I am a nerd. This is not news.

So I have been embracing my nerdiness recently. I’m in a Doctor Who phase, for one thing. This is mostly sparked by Christmas and the Christmas special being so well-done. Also, when my boyfriend and I went Christmas shopping, we saw a figurine collection of all eleven doctors, with their signature accessories (usually the sonic screwdriver), and it was actually well-done. Not all eleven doctors looked like their portrayer, but let’s say 8 out of 11 did. Which is pretty good for plastic. I’ve also been listening to the audio plays from Big Finish. I also blame Christmas for this: they’re kind of perfect for long flights when there’s nothing good being shown on the actual airline TVs. I read a lot of the time as well, of course, but would turn on the Big Finish when I just wanted to phase out. Also, Tor.com did “The Twelve Days of the Doctor” over the Christmas season, which just fed the obsession.

The other day, while I was home alone (since my actual Full-Time Job didn’t start until today), I extended the obsession. I watched all of the regeneration scenes, for each of the Doctors. And after each regeneration scene, I watched the first scene or two (or three) with the new Doctor – enough to see him reintroduce himself to the companion(s) and the situation and establish himself as a personality. The only one I didn’t watch this time was Four into Five, because I’ve seen Castrovalva a few times, and the last time was just a couple of months ago. Oh, and I limited myself to the “classic” Doctors, because obviously I’ve seen the new regenerations and establishing scenes more than a few times. They’ve kind of imprinted on me.

It was really interesting to see how the actors, writers, and directors established the departure of each Doctor and the arrival of each new Doctor. There were a few similarities, but mostly they were individual. One into Two is, sadly, lost as a video. There are reconstructions (which I watched) but the quality was so bad, and my understanding of the plot was so bad, that I didn’t really get a lot of it. I would wish, if it were any use, that there were more Troughton bits available – I think I would like him as a Doctor. I’ll watch what I can, when I can, though.

Two into Three was the forced regeneration. It was interesting that the Time Lords gave the Doctor a choice of face for this one – even though Pertwee wasn’t one of the choices. I wonder, had Pertwee been cast at this point? Or did they just want to surprise people at the start of the next episode? Pertwee started off as you would expect a disgraced, exiled, regenerated Time Lord to act: secretive, angry, upset and disappointed. It didn’t help that the Brigadier didn’t recognize him, and then he almost got kidnapped and had to escape in a wheelchair with masking tape over his mouth. There was a touch of “crazy man” about him, but not as much as the next one.

Three into Four was tricky. Sarah Jane had no idea what to expect, the Brigadier was surprised but quickly resigned himself to it, and a helper from, I assume, previous episodes had to come and speed things along a bit. And then Tom Baker appeared and “crazy man” absolutely took over. He is so….I’m not sure what the right word is. It’s not manic, because he’s more laid back than that. It’s not “crazy” with the negative connotations. But he’s kind of amnesiac at first, and then he absolutely refuses anyone’s assistance, advice, or presence. He disappears into the Tardis, apparently about to abandon Sarah Jane and the Brigadier, when it’s like something clicks back into place. That smile appears, his eyes go happily wide instead of the alert and wary wide they’ve been so far, and he snaps into place. In one episode – not even one episode – you know exactly what his Doctor is going to be like, and the key word is going to be “unpredictable”. He won’t hesitate to tie someone up in a closet by his bootlaces; he also won’t hear of anyone putting themselves in danger for him. You’ll think he’s placid until he explodes into a fury of activity.

Four into Five is different again. As he regenerates, Four sees visions of all of his previous enemies and companions. He’s also been warned by the Watcher (a white-wrapped figure, theoretically the Doctor’s potential next self, I think?) that a regeneration is coming, so it’s not as violent a “death” as some of the others (Three was attacked by mutant spiders, if I recall…). And then Five comes along and takes over the role. There’s a touch of amnesia, as is becoming usual, but it’s more that Five doesn’t know who Five is rather than he doesn’t know who the Doctor is. He progresses through each of his previous personalities – and is spot-on in doing so – before establishing himself. It’s a nice touch of continuity in a show that is notoriously – and necessarily – bad with continuity.

