My parents believed that children who got straight As and attended Ivy league schools had only two possible future professions: doctor or lawyer. That’s what they owed society. So when my parents saw 10 graduate school applications neatly laid out on the diningroom table during the fall of my senior year of college, they can be forgiven for asking, in hopeful tones “When do you plan to take the LSAT?” It took my parents years to get over this. You can imagine how excited I was when my mother developed an interest in the cinema, the focus on my PhD.

Her cinephilia started not too long after an independent theater, The Midtown Cinema, opened up in her city (which also coincided with her retirement from politics). There she could go and see “art” films like Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch) in their initial release. She also got into the habit of calling me after going to see one of those art films — because if I wasn’t going to be a doctor (meaning, the “real” kind), then at least I could help her understand what the hell was going on in Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze). That was a fun conversation.

I am always impressed that my mother wants to discuss the films that challenge her. For example, after going to see Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan), she left the following message on my voicemail: “Honey, your father and I just saw Inception. We have A LOT of questions.”

Perhaps the best thing about my mother’s cinephilia is her pithy, honest responses to them. Her critiques generally match up with what the professional critics have to say. And she sees enough of the new releases to have a solid understanding of the contemporary cinematic landscape. She can tell when a film is being manipulative (like War Horse [2011, Steven Speilberg]) and when it is being subtle. Her one blind spot is experimentation. My mother doesn’t like films that are “too weird” or that steer too far away from conventional cinematic language. For example, she really enjoyed The Artist (2011, Michel Hazanavicius), which, with its lack of sound, can certainly be labeled as “experimental.” But she hated Tree of Life (2011, Terence Malick). We have discussed her hate for this film on several occasions. I think she is actually mad at Terence Malick for making this film and for luring her into the theater to see it.

For the last few years my mother has also made a point of trying to see all of the films nominated for awards. In fact, there are many Oscar seasons when she has a far more informed opinion of the year in film than I do. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to have my mother, amateur film buff, give you some of her 2012 Oscar picks. I sent her a list of questions via e-mail, and then I called her and we discussed them.

Before we get to the interview, allow me to tell you a little bit about my mother, in order to contextualize some parts of our conversation. She is 69-years-old, born and raised in Pennsylvania. She received her BA as well as her MA in education from Shippensburg University. When she first moved to Harrisburg as a young, single woman, she taught public school, but quit teaching when I was born. Then, when I was about 8 years-old she ran for Register of Wills in Dauphin County, a position she held for 4 years. After that she was a Dauphin County Comissioner for 12 years. My father, who she was married to for 43 years, passed away over the holidays, so she is also a recent widow. My mom wanted me to add that she has “two wonderful children” and “four beautiful grandchildren.” So there you go.

Mom and Dad on a cruise ship, looking fly.

Below is a transcript of our conversation, with my questions appearing in bold-face. The portions of the text appearing in brackets are my later additions/corrections to the interview.

Which of the films nominated for Best Picture Oscars have you seen so far?

I’ve seen every nominee except for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011, Stephen Daldry), Hugo (2011, Martin Scorsese), and Moneyball (2011, Bennett Miller).

Out of the Best Picture nominees, which films were your favorite? And can you tell me why these films were your favorite?

The film that I thought was the best was The Artist. It was just incredibly watchable even though it was a silent film. It was very unique in the way it was done, with a little bit of sound but mostly silent. It was just fascinating to watch. I loved it.

Did you think going to see a silent film would not be enjoyable?

I don’t think I would have gone to see it at all if I hadn’t read the reviews. It didn’t sound appealing. Although I do prefer subtitles because of my hearing problem.

You mean intertitles? Yeah, it’s probably better for you if you can read the dialogue.

A lot of my friends weren’t interested in seeing [The Artist] at all. So I’m glad it was playing in Greenville when I was visiting you.

And why weren’t they interested? Because it was silent?

Yeah they just thought it was too weird to go in and watch a movie like that.

Now you also told me about how much you liked The Descendants (2011, Alexander Payne). 

Yes. But as far as Best Picture, The Artist was special. It will definitely win the Best Picture award. [she pauses] But I’ve been wrong before.

Out of the Best Picture nominees, which films were your least favorite? Can you explain why?

My least favorite was Midnight in Paris (2011, Woody Allen).

Me too.

I didn’t like it at all. Do you want to know my second least favorite is?

First I want to know why you didn’t like Midnight in Paris.

It was very disjointed. It went back and forth in time so much that it lost me. I thought the acting was terrible.

Who did you think was terrible?

The guy. Whatever his name was. I didn’t like him.

[she is referring to Owen Wilson]

It was almost a tie for me with Tree of Life.  I just didn’t care for [Tree of Life] at all.

[we both start laughing]

Did you ever see it?

The offending surreal scene from TREE OF LIFE.

Yes, I saw it last weekend.

What did you think?

I liked it.

I didn’t like it. I think the film made me very uncomfortable.

How so?

It was such a depressing film because of the character played by Brad Pitt. I was constantly feeling sorry for  the children and the wife. And that whole surreal scene on the beach? Where they were all going wherever they went? That was strange.

What about the first 15 minutes of the film? Where the director shows the evolution of life on Earth? What did you think of that?

Totally lost me. Went over my head. Wasn’t for me. That is never going to get Best Picture. Ever.

When I was watching the beginning of Tree of Life, I knew to expect that kind of opening because I had read about it. As somebody who went in to see that movie, and wasn’t expecting 15 minutes of almost abstract images and no plot or characters, what was that like for you?

I wasn’t expecting it. I just didn’t get it. It was just uncomfortable. I didn’t care for it. It was a film without any light moments. I really firmly believe that a director has to have a little bit of brightness in a movie. It can’t be all depressing and weird.

[we laugh]

Even The Descendants — with that serious topic – there were several really funny, light moments that made the viewer relax a little bit. I don’t think a film should be all of one type…I don’t know how else to express it.

Which actors, in your opinion, gave the best performances?  

Definitely George Clooney. I love the way — and I’m not a fan of his — but I loved the way it was such a real performance as far as a father dealing with two young daughters, and what they were feeling with their mother in a coma. And then his wife, who was in a tragic accident, dealing with that. And dealing with his business. It was extremely believable. And then his reaction when he found out his wife was having an affair.

And he did provide the sadness, and the very deep part of the whole film — making the decision to let this poor soul pass away [she is referring to the character who is on life support]. And at the same time he finds a relationship with his girls.

Did you find that you related to George Clooney’s character, given that you were faced with with an eerily similar situation back in December? Did you find any parallels?

No. Not really. I didn’t shed a tear like you did.

[correction: I cried for the duration of the film]

Watching this film and watching how another family dealt with the same situation… It was sort of comforting in a way, in the way the doctor told him [that his wife would never wake up]. They didn’t hesitate. They had to do it.

Did that make you feel better?

Yeah. In a way. Now what about best actress?

Who is your pick?

Absolutely Meryl Streep. If she doesn’t win, I give up. That’s ridiculous. I mean she was just…did you see it?

No. I haven’t seen it. 

Well, she is the Iron Lady. You know, there was a lot of criticism about portraying this woman in her later years, when she had dementia, not when she was in top form.

But I thought it was very difficult to play the role as [Meryl Streep] did. Because the times she was in the public eye, she had to act normal and then she’d go home and be sitting on the couch talking to her husband, who wasn’t there.

Did you relate this character in any way? Since you were also a woman who held public office?

No, because I don’t have Alzheimer’s.

[we laugh]

One of my favorite parts was a flashback where she was interviewed and wearing this hat. After it was over her consultants told her she had to get rid of the hat. And she was “Why should I?”

[note: here my mother attempts to imitate Merly Streep imitating Margaret Thatcher but she sounds more like Meryl Streep imitating Julia Child. Yes, it is awesome]

I can remember those kinds of meetings. Like remember when I went to one of your softball games while wearing a suit and heels?

I don’t remember that.

Afterwards there was this was a poll in the newspaper. And some woman said I was “uppity” because I wore a suit and heels to my daughter’s softball game.

WHAAAAAT?

But I was talking to Dr. Garcia [my friend's father] at that game and he was wearing a tie and jacket.

Oh my Gawd!

Mmmm hmmmm.

Is there anyone who was not nominated for best actor/actress or best supporting actor/actress who you feel was snubbed? I know you said you were angry that Leonardo DiCaprio was snubbed for his performance in J. Edgar (2011, Clint Eastwood). 

Well after all the years of watching him and being such a fan of his incredible acting…I think his problem is — and this is just my opinion — I think he’s just too good-looking.

Well then what about George Clooney and Brad Pitt?

Right. I don’t get it. There have been actors in [Leonardo DiCaprio's] situation. For example, Paul Newman never won an Academy Award. Fabulous actor. Great stuff. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958, Richard Brooks).

