Arwen Spicer's Blog: Diary of a Readerly Writer (and Writerly Reader), page 7
April 4, 2013
Review: Rousseau: A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) is the first of Rousseau’s essays I've read. (I took a decent swing at his novel, La Nouvelle Heloïse.) It’s remarkable to how thoroughly outdated and yet still current the essay is. For context, Rousseau was about thirty years older than Thomas Jefferson. This particular essay was written when Jefferson was about eleven. Jefferson never knew a social world that wasn’t steeped in the ideas of Rousseau and his intellectual milieu. So if I felt at points like I was reading the same ideology I’ve read (and by and large believe in) in The Declaration of Independence, that’s not surprising.
Many of Rousseau’s basic ideas are truisms of democratic society today: that society is based on a social contract designed (theoretically) to benefit all its signatories, who agree to certain limitations and responsibilities in exchange for advantages of social organization; that if this social organization does not benefit its members, they have no reason to continue to adhere to it; that the divine right of rulers has no basis in reality; that significant inequality is a social construction and natural inequality (in talents, strength, etc.) comparatively inconsequential.
More surprising to me--though I suppose on some level I’ve known this--is how foundational Rousseau is to sociobiology/evolutionary psychology. I don’t mean that he was a major direct influence on E. O. Wilson. But at a greater remove, his influence is pervasive, and he is one of the founders--if not the founder--of the practice of explaining human society in terms of how humans best function in “nature” as a species of animal. Indeed, so vast does Rousseau loom over these ideas that it’s probably fair to call him, in Foucauldian terms, the “originator of the discourse”: if not the first voice, the first whose voice really matters in establishing the sociobiological conversation that’s ongoing today.
As for what he had to say about “savage man” in a state of “nature,” some of it reads to me as loopy and some as fairly plausible. It all reads in that venerable 18th-century fashion of creating great speculative systems without scientific rigor: it was an age of “natural philosophy” when philosophical flights went hand in hand with observations of the natural environment and a hypothesis needed only a well-written essay to become an established theory.
In any case, much of his speculation is loopy. The idea that a species resembling humans could consist of individuals wandering around alone without any social interactions beyond sex, rearing of very young children, and the occasional fight or random act of “pity” shows no awareness of the either the pervasiveness of social structure among many animals (prides, pods, packs, flocks, troops, etc.) or the biological predisposition of humans to be in groups, as for example, lacking much strength to fight off predators alone. The idea that humans in “nature” would not form special bonds with certain individuals also shows a lack of observation of the extent to which other mammals in do. Dogs and cats have their favorite companions; deer often travel around in the same group of two or three does. (I won’t mention species like bonobos Rousseau had some excuse not to be aware of.)
It’s difficult to know what to say about Rousseau’s stance toward women. The words “raving misogynist” come to mind, but that’s not really fair. In the main, he does not so much demean women as erase them. On occasion he says something denigrating, like the female sex was made to follow, but that’s rare. Mostly, he just talks about men, for when he notes that the savage man wanted nothing but food, a female, and shelter, well, he’s not talking about women. At a few points, women are trotted out as passive sex objects or active agents as mothers, but this gets little page space.
Since women are not strongly present, they are not strongly differentiated from men and, therefore, in a “mankind” sort of way, do get tacitly grouped with men as (more or less) subjects of the same sociobiological conditions who respond in the much the same way. Indeed, at one point Rousseau states this explicitly. On one level, this is very egalitarian for his time. When we consider that in his age, many people still believed that Eve had literally been seduced by Satan and, thus, that women were inherently more evil than men and root of all worldly trouble, Rousseau looks very egalitarian indeed. Less than a century away from mass execution of witches, yes, he’s looking quite egalitarian.
On another level, this erasure demonstrates how socially skewed a “science” can become by assumptions that a certain group simply isn’t worth studying. Let’s take again the idea that men and women functioned pretty much the same way in a “state of nature”: this ignores the fact that the women would have been pregnant or nursing small children most of the time, which, obviously, has no effect on how you forage for food, how much food you need, how effectively you can flee danger, etc. Apparently, to Rousseau, being pregnant is pretty much the same as not being pregnant, and caring for a small child is pretty much the same as not caring for a small child.