And it couldn’t be more different than Five into Six. The regeneration itself is fairly standard – it helped that both Peter Davison and Colin Baker had blond hair – but the establishing scenes make a very definite statement: this is not the same Doctor. After watching that bit, I can absolutely see why Colin Baker had trouble in the role. I can absolutely see why many fans didn’t like him, and why the ratings dropped so precipitously. He comes in to this established and loved series and says, paraphrasing only slightly, “I am not the Doctor that you have known and loved. I reject everything that has come before me, and if you don’t like it, too bad.” He dismisses Peri’s affection for the Doctor, he literally rejects every costume that his predecessors wore and chooses something (a garish coat-of-many-colours) that they themselves would have rejected.

I don’t see this as even mostly Colin Baker’s fault. He’s been wonderful in the audio dramas. His Doctor, when given a chance, is not really that different from the other Doctors – he’s just less gentle on first acquaintance. But first acquaintance is all that some people will give you – and when you reject and abandon the aspects that drew them to you in the first place, they won’t stick around to find out what you’re really like. And, like I say, this isn’t Colin Baker’s fault. He didn’t write the lines – he just delivered them. And I would imagine that he was given some input on how to deliver them. It can’t have been entirely his idea to make the first appearance of the Doctor so inherently unlikable.

With all that, and the behind-the-scenes BBC drama, it’s no wonder that Colin Baker, the public face of the Doctor, was fired – or that he refused to film a regeneration scene. So Six to Seven is a bit different again. The regeneration happens fairly quickly – I don’t even know how much lead-up to it there was in the previous episode – and then Seven is thrown straight into the new situation. No amnesia, no character-establishing scenes where he’s picking out a costume or looking at his new face. He wakes up, he’s face to face with the Rani, and he’s just there, dealing with it, the end.

I’ll stop there for now. There’s still the movie and New Who to get through, plus reactions to the Christmas special and excitement about the new season, and the audio plays, and I’ve read a couple of the novelizations (and got one for Christmas, yay)… plus there’s the additional geekery of getting into World of Warcraft for the first time (hey, it gives me contact time with the boy) and Eternal Sonata and a couple of anime shows….

Football thoughts

The Pro Bowl was last night, and I listened to it as I fell asleep. Here's a question: is there anyone who takes the Pro Bowl seriously? Most of the players weren't, and the announcers certainly weren't. Here's the next question: do we need to?

There's been a lot of talk this year (....at least, from the two Sports Illustrated writers I follow, and from NFL.com) about the relevance of the Pro Bowl and the perception of the Pro Bowl, etc., etc. A lot of players withdrew because of either the Super Bowl or injury. Players were still being named to the squads in the week leading up to the Pro Bowl. Is the Pro Bowl still important? Still necessary?

I don't follow any other professional sports league as avidly as I follow the NFL, so I don't know what reaction their All-Star games get. I know that MLB's All-Star game comes in the middle of the season, but I don't know anything about the NBA or NHL's All-Star games. I'm assuming they each have one. (Perhaps someone who does follow these sports can help me compare?)

Because that's all that the Pro Bowl is: an All-Star game. And it doesn't need to have this great import or significance. It's the best players of the season (for a certain level of "best" this year, admittedly), playing the game that they love to play, in a game that has no significance other than bragging rights. That's the point. The emotional investment, for players and for fans, isn't in winning or losing: it's just in the game.

And you could tell that, at least from the Westwood One announcers last night. They were just a bunch of guys sitting around, talking about football, and oh, yeah, there was a game going on too and wow did you see that play? I don't think they used those exact words, but pretty close. They were guys who liked football and each other. That was why they were there, and that came through over the airwaves.

(I suppose they're not airwaves if it's digital and online and stuff, is it? I'll stop obsessing over pedantry now.)

Last night's Pro Bowl was definitely an offensive battle: the defense was almost non-existent. And that's also okay: you'd hate either to have or cause a potential career-ending injury in the Pro Bowl (or a pre-season game: the same emotional attitudes apply). And, again, it's just a game for the enjoyment of the game. Not that I don't enjoy good defense, but highlight reels are made for long runs and beautiful spiral passes, with the occasional interception and kick or punt return thrown in. (I did hear that there was an interesting lateral play? I think one of the SI writers said something about Benny Hill....?)

I don't know how to "fix" the perception of the Pro Bowl; I don't know if it's better or worse to have it before the Super Bowl or in Miami instead of Honolulu. But I do know that it doesn't need all the hand-wringing that I've seen over the last few weeks. Maybe it's not the Pro Bowl's problem - maybe our expectations need to be adjusted instead.