[correction: Newman won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1987 for The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese)]

And the other one was, what’s his name? He does the Sundance stuff?

Robert Redford? Has he never won an Oscar?

He’s never won. Neither of them.

[Note: she is correct about Robert Redford, who has never won an Oscar for his acting]

I don’t know what’s going on with Leonardo. Frankly, when you look at Titanic (1997, James Cameron), what’s-her-name won Best Actress for that film. I think he was nominated and didn’t win, which is absolutely insane. I mean he was that film.

[correction: Kate Winslet was nominated and didn't win. Leonrado DiCaprio was not nominated for Titanic. But I don't think this invalidates my mother's point. Kate was recognized, Leo wasn't.]

Well, you also have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio.

Yeah, I do.

And then in J. Edgar, I’m hoping you get to rent it, because he was magnificent in that film.

What made his performance great?

Because first of all, he became J. Edgar Hoover as you watched it. Number two, he showed this incredibly strange side that he had — this very manic thing he had with the law. But then, the film didn’t really come out and say that he was gay…

But it was implied…

There was this scene, where [J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson] are together and J. Edgar says “I think I have to get married.” And the other guy, I forget his name [Tolson], just goes beserk. They had this fight and start rolling on the floor, and then they kiss. And J. Edgar is absolutely furious about the whole thing. But that’s the way it was in those days. Whether he consummated an affair with that guy, nobody knows for sure.

The problem with the film, and I was very disappointed with Clint Eastwood because he is such a superb director, but I was disappointed with how [Leonardo DiCaprio] was young, then old, then young, then old…I didn’t like it.

Well, thanks for talking to me about movies, Mom.

I’ll get to read this?

Adam, Mom, & Me circa summer 1980

So what do you think of my mom’s picks? Will The Artist win? Was Tree of Life simply “too weird”? Does anyone else’s mom have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio?

This is real, dear readers. Kate Gosselin, former star of Jon & Kate Plus 8, and more recent star of the “Celebrity Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong” section of your favorite tabloid, is partnering with Royal Caribbean to give vacationers the cruise experience of a lifetime! The cheapest cabin on this cruise is $3,000 and the priciest is $5,500. That doesn’t include the roundtrip airfare to the port of embarkation, 7 days worth of booze, and mandatory tips for the various staff who will be shoving complimentary ice cream sundaes in your face 24-hours a day.  And you’ll need someone to watch your cat while you’re gone. That’s gonna cost you too. Especially when your cat finds out why you’ve abandoned her for 7 days and 7 nights (hint: pee in shoes).

It’s not that I doubt that there are people out there who would like to meet Kate Gosselin, or at least see her in person. If Kate Gosselin was coming to the Greenville Olive Garden, I would most definitely drive across town to see her. I’m a gawker by nature. I might even wait in a line to see her. Especially if there was the promise of endless breadsticks and salad afterwards.

What I doubt is that there are enough people to fill a cruise ship who have 1. the desire to meet Kate Gosselin and 2. several thousand dollars of disposable income. But clearly some vacant-eyed minion in Kate Gosselin’s employ must have gotten on the blower, done some canvassing, and found out that YES! there are in fact at least 3,000 people willing spend a lot of money to “learn a new craft” with Kate Gosselin somewhere in the Caribbean. Kate makes amazing crafts.

Who might these people be? I imagine these are people who have worked very hard to create a nice nest egg for themselves, one that they’ve been squirreling away for a big splurge. They are willing to spend this money on a worthwhile venture — something the whole family can enjoy. I imagine a mother of three young children, a woman who still believes that Kate Gosselin is her former self, a domestic super hero who manages to “do it all.” She does not see Kate Gosselin’s current self: a strung out fame addict making due with celebrity cruise ship gigs (which, if you didn’t already know, are the methadone of fame fixes, followed only by state fair appearances). I believe this target consumer is a generous, good-hearted woman. She thinks that Kate Gosselin got an unfair shake when her marriage to fell apart in front of the reality TV cameras and what was poor Kate to do but scramble for more TV gigs in order to make ends meet while her lazy, good-for-nothing ex-husband shopped for Ed Hardy T-shirts and had sex with young women who should know better? Lancaster county private schools don’t pay for themselves. And neither do unlimited sessions at The Sunshine Factory.

Yes, the ideal passenger on the Kate Gosselin cruise is a woman who doesn’t like to gossip, but enjoys reading gossip rags. When the cover of US Weekly proclaims “Angie is Pregnant!” she believes them and wishes the best for Angie. She owns several products featuring the “As Seen on TV” sticker. They have to work. Why would Ron Popeil lie?

This woman sees the Kate Gosselin cruise as a chance to play “fun family games with Kate and staff,” no doubt envisioning being tethered to Kate in the 3-legged race or possibly depositing an egg, ever-so-gingerly, onto Kate’s awaiting spoon. I imagine this mother has twins, just like Kate, or possibly triplets or quadruplets (but definitely not sextuplets because then this woman would also have her own show), and that’s why she identifies with Kate in the first place. She understands why Kate was so frazzled — why she barked at her children and needled her husband. She’s done that too. Having multiples is tough.

This woman might be a stay at home mom (but only temporarily, just until the twins are old enough for school) and the days are long. Some days she wonders why she keeps wiping crumbs off of the counter top after breakfast, knowing that they’ll reappear again, like magic, after lunch. She wonders why she bothers changing her clothes before loading the triplets into the minivan and heading to the grocery store. After all, she’ll be wearing her winter coat — no one will see the dribbles of coffee on her chest or the dried rice cereal clinging to the cuffs of her sleeves. But there’s always the chance. She brushes her hair, too, and puts on a little lipstick even when she knows she’ll be at home all day, just her and the quadruplets. Grooming’s important. Because you just never know who might show up at the door while you’re sitting there, not wearing any lipstick. She and Kate understand this.

She’s sympathetic to Kate and her Botox and her hair extensions and her tummy tucks. She wouldn’t mind getting a tummy tuck herself. Who wouldn’t? She plans to tell Kate all of this at that “private BBQ on deck with Kate and a fabulous band.” She’s thinking that “private” sounds nice. Maybe she and Kate will share their birth stories. Hers is a real doozy — 40 hours, no epidural. Not even a valium. She practiced her visualization and guided imagery ahead of time, thinking of her uterus as a flower slowly opening, just as her Bradley method teacher instructed. Not many women can do that. Maybe they’ll stand together at the railing, this target consumer and Kate, looking out at the ocean, quoting Titanic (“I’m king of the world!”). “Yes,” she thinks, “this could be the family’s summer vacation. Pricey, yes. But we can swing it.” And won’t it be nice to get a “A commemorative personalized gift from Kate” (one per family)? The gift will be personal because Kate understands her, just as she understands Kate.

I understand this woman, too, because part of her is me. And I think this woman deserves better. She deserves to use that $5,000 nest egg on something real and tangible — not a staged photograph with a curt former reality TV star. But she enters her credit card information. She understands the ticket is non-refundable. She’s going to meet Kate Gosselin. It’s worth it.

Recently I was asked by a colleague who runs East Carolina University’s Ethnic Studies Film Series to provide an introduction to the January 31st screening of The Help (2011, Tate Taylor). I agreed because, having just read the book and watched the film, I wanted to try to come to terms with what it is that rubbed me the wrong way about these two texts. I loved Kathryn Stockett’s writing style in the novel and I loved the actresses’ performances in the film, but after completing both I felt a profound sense of discomfort with them, as did so many people who read the book and watched the film.

I thought this introduction would be of interest to my readers, so I am publishing it here. There’s nothing particular earth-shattering about my arguments, and in fact, most of what I have to say about these issues comes from an article in The Daily Beast, originally posted by Dr. Kristen Warner, who consistently links to thought-provoking articles on her Facebook timeline (and you thought Facebook was useless!). In fact, if Kristen lived closer, I would have brought her in to do The Help introduction herself; even without having seen the film herself, Kristen’s insights on these issues are better articulated in a series of tweets or casual Facebook comments than I can do in an entire blog post.

*****

The reason I wanted to do tonight’s introduction for The Help is that I recently read the book and watched the film, and I found myself struggling with both texts and my own reactions to them.

On the one hand, both texts are beautifully crafted. Kathryn Stockett weaves together the stories of almost a dozen fascinating, complicated women. And the adaptation of Stockett’s novel, directed by Tate Taylor, has enlisted a talented cast of actresses to portray these strong characters, including Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Other than Bridesmaids, also released in 2011, how many Hollywood films can boast a cast that is almost entirely composed of women? Women talking to other women about women?

The women of the THE HELP.

