Crazy Jesus-People Update: The Passion of the Drunky

The Illustrious Mel Gibson, Mister I-paint-my
-face-blue-and-make-movies-that-bash-British-
people-and-Jews, has been arrested "on suspicion" of driving under the influence. Go here if you'd like to read what Mr. Passion said to the officers that pulled him over. Good to know a man fond of anti-Semitic tirades is raising seven kids to think just like him!

Mad Max is recently directed a film called Apocalypto.
You can check out the trailer:


Supposedly about the decline of the Mayan civilization in the face of Spanish colonization, the film's title gives it a Biblical overtone, and the quote about civilizations destroying themselves suggests that the members of this society somehow deserved it. Dincha know they were heathens? Of course I'm mostly speculating about the political thrust of the movie. On the one hand, Gibson has been known to make movies that are pro-colonist, anti-colonizer (The Patriot, Braveheart), but on the other hand, both movies are anti-English. The English were Protestant by the time of the American revolution, and while they were still Catholic during the fourteenth century (the setting for Braveheart), the English Catholics were never as energetic as, say, the Spanish (hello, the Inquisition?). So, the question is: will Mr. Beyond Thunderdome decry the conquistadors' violent, exploitive tendencies, or will he praise them as Catholic warriors?

Do me a favor--after you've spent $9 to see this oddity, let me know. After I sat through the glorified snuff film that is the Passion, i'm not throwing any of my pennies St. Mel's way.

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In Defense of the Log

So the PR recaps go something like this:

“Malan has a fake accent—haha! I hope he gets kicked off. Oh, but wait, he’s not nearly as annoying as Angela or Vincent. I hope they get kicked off. And his mom was mean to him! Now I’m totally his #1 fan. Go Malan! But it’s a LOG! AACK! Now he’s off. Oh well, he was totally fake anyway.”

I take issue with this assessment.

THE ACCENT. How do we know the accent is fake? Sure it sounds ridiculous, but maybe he grew up around people that sounded ridiculous (his preening puta of a mother, for starters). Does he ever drop the accent at any point in the show? No? So maybe it’s real. Or at least, maybe he thinks it’s real. If he has cultivated a totally new persona for himself, he’s probably been working it for years now, which means he probably thinks that’s who he is. In any case, the accent is real for him. You go, Gatsby! Just…don’t ever read the ending to that story.

THE COMPETITION. “It’s a design competition, not a teamwork competition.” Fair enough. So why is Angela here?
She admits herself that she can’t (or worse, won’t) sketch—say all you want about your organic work process, sweetheart, but showing up empty-handed to a client will not inspire confidence in your designing abilities. Neither will an “umpire” waist. It’s sad Mr. “coffee-and-a-water” Vincent wouldn’t let you do anything for the dress, but it’s not like he got to really pick you; you were chosen last, and after you refused to do the basic design grunt work (sketching, pitching the idea) you were deemed unreliable. Imagine that.
This is a design competition, and Angela refused to design. She essentially refused to compete in this competition. WHY WASN’T SHE KICKED OFF?

*side note: Angela is from a place that on this blog I will call “Flohio,” and in a strange way she’s doing a service in showing the world the diversity of Flohioans. Not all Flohioans are overweight GOP-voting provincials. Apparently, some of us are flakey organic weirdoes that don’t sketch and wear pee-stained army pants. Woot to the home state!

THE LOG. No way in Flohio would that ever work as a pageant gown, but c’mon, I could totally see that dress being praised in a different context. Malan’s design from the first challenge shows he has a distinct design sensibility: he likes to incorporate a slightly ragged, unfinished or de-constructed look, or what Tim calls, “slightly arts-and-crafts, but in a good way.” The pageant gown had the same look. Can’t you hear NYTimes fashion critic Cathy Horyn on one of her audio slideshows, droning on about the “unconventional textures, and the charming asymmetry, which gave a modern flair to the traditional gown”? And speaking of fake accents, did you know Cathy Horyn is from Detroit? Another Michigan native trying to sound worldly—she’s the Madonna of fashion criticism. Back to the point: Malan committed the sin of not designing for the client, but to my mind that sin pales in comparison to the cardinal sin of not designing at all.

TO SUM UP: Malan comes across as fake because he tries too hard, which in a way is endearing, and his vision is misguided at times, but at least it’s a vision, while Angela needs to get a new pair of neon-green cat’s-eye glasses to recover her vision. In this challenge, Project Runway rewarded apathy over naïve enthusiasm, and I think that’s a shame. I’ve always liked this show because unlike most reality shows it depended on actual merit and honest effort, so if nonsense like this ever happens again, I’ll just stop watching.

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Dead White Man News

Shakespeare's first folio goes for $5 million.