Moooooooooooooooom, I'm booooooooooored.......

There was an article in the New York Times about boredom recently. It started with the fact that book reviews rarely use the word “boring”, even if the book in question is, meandered through the history of boredom and contemporary culture’s attitude toward boredom, and concludes with boredom in literature (specifically David Foster Wallace’s new book).

Boredom is something that I’ve thought about quite a lot recently, like within the last year or so. For me, at least, boredom is not a case of having nothing to do – it’s a case of low motivation and not wanting to do what you do have to do, or not being able to decide what to do (a big problem for me right now). Having nothing to do is boring, but you can justifiably fill the time with mindless entertainment or something. For me, boredom has a mild frustration element – of wanting to have nothing to do, of not being able to focus, of not having the panic of deadlines pushing me to finish things.

It’s lack of interest, mostly. Lack of interest in the things on my to-do list. Lack of interest in what’s going on in the world, in my life. When it comes to boring books or movies, lack of interest in what’s going on in the story. It’s not necessarily something inherent in the book or movie, although it might be. What is profoundly uninteresting to me might be fascinating to someone else, and vice versa.

The article brings up some good points about boredom – how it was created by the rise of the middle class, leisure time, and individualism born out of the Industrial Revolution. People pre-Industrial Revolution might have been bored, but not quite in the same way that people post-Industrial Revolution were. The argument, sort of, is that it took the rise of leisure time for people to realize that boredom was a possibility, that you were responsible for filling your own time and that you could enjoy what you did.

One of the references in the article is to a recent study that shows the neurological patterns of a “resting mind” – they analyzed the patterns of people in an fMRI machine who were told to “just relax” and empty their minds. For a lot of people, that is boring – but for me, at least for a while, it would be relaxing. I wouldn’t have to worry that I’m supposed to be doing something else, that I’m missing out on something. Of course, after a while, forced inactivity does become boring – but again, it’s because you can’t stop thinking of the things that you should or could be doing instead.

(I’m not sure if this post is turning out the way that I wanted it to…..I may have to revisit it at some point and rewrite….)

Soap Operas

Guiding Light, the longest running entertainment program in the US, ended last week after 72 years on radio and TV. I find this kind of sad. I understand that the TV industry is just that, an industry, and it’s driven by costs and ratings, but soap operas and Guiding Light in particular seemed like stalwarts, like they’d never end. Even if other soaps failed (Sunset Beach, Loving/The City, etc.), soaps in general would go on, and Guiding Light would always be there.

I used to be a huge soap opera fan. My mom watched Days of Our Lives and Another World when I was very young – to the point where, when SoapNet started showing old episodes of Another World, things were familiar. My own personal fandom started one vacation, probably summer vacation, when I was in middle school with The Young and the Restless. After a year or so of that, I moved on to Days of Our Lives (I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the possession storyline drew me in, although it’s not what kept me) and Another World for the last year or so of its existence. Then I found out that an elementary school classmate of mine was occasionally an extra on Guiding Light, so I watched that in the hopes of glimpsing her. My roommate sophomore year of college taped Passions and would watch it every evening, and it was a small room so I watched too. Then, the year after I graduated from college, when I had nothing to do in the afternoons, I turned on the TV. I don’t remember what got me hooked on them, but somehow I ended up hooked on All My Children and One Life to Live, with General Hospital thrown in by the end of the year, partially because I was too lazy/distracted to change the channel. Thanks to SoapNet, I rewatched early-to-mid-80s Another World and kept up on all of the above. When I got my computer for Slovakia, my second year, and was investigating the wonderful world of free podcasts, I rediscovered Guiding Light and newly discovered As the World Turns, both of which had audio podcasts of their episodes. If I’m in a TV-watching mood in the US, I still will happily turn on SoapNet. Soaps are the television equivalent of Harlequin romance novels (which I also enjoy, probably more than I ‘should’). They’re formulaic, they’re repetitive, they require attention but not a lot of thought to consume, and every once in a while there’s something that stands out as beautiful or genius or true.

The thing about soaps – and fiction in general – is the story. That’s why I watched, anyway. (That and the hot guys.) Humans are a story-telling animal. That’s why even non-fiction books have to have some kind of narrative structure to them and some kind of character to identify with and care about. If they don’t, it’s like reading the dictionary: informative, but not something that (most) people do cover-to-cover or for fun. I watched (or, that year in Slovakia, listened) because of the story, because of the characters. I wanted to know what happened to these people, and I wanted to know how and why it happened. (And if the story didn’t turn out the way I wanted, John and Natalie on OLTL, then I often drifted away if there wasn’t any other story keeping me hooked.)