This glaring omission in reasoning has ramifications beyond just women. It invalidates the entire premise that mankind in nature mostly wandered around alone. Because if you spend a large portion of your adult life pregnant (including a risky birth process) and caring for small children and wandering around alone with no companions for help or mutual protection, it will very likely kill you and/or your children--and, thus, the human species. Yes, women do matter to human social evolution. Actually, they matter a lot. Rousseau’s inability to grasp this obvious fact is a good example of situated knowledge as suspect knowledge.
On which subject, it’s also hard to know what to say about Rousseau’s attitude toward the “savages” of his own day, or as we would say, “primary peoples.” Not being one, I’m much less qualified to have an opinion than I am on the subject of women, but here goes. As with women, I would say his attitude is both pernicious and (for his time) genuinely progressive. Yes, he commits many cardinal sins of “noble savagery,” as if would later be called. He vastly oversimplifies the social structures of peoples he knew next to nothing about and had no right to evaluate. One particularly egregious example of this is the assumption that “savage” languages are very simple, which I can only assume he knew because he was fluent in Tahitian, yes? Now, I am not familiar any primary culture’s language, but from what I’ve read, such languages are often among the most complicated. Indeed, language becomes simplified as social units get larger and more peoples (and languages) mix, taking on simplified characteristics as people from different language backgrounds learn to use them. Thus, Old English lost most of its declension when it mixed with Norse, which didn’t use the same kind of declension, etc.
All that said, the bare fact that Rousseau posits that primary cultures may, in many respects, be happier and better functioning than more “civilized” cultures in the 1750s is pretty amazing. This was an age when a more dominant view considered Native Americans to be brutal savages in need of killing. Thomas Jefferson was pretty progressive in putting forward that they merely needed to be completely assimilated as good Euro-Americans and put aside their primitive ways. A century after Rousseau, Charles Darwin was going on about how some races were less highly evolved and naturally more animalistic than others. But Rousseau explicitly discusses all human beings as alike in their basic potential, intelligence, etc. And his basic view that a lifestyle closer to a state of “nature” makes for generally more contented people continues to have merit.
Now, I have to ask myself if I’m making that contention more because I see good evidence for it or because I come from a cultural context massively indoctrinated by Rousseau. No doubt it’s some of both. But the modern sociobiologist in me sees some sense here: humans evolved to fit certain lifestyles for hundreds of thousands of years. It makes sense, to a degree, that the closer we live to those lifestyles, optimizing the use of our natural instincts and proclivities, the better we’ll function. For example, human nature generally leads us to care about people we see in pain: if we live in a smallish community where we routinely encounter people we know, we’ll want to help them out when they’re in trouble. But human nature did not evolve under conditions that required us to worry about the fates of millions we’ll never see. Therefore, we don’t do it very well. We know intellectually that millions starving is terrible, but we usually don’t feel much gut-level impetus to intercede. I think it can justly be said, therefore, that we behave more morally--or, as Rousseau would say, with more “pity”--in a small-scale social unit the like of which we evolved in. While Rousseau’s ideas about the particulars of human nature are sometimes absurd, this basic idea makes a great deal of sense.
All in all, Rousseau was discussing an area of anthropology (as we’d say today) that required more scientific rigor than his era equipped him to give it. Many of the flaws in his thinking are glaring today. Some of his flaws may still be eclipsed by the fact that much of his discourse is still dominant in Western society and his suppositions often taken for granted. Yet still, I cannot help but see a great deal of validity in many of his ideas, and indeed, it may be that many deserve their dominant place in our discourse.
Many of Rousseau’s basic ideas are truisms of democratic society today: that society is based on a social contract designed (theoretically) to benefit all its signatories, who agree to certain limitations and responsibilities in exchange for advantages of social organization; that if this social organization does not benefit its members, they have no reason to continue to adhere to it; that the divine right of rulers has no basis in reality; that significant inequality is a social construction and natural inequality (in talents, strength, etc.) comparatively inconsequential.
More surprising to me--though I suppose on some level I’ve known this--is how foundational Rousseau is to sociobiology/evolutionary psychology. I don’t mean that he was a major direct influence on E. O. Wilson. But at a greater remove, his influence is pervasive, and he is one of the founders--if not the founder--of the practice of explaining human society in terms of how humans best function in “nature” as a species of animal. Indeed, so vast does Rousseau loom over these ideas that it’s probably fair to call him, in Foucauldian terms, the “originator of the discourse”: if not the first voice, the first whose voice really matters in establishing the sociobiological conversation that’s ongoing today.