In addition to its spectacular cast, The Help is worthwhile because it is a mainstream Hollywood picture that grapples with America’s racist past, damning the segregationist policies in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. The film is set in 1963, just one year before Congress passes the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. The world of The Help is a world in which white people were incapable of examining their own culpability in the racist power structure of the time. The characters believe themselves to be moral and most certainly not racist, and yet, they are very very racist. Those who have read the book will find that there are several major changes to the plot, involving Constantine (Cicely Tyson) and her daughter, revelations about Charlotte Phelan’s (Allison Janney) health, and Skeeter Phelan’s hair (Emma Stone is a little too well-groomed to play the role of Skeeter, in my opinion, but I digress…)

This is not Skeeter's hair.

Despite these alterations to the novel, I think you will enjoy the film. But the purpose of the Ethnic Studies film series is to examine how the cinema grapples with issues of race and ethnicity. So for the next few minutes I’d like to address some other issues to think about as you watch The Help.

I’ll begin with a positive review of the film from The Los Angeles Times. The reviewer writes: “Since we generally prefer not to be reminded of the darker chapters of our history, it’s a risky business taking us back — even with a fictional tale — to Jackson, Miss., at a time when African Americans were still very much the serving class.” This review tells us that The Help brings audiences back to a time when African Americans were “still very much the serving class.” This line, because it uses the past tense “were,” implies that the racism we see in The Help is in the past. Viewers are encouraged to rage against the cruel villainy of Miss Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) and cheer for Miss Skeeter’s anachronistic color blindness. We are told that in the 1960s, domestic servants and service workers were treated like second-class citizens (but not today). In the 1960s white people lived in wealthy part of town near the “good” grocery stores like the Jitney Jungle, while the African Americans lived in cramped homes and shopped at the inferior Piggly Wiggly (but not today). In the 1960s there were terrible consequences for the disenfranchised who attempt to tell the truth (but not today). But of course that isn’t true, is it?

Miss Hilly: Ate Shit. Minny: Lives in tiny house with 5 kids, has drunk husband who beats her, works like a dog every day. Who really won this battle?

We cannot allow the tears and laughter that The Help generates in equal measure to distract us from the fact that the racism tearing apart 1960s Mississippi is the same racism that is tearing apart the United States in 2012. Contemporary racism is less overt, of course, and somewhat less pervasive. But it remains just below the surface of American society, which in many ways is a more dangerous racism, because it is one that we, as a society, can easily deny. When racism is bold and in your face, like when Miss Hilly begins her Home Help Sanitation Initiative, it is easy to recognize and declare as immoral. But when racism is quiet and subtle, it’s much harder to uproot. To acknowledge the racism that lurks behind the veil of inclusionary discourse in popular culture is to acknowledge that many Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, have not moved past the racial dichotomies of 1960s Mississippi. We may all be using the same bathrooms, but the belief systems underpinning Jim Crow laws remain.

If the dog can be there without an official nomination, I suppose Charlize can too.

To offer up just one small example, since it is directly related to The Help and its cast, I want to discuss a short clip from a roundtable of Oscar-nominated actors that was hosted by Newsweek last week. In the following clip, Viola Davis, who received a Best Actress nomination for performance as Aibileen, the depressed, emotionally-battered maid, is asked why a talented actress such as herself has only scored her first starring role at age 46. As Davis tries to explain, she is interrupted by Charlize Theron (and I still cannot figure out why Charlize Theron was there, since she has not been nomtinated for an Oscar this year.):

[Note: you can watch the video by clicking on the link below.]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/23/george-clooney-s-worst-job-10-best-newsweek-oscar-roundtable-bits.html

Allison Samuels of The Daily Beast wrote a great article, “What Charlize Theron Doesn’t Get About Black Hollywood,” analyzing this outburst in the context of Hollywood’s racist beauty standards. Here’s what I saw happening. Charlize Theron believes that Viola Davis is saying “I’m not getting roles because I’m not pretty enough.” Charlize Theron is familiar with this lament because most white actresses will be told they are too fat or too plain or even, too pretty for a role. This burden, the burden of being judged on your looks first and your talent second, is shared by all women, regardless of race. No wonder Charlize jumped into the conversation! This is a burden she can relate to (even if it is the burden of being too damn pretty)!

"Don't tell me I'm too pretty for this role!"

But that is not the burden Viola Davis is referencing here. When Viola Davis counters, “There’s just not a lot of lead roles for women who look like me” she is not lamenting that she doesn’t look like Halle Berry. 99% of the women in the world don’t look like Halle Berry.

Mmmm, Halle Berry.

Davis is lamenting that there aren’t many any leading roles for African American women in mainstream Hollywood films. Why? Because Hollywood will not make these movies. Why? Because Hollywood believes that white audiences will not pay to see movies about black women (am I referring to Hollywood as if it is a person? Yes. I imagine a white, middle-aged male person smoking a cigar and furiously crunching numbers. But I digress). Why does Hollywood make movies for white audiences? Much of Hollywood—its studio heads and producers–are under the (erroneous) belief that white audiences are the ones who are paying to see movies. But this is no more true than the belief that women don’t go to see movies. The success of Tyler Perry’s films among African American audiences and Bridesmaids among female audiences is proof that Hollywood is clinging to an outdated understanding of audience demographics. Or they’re willfully ignoring audience demographics. In short, the problem is not that Viola Davis does not look like Halle Berry. The problem is racism.

African Americans DO go to the movies.

So what does Charlize Theron’s off-hand comment have to do with The Help? Both are well-meaning and empathetic. Both want African American women to know that they are “hot as shit,” that they are equal to white women and that everything is going to be okay. Both tell us that racism is about individuals rather than institutions. Both would like us to rage against a racism of the past, one which we have presumably “solved,” and empowers us to feel good about our comparative enlightenment today.

But this type of filmmaking is dishonest at best and insidious at worst. As you watch The Help tonight, I encourage you to think about how the film presents racism. Where does it come from, how does it manifest itself, why is it unethical, and how do characters address it? Does the film encourage you to examine your own role in America’s discriminatory practices or does it congratulate you for living in 2012? Don’t get me wrong, any film that forces us to think about racism in America is positive. But acknowledging America’s problems with race, only to dismiss them (much as dear Charlize has done) as something that is over and done with, provides whites with a false sense of security. That our work here is done. But it’s not.

I know that I am not alone in these views. Simply Google “The Help” and a long string of critiques appear. So I guess what I’d like to hear from readers is: what value, if any, does The Help (as a book and a film) hold? Is there value there? And if so, what is it?

I only put Post It notes on the dog when I run out of space in my office.

So I think I’ve come up with a solution to the workingmotherblogger’s problem. In addition to my regular blog posts, which often range from 1,000 to 2,000 words, I am introducing a new feature to my blog: the Nota Bene. Nota bene is a Latin word meaning “note well.” In legal writing, the term is used to refer to a detail of the document that has been expanded or highlighted. It draws the reader’s attention away from the main topic in order to address a specific issue in greater depth. Very often my frantic Post It scribbles are little details I want to call to the attention of my readers. But during busy times I don’t have several hours to devote to a full-length blog post. So I write nothing. And when I write nothing, I get itchy. Like a sneeze that is about to happen but never does. Or an itch in between my shoulder blades that I just can’t reach. The Nota Bene will be my attempt to scratch those little itches and sneeze those little sneezes. I hope that these shorter, more frequent posts will generate discussion, amusement, or at the very least, a “Bless you, dear!” Below is my first Nota Bene. Consider my itch scratched:

I would become a polygamist if it meant that I could marry Coach and Mrs. Coach.

I know that most die-hard fans of Friday Night Lights, the tear-jerking, sweet-but-never-too-sweet TV series about high school football in Texas, watched the final episode way back in February 2011 when it completed its run on Direct TV. Or they watched it when it completed its run on NBC back in April of 2011. OR, they watched it when the final season was released on DVD, also in April of 2011. But I’ve been busy (see the italicized introduction above for a sampling of my daily schedule). My husband and I finally got around to finishing Season 5 last week. And as my time with Coach Taylor drew to a close, I couldn’t help but think about some of the key truths of the series that were highlighted in the final season:

1. Coach Taylor is always right.

Think Coach Taylor’s 80s-style Oakley sunglasses are stupid? Wrong. They’re awesome. Think you’d rather smoke pot all day and dance to Grateful Dead music around camp fires, Hastings Ruckle? Wrong. You should be playing football for the East Dillon Lions (for more on this see Point 3 below). Think you should get to play in the last big game of the season just because you are the star quarterback of the East Dillon Lions, Vince Howard? Wrong. Sit on the bench and stop showboating. Think you can have sex with busty college freshmen just because you’re the “head TA” for History 101, Derek Bishop? Wrong. Get the hell off of Coach Taylor’s lawn before he does to your face what he just did to your car. And this is just in Season 5. Understand this: Coach is always right. He’s a pillar of moral certainty in an uncertain world. He is my reference point, my anchor. When faced with an ethical issue I ask myself “What would Coach do?” and then I put on my 80s-style Oakley sunglasses, pick up my football, and do the right thing.