A 200-yr-old poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley has been found stuck inside an old book. This is how it always happens. Go Romanticism!

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Racialized Religion Update

A few days ago I posted about a Times of London article that tried to say all Indians are Hindus, and that they would like to be known as Hindus first. I thought this was a strange way of formulating the race/ethnicity/religion question; apparently I'm not the only one. Click here to read the replies to this article. Sadly, while most of these letters point out the article's inaccuracy in generalizing on the British Indian identity, the paper decided to give the collection of letters the following title: "Questions of Hindu faith run deeper than ticks and boxes." Are the folks at the Times really that dense?

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The Exorcist: that's a very, very bad case of PMS

Ever since the Omen got remade and released on 6/6/06, I've been interested in seeing 70s horror classics, starting with the original Omen and then the Exorcist. While The Omen looks campy now, I have to say The Exorcist has aged well. I was definitely spooked and a little jumpy when trying to fall asleep afterwards. So what is it about that movie that makes it so scary?

First, the supporting details: as parents of a demonic boy, Peck and Remick are far too noble. When bad stuff happens, the mother is all hand-wringing and wide-eyed, the father is stoic and righteous. They're out of place in 1976 when movies can have swearing and violence and sex, and the "good guys" don't need to be squeaky clean. When stuff starts happening to her 12-yr-old daughter, Ellen Burstyn's character starts swearing and getting aggressive with condescending, chainsmoking doctors. This response is much more relatable--if your kid is acting like its afflicted with demonic possession, you should scream "fuck" and "bullshit" at least once, just to show you grasp the gravity of the situation.

And the gravity of situation is: OUR TWELVE-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL-PURE ANGEL JUST PEED HERSELF, AND IN FRONT OF COMPANY! Seriously, that's why this movie is so scary. Like I said before, profanity can humanize a character, and the profanities Regan screams when possessed are hokey and over-the-top, like a kid trying to say the worst thing he can think of. The body is the issue: starting with the pee scene, this movie emphasizes and exaggerates the disgusting aspects of the human body, and the fact that the body belongs to a 12-yr-old girl is that much more shocking.

A twelve-yr-old girl is almost certainly a virgin, and likely not even menstruating yet. Without the menstrual blood or a developed sexuality, she is still a pristine creature; men don't have to freak out about her periods or her "tempting" ways. Her transformation in the movie shows that the audience's reaction depends upon a very traditional, almost Victorian view of juvenile femininity: girls are supposed to be pretty and clean, they're not supposed to fart or have any body functions, much less demonstrate these body functions in front of spectators. Girls are supposed to be so busy picking flowers and drawing pictures of bunnies that they're not even conscious of their own bodies.

In addition to being ethereal, these feminine creatures are supposed to be angelic. No anger please, and certainly no anger demonstrated through aggression. Having grown up with a little brother, I wasn't shocked by anything Damien "did" because I know that four- and five-year-old boys can be incredibly violent. While girls are playing with dolls, boys are playing war games and pretending to kill each other. We accept that our sons are "little monsters," while our daughters are held up against a standard of a sexless angel or the Virgin Mary.

So either The Exorcist is about subverting our glorification of the sexless, bodiless female, or it's an exploration of our anxieties about female sexuality. At twelve, Regan is at the cusp of adolescence, and when she first starts behaving oddly--swearing a lot, being generally antisocial--I'm surprised no one in the film says "she's just being a teenager." The cross-stabbing scene creates blood stains that resemble a heavy period or a miscarriage, and this scene sexualizes her body in a way that also makes her appear monstrous. This movie re-affirms the feeling that pervades our culture: girls get scary when they start to bleed.

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I don't care WHAT you say, the Onion is REAL!

so there.

To read about the Pro-Lifer that thinks "pro-abortion" article in The Onion is REAL, go here.


To respond to this guy, go here.


we need help.

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Racialized Religion

UK Hindus don't want to be called Asian

If you've never been to the UK, you might not know that over there "Asian" is the term used to refer to groups called "South Asian" in the US. Other Asian groups--i.e. the Chinese--are East Asian. Of course, this means that "Asian" refers to Pakistanis, who are largely Muslim, as well as Indians, most of whom are Hindu. Apparently British Hindus dislike the term "Asian" because the general UK public assumes that every Asian person is Muslim, which means Hindus feel neglected when it comes to being offered dietary restrictions, etc.