As for what he had to say about “savage man” in a state of “nature,” some of it reads to me as loopy and some as fairly plausible. It all reads in that venerable 18th-century fashion of creating great speculative systems without scientific rigor: it was an age of “natural philosophy” when philosophical flights went hand in hand with observations of the natural environment and a hypothesis needed only a well-written essay to become an established theory.
In any case, much of his speculation is loopy. The idea that a species resembling humans could consist of individuals wandering around alone without any social interactions beyond sex, rearing of very young children, and the occasional fight or random act of “pity” shows no awareness of the either the pervasiveness of social structure among many animals (prides, pods, packs, flocks, troops, etc.) or the biological predisposition of humans to be in groups, as for example, lacking much strength to fight off predators alone. The idea that humans in “nature” would not form special bonds with certain individuals also shows a lack of observation of the extent to which other mammals in do. Dogs and cats have their favorite companions; deer often travel around in the same group of two or three does. (I won’t mention species like bonobos Rousseau had some excuse not to be aware of.)
It’s difficult to know what to say about Rousseau’s stance toward women. The words “raving misogynist” come to mind, but that’s not really fair. In the main, he does not so much demean women as erase them. On occasion he says something denigrating, like the female sex was made to follow, but that’s rare. Mostly, he just talks about men, for when he notes that the savage man wanted nothing but food, a female, and shelter, well, he’s not talking about women. At a few points, women are trotted out as passive sex objects or active agents as mothers, but this gets little page space.
Since women are not strongly present, they are not strongly differentiated from men and, therefore, in a “mankind” sort of way, do get tacitly grouped with men as (more or less) subjects of the same sociobiological conditions who respond in the much the same way. Indeed, at one point Rousseau states this explicitly. On one level, this is very egalitarian for his time. When we consider that in his age, many people still believed that Eve had literally been seduced by Satan and, thus, that women were inherently more evil than men and root of all worldly trouble, Rousseau looks very egalitarian indeed. Less than a century away from mass execution of witches, yes, he’s looking quite egalitarian.
On another level, this erasure demonstrates how socially skewed a “science” can become by assumptions that a certain group simply isn’t worth studying. Let’s take again the idea that men and women functioned pretty much the same way in a “state of nature”: this ignores the fact that the women would have been pregnant or nursing small children most of the time, which, obviously, has no effect on how you forage for food, how much food you need, how effectively you can flee danger, etc. Apparently, to Rousseau, being pregnant is pretty much the same as not being pregnant, and caring for a small child is pretty much the same as not caring for a small child.
This glaring omission in reasoning has ramifications beyond just women. It invalidates the entire premise that mankind in nature mostly wandered around alone. Because if you spend a large portion of your adult life pregnant (including a risky birth process) and caring for small children and wandering around alone with no companions for help or mutual protection, it will very likely kill you and/or your children--and, thus, the human species. Yes, women do matter to human social evolution. Actually, they matter a lot. Rousseau’s inability to grasp this obvious fact is a good example of situated knowledge as suspect knowledge.
On which subject, it’s also hard to know what to say about Rousseau’s attitude toward the “savages” of his own day, or as we would say, “primary peoples.” Not being one, I’m much less qualified to have an opinion than I am on the subject of women, but here goes. As with women, I would say his attitude is both pernicious and (for his time) genuinely progressive. Yes, he commits many cardinal sins of “noble savagery,” as if would later be called. He vastly oversimplifies the social structures of peoples he knew next to nothing about and had no right to evaluate. One particularly egregious example of this is the assumption that “savage” languages are very simple, which I can only assume he knew because he was fluent in Tahitian, yes? Now, I am not familiar any primary culture’s language, but from what I’ve read, such languages are often among the most complicated. Indeed, language becomes simplified as social units get larger and more peoples (and languages) mix, taking on simplified characteristics as people from different language backgrounds learn to use them. Thus, Old English lost most of its declension when it mixed with Norse, which didn’t use the same kind of declension, etc.