The other thing that soaps can provide is history. Guiding Light was on the air for 72 years, and one of the reasons that it survived so long is because of its slow transitions through its history. That’s how most of the soaps that are still on survive. They started with a core group of people – usually a family – and introduced new characters in connection with that family, not in isolation. As the new characters became established, then perhaps the original group would fade out, but not until then. This is one of the problems with soaps today. In a desperate attempt to attract new viewers – especially in the summer when teenagers are out of school – producers throw new, usually teenaged characters at the show in a usually-futile attempt to make something stick. If these newcomers have a connection with established characters, it’s tenuous or very limited – in a new group of five ’16-year-old’ characters, one may be the child of a supercouple, usually a child that we haven’t seen for a while who has now undergone SORAS [Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome] and should really only be about 8 years old if we’re going by real time. (This is also one of the reasons that soap opera mothers can steal their daughters’ boyfriends – at a certain point every character over the age of 21 is portrayed as within about fifteen years in age of each other, unless they are in ‘grandparent’ character in which case they’re allowed to have grey hair but not usually a social life except in certain circumstances.) The year that I lived at home and was watching four or five soaps a day, minimum, I stopped watching consistently during the summer because I was so annoyed by the new teenaged characters that I didn’t know and didn’t care about. (I learned how to use the DVR so that I could fast-forward through storylines like that that I didn’t like.) Most viewers want the consistency of the history of the soap - an acknowledgment of characters and storylines past - and shows ignore that history at their peril.

Another thing that I find wonderful about soaps is the sheer volume. Almost every daytime soap in the US right now is an hour-long daily. There are no repeats. There are times during the year when they don’t air – major sporting tournaments, especially tennis in the summer, for example – but there is no ‘hiatus’ like primetime shows get. A primetime season of 22 episodes is just over a month in daytime soaps. The sheer volume of work that goes on with soaps is absolutely incredible.

There’s a good mental_floss article about soaps and the ending of GL (I figured since I commented about a bad mental_floss article a while ago I should link to one that I enjoyed). I particularly like the slightly snarky comments that undercut the actual good work that soaps do to highlight social and global issues.

Goodbye, Guiding Light. I'll miss you.

'Twitterature' is coming...

I am of two minds about this (not that anyone’s asked me, or would).

On one hand, it’s kind of intriguing. It’s always a good idea to at least experiment with new forms of production and new types of media. It may be a colossal failure, it may end up being a very short-lived success, or it may end up creating a new format for literature. Japan already has text-message novels, so what’s really the difference between that and Twitter lit? (Twit-lit? I shudder.) Also, the idea of compressing ‘classics’ into a more ‘manageable’ size is not exactly a new one. SparkNotes, Cliff’s Notes, and my personal favourite from a humour/entertainment perspective, Book-a-Minute . Really, this idea doesn’t sound that different from book-a-minute, at least right now.

But it remains to be seen what they’ll do with (or to) the books that they adapt. Is it just going to be plot summaries, in twenty tweets? Is it going to be twenty selected 140-character passages? Because classics aren’t classics merely because of the story they tell. They’re classics because of the way that they tell it. A writer’s style – the way s/he uses words, constructs sentences, lays out the paragraphs on the page, and so on – is so much a part of what makes a book a ‘classic’. Are these students going to maintain the authors’ styles, or is it going to be story reductions only?

When ‘Twitterature’ is released, I expect there will be howls of outrage over people who will read ‘Twitterature’ instead of reading the ‘classics’ that they condense. And there will be plenty of them. Just like there are lots of students who read SparkNotes or Cliff’s Notes or Wikipedia pages about books instead of reading the books that they’re based on, not to mention the people who watch the movie and think that qualifies as knowing the book. People forget that the plot of a book is not the same as the book itself. Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary have the exact same plot, but they’re not the same book. (Persuasion and The Edge of Reason are an even closer connection, plot- and pacing-wise. Still not the same book.)

If ‘Twitterature’ is a way to reduce books while still maintaining a sense of the author’s style, then more power to them. If it becomes a gateway for people to get some exposure to a ‘classic’ and then read the full thing, then again, more power to them. If it is just a quirky way to summarize books that were on a high school reading list, then it’s not nearly as innovative or ambitious as they want it to be.