I find the article linked above interesting not because of the Hindus' response--I would be frustrated too if, because of people's mental laziness, my religious identity were simply absorbed into another--but because of how the article articulates the problem. The article refers to a group of people as Hindus in the title and the first half of the article, a stylistic choice that led me to believe they were talking exclusively about people that practiced the Hindu faith, not about the general Indian ethnic population. Not all Indians practice Hinduism, after all. However, the term "Indian" is quoted at the end of the article, and the writer doesn't bother to connect the term "Indian" to "Hindu," presumably because the terms are interchangeable. Again, that configuration is close but not quite.

According to the article, "Hindu" should be dropped in favor of "British Indian," "Desi," or just "Hindu." While one of the terms includes the word "Indian," it still looks as if Hindus want to depart from a generalized regional term--Asian--to one that identifies them solely by religion. Even if they adopt the term British Indian, the reason for the adoption--they don't want to be construed as Muslim--reinforces the idea that religion is the foremost determinant of identity and religion can even, in some cases, determine your ethnicity (as opposed to being a signifier of ethnicity).

I guess the reason why I think this is so weird is because the relationship between religion and ethnicity can be very different in the US. For white people whose families have been here for generations, they have such a mixed European heritage that they don't even know why their family is Catholic or Methodist or whatever. Moreso than in the UK, religion is seen as a matter of personal choice and self-expression as opposed to a designation imposed on the individual by some larger group. Thus, even if a guy who is 100% Polish decides to convert from Catholicism to an evangelical Christian faith, no one is surprised or upset (well, except maybe the guy's mother). He would stile consider himself Polish, and a lot of other people would too. Also, while someone might assume that a guy with a Polish last name is a Catholic, he'd be less ready to look at a guy walking out of a Catholic church and assume that he's Polish (or Irish, or Italian, etc.). In the US, ethnicity can, to a limited degree, determine your religion, but of course that's not a hard and fast rule.

The United States doesn't have a state religion; the UK does. Well, it has a few: the Church of England is Anglican (the US offshoot are the Episcopalians), the Scottish and Welsh Churches are Presbyterian. The Queen of England is head of all them, and if you can explain how that works, I'll give you ten dollars. So, you're full-blooded English if you belong to the Church of England, but if you're a Catholic or a member of some other Protestant sect, then you're not quite English enough. In fact, if you're Catholic, people might think you're of Irish descent, and then you have a new set of issues to deal with. It seems reasonable to conclude that historically, religion has been a driving issue in the English struggle to maintain national independence and identity, to the point where religion has been cemented in people's minds as a antecedent or determinant of ethnicity. Such is the inverse of the American situation, though of course issues of identity are so complex that I doubt either country has it right.

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Dead Man's Chest Needed to be Longer

Seriously, if this movie needs anything, it's another 45 minutes of repetitive exposition and scenes of Orlando Bloom frantic in a rolling hamster wheel. Who really likes Orlando Bloom anyway, except for Legolas fans? I mean his girlfriend Kate Bosworth is turning into a Skeletor...right. I was talking about pirates.

This flick clocked in at 255 minutes. Why are movies getting longer? The media talks about a record-low summer box office, so why are studios making longer movies that require more special effects and larger budgets? One of the best movies I've ever seen was Sexy Beast and it was 80 minutes or something. Ben Kingsley is in that one, and 80 minutes of Ben Kingsley left me wanting more, just like 80 minutes of Jack Sparrow would have left me wanting more. Unfortunately, Jack Sparrow only looks as cool as he does if he's surrounded by uncool people like Will Turner, so we're subjected to 80 minutes of Orlando. I suppose it's not Orlando's fault, it's the character; the character of Will Turner teaches you that, if you're a good person, you don't have to go showing off how good you are every bloody second. If you do, people will want to punch you in the face. I want to punch Will Turner in the face. I hope that in the next movie, Jack Sparrow will punch Will Turner in the face. Actually, I hope that in the next Pirates movie Jack Sparrow punches him, gives him a wedgie and then throws him overboard. I would clap in the theater if I saw that.

What happened in the movie? Oh, right: East India Trading company arrests Orlando and Keira (aka The Ninnies), sending Orlando out on an absurd expedition, and of course Keira follows him because she's supposed to be spunky and all that, and Orlando gets mixed up with all kinds of bad guys, from "natives" to ghosties to big squid thingies. Hilarity (supposedly) ensues. Jack Sparrow is involved of course, that's a bright spot, and I can't spoil the ending because the movie STOPS before there's a conclusion, at which point, the theaters are already making a space for your $10 to see the next one. It's a right mess so if I were you get the DVD, watch the Jack Sparrow parts and FF the rest.