All that said, the bare fact that Rousseau posits that primary cultures may, in many respects, be happier and better functioning than more “civilized” cultures in the 1750s is pretty amazing. This was an age when a more dominant view considered Native Americans to be brutal savages in need of killing. Thomas Jefferson was pretty progressive in putting forward that they merely needed to be completely assimilated as good Euro-Americans and put aside their primitive ways. A century after Rousseau, Charles Darwin was going on about how some races were less highly evolved and naturally more animalistic than others. But Rousseau explicitly discusses all human beings as alike in their basic potential, intelligence, etc. And his basic view that a lifestyle closer to a state of “nature” makes for generally more contented people continues to have merit.
Now, I have to ask myself if I’m making that contention more because I see good evidence for it or because I come from a cultural context massively indoctrinated by Rousseau. No doubt it’s some of both. But the modern sociobiologist in me sees some sense here: humans evolved to fit certain lifestyles for hundreds of thousands of years. It makes sense, to a degree, that the closer we live to those lifestyles, optimizing the use of our natural instincts and proclivities, the better we’ll function. For example, human nature generally leads us to care about people we see in pain: if we live in a smallish community where we routinely encounter people we know, we’ll want to help them out when they’re in trouble. But human nature did not evolve under conditions that required us to worry about the fates of millions we’ll never see. Therefore, we don’t do it very well. We know intellectually that millions starving is terrible, but we usually don’t feel much gut-level impetus to intercede. I think it can justly be said, therefore, that we behave more morally--or, as Rousseau would say, with more “pity”--in a small-scale social unit the like of which we evolved in. While Rousseau’s ideas about the particulars of human nature are sometimes absurd, this basic idea makes a great deal of sense.
All in all, Rousseau was discussing an area of anthropology (as we’d say today) that required more scientific rigor than his era equipped him to give it. Many of the flaws in his thinking are glaring today. Some of his flaws may still be eclipsed by the fact that much of his discourse is still dominant in Western society and his suppositions often taken for granted. Yet still, I cannot help but see a great deal of validity in many of his ideas, and indeed, it may be that many deserve their dominant place in our discourse.
March 25, 2013
Book Review: The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs is a good story poorly executed. Set in England c. 1700, the story revolves around the fortunes of a young man, Gwynplaine, who was surgically disfigured in infancy so that he appears always to be hideously laughing. Abandoned as a child by the Comprachicos (child-buyers) who mutilated him, Gwynplaine is wandering through the snow when he finds a baby in the arms of her dead mother. He rescues the baby, and the two of them are ultimately taken in by a kindly if verbose mountebank, Ursus, and his tame wolf, Homo. The baby, Dea, blind as a result of nearly freezing to death, grows up to love Gwynplaine and he her, and all goes reasonably well for this band of traveling performers until a long-buried secret transforms Gwynplaine’s fortunes in unexpected ways.
As we expect from Hugo, the novel is replete with biting social commentary. In this case, the focus is the nobility’s blindness to the misery it causes the poor, with particular reference to the whimsical injustice of late-17th century British law.
The idea of the story is excellent. The conceit of the man who must grin irrespective of his true feelings is not only engagingly grisly and pathetic on a literal level but is also a fine metaphor for the disconnection between the reality of social injustice and the semblance of beneficent order the aristocracy pretends to. The four performers make a quirky and memorable family. The sexual tension between Gwynplaine and the thrill-seeking duchess, Josiana, who, at one point, tries to seduce him, is plausible and compelling in a dysfunctional way. The way Gwynplaine’s laughing face sabotages his attempts to promote social reform through inspired rhetorical address is plausible, moving, and powerfully symbolic.
Despite these strengths, however, most of this long book suffers from poor craftsmanship. Of course, allowances must be made for the conventions of the 19th-century novel. So let’s take it as read that the heroine (Dea) is going to be helpless and almost completely devoid of personality. Let’s anticipate that the story will take two or three times as many pages to narrate as the same story would in the 20th century. Let’s forgive grand generalizations about Man, Woman, Gypsy, the Nature of Love, etc. and apostrophes of the “Oh, such angelic innocence!” variety. Let’s prepare for lots of exposition “telling” us about characters and situations at the expense of scenes that would actually “show” these things.