2. Mrs. Coach is always up in your business.

Tami Taylor is one busy woman. She has a boy crazy teenage daughter, a toddler, and a husband who is always expecting her to show up to some football booster event in a purty dress and high-heeled cowboy boots. Sometimes she is the principal of a high school and sometimes she is a guidance counselor and sometimes she is a women’s volleyball coach. Eventually, she becomes the Dean of Admissions at FancyPants Liberal Arts College in FancyPants Philadelphia. So you might think that you can smoke cigarettes in the girl’s bathroom and eat Chee-tos for breakfast and have a destined-for-the-pole name like Epic, and Mrs. Coach won’t notice because she is too busy coaching volleyball or breastfeeding little Gracie Bell or making sure her hair always falls in those gorgeous, thick curls. But rest assured, troubled youth, Tami Taylor will find you and she will get up in your business. Don’t fight it. Just be grateful for her attention. She’s awesome.

3. Everyone loves football/ football makes you a better person.

Landry Clarke was a studious nerd who founded an alternarock band called Crucifictorious and mocked his best buddy, Matt Saracen, for trying out for the football team. Vince Howard was a petty criminal with no respect for authority and no discipline. Buddy Junior was a disaffected slacker who thought every activity, other than eating and getting drunk, was stupid (he’s right, by the way). But, if you put a football in the hands of these young men, they are suddenly converted into determined, authority-fearing, irony-deficient soldiers of Taylor. Football is that powerful, people.

4. Jason Street, whether he is on screen for 5 seconds or 50 minutes, will break your heart.

Jason Street was paralyzed in the first episode of Friday Night Lights. He left the series in season 3. But every time he returns for a cameo, however short, I cry. In fact, I teared up just searching for photos of Jason Street on Google. Why, Jason, why did it have to happen to you? You coulda been a contender!

5. Julie Taylor is boy crazy.

Julie Taylor has a loving, no-nonsense Daddy and a Mama who is always up in her business. But she also has giant boobs and very full, pouty lips that make Head TAs go cray-cray. Here’s hoping that boring Matt Saracen and his line drawings of hands and outrageously large studio apartment in Chicago can keep those pouty lips satisfied. But my bet is no. There are loads of horny Head TAs in Chicago.

6. Tim Riggins.

Tim Riggins had sex with his paralyzed best friend’s best girl and you forgave him. Tim Riggins drinks beer for breakfast. Tim Riggins has Daddy issues. Tim Riggins does not tell jokes. Tim Riggins will take you to Mexico for experimental spinal surgery. Tim Riggins squints his eyes and looks off into the middle distance better than any other character on television. Tim Riggins will have sex with older women. Tim Riggins will be a father figure to your fatherless son. Tim Riggins has Mommy issues. Tim Riggins will go to jail so that you can have a better life. Tim Riggins must always be addressed as either “Tim Riggins” or “Riggins.” “Who is Tim?” asks Tim Riggins. Tim Riggins will build his own house. Tim Riggins loves football and Texas. Tim Riggins might just love you if he met you. But Tim Riggins isn’t real. Tim Riggins is a character on Friday Night Lights. Pretend I didn’t just write that. Tim Riggins IS real. And I love Tim Riggins. And Tim Riggins loves me. Now leave me and Tim Riggins alone. We’re having beer for breakfast. Mmmm, Riggins.

So what am I missing? What other key truths have I missed? Discuss below.

The other day I was reading an article a friend of mine (Melisser, this is ALL your fault) shared on Facebook. The article, “The 50 Greatest Internet Memes of 2011,” is, as you might imagine, a deep wormhole. Not only is the article long (it covers, in detail, 50 different internet memes), but it includes links to various iterations of these popular memes. It took me almost an hour to get through the first five. Afterwards I cursed myself for wasting precious grading time. When you pay other people to take care of your children so that you can work, wasting an hour on nonsense is unacceptable.

The real question here is not why did I spend a precious hour of my work day reviewing the top internet memes of 2011. Clearly,  Hipster Cop and Paula Deen riding things are awesome. But why are they awesome?

Given the rampant popularity of internet memes, it should not be surprising that there is a growing body of work on the subject. Memes are not simply photoshopped images shared on social media and on Internet clip shows for the amusement of those of us who spend long periods of time sitting in front of a computer each day. They form our social and cultural networks. The term “meme” (short for “mimeme”) dates back to Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene (1976). He refers to memes as “units of  cultural transmission.” For example, if I read an article detailing a new approach to say, the critical analysis of widgets, I might mention it to my colleague, an analytical widget specialist. She might then write about it in a paper that she plans to deliver at the National Association for the Critical Analysis of Widgets (aka, NACAW). In turn, people sitting in the NACAW audience, listening to my colleague deliver her paper, will hear that idea, putting it to other purposes, in a variety contexts. The idea spreads as it multiplies. In this way, Dawkins argues, memes are like viruses:

When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. (192)

This sounds a little bit like the zombie apocalypse but you won’t need to worry about that for at least 3 more years. Let’s move on, shall we?

Like zombies, we shouldn’t think of memes simply as the innocuous debris of popular culture. As Karl Hodge explains in a article for The Guardian, written all the way back in 2000:

[Memes] are much more than just whispers being passed down a line. Religion and ritual are memes, as are fashions, political ideas and moral codes.

They are copied from one person to the next, planting fundamental beliefs and values that gain more authority with each new host. Memes are the very building blocks of culture. Not every meme is a big idea, but any meme with the right stuff can go global once it hits the internet.

In “‘ALL YOUR CHOCOLATE RAIN ARE BELONG TO US’?: Viral Video, YouTube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture,” Jean Burgess argues that internet memes are “a medium of social connection.” The value of any particular meme is based on its ability to generate more content, that is, on its “spreadability.” Burgess explains:

…in order to endow the metaphors implied by terms like “memes,” “viruses,” and “spreadability‘ with any explanatory power, it is necessary to see videos as mediators of ideas that are taken up in practice within social networks, not as discrete texts that are produced in one place and then are later consumed somewhere else by isolated individuals or unwitting masses. These ideas are propagated by being taken up and used in new works, in new ways, and therefore are transformed on each iteration – a “copy the instructions,” rather than “copy the product” model of replication and variation.

Indeed, the Paula Deen Riding Things meme offers potential meme participants an actual template to use, promising “anyone can do it”:

For me, at least, community is a major part of the appeal of most internet memes. When I see Paula Deen riding the balloon from the “balloon boy” hoax of 2009, I am delighted because 1) the image itself is funny and 2) because I know that the author of that content also found that image to be funny. The creator and I are linked by our shared laugh over the image of a tipsy Paula Deen riding a tinfoil balloon. Or how about the person who dressed up as Paula Deen Riding Things for Halloween and then herself became an example of Paula Deen Riding Things? When I look at this image I am delighted to think that there are other people who laughed as hard at this image as I did. Just like film genres, internet memes create a sense of community.

But the point of this blog post is not to explain what memes are or how they work, since there are many superior scholars handling those questions (see Works Cited for a few). What I am interested in is why internet memes make me laugh. Dissecting humor is no fun but I am consistently amazed by how funny certain memes become for me and by their ability to make me laugh out loud when I’m sitting alone at my computer. That’s a weird feeling. The memes that make me laugh the most have a few recurring traits:

 Recognizability

The majority of memes rely on the recognizability of the image or video that is transmitted from user to user. If you cannot instantly see the resemblance between the meme and its source text (whether that source is something “in real life” or another meme), then the humor won’t work. For example, the humor of the amazing Pepper Spray Cop meme was based primarily on the recognizability of its source: the horrific police brutality that took place at a peaceful UC Davis student protest. This story was all over the news — particularly online — and the various YouTube videos documenting the protest have racked of millions and millions of views.

This meme is particularly interesting because its source  text is incredibly disturbing, revealing the casual way in which someone in power is able to use a weapon of suppression on a peaceful citizen. But the meme’s power relies precisely on the viewer’s ability to register all of this tragedy, to recognize the new environment into which Pepper Spray Cop has been inserted, and to find humor in the very incongruity of their meeting. For this reason, I think the best examples of this meme are those which have PSC spraying symbols of innocence or peace:

As the old saying goes: comedy = tragedy + time

Repetition

For all four years of college, I worked for the campus humor magazine. Often, in order to meet publisher deadlines, the staff would literally work all night: scanning images, laying out pages, and writing content. The last-minute content was almost always the product of delirium and repetition. What was not funny at 9 pm was very, very funny by 3 am. It’s all about the repetition: if say something unfunny often enough, eventually it will be funny. Even Henri Bergson knows that repetition is awesome, or so he says in his essay “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic.” He offers this example:

The same by-play occurs in the Malade Imaginaire. Through the mouth of Monsieur Purgon the outraged medical profession pours out its vials of wrath upon Argan, threatening him with every disease that flesh is heir to. And every time Argan rises from his seat, as though to silence Purgon, the latter disappears for a moment, being, as it were, thrust back into the wings; then, as though Impelled by a spring, he rebounds on to the stage with a fresh curse on his lips. The self-same exclamation: “Monsieur Purgon!” recurs at regular beats, and, as it were, marks the TEMPO of this little scene.