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The Red-State-ization of America: The Jesus-People are nuts

Names have been changed to protect the innocent, but someone *cough*boyfriend*cough* found this DVD in a Borders Bookstore, nestled among other animated movies in the children's section (we were looking for the old BBC version of the Narnia Chronicles). I'm not sure why this DVD exists--Mel Gibson's Passion was created as a movie specifically for adults, presumably because those that are 17 and up can read a deeper meaning in the chunks ripped out of Christ's back. Graphic realism was the grownup Passion's reason for being (well, that and veiled anti-Semitism), so I have no idea what special quality the cleaned-up kiddie Passion has to offer. And no, I'm not going to find out, because I refuse to buy the DVD, which was listed at $14.99. Marvelling at its existence is pleasure enough.

The Animated Passion is the sort of thing I would be used to seeing back home, in a state that I will call "Flohio," where right-wing Christians are everywhere and Christian bookstores are common. However, we found this DVD in Chicago, a city that's been known to pull a mostly-red state into the Blue come election time. Of course, Borders is a national chain, and it's possible they carry the same stuff everywhere, regardless of region. That strikes me as foolish--people in different places will buy different things. Have the Christian whackos--the ones that live in the country, the small towns, the mid-size cities--really penetrated major urban areas so much that businesses are catering to their needs? The black churches in my neighborhood are on the fundamentalist side (and probably always have been), but I haven't noticed as much in-your-face evangelism here in Chicago as I have in Flohio. This reddening of Chicago doesn't feel homegrown.

The Animated Passion scares me, but not as much as the kind of people who would want their kids to see it. I hope to God (or whomever), we start electing Dems and begin turning the country Blue.

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I need to learn French #2:

"The writerly is the novelistic without the novel, poetry without the poem, the essay without the dissertation, writing without style, production without product, structuration without structure." -- Roland Barthes, S/Z, translated by Richard Miller.

Would this sentence make any sense in the mother tongue?

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I need to learn French

The 18thC is my field of choice (ok maybe not yet but I'm working on it), and the problem with the English in the 18thC is they were writing/reading in bloody FRENCH half the time! Mi espanol just ain't gonna cut it. Mon dieu.

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Your call is very important to us...

When registering for silly little insignificant things like the GREs, which of course have no bearing on your grad school application whatsoever (GREs are just for fun!), it's not an issue if the online registration system doesn't work. Also, it's no sweat if, when calling the registration hotline, you're put on hold and and automated voice tells you more than once about the wonderful online registration system. A dropped call is a bonus. These things are not annoying at all--happy 5th of July everyone!

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Revenge on Hamlet

I have never felt the need to take a Shakespeare class as an English major in college. The reason for this is simple: I overdosed on the Bard in high school. Every year was spent obsessing over one of his plays, as if nothing great had been written in the English language since then. So depressing. Also depressing was the senior term paper I was required to write Macbeth AND Hamlet, an incoherent mess that clocked in at 52 pages. Argh!

After obsessing over Hamlet (and losing the point of it, i'm sure) I came to this exasperated conclusion: Hamlet is a brat. Under all the brooding that's supposed to make him brilliant, he's just an over-indulged rich kid with too much time on his hands and a misogynistic bent--the Brandon Davis of Denmark, if you will. In retrospect I don't think this is true, but it's a likely conclusion for anyone who is sick to death of the play's "brilliance."

Maybe that's why I enjoyed Gertrude and Claudius so much--in John Updike's prequel to the play, Prince Hamlet is a minor character, and his mother dismisses his brooding nature as a self-importance he inherited from his priggish father. And really, the book is about Gertrude as much as it is about anyone else, revealing the cramped world of a medieval queen and how the demands of royalty leave her starved for affection. Gertrude grows up in a world in transition from paganism to Christianity, and in this novel the erotic passions take on a pagan aspect, especially when contrasted with the pompous anti-sex, anti-woman sentiments espoused by the highly Christianized Hamlets. Claudius, for his part, is a well-travelled mercenary soldier whose cosmopolitan values make him all the more attractive to the Queen. Their coupling--and the desires that feed into it--show the destructive power of human passion in a world hastily constructed by the patriarchal Church, and how the inequities of this system make desire, particularly female desire, the chaotic force that it is in this novel.

I read this book in a day, so it's definitely not hard to get through. If you're interested in a clever re-working of a masterpiece, I would recommend this one.

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The Alphabet of Manliness?

A certain person who shall go unnamed *cough*boyfriend*cough* has ordered a book called "The Alphabet of Manliness" by a guy named Maddox, who apparently runs a popular website. After visiting this website and others like it, I've realized what my blogging friends have been telling me for years: anyone, and I mean ANYONE, regardless of taste or basic intelligence, can post his opinions on the web and be taken seriously by someone else. Thus, it is with great confidence (and pretty much no personal standards) that I inaugurate this blog. If you're interesting in different things--Jane Austen, trivia, pop culture gossip, etc., I hope you find this site worthwhile.

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