These allowances having been made, the book is still poorly crafted. Here’s an example: near the end of the saga, Gwynplaine makes an impassioned speech to the House of Lords in which he observes that he has seen the suffering of the common people of which they know nothing. This could be a moment of powerful payoff if we had seen him see it. But we haven’t. Yes, he stumbled through the snow fifteen years before as a child and saw a hanged man and was hungry and near death, and it was well written too. But since then, Hugo has done almost nothing but emphasize how happy Gwynplaine’s social circle is, how successful they are in making a decent living as mountebanks. We haven’t seen Gwynplaine suffer from poverty or show any significant awareness of others’ suffering either (he says a sympathetic word or two once in a great while), and thus, his words before the Peers ring hollow.
Likewise, after several chapters advertising that Gwynplaine and Josiana will momentously cross paths at some point, their actual meeting is short and anticlimactic: she attempts to seduce him but then goes off him when she receives a letter stating that Queen Anne wants her to marry him (he is only interesting when forbidden). This basic irony is all well and good, but it’s delivered so briefly after such voluminous foreshadowing that I, for one, feel jipped.
And even in a 19th-century novel, it’s hard to care about a love story in which the two principals, Gwynplaine and Dea, never have a single real conversation. Though we get several expository reiterations of how lucky it is that Dea is blind because she won’t judge Gwynplaine by his appearance and how conflicted Gwynplaine is between idolizing Dea yet loving her sexually, the sum total of their actual discourse is a handful of very short, very stereotyped conversations with no content: pretty literally “sweet nothings.”
Overall, the book indulges in exposition to the detriment of story. Anyone who’s read Les Misérables knows that Hugo inserts massive essays on everything under the sun into his novels. But in Les Misérables--and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for that matter--these essays exist alongside the actual story, which is complete with conversations, actions, descriptions: characters doing things. In The Man Who Laughs, however, actual scenes of storytelling are significantly outstripped by long, repetitive discourses on privileges of the British aristocracy, different types of ships, the Nature of Woman, and so on. One wants to read the story, but there isn’t much story to read.
I also have one criticism of content rather than execution. This novel expresses a level of misogyny I didn’t think Victor Hugo was capable of. Yes, it’s a 19th-century novel, and allowances must be made. But his reduction of women to petty and helpless symbols of different facets of sexuality is persistent and unrelieved. He repeatedly categorizes women as virgin, mother, or seductress: Dea is virgin and potential mother, Josiana seductress. Dea is also an unwitting seductress--apparently all women are, for Hugo tells us, Eve seduced Satan. Now, he clearly didn’t mean this literally, but even a piece of metaphorical hyperbole, it is a statement unworthy of a social reformer, yes, even in the 19th century, as it does nothing but reinforce the age-old practice of blaming women for the existence of evil (and by extension, for men’s negative actions, particularly towards women).
And finally, if Dea is meant to be our paragon of female virtue, how should we read the implication that if she had not been blind she would not have been able to love Gwynplaine? Ursus is not blind, and he loves Gwynplaine, a fact which is apparently so unremarkable it’s scarcely even commented upon. Does this mean that the most virtuous woman imaginable is shallower than a rough, rather cynical man is simply assumed to be by default?
These criticisms notwithstanding, the story does have some strong moments: Gwynplaine’s initial abandonment and trek through the snow; the foundering of the ship that abandons him, in which Hugo pulls off the rare feat of profoundly interesting me in the fates of a bunch of random characters with no personalities; and Gwynplaine’s diatribe before the House of Lords are all powerful sections. If the whole book had been written to that caliber, it would have been a classic at least as renown as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. As it is, it is a powerful idea in a poorly designed package.
Worth reading (or skimming) if you have patience and are a fan of Victor Hugo.
Worth seeing is the 1928 silent movie adaptation of the novel, impressive for its time and remembered today for creating the visual character concept that inspired the Joker in Batman.
As we expect from Hugo, the novel is replete with biting social commentary. In this case, the focus is the nobility’s blindness to the misery it causes the poor, with particular reference to the whimsical injustice of late-17th century British law.