Let us scrutinise more closely the image of the spring which is bent, released, and bent again. Let us disentangle its central element, and we shall hit upon one of the usual processes of classic comedy–REPETITION.

I think, had Bergson has the opportunity to see the Nyan cat video, he would be using that as an example, rather than Moliere. Watch the following videos and I think you’ll agree. First, take a look at the original Nyan cat. You only need to watch it for about 30 seconds to get the point:

Then, there are Nyan cat videos which play with Nyan’s presumed ethnicity. This variation on the meme adds stereotypical signifiers of an identity — such as a turban and Bollywood music — to the source text:

There are versions of the Nyan cat meme that simply play with its addictive, seizure-inducing score:

Then there are the many Nyan cat videos that play with the Nyan cat’s presumed joie de vivre:

This one comes with an important warning “Eats Souls.” Please proceed with caution.

I had to stop watching this one around the 20 second mark:

And finally, Nyan IRL:

With every video I laugh harder until there are literally tears coming down my cheeks as I watch the still image of a cat with a pop tart tied to its back and a plastic rainbow placed next to its ass.

Cruelty

It is difficult to deny that part of the humor of many internet memes lies in mocking the source text. And it is always a relief to laugh at someone else since it means, for the time being, no one is laughing at you:

I don’t feel all that bad for celebrities who become memes or even “civilians” like Rebecca Black. I think if you put a video on YouTube in the hopes that it will make you famous, then you have to accept the consequences of “fame,” whatever form that fame might take. But I do feel bad for those unfortunate souls who did not intend to be on the internet but caught the snarky eye of a someone with access to Photoshop and WiFi (i.e., everyone):

This meme, Angry Vancouver Fan/Angry Asian Rioter, is particularly mean-spirited. I agree that rioting after a hockey game is stupid. Who watches hockey? But clearly the appeal of this image is who is doing the stupid rioting. Asians as well as Canadians are stereotyped as being mild-tempered pacifists (which is actually a stereotype worth embracing), and so this image appears especially outrageous. “How can this Asian Canadian young man have so much  rage?” the internet wonders, “Let’s torture him for it!”  Images like the one above remind me of a John Hughes movie: Angry Asian Rioter is Duckie and all of us on the internet are James Spader.

Self Loathing

Sometimes the source text being mocked is the person sitting in front of the computer. For example, the “first world problems” or “white whines” meme that was so popular throughout 2011 mocks the idea that anyone living in a first world country and/or anyone who is white would have a legitimate reason to complain about their life:

In particular, this meme mocks individuals who use social media like Twitter or Facebook to lament the small inconveniences in their otherwise cushy lives, like finding pickles on your sandwich after you said “no pickles.” On the one hand, this mockery is deserved — with so much suffering in the world, is it legitimate to curse your cable provider for creating a DVR incapable of consistently recording the TV shows you program it to record? Sure. But next to famine and oil spills, not so much. The  snark is well-deserved and as someone guilty of complaining about many first world problems, I recognize myself in this meme. I especially enjoy cursing my cable provider (you know who are. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). This kind of meme serves a valuable social purpose — it forces many of us (or pretty much anyone who regularly consumes and distributes memes) to recognize our own privilege. The best humor holds up  a mirror to society.

But let me add a brief sidenote to this “self loathing” aspect of memes. Consider the reaction to the consumer debacle that was Black Friday 2011. The image of people using pepper spray (pepper spray is having the best year EVER!) and guns in order to save  a few dollars on their Christmas purchases, is disdainful. And memes like this one appeared:

And a non-comical one:

Both images paint the Black Friday shoppers as greedy, mindless consumers. And yet, should we really be shaming all of those people who stood in lines at midnight, hoping to snag a good deal? In America’s current, desperate economic climate, can we really mock those individuals who plot, plan and scheme to save money during what is the most expensive time of year? Sure, scrambling for a Barbie doll when little children (and adults and teenagers) in Africa are starving feels unreal. But for the unemployed and underemployed worried about putting a present under the tree, waiting on line for a cheap Barbie doesn’t seem so greedy or mindless.

But still, I mean, first world problems, people, first world problems.

Or Just Read this Flow Chart

Cracked.com also did an amazing job of explaining the humor of memes with this elaborate flow chart. I suppose you could have just clicked on this link and skipped my entire post. Yeah, sorry about that.

*****

So, what are some of your favorite memes and why do they make you laugh? I think you know what mine is, at least for this week:

Works Cited

Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1911. http://www.authorama.com/laughter-1.html

Burgess, Jean. “‘ALL YOUR CHOCOLATE RAIN ARE BELONG TO US’?: Viral Video, YouTube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture.” Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. 101-109.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

The Precious

Throughout the long process of writing my book proposal, revising and cutting down a 400 + page dissertation to a 200 page book, compiling my own index (DON’T DO IT!), and checking my proofs, I would often post book-related status updates on Facebook. Therefore, when I posted the above image, most of my Facebook friends understood that this was the culmination of many years of hard work (seven years, if you count the years it took to write the dissertation). I received hearty congratulations and words of support. It felt wonderful, like being the Prom Queen. Or at least that’s how I imagine being the Prom Queen would feel.

"Thank you everyone, thank you! Hey, why is there a bucket..."

However, it is an odd thing publishing an academic book. On the one hand, my colleagues at East Carolina University, my graduate school professors and friends, and the other academics I have met along the way have a very clear idea about how difficult it is to obtain a book contract with a university press, how this will be a boon to my tenure case (fingers crossed), and finally, how specialized the audience is for a book like this. In other words, although my mother has purchased copies of this book for each of my aunts and uncles, I am fairly certain that my aunts and uncles are going to stop reading my book around page 2. That is, if they even crack it open at all.

My aunts and uncles will stop reading not because my book is difficult to understand or filled with field-specific jargon. Quite the contrary, I try to write as I speak: simply and directly (minus the occasional curse words). I think my relatives will not read my book because academic books are peculiar creatures. Generally, academic books are a dissection of a very specific idea or question in a very specific field of study. And unless you are somewhat interested in that idea/question, you probably won’t enjoy reading an academic book. It has nothing to do with the intelligence of the reader or the accessibility of the book — if you aren’t interested in the subject, academic books can be … monotonous.

If my wonderful editor over at the University of Texas Press is reading this post right now, I am betting smoke is coming out of his ears “Why are you discouraging people from buying your book?!?”  I guess my fear is that my dear friends and family, who only bought American Film Cycles because I wrote it (as opposed to an interest in the topic), will open it up and realize that they spent $55 on a pretty blue paperweight. Can you tell that I have a guilt complex?

In order to both combat this guilt and promote my book at the same time, I’ve decided to write a blog outlining the subject and purpose of American Film Cycles. Then, if you buy it and you’re bored it’s your fault, isn’t it? So below I offer some FAQs about my book (and by “Frequently Asked Questions” I mean, “the questions I just made up right now”):

FAQs about American Film Cycles

Why did you write this book?

The point of my book is to offer the first comprehensive discussion of the American film cycle.

What is a film cycle?

Currently, vampire films are a thriving cycle (also appearing on television and in book form)

Film cycles are a series of films associated with each other due to shared images, characters, plots, or themes. Film cycles usually form based on the success of a single, originary film. The images, characters, plots, or themes of that successful film are replicated over and over until the audience is no longer paying to see these films. Then the studio producing these films has to either alter the original formula or abandon it all together.

That sounds a lot like a film genre. Say, what are you trying to pull here, lady?

The torture porn cycle tapped into audience desires to work through our own fascination with and anxiety about the use of torture. Also, people are gross.

I know, they do sound a lot alike. But they’re different. Trust me. Film genres and film cycles generally form for the same reasons: a particular combination of image and theme resonates with a particular audience. However, cycles differ from genres when it comes to a few things, which I’ll briefly discuss below:

1. topicality:  A film cycle needs to repeat the same images and plots over and over within a relatively short period of time (most cycles only “live” for 5-10 years). A cycle must capitalize on the contemporary audience’s interest in a subject before it moves on to something else (for example, the torture porn cycle that was extremely popular just a few years ago). While individual films within a genre may be quite topical (see, for example, how the gangster genre has altered the ethnicity and race of its hero over the decades to fit America’s changing view on who or what is “the public enemy”), film cycles are defined by their topicality.

Remember when all of those white suburban kids started trying to pop and lock? You can blame this movie.

