows once the gang starts hating each other.

I think my lack of interest has a lot to do with my theory that fictional death (of the individual, of the group, of the relationship) is basically a cop-out. To me, the hard part of writing (and life) isn't the ending, it's making the middle--the people-in-relationships stuff--work. Hence, I have no problem associating marriage with feminism. Construction versus deconstruction.

That's me talking as a writer. As a reader, it could be an investment issue, the reason X-Files works even though the leads don't get together until the very end. Leads not getting together is usually anathema to me; I find it so tiresome. But in X-Files, Dana and Mulder have a thriving (emotionally) intimate relationship from the very beginning. This is also true of early BallyK. The leads may not technically be together, but they act like they are, so what's the dif? And that thriving relationship gives the viewer something to invest in. The viewer, I contest, WANTS something to invest in.

Which brings me to the argument, "But life changes!" Relationships fall apart. Friends drift apart. Bodies crumble apart. This is all true and people do write/create based on what they know. However, I think there is a difference between "natural" change and "toying with the reader/viewer" change. Angel leaving Buffy was a natural change (and everybody else should have left too, really). Xander breaking up with Anya wasn't--that was "toying with the viewer." When the fellowship of Lord of the Rings breaks up, that is, unfortunately, a natural/inevitable change. The heroine of a mystery/romance series not being able to choose between two guys for trillion-some-odd novels IS NOT natural or inevitable; it's just stupid.* Frodo leaving Middle-Earth is a necessary and natural consequence of what he has endured. U.S. Marshals, the sequel to The Fugitive in which unnecessary people die, was just lazy.

So, I prefer to keep my heroes/groups/lovers together, but I'm willing, for the sake of good writing and transcendent endings, to split them up. But ONLY for the sake of good writing and transcendent endings. Otherwise, it's just nasty manipulation and there're better things for me to read and watch.

*A note on the (trillion) mystery/romance series. I really hate some of them although I don't start to hate them until about novel 3 or 4. They almost always include a single woman who lives in a small town where she is pursued by two men. One guy is sweet, kind, not-so-handsome but a wonderful human being. The other is danger guy. And the heroine can't make up her mind. And the guys stick around and wait. What self-respecting guy would STICK AROUND? and WAIT? By the time I hit book 4, I start to suspect that the writer is indulging in personal fantasy. GET OVER IT, I say. (I had the same reaction to Charlaine Harris' vampire series. I really enjoyed the first few books, but I lost interest eventually. Eric was the most interesting love interest Harris created for the heroine, but because, presumably, Harris couldn't make up her mind, the heroine couldn't make up her mind either. The new guy is just dull, so I gave up. If you like her books, though, rumors have it the series is being made into a television drama.)

Cox, Becker & House

So I guess I have a thing for bad-tempered doctors with hearts of gold.

Cox (from Scrubs), Becker (from Becker) and House (from, uh, House) all, sort of, fit the above description. But they are different in rather interesting ways. Cox and Becker, for instance, are much more functional than House and not just because of his leg. They have a greater ability to interact with others and, in Cox's case, are much more medically fallible.

In fact, Cox is the most realistic of the three. He is a very good doctor but, as far as I know (I've just started watching the show), not a genius. Becker isn't a genius either, but Becker sets himself apart by willingly staying in the Bronx when he could, with his credentials, make more money elsewhere.

Like the other two, Cox is aware of his own personality flaws (in the episode last night--these are reruns--he tells Newbie, "You want to be me? I don't even want to be me.") Unlike Becker, who isn't always aware of his effect on others, Cox--like House--can deliberately changed his behavior to produce an outcome, such as the episode where he provokes Kelso into taking back rounds--for Kelso's own good.

And Cox has an ex-wife girlfriend and a son and an intern who adores him.


Becker does eventually get a decent girlfriend--played by the very talented Nancy Travis. Like Cox, his personality, while not entirely environmentally induced, is strongly influenced by past unhappiness: multiple divorces, a bad childhood (that's Cox), etc. I'm not saying the writers use that material as an excuse for Cox and Becker's behavior, but it is important to understand their backgrounds in terms of the distinction between Becker & Cox and House.

With House, the producers (who I am now going to refer to as David Shore since Shore is the only one I know [from Due South, another great show]) are doing something rather difficult. House really isn't supposed to be a doctor with a heart of gold. House is really supposed to be a jerk. A complicated jerk but a jerk. The environmental complications--his leg, his lost girlfriend--do not fully explain him. I realize "The Jerk" was supposed to elucidate this, but I thought it was much better elucidated in the episode with the carpet stain. Yes, House plays games, but Shore wanted to make it clear, through that episode, that there's a real part to this guy that can't stand inconsistencies in his environment. It isn't supposed to be this weird thing that House goes through every now and again. It is supposed to BE House. All the stuff he does and says isn't a "front" or bad temper or a coping mechanism or disillusionment (which Cox, for example, portrays very well) but the guy himself. (Although House does have a stinky dad.)


And once you accept that basically House is NOT someone you would really want to spend time with, it gets a lot easier to spend time with him. He manipulates and plays games with people NOT because secretly he is trying to help them be better people (yuck) but because he really can't stand not to know why people do what they do. Other people create chaos, and he doesn't want chaos even though he believes in chaos. He MUST dig out Wilson's secrets. He MUST find out what is wrong with his patients. He MUST know.

Which makes him difficult to be around but a great diagnostician.

What makes all three of the doctors interesting to watch is that all three of them act the role of "fool"--not "fool" in the Ben Stiller sense but fool in the old Shakespearean/King Lear sense. They say things other people don't admit/want to hear. (I must include Cox's ex-wife girlfriend here, especially the episode where she keeps trying out lines like, "I'm not wholly myself when Cox isn't with me" and then saying, "No, it doesn't sound like me, does it?")

Now, I've got a big dose of Jane Austen in me--I believe in appropriate conversation for appropriate venues, but that didn't stop Jane Austen skewering people in her letters to Cassandra. It doesn't really work for effective day-to-day living; it is much better to accept other people's fallibilities and forgive and all that.

But it makes GREAT television.

TELEVISION