The idea of the story is excellent. The conceit of the man who must grin irrespective of his true feelings is not only engagingly grisly and pathetic on a literal level but is also a fine metaphor for the disconnection between the reality of social injustice and the semblance of beneficent order the aristocracy pretends to. The four performers make a quirky and memorable family. The sexual tension between Gwynplaine and the thrill-seeking duchess, Josiana, who, at one point, tries to seduce him, is plausible and compelling in a dysfunctional way. The way Gwynplaine’s laughing face sabotages his attempts to promote social reform through inspired rhetorical address is plausible, moving, and powerfully symbolic.
Despite these strengths, however, most of this long book suffers from poor craftsmanship. Of course, allowances must be made for the conventions of the 19th-century novel. So let’s take it as read that the heroine (Dea) is going to be helpless and almost completely devoid of personality. Let’s anticipate that the story will take two or three times as many pages to narrate as the same story would in the 20th century. Let’s forgive grand generalizations about Man, Woman, Gypsy, the Nature of Love, etc. and apostrophes of the “Oh, such angelic innocence!” variety. Let’s prepare for lots of exposition “telling” us about characters and situations at the expense of scenes that would actually “show” these things.
These allowances having been made, the book is still poorly crafted. Here’s an example: near the end of the saga, Gwynplaine makes an impassioned speech to the House of Lords in which he observes that he has seen the suffering of the common people of which they know nothing. This could be a moment of powerful payoff if we had seen him see it. But we haven’t. Yes, he stumbled through the snow fifteen years before as a child and saw a hanged man and was hungry and near death, and it was well written too. But since then, Hugo has done almost nothing but emphasize how happy Gwynplaine’s social circle is, how successful they are in making a decent living as mountebanks. We haven’t seen Gwynplaine suffer from poverty or show any significant awareness of others’ suffering either (he says a sympathetic word or two once in a great while), and thus, his words before the Peers ring hollow.
Likewise, after several chapters advertising that Gwynplaine and Josiana will momentously cross paths at some point, their actual meeting is short and anticlimactic: she attempts to seduce him but then goes off him when she receives a letter stating that Queen Anne wants her to marry him (he is only interesting when forbidden). This basic irony is all well and good, but it’s delivered so briefly after such voluminous foreshadowing that I, for one, feel jipped.
And even in a 19th-century novel, it’s hard to care about a love story in which the two principals, Gwynplaine and Dea, never have a single real conversation. Though we get several expository reiterations of how lucky it is that Dea is blind because she won’t judge Gwynplaine by his appearance and how conflicted Gwynplaine is between idolizing Dea yet loving her sexually, the sum total of their actual discourse is a handful of very short, very stereotyped conversations with no content: pretty literally “sweet nothings.”
Overall, the book indulges in exposition to the detriment of story. Anyone who’s read Les Misérables knows that Hugo inserts massive essays on everything under the sun into his novels. But in Les Misérables--and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for that matter--these essays exist alongside the actual story, which is complete with conversations, actions, descriptions: characters doing things. In The Man Who Laughs, however, actual scenes of storytelling are significantly outstripped by long, repetitive discourses on privileges of the British aristocracy, different types of ships, the Nature of Woman, and so on. One wants to read the story, but there isn’t much story to read.
I also have one criticism of content rather than execution. This novel expresses a level of misogyny I didn’t think Victor Hugo was capable of. Yes, it’s a 19th-century novel, and allowances must be made. But his reduction of women to petty and helpless symbols of different facets of sexuality is persistent and unrelieved. He repeatedly categorizes women as virgin, mother, or seductress: Dea is virgin and potential mother, Josiana seductress. Dea is also an unwitting seductress--apparently all women are, for Hugo tells us, Eve seduced Satan. Now, he clearly didn’t mean this literally, but even a piece of metaphorical hyperbole, it is a statement unworthy of a social reformer, yes, even in the 19th century, as it does nothing but reinforce the age-old practice of blaming women for the existence of evil (and by extension, for men’s negative actions, particularly towards women).
And finally, if Dea is meant to be our paragon of female virtue, how should we read the implication that if she had not been blind she would not have been able to love Gwynplaine? Ursus is not blind, and he loves Gwynplaine, a fact which is apparently so unremarkable it’s scarcely even commented upon. Does this mean that the most virtuous woman imaginable is shallower than a rough, rather cynical man is simply assumed to be by default?