2. longevity: One major difference between film cycles and film genres is that genres can better withstand interludes of audience apathy, exhaustion, or annoyance. Westerns, to name one prominent example, enjoy periods of intense audience interest as well as more fallow periods when audience interest wanes. Why are they able to do this? Simply put,  film genres are founded on a large corpus of films that have been existence for decades at a time. The basic syntax or themes of the most established genres address a profound psychological problem affecting their audiences, such as the way gangster films address the legacy and impossibility of the American Dream. Film cycles generally address something far more topical and time-bound.

Climate change, nuclear holocaust, oil spills... WE WERE WARNED!

3. stability:  It’s best to quote the master of genre studies, Rick Altman, here:

“The Hollywood genres that have proven most durable are precisely those that have established the most coherent syntax (the Western, the musical); those that disappear the quickest depend on recurring semantic elements, never developing a stable syntax (reporter, catastrophe, and big-caper films to name a few” (39).

Cycles generally lack a stable syntax, or set of themes. They are too new and fleeting to remain stable. Therefore, while film genres are defined by the repetition of key images (their semantics) and themes (their syntax), film cycles are primarily defined by how they are used (their pragmatics).

Huh?

50s teenpics helped to define the contours of the teenage subculture.

In other words, what separates cycles from genres is their intensely intimate relationship with their audiences and how audiences use them. The metaphor I use in my book is this: “If the relationship between audiences and genre films can be described as a long-term commitment with a protracted history and a deep sense of familiarity, then the audiences’ relationship with the film cycle is analogous to ‘love at first sight’” (11).

Jeans = fast girl

For example, in the 1950s, just as teenagers were starting to view themselves as “teenagers,” film studios tapped into this market by releasing a slew of films that exploited  the newly emerging concepts of the teenager, juvenile delinquency, and rock n’ roll. But this relationship wasn’t one-sided. As much as studios exploited the teen subculture for profit, the teen subculture needed these films. Studios were integral to the definition and formation of this youth subculture, with their economic motivations acting as a catalyst, rather than a deterrent, for the growth of the subculture.

Why is your title so long?

I love short academic book titles.I think my all-time favorite title is by Richard Dyer: White: Essays on Race and Culture (the book itself is pretty damn amazing too). I wanted something similarly short and pithy for my book as well, because as we know, academic book titles and article titles can get out of control. However, after numerous back-and-forth e-mails with my infinitely patient editor, he convinced me that the more keywords that appear in my title, the easier it will be for interested readers to find my book. I think he’s right.

Okay, I understand. But so what?

In my book I argue that  cycle studies offers an important compliment to traditional genre studies by questioning how generic structures have been researched, defined, and understood. Cycle studies’ focus on cinema’s use value—the way that filmmakers, audiences, film reviewers, advertisements, and cultural discourses interact with and impact the film text—offers a more pragmatic, localized approach to genre history in particular and film history in general. Cycle studies argue that films are significant not so much because of what they are, but because of why they were made, why studios believed that they were a smart investment, why audiences went to see them, and why they eventually stopped being produced. Any film or film cycle, no matter its budget or subject matter, has the potential to reveal a wealth of information about the studio that made it and the audience who went to see it.  In my book I liken film cycles to fossils. Pressed on all sides by history/popular culture/audience desires/studio’s economic motivations/trends in fashion/trends in music/ etc. , film cycles serve as documents forever preserving a particular moment. In other words, if we examine film cycles (and film studies has, for the most part, entirely ignored this important production strategy), we can learn a lot about how audiences interact with films and how films interact with audiences.

Come on, let's talk about EPIC MOVIE, friends.

On a practical level, cycle studies can answer a question I am so often asked by students and friends “Ugh, why do they keep making movies about [insert annoying film cycle subject here]?” Well, friends, after seven long years of research, writing, and revision, I think I can answer that.

So there you have it, folks. If you have read all of this and are still interested in my (AMAZING! GROUNDBREAKING! LIFE CHANGING!) book, you can purchase it here or here (it’s cheaper through the press). Or, you can order one for your university’s library. Or you can order 10 copies, sew them together, and make yourself a nice book coat. It’s cold out there — knowledge is warm.

Works Cited

Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 27-41.

Klein, Amanda Ann. American Film Cycles:Reframing Genres, Screening Social Problems, & Defining Subcultures. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

Although I had heard about Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camps’s stop-motion video, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” over a year ago, it was only after the sequel, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Two,” premiered  on YouTube that I finally decided to watch it. Then I watched it again. Then I played it for my kids. Then I sent the video to friends. Then I began to quote it obsessively to myself. Of the two videos, the sequel is the superior text (due to it’s exploration of shell hardship), but both should be watched.

The Original:

Part Two:

The first thing that grabbed me about this video series is its format. Much like popular single-camera television comedies such as Arrested Development, The Office, Parks & Recreation, and Modern Family, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” is filmed as if Marcel is the subject of a documentary. Marcel addresses the camera directly, answering questions and pointing out items that appear in his home, such as a pet made out of lint.  And like the subjects of The Office and Parks & Recreation, Marcel’s world is profoundly mundane. Nevertheless, Marcel immediately ingratiates himself with the audience because 1. he is an adorable shell wearing tiny adorable shoes and a single googly-eye and 2. Marcel has a nasaly, childlike (or should I say shell-like?) voice, courtesy of Jenny Slate. The fragility of Marcel’s shell body and single eye, combined with Slate’s spot-on voice work, make Marcel into an ideal subject for the smallness of the new comedy verité” genre. Like Parks & Recreation‘s Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), Marcel is both aware of his inconsequentiality and yet, is still proud of who he is and how he lives his life. He is an eternal optimist.

Leslie Knope is the Marcel of the human world.

Most of the humor of the series is based on Marcel’s smallness and the way that smallness impacts his ability to function in a world built for large, resilient humans, not tiny shells. He often asks his off-screen interviewer questions that resemble the kind of jokes one five year old tells to another: “Guess what I use for a beanbag chair? A raisin” and “Guess what I do for adventure? I hang glide on a Dorito.” These jokes, silly as they are, paint a picture of Marcel’s tiny world. Furthermore, Marcel is usually filmed in such a way that we see the world from his small perspective. The camera films him at eye-level when he stands on a laptop or book and sits on the floor when Marcel scurries under the leg of chair to avoid his new puppy. This cinematography gives us a  sense of how large the world must look to a small shell like Marcel.

Small shell, big world

However, Marcel seems gleeful, not discouraged, by the limitations of his smallness. His size forces him to be inventive, to tinker with the objects he finds around him and put them to new uses. For example, my favorite bit in the entire series revolves around Marcel’s primary mode of transportation — a bug:

“If you do drive a bug you have to be pretty easy-going because you’re only going to get to go where the bug wants to go. One week there was a maple sugar syrup spill in the kitchen and every time I would ride the bug, no matter where I wanted to go, I would just end up back in the kitchen.”

This anecdote reminds me of a Shel Silverstein poem I read often as a child:

One Inch Tall

If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you’d walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You’d swing upon a spider’s thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You’d surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn’t hug your mama, you’d just have to hug her thumb.
You’d run from people’s feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write–
‘Cause I’m just one inch tall).

As I child I loved Shel Silverstein’s poetry because he managed to capture, in equal parts, the profound joy and the profound terror of being child. Silverstein understood that the child’s imagination is a gift and a burden. Imagination allows children to transport themselves to places that are exciting and wonderful and yet, because of the boundlessness of the imagination, these places can easily become scary. Sure, if you were one inch tall you could surf on a stick of chewing gum. But you would also find full-sized feet terrifying. As a child I always despaired over the line “You couldn’t hug your mama, you’d just have to hug her thumb.” One wonders if Marcel possesses the ability to hug: he has no arms and he’s a shell.

Marcel smiles cause it's worth it.

Marcel offers the same mixture of joy, terror, and sadness as any good Silverstein poem. For example, after the aforementioned bug anecdote, Marcel concludes “Really, what you just have to want to do is take a ride.” Here Marcel takes a situation that should be infuriating — a mode of locomotion that cannot be controlled — and makes it into something liberating. Riding a bug is about a willingness to have an adventure — not about reaching a predetermined destination. Likewise, Part Two concludes with the following exchange:

“Guess why I smile a lot?”

“Why?”

“Uh, ’cause it’s worth it.”

This statement would sound hokey in a different context (though I think Leslie Knope could also pull it off). But it is preceded by a shot of Marcel standing on a white countertop, looking offscreen towards a window, as chimes tinkle softly. He takes a deep breath and sighs, then turns to face the camera with this insight. Afterwards, he turns back to face the window, enjoying existence, mundane as it is.