Is “instant communication” destroying literature?

There was a column on the Huffington Post today, referring back to a column in the New York Times, about that very question. I went back and read the NYT article and it struck me as kind of whiny. “Poor me, I can’t use my contrived plot device in the cellphone era.” The basic argument is that many moments in great literature are born out of misunderstanding and miscommunication, and these moments can no longer happen in the technologically advanced world that we live in today.

I call foul on this argument. It assumes is that the communication medium is the communication, and that is simply not true. Just because it is easy (well, easier) to get in touch with someone doesn’t mean that you will.

Let’s take the examples that the writers give, one by one. Casablanca – Ilsa could have sent Rick a message (presumably either text or voicemail) explaining why she stood him up at the train station. OK, fine. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Casablanca, so someone will have to remind me. Did Victor Lazlo come to Paris to find her, or did she just find out that he was alive? If he came to Paris to find her, when exactly would she have left Rick the message? “Sorry, honey, glad you’re not dead, but give me just a second to finish texting my new boyfriend.” If she was going to do that, she might as well have just gone to the train station and explained to Rick in person. [Actually, the same argument applies if someone else told her that he’s still alive.]

Misunderstanding in Shakespeare’s comedies could be cleared up with an IM – are you a boy or a girl. Again, if that is a possibility, what is stopping the character from asking straight out? Besides, in most of the cross-dressing comedies that I can think of, it doesn’t even occur to anyone that cross-dressing is happening until it is revealed at the end.

Romeo and Juliet could have texted each other about the faking-the-death plan. That one is a little bit trickier to get around, but just as technology could “solve” the problem, technology could make it continue. Juliet’s mother could have confiscated her phone. Romeo was in exile and “out of service area”. The phone had run out of battery (it’s not like they had any time to charge their devices in the three days they spent together).

And the one that is so clearly not a technological communication issue: Pride and Prejudice. If only Lizzie had been able to get in touch with Mr. Darcy! But to do what, exactly? “Sorry I turned down your proposal…now that I’ve seen your house I’ve changed my mind?” Clearly Pride and Prejudice would never work in the modern world. It’s not a story that has been redone over and over and over again, including 21st century versions at all.(/sarcasm)

I suppose my point is that good literature is character-based, not technology-based. Even in this world of almost instant and constant communication, misunderstandings and miscommunications are going to happen. Phones die, or get stolen, or run out of credit. Calls are dropped as you travel through a tunnel or through an old stone building. You travel out of the country without international service. You don’t have access to a computer to check your email or facebook or other messages. You don’t pick up on the emotional nuances of an email or a text. Voicemails are delayed. But what the story comes down to is character. If the character wants to get in touch with someone, they will find a way, whether it’s 2009 or 1809 or 509. Complaining that today’s technology makes writing good literature impossible just shows a lack of creativity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12richtel.html?_r=1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-stolz/is-the-internet-ruining-e_b_186041.html

Poetry day!

I don’t read enough poetry. I should read more. Maybe I'll make poetry day a regular thing.

I love the war poets. I am fascinated by almost everything that has to do with World War I - I think it has something to do with the fact that Rilla of Ingleside is one of my favorite books ever. World War I is a perfect example of a political war, and one that would never happen in today’s world of near-instant communication and news. At the start of the war, there was still a huge sense of patriotism, of duty, and of “we don’t need to know why - we just need to be told to go.” English soldiers (I don’t know that much about other countries) were idealistic, especially the young, often bored, independently wealthy officers. And then they actually started fighting and realized that the “glory of war” was not so glorious. The boys started coming back with shell-shock, which no one really knew how to deal with (today it would probably be diagnosed as PTSD of some kind, not that we fully understand that either). A lot of really excellent poetry was written during World War I, much of it about the reality of fighting in the trenches and the reality of coming home afterwards. (Although not all of the poets did come home afterwards.)

The poets that I had to teach, the ones that are sometimes considered “canon” as war poets*, are Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. This poem is by Siegfried Sassoon, from the book “Counter-Attack and Other Poems,” published in 1918. I like it because of the depressing sarcasm that permeates the whole thing. I can really hear both the voice of the people - I usually picture middle-aged women with hats and high-pitched voices - and the soldier, mocking them and getting angrier and sadder as the poem goes on.