These criticisms notwithstanding, the story does have some strong moments: Gwynplaine’s initial abandonment and trek through the snow; the foundering of the ship that abandons him, in which Hugo pulls off the rare feat of profoundly interesting me in the fates of a bunch of random characters with no personalities; and Gwynplaine’s diatribe before the House of Lords are all powerful sections. If the whole book had been written to that caliber, it would have been a classic at least as renown as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. As it is, it is a powerful idea in a poorly designed package.
Worth reading (or skimming) if you have patience and are a fan of Victor Hugo.
Worth seeing is the 1928 silent movie adaptation of the novel, impressive for its time and remembered today for creating the visual character concept that inspired the Joker in Batman.
March 8, 2013
Anime Review: Please Save My Earth
Last month I likened the anime, Ano Hana, to 1993’s Please Save My Earth. This month, I thought I owed PSME an entry of its own. Adapted from an intricate manga by Saki Hiwatari, the anime recounts the experiences of six teenagers and a younger child united by dreams of past lives as alien scientists studying the Earth from an outpost on the moon. The anime is only six episodes long and ends in medias res, but in this case, I hardly find that a drawback. The story, by its nature, is tangled and complex, and the open-ended finish of the anime fits the narrative’s resistance to pat conclusions.
Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project.
Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project.
February 25, 2013
Keeping a Good List
I have lately discovered the relief of keeping lists to help manage modern life. Now, lots of folks keep lists in lots of ways, but I’ll share some techniques that are working for me. Maybe some of them will work for you too.
Make lists manageable, not daunting.
* Intend to complete every item, every day. If you can’t complete them all, the list is too long. Pare it down.
* Don’t skip ahead. If you complete everything early, you have free time!
* Don’t list fun stuff. If you list it, it becomes work. You can enjoy your work, certainly. But let the recreational stuff remain spontaneous and optional.
* List ongoing activities by reasonable time segments. For example, “writing novel, 30 minutes.”
* Similarly, break complicated tasks into sub-tasks. For example, I need to design an online writing course. For a single day, my task might be “copy old quizzes from previous course management system” or “redesign essay 2.” By doing a little bit day by day, I can complete the larger task in a timely fashion without feeling overwhelmed.
Have a balanced list of items to reflect a balanced life.
* Include 1-2 time-consuming items, and do count the day job.
* Include 1-2 items that take you out of the house, running errands, walking, etc. (Of course, you might set aside one day to go into town and run 5-6 errands, but in general, aim to get out at least a little each day.)
* Include 3-5 quick items: emails you’ve been putting off, information to look up. These things should not take more than 5 minutes each, and it feels so good to cross them off.
* Include 1-2 items that involve physical work: dishes, laundry, taking out the trash, etc.: fit in some active time.
* Include at most 1 onerous task, something you know you really won’t enjoy. For one day, my onerous task was buying cell phone minutes. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? You don’t have my provider: it took an hour and a very unpleasant call to customer service. I was so glad it was the only icky task of the day!
Be flexible!
If I may butcher George Orwell, break any of these rules sooner than follow a list that doesn’t work for you. Life happens: if you need to, switch items around, give yourself sick day: a list is a tool there to help not to dictate.
Make lists manageable, not daunting.
* Intend to complete every item, every day. If you can’t complete them all, the list is too long. Pare it down.
* Don’t skip ahead. If you complete everything early, you have free time!
* Don’t list fun stuff. If you list it, it becomes work. You can enjoy your work, certainly. But let the recreational stuff remain spontaneous and optional.
* List ongoing activities by reasonable time segments. For example, “writing novel, 30 minutes.”
* Similarly, break complicated tasks into sub-tasks. For example, I need to design an online writing course. For a single day, my task might be “copy old quizzes from previous course management system” or “redesign essay 2.” By doing a little bit day by day, I can complete the larger task in a timely fashion without feeling overwhelmed.
Have a balanced list of items to reflect a balanced life.
* Include 1-2 time-consuming items, and do count the day job.
* Include 1-2 items that take you out of the house, running errands, walking, etc. (Of course, you might set aside one day to go into town and run 5-6 errands, but in general, aim to get out at least a little each day.)
* Include 3-5 quick items: emails you’ve been putting off, information to look up. These things should not take more than 5 minutes each, and it feels so good to cross them off.