Treats and snoozin, snoozin and treats

Of course, life for a small shell isn’t all fun and games — it is also plagued with hazards. In Part One Marcel explains how he longs for a dog. In Part Two he gets his wish, though clearly even a small dog is too much for Marcel. In one scene Marcel runs off camera, screaming, after the dog jumps us to bark at the door. And in Part Two, Marcel explains that he once had a sister named Marissa. “What happened to her?” the interviewer asks. “Someone asked her to hold a balloon.” Marcel doesn’t elaborate on what happened after his sister took the balloon. Instead the camera cuts to a new scene in which Marcel discusses his dog’s proclivities (“Look at him: treats and snoozin’, snoozin’ and treats. That’s it”). The subject of Marissa comes up again later in the video, thus making it clear that her loss was not trivial: “It was pretty hard at the time but now I just think ‘Ohhh, you know, she’s travelling.’” Marcel is still mourning the loss of his sister. But he also understands that life is filled with difficulties and tragedies, especially when one is a shell, so it’s best to focus on the small things that bring us happiness. Like wearing lentil hats and having friends over for salad.

Marcel makes salad with friends.

Life is hard for a shell. It’s easy to get carried away by a helium balloon, trampled by your own pet dog, or worst of all, ignored. But Marcel enjoys living his life — sleeping “eight to the muffin” in a fancy hotel and reading receipts for pleasure — despite it’s obvious complications. After I showed this video to my daughter this morning I asked her:

“Did you like it?”

“Yes”

“Was it funny?”

“Yes. But it was also sad.”

“Why was it sad?”

“It just was. But it was funny.”

I think this is why I am so captivated by “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” It’s difficult to make humor sad and sadness humorous. But Marcel walks that line perfectly. While wearing perfectly tiny pink shoes.

Their haircuts are cooler but our TV is bigger.

My husband and I have been together for over 11 years. And except for one year back in 2001, when we thought we’d “experiment” with not having cable (a terrible, failed experiment, by the way), we have also been watching television together for 10 years. Generally, if a couple is compatible with each other — sharing similar views on politics, childrearing, home decor, and food — then their tastes in television will also be compatible. Let’s call this our “TV relationship.” Our TV relationship has remained healthy and thriving for the last decade since we share key viewing preferences: we will watch any HBO “original series” at least once and will likely keep watching it, even after we determine that it is awful (John from Cincinatti, I’m talking to you); we will watch every single season of Survivor, ratings be damned; we will watch any series featuring characters who regularly get shot, beheaded, scalped, or mauled (but not eaten); we will watch any MTV reality show that makes us feel better about who we are and the life decisions we have made (i.e., every MTV reality show); we will not watch any comedies containing laugh tracks (bye bye, Whitney). I should also point out that TV watching takes place during a specific time-frame in my house: a. after the children are asleep and b. when all other work has been completed. So we generally watch TV between 9 pm and 11 pm. Likewise, there is just one DVR in our house, so if TV is being watched in my house, my husband and I are probably watching it together.

You should have seen what he did to the other guy. No really, he SCALPED the other guy.

A few years ago, there was a definitive rift in our TV relationship, precipitated by the premiere of a new “cycle” (not season, Tyra doesn’t like seasons) of America’s Next Top Model. My husband and I love gamedocs (Survivor, Top Chef, So You Think You Can Dance), and this one delivered the works: competition, delusional bulimics, and most importantly, Tyra Banks. “Top Model comes on tonight!” I called from the den. These sort of TV-based announcements are like foreplay in my house. In fact, my husband and I send each other links to reviews/publicity about new TV shows in the same way that other couples might send each other sexually suggestive e-mails. The subject line is “Oh baby” but the e-mail itself reads “We should watch this, right?” But when I announced the new cycle of America’s Next Top Model, my husband was not very excited:

Him: I think I’m done.

Me: What do you mean?

Him: I think I’m done watching America’s Next Top Model.

Me: [incredulous] You mean you’re just … not going to watch it anymore?

Him: You can watch it without me.

So I did watch America’s Next Top Model without him. Alone. But it just wasn’t the same. Every time Tyra told some ingenue to “smile with your eyes” (later becoming the portmanteau, ”smize”), there was no one on the couch next to me with whom I could commiserate over the stupidity of asking someone to smile with a part of the body that cannot smile. And every time a contestant explained “I’m not here to make friends!” there was  no one on the couch next to me with whom I could say “That’s the 10th time someone has said that this season!” I made it through that cycle of America’s Next Top Model, but it was to be my last. The show just wasn’t as much fun to watch without my husband around.

After that first blow to our TV relationship, it became easier for one of us to drop out of a show. When this happens, it is customary for desperate campaigning to ensue, with one partner attempting to convince the other that a terrible mistake has been made. The dropped show is the “BEST SHOW ON TV!” or the dropped show has finally “hit its stride!” “Don’t you want to come back and start watching it again?” For example, when I gave up on the 90210 reboot after just three episodes (I missed the original cast too much), my husband, an ardent fan of all teen melodrama, would make casual comments like “It’s a shame you stopped watching 90210 because this is the best season yet.” Or I’ll tell my husband, “There was a scene in Parenthood last week that was an exact replica of the conversation we’re having right now. Isn’t that funny?” And my husband, aware of what I’m doing, will reply, “Yeah, I’m not going to watch that show again.”

Deal breaker.

Of course there are certain shows that I watch, knowing full well  that my husband will never watch them with me (Project Runway) and there are shows my husband watches that he knows I will never ever watch with him (Walking Dead). There is no attempt to convince the other person of the merits of these programs. I will not watch a show containing zombies and my husband will not watch a show in which  people discuss asymmetrical hems and “taste levels.” These are “deal breakers.”

DEAL BREAKER.

Yes, differences in TV preferences are a part of any couple’s life. They cannot be avoided. But there are ways to keep your TV relationship as stable and functional as possible. This is important because, as the old saying goes, the family that gazes together, stay-zes together. To that end, here are some tips for promoting the longterm health of your TV relationship:

1. Don’t Box Him/Her Out

I enjoy HBO’s How to Make it in America. It’s not my favorite show, but I like it’s focus on fashion and hipsters, as well as it’s wicked awesome opening credit sequence, which is worthy of it’s own blog post. But my husband is lukewarm about the series; he only watches it because I do. Just after Season 2 premiered a few weeks ago my husband went out of town. 2 episodes of How to Make it in America sat on the DVR, beckoning, “Watch me, Amanda. Your husband doesn’t even like this show. He won’t care….” And so I did. The next week, I watched another episode without him, noticing that we had acquired 3 in our DVR queue (I hate an unwieldy DVR queue). When I encouraged my husband to catch up on the series, he was dismayed. “You’re boxing me out,” he whined. It was true. What motivation did he have for watching a series he only mildly liked on his own? Conclusion: if one partner is lukewarm on a series, make sure you watch it together. Otherwise, you will be watching it alone forever and always.

2. Give it a Chance

Blerg.

Sometimes when I get those not-sexy-unless-you-love-TV e-mails from my husband, in which he attempts to seduce me into watching a new series, I think “Ugh, this looks terrible.” I feel like the authority on these matters since it is I who has the PhD in visual media. What does the software programmer know? I’m the expert here! But there is something to be said for allowing your significant other to select some programming, even if you are sure that the show is going to be horrible. Case in point: my husband decided to put Whitney in our DVR queue (Whitney for crying out loud!!!). I was resistant, but ultimately agreed to watch the series premiere. The show was not nearly as awful as I thought it would be, but it had a laugh track, and that is a deal breaker. So even though I am no longer watching Whitney with my husband, I did try it. And that’s all you can expect in your TV relationship. Conclusion: take your partner’s preferences into account and give all new programs a chance.

3. Watch it Anyway

Foreplay.

Another key to harmony in your TV relationship is something you are probably already doing, and that is “compromise.” Longterm relationships are all about compromises. Especially when those relationships involve the watching of TV. Earlier in this post I mentioned that my husband and I always watch Survivor – in fact, my husband and I have watched every single season  of Survivor together, except for seasons 1 and 2 (which predate our moving into together in 2001). So in a way, Survivor is most representative of our TV relationship. But the thing is, I have lost some of my love for Survivor over the last few years. I still believe that it is the greatest game show of all time, but I started watching it at a time when reality TV was far more compelling than scripted television. But right now TV is just so good that I would prefer to spend the limited amount of time I have for TV viewing on something else. But I don’t.Why? Because Survivor is what my husband and I watch together. Some couples have a vacation spot or a restaurant or a song that symbolizes their relationship. My husband and I are united by Jeff Probst and “The tribe has spoken.” So I will continue to watch Survivor even though I’d rather be watching Parenthood, because only one of those shows includes my husband on the couch. And that makes TV viewing 65% more enjoyable (these are hard scientific numbers).

But now I’m curious about your own experiences with watching TV with your partner (current or former). For those of you in long term relationships, what hardships have you faced in your TV relationships? Are there shows your partner loves and that you despise? Do you have more than one DVR in your house?