Does It Matter?

Does it matter? -losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? -losing your sight?
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? -those dreams in the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they know that you’ve fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

-by Siegfried Sassoon.

*This is not to imply that they are the only war poets or that they are the only ones that are worth reading.

The Flanders Panel

I just finished reading The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It was pretty good, right up until the end. It wasn’t exceptional, and if I’d had anything waiting that I was anxious to read, I doubt I would have finished it, but I did enjoy it – right up to the end.

See, here’s the thing. You can’t do something “for” somebody when the somebody DOESN’T WANT YOU TO DO IT. And most of the time, when someone uses the excuse “I did it for you!” they’ve done something either illegal or really, really ill-advised that they knew (or at least suspected) you wouldn’t like. In the book, it’s killing people. In real life, it’s often breaking up with someone else, or moving, or something slightly less extreme but still life-changing.

Rule of thumb: unless the person says the words “do this for me,” you are not doing it “for” them. You may do it in the hopes that the person will like it, but you are not doing it “for” them.

Every time I have had someone tell me that they’ve done something “for” me, it has been something that I don’t want. Earrings, plans, breaking up with their girlfriend….it’s become kind of a peeve of mine, which is why I think I hated the ending of The Flanders Panel so much. Granted, killing people is a little bit more extreme than any of my stuff, but still – if the person doesn’t want you to do it, you are not doing it for them. You are doing it for yourself. Just admit it already.

The excuse wasn’t the only bad thing about the ending of the book, though – it kind of didn’t really make sense at all. But it’s the part that bugged me the most about it.

The Pilgrim's Regress

After talking about how much I like C.S. Lewis, I have to confess that I am giving up on The Pilgrim's Regress. It was the first book he wrote after his conversion, and it's a variation of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

I am about halfway through the book now, and it's losing me. There are several different reasons for this:

First, Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress used easily recongnizable and definable concepts as allegorical characters: people like Timorous (fear), Piety, Christian (the main character), and Evangelist. In order to understand the characters of The Pilgrim's Progress, all you really need is a dictionary. Lewis, however, is using philosophical movements. These are almost incomprehensible if you haven't studied them. You can look them up in a dictionary or encyclopedia, of course, but without a philosophical background, you (I) may not understand their references.

Second, Lewis sometimes throws in Greek, Latin, or other linguistic quotations. These are neither translated or attributed. I have studied Greek and Latin; I could figure them out if I worked at it. But it's very distracting. And if it's distracting for me, when I know the languages, what must it be like for people who don't?

Third, the continual references to the dream framework make it too easy to dismiss the points that Lewis is trying to make. If you can say, "Oh, but it was just a dream," it almost invalidates the reality of the situation. Dreams are supposed to be unreal and illogical; the allegory that I think Lewis is trying to convey is not.

Basically, I'm just too stupid ignorant to read this book right now. It's more work to understand the layers than I'm willing to put in, and it's not interesting enough on a story level to make it worth reading without that deeper understanding.


It's really too bad, though, because it's the type of book I think I would really enjoy if I understood it better. Maybe I'll keep my eyes out for an annotated version or see if someday I can take a class on Lewis that explains it better. But right now, I'm giving up and moving on to The Other Boleyn Girl.

Humility and Inferiority

I finally read The Screwtape Letters a few months ago. I really did enjoy it – overall I really like C.S. Lewis. I trust him as a theologian, because he came to Christianity as a skeptic. He doesn’t come from the perspective of “I’m right because I’m right and now here are things that back me up.” He comes from the perspective of “I’m right because I found these things that convinced me that I had been wrong.”

Screwtape is interesting because it’s written from the point of view of a devil, a tempter. Mostly Screwtape points out all the ways that modern society and modern ways of thinking are ungodly. Like with the other Lewis books I’ve read, I understand his point on pretty much all of it, and I agree with let’s say 90% of it.

The one bit of Screwtape that got me thinking, more than any other, was the part about the illusion of equality. He says that when someone says “I’m as good as you,” that person is coming from a sense of inferiority. You never tell someone whom you feel is inferior that you are as good as they are, unless you are being patronizing and condescending.

My problem with this comes not from the statement itself – I do agree that when someone says “I am as good as you are” they are usually speaking from a sense of inferiority – but from the implication that trying to overcome a sense of inferiority is an ungodly thing.

I think that Lewis is probably trying to make a point about the lack of humility in today’s society, which is probably a valid point. But I think that there is a difference between feeling humble and feeling inferior.

Humility is internal. If it is imposed by anyone/anything, it is imposed by God. Humility says “I am not the best at this” but humility also allows you to say “I will try.” Inferiority, on the other hand, is imposed externally – by individuals or by society. Inferiority says “You can’t do this” and inferiority says “Why should you even try?” Humility is not a bad thing. False humility is, but that’s a different discussion. Inferiority, especially inferiority based on unchangeable factors like gender/race or subjective factors like beauty, is a bad thing and should be fought against wherever it is found.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Thursday afternoon I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If you don’t want to know about it, STOP READING NOW.

Seriously. I’m going to talk about the movie in moderate detail. Not great detail because I’ve only seen it once so far, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who wants to be surprised.

So if you’re still reading at this point, I can only assume that you want to know about the movie.

Here goes.

It’s definitely better than Temple of Doom. Of course, I haven’t watched Temple of Doom in several years, because it annoys me so greatly and I have to watch much of it on mute so that I can enjoy ogling Harrison Ford without having to hear Kate Capshaw. But Crystal Skull was better than I remember Temple of Doom being.

However, it was not as good as either Raiders or Last Crusade. Those are two very different movies, I’ll admit, that bear very little resemblance to each other besides having several of the same characters and the same basic premise. Raiders is much more action/shoot-em-up while Last Crusade is more comic and almost slapstick. Raiders is quite serious; Last Crusade is much, much lighter.

The thing that Raiders and Last Crusade do have in common that Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull don’t is a Judeo-Christian quest. I’m not trying to be racist or anything like that, and I sincerely apologize if I come across that way. I don’t think the quests in Raiders and Last Crusade are the only reason that they are better movies than Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull, but I do think they are a part of it, for two reasons. First, the predominant culture in the US/UK has a Judeo-Christian background, so the quests are already at least slightly familiar to at least some of the movie-going audience. Second, setting the quests in the context of the predominant culture limits the stereotyping that unfortunately affects both Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull. For example, Temple of Doom is set in India and the things that people remember (other than the annoyingness of Kate Capshaw and the kid who plays Short Round)? Eating monkey brains and pulling out people’s hearts. And in Crystal Skull, technically it takes place in South America, and has to do with ancient Mesoamerican culture. Apart from pictographs, the only representations of that culture are loincloth-clad people who blend in with the wall, move like monkeys, and shoot poison darts.

Crystal Skull is not a bad movie, though. There are a few inside jokes and references, but not so many that it overwhelms the story. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have noticed, since I am a long-time Indy fan. Karen Allen is more than welcome – she’s always been my favourite of the Indy girls. Not that there’s a lot of competition: Kate Capshaw is, as previously stated, annoying, and Alison Doody’s character turned out to be evil. But Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood is more of a partner – she shrieks, sure, but she also attempts to think and fight her way out of situations by herself. And I appreciate the tributes to Denholm Elliott (who played Marcus Brody – he gets referenced and a statue) and Sean Connery (who turned down the film because he’s retired; get over it already online reviewers).

However, it’s not a great movie. Normally I like Cate Blanchett, but she is so ridiculous in this. Her obvious wig and totally fake accent do not help things. And there are oh-so-many “Yeah right” or “You’ve got to be kidding me” moments ranging from Shia LeBeouf sliding his motorcycle along a library floor and getting out from under it without so much as a limp to Ray Winstone’s character’s true allegiances, whatever they might be, to, well, the whole crystal skull reveal. (Aliens? Really? Whose “treasure is knowledge”? Um…..okay.)

They also drop so many things. Like I said, it’s supposed to be based around this Mesoamerican culture, but the poison-dart-blowing representatives of that culture only show up, like three times, never speak, and even though there’s this myth about the crystal skull being guarded by the living dead or something like that, they’re never explained. And, the thing that distracted me the most, during the big chase scene where the evil Soviets are chasing Our Heroes, Marion just…..disappears. She’s driving one of the jungle tanks and I guess she falls behind or something, but she’s off-screen so long that I wondered if they’d forgotten that she was in that scene, or if I’d missed the part where she gets kicked out of the car.

But I liked it, and I would go see it again. I still love Harrison Ford, I enjoy Karen Allen and the relationship between Marion and Indy, and I have a good time watching the fight scenes and archaeology (yeah right) stuff. Everything else, I can ignore.