I’m also curious about TV relationships between non-romantic couples. For instance, do you regularly watch TV with a roommate, sibling, or parent? If so, how do you keep that relationship stable?

Please share below…

]]> http://judgmentalobserver.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/love-and-television-aka-first-world-problems/feed/ 20 princesscowboy happy-couple-watching-tv richard-harrow 293.austin.projectrunway.100808 The-Walking-Dead-tv-series-4 Whitney SURVIVOR: MICRONESIA - FANS VS. FAVORITES http://judgmentalobserver.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-myth-of-the-ugly-duckling/ http://judgmentalobserver.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-myth-of-the-ugly-duckling/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:07:00 +0000 princesscowboy http://judgmentalobserver.wordpress.com/?p=1980 ]]>

She's so a-dork-able!

Last year I wrote a blog post detailing my biggest television pet peeves because TV shows are filled with conventions that are used and reused until they drive their audiences nuts. Repetition is part of popular culture.  There’s even an entire website devoted to annoying, overused TV tropes. Sure, we must accept the easy shorthand of the TV trope if we are going to watch TV, but ever since I started seeing ads for Zooey Deschanel’s new comedy, New Girl , I’ve been thinking a lot about one particular trope that I’ve always hated. It goes by many names, but for the purposes of this post, let’s call it “the myth of the ugly duckling.” You all read “The Ugly Duckling” when you were a kid, right? First published in 1843 (thanks Wikipedia!), Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story is about an unattractive baby duck who is abused by all who meet him until finally, one glorious day, he realizes that he is actually a beautiful swan! Here’s how Andersen’s story concludes:

He had been persecuted and despised for his ugliness, and now he heard them say he was the most beautiful of all the birds. Even the elder-tree bent down its bows into the water before him, and the sun shone warm and bright. Then he rustled his feathers, curved his slender neck, and cried joyfully, from the depths of his heart, “I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.”

 The lessons in this classic tale are clear: If people bully you based on something you cannot control, such as the fact that you are “ugly,” don’t worry. Eventually, you will be accepted by a group of much better looking people. These people will embrace you and love you based on something else you cannot control, the fact that you are now “beautiful” and look just like them. Good for you, little duck!

Obviously, this message of “beauty as transcendence” is problematic and highly damaging to the psyches of young children and insecure adults alike. But that’s not why I dislike the myth of the ugly duckling. I dislike it, and its many iterations in popular culture, because the ugly duckling is not “ugly.” I mean, have you seen a baby duck (or a baby swan) before? Let me refresh your memory:

Hag!

You weirdos need a makeover.

Kitten: "You dorks are both getting wedgies." Ducks: "Noooooooo!!!!"

Cygnet (aka, baby swan). For Kara.

And that’s pretty much the problem I have with the myth of the ugly duckling when it is translated into a film or TV show. It’s simply untrue. Don’t tell me someone is ugly when they are so clearly NOT ugly. My first exposure to this myth, as applied to women, occurred when I was about 6-years-old and watching my favorite channel, MTV:

Thank goodness “Goody Two Shoes” was in heavy rotation in 1982; it communicates so many important lessons about beauty, sexuality, and male-female relationships. The most important lesson Mr. Ant taught me is that women who wear suits, buns, and glasses are highly unattractive. Even when they are so clearly hot. This was upsetting to me because at the time I wore a large pair of glasses, quite similar to the pair worn by the woman featured in the video, and I often wore my hair pulled back. Also, I did not drink or smoke. “Shit,” my 6-year-old self noted, “I’m ugly!”

I wore the same glasses.

But not to worry. According to this video, it is easy to capture the attention of the wily Adam Ant. All you need to do is shake your bun out and remove those giant glases. Viola! Ant Ant is totally going to screw your brains out in that hotel room while his horny butler watches through the keyhole. I should also note this video’s plot, about an uptight looking woman who appears to be interviewing Adam Ant, and then decides to let her hair down (literally) and make sweet love to the rockstar, has very little to do with the song’s lyrics. The lyrics themselves (you can read them here), seem to be a critique of image and stardom and of the very transformation the woman makes. But my 6-year-old self was not listening to the lyrics. I was watching the video. And taking copious mental notes.

Rawr.

Fast forward a few years to one of my all-time favorite films, The Breakfast Club (1985, John Hughes). I did not see this film in the theater, but by the time I was in junior high it seemed to be playing on TBS every single Saturday afternoon. Like most kids of my generation, everything I thought I knew about being a teenager came from this film (or some other John Hughes film). Some of the film’s many lessons include: bad boys are sexy, girls who don’t like to make out are prudes, Claire is a “fat girl’s name,” detention is wicked awesome, and, most importantly, if you want cute boys like Emilio Estevez to think you are pretty, stop being so weird and interesting and let the popular girl give you a make over. Ally Sheedy, I am talking to you.

The Ugly Duckling...

...is really a Swan!

Even as an insecure preteen I noted with dismay that the pre-makeover Allison was actually very, very pretty. After all, she’s played by Ally Sheedy! Ally Sheedy is a fox!  Her “make over” doesn’t alter her appearance in any kind of radical way, much as the removal of a bun and glasses doesn’t change much about the goody two shoes in the Adam Ant video. Both of these women were beautiful from the start and the only people who insisted on their physical unattractiveness were the creators of these texts. In other words, almost every ugly duckling I have encountered, dating all the way back to Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, have never truly been “ugly.” Their ugliness is an artifice I have been asked to believe so that the beautiful, swanlike transformation that inevitably follows can happen. Time and again, beautiful women are cast in the role of the “awkward,” “drab,” “dorky,” or “ugly” girl. And all it takes to make them “ugly” is a pair of glasses, a disinterest in fashion, or a quirky hobby.

At this point you might be thinking: so what? Who cares if film and TV audiences are repeatedly asked to view highly attractive women as “ugly”? I guess my problem with all of this is that in these films and television shows I am told, over and over, that certain key signifiers make attractive women into unattractive or undesirable women. These signifiers include but are not limited to:

Being a tomboy and an awesome drummer:

Some Kind of Wonderful's Mary Stuart Masterson

Being poor:

Pretty in Pink's Molly Ringwald

Being Aaron Spelling’s daughter:

Saved by the Bell's Tori Spelling

Wanting to be an artist:

She's All That's Rachel Leigh Cook

Having musical talent that far outstrips that of your peers:

Glee's Lea Michele

Being smart and wearing glasses:

One Day's Anne Hathaway

In every case, the decision to be studious or artistic or slightly different from everyone else transforms a woman who would normally have more suitors than an alley cat in heat into a lonely spinster. So the message is: ugly women are screwed. And pretty women who value something other than being pretty are screwed. And if you are ugly and you like to read? Well, start collecting cats and Hummel figurines now because you have a lonely life ahead of you, spinster.

DORK.

And that is why I could not bring myself to watch the premiere of New Girl. I just could not stand the way that Zooey Deschanel’s character, Jess, was repeatedly described as being “dorky” and “awkward” in press releases and in early reviews. I don’t care how big her glasses are or how often she bursts into song at inopportune times. Zooey Deschanel is not a “dork.” She’s hot. Can a woman who is that beautiful really and truly be a “dork”?Now I’m not saying that hot chicks don’t get dumped, as Deschanel’s character does in the show’s premiere. And I’m not saying that hot chicks don’t find themselves feeling awkward or acting the fool. I am sure they do. But it’s hard to buy a woman like Zooey Deschanel as a true awkward dork.  You know who plays good dorks? Kristen Wiig. Someone else? Charlyne Yi. I believe her.

Yi gives good dork.

Just not another hot chick in glasses.

It’s time for film and TV to get a new trope. Make a character a social outcast because she’s a bully or because she’s too judgmental. Not because she wears glasses or reads books or carries a big purse. After all, you need a big purse to carry all those books. And you need glasses to read those books. Just sayin.

Will Arnett and Christina Applegate in UP ALL NIGHT

This might come as a shock to those of you who regularly read this blog, but … I love TV. And although the “fall television season” is not what it used to be now that so many television series premiere in the winter and even the summer, there are still plenty of new shows to be excited about. That’s why I volunteered to write some short reviews of two particularly exciting series premieres, The CW’s Ringer and NBC’s Up All Night, over at Antenna.

"Look, I'm standing in front of a mirror! Because I'm a twin! Twins love mirrors!"

My short reviews of Ringer  (click here) and Up All Night (click here) are live now. If you are simply too lazy to read these 300 word reviews (and I can appreciate that kind of laziness), I will summarize for you: Ringer is a Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle about twins, mirrors, and identity theft (meh) and Up All Night is a surprising funny comedy about how babies ruin your otherwise super-awesome life (check it out!). There are no vampires in either program. Yep, that bummed me out too.