Fairy Tales

How do you define a fairy tale? The Webster’s Dictionary I have defines a fairy tale as either a story about fairies or an unbelievable/unreal story. The Macmillan Student’s Dictionary adds “a traditional children’s story in which magical things happen.”

So how do you define a fairy tale? My students tend to define it as any work of fiction, especially if it has been made into a movie or, especially, a cartoon. Common answers when I ask about their favourite fairy tales are “Tom and Jerry” and “Harry Potter.” When I ask about Slovak fairy tales, I get romance novelists and whatever they’re studying in literature class.

Some people use Disney movies as the go-to example of fairy tales, and many Disney movies are fairy tales. But I don’t think they all are, and the problem that I run into is that my students – not having the cultural brainwashing of the difference between movie studios – go from “Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty are fairy tales” to “Cartoon movies are fairy tales” to “Anything animated is a fairy tale.” Hence Tom and Jerry.

But where is the line? Why is Sleeping Beauty, with its fairy godmothers, a fairy tale but Mulan, with the talking dragon, not? Would you call Aladdin a fairy tale? Or The Lion King? Is Shrek a fairy tale? What about something like The Princess Diaries?

Personally I think of a fairy tale as a story, primarily but not exclusively for children, that has a lesson or moral, a happy ending or at least something that can be spun into a happy ending, and an unreal or magical element. Cinderella is a fairy tale. Harry Potter can be argued to be a fairy tale. Tom and Jerry – I don’t think so.

In my view of fairy tales, there are two reasons that Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale and Mulan is not. First, Mulan is based on a (probably) true story and real events in a way that Sleeping Beauty is not. Second, the events of Mulan are not reliant on the magic element, whereas the story of Sleeping Beauty is completely dependent on unreal elements. Yes, Mulan has a talking dragon, but Mushu does not either start or resolve the plot. It is Mulan’s actions and Mulan’s ingenuity that defeat the Huns. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, doesn’t exist without magic. The main conflict and its resolution are both magically based.

Where I run into problems is with Harry Potter. I think I’m going to have to say that Harry Potter is not a fairy tale, at least not in the traditional sense. You can argue that it is, but right now I’m arguing that it’s not. For one thing, it’s complex. It’s an epic fantasy, not as simple as the fairy tales. For another thing, while there is magic, in Harry Potter, the magic is an integral part of the world. It’s not extra or special; it’s a talent like being a musician is a talent or athleticism is a talent. It’s a part of the construct, not a part of the plot. I will accept it when students name Harry Potter as their favourite fairy tale, but personally, I don’t think it is.

(Do we even need to discuss why Tom and Jerry is not a fairy tale? I didn’t think so.)

Generation gaps

The latest issue of The Lutheran has a cover story about baby boomers. (It also has the really, really awesome Luther College ad on page 31. Go Norse!) Now, I have nothing against baby boomers. My parents are baby boomers. They are one of the best-defined generations in the US. I do, however, have a problem with one of the sentences in the article. It reads "These men and women are in a 20-year stretch of life that is filled with transitions."

I do not dispute the accuracy of that statement. I do, however, dispute the implication that this is a new, strange experience unique to the baby boomer generation. Because, honestly, what stretch of life does not have transitions? My generation is in a stretch of life that is filled with transitions/ We are graduating from college and/or graduate school, starting careers, careers, dating and/or getting married, having children, living on our own for the first time, living with someone outside our family for the first time, moving, buying houses, setting up our lives. People in their 30s and 40s are establishing their careers, raising familis - and I defy anyone to say that life with children is not full of transitions - and dealing with any number of physical, mental, and social changes. Not to mention the not-recession that the US is in right now - do you think it's easy fighting for a job at the age of 30/40-something? Children's lives are in a perpetual state of transition. Nearly every day something changes - they just aren't as aware of it until they look back when they're older. And those that are left in my grandfather's generation are dealing with more rapid physical and/or mental changes, the probability of no longer being able to live without assistance, and transitions in their societal role. There is no type of life where you can just sit back and expect things to remain constant. And as someone who is not of the baby boomer generation and yet is experiencing major life changes, I resent the implication that the baby boomers are unique in their transitional status.

I also am not entirely happy with the thought that these transitions are new to the baby boomer generation. Did my grandparents' generation not have to deal with at least some of these same transitions? I bet they did.