* Include 1-2 items that involve physical work: dishes, laundry, taking out the trash, etc.: fit in some active time.
* Include at most 1 onerous task, something you know you really won’t enjoy. For one day, my onerous task was buying cell phone minutes. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? You don’t have my provider: it took an hour and a very unpleasant call to customer service. I was so glad it was the only icky task of the day!
Be flexible!
If I may butcher George Orwell, break any of these rules sooner than follow a list that doesn’t work for you. Life happens: if you need to, switch items around, give yourself sick day: a list is a tool there to help not to dictate.
February 14, 2013
Perdita got picked by FreeBooksy
I'm told this is "no small feat" as they hand-pick which books to select, so I'll take them up on their offer to post this little banner. :)
January 28, 2013
A Pet Peeve: The [Blank's] Wife
Returning to my Goodreads home page, I saw an ad pop up for The Aviator's Wife. Now, I haven't read this book; it may be excellent. I don't intend to say anything against it as a work of literature, but I'm tired of this titling convention.
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Zookeeper's Wife
The Aviator's Wife
I know I've seen others. I guess the idea is that the women behind the traditional male protagonists are important, that being a wife is important, that wives are real people worthy of being their own protagonists. Fair enough.
The trouble is that the titling convention itself undermines this assertion. By saying you are Blank's Wife, I am linguistically saying that you are defined by Blank, that your identity is as an appendage of him. Such a title, if intended to be empowering to women, deconstructs its own empowering aims.
Now, this trope is not new. It was used by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway in 1925: yes, 1925, as in almost a hundred years ago. The purpose then was to demonstrate the tension between the full human being Clarissa and the reduction/definition of her as "Mrs. Dalloway." And Woolf did this very well; it's been done.
It's the 21st century. We really can do better than resurrect the idea that wives need to be defined first and foremost as wives. I don't care if it's meant to be ironic. Let's make a virtue of defining female protagonists as themselves instead--even in historical novels--yes, women were themselves in the olden days too. Consider Romola: she was a wife in way that defined much of her life, but Eliot did not feel a need to call the novel The Immature Dick's Wife. Can we please just move on?
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Zookeeper's Wife
The Aviator's Wife
I know I've seen others. I guess the idea is that the women behind the traditional male protagonists are important, that being a wife is important, that wives are real people worthy of being their own protagonists. Fair enough.
The trouble is that the titling convention itself undermines this assertion. By saying you are Blank's Wife, I am linguistically saying that you are defined by Blank, that your identity is as an appendage of him. Such a title, if intended to be empowering to women, deconstructs its own empowering aims.
Now, this trope is not new. It was used by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway in 1925: yes, 1925, as in almost a hundred years ago. The purpose then was to demonstrate the tension between the full human being Clarissa and the reduction/definition of her as "Mrs. Dalloway." And Woolf did this very well; it's been done.
It's the 21st century. We really can do better than resurrect the idea that wives need to be defined first and foremost as wives. I don't care if it's meant to be ironic. Let's make a virtue of defining female protagonists as themselves instead--even in historical novels--yes, women were themselves in the olden days too. Consider Romola: she was a wife in way that defined much of her life, but Eliot did not feel a need to call the novel The Immature Dick's Wife. Can we please just move on?
The Curse of Chalion Review
The Curse of Chalion (2001) by Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time, though the first half is stronger than the second. The novel closely follows its single point-of-view character, the minor lord and battered veteran, Cazaril, as he navigates a cutthroat world of court politics, with some magical assistance. Returning from war and imprisonment as a galley slave, Cazaril wants nothing more than a modest sinecure where he can live out his life in obscurity. But this is not to be, as he soon finds himself employed as a tutor for the Royesse (Princess) Iselle, who stands only a couple of relations away from inheriting the kingdom. When Iselle is summoned to court, Cazaril finds himself enmeshed in court intrigue made more malign by a curse that taints Iselle’s royal family. He must use all his wits and courage to help steer Iselle and the kingdom to safety.
Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project, where I am proud to blog betimes.
Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project, where I am proud to blog betimes.
January 21, 2013
Review: The Fire Next Time
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, this seems a good time to review James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963). I recently read this book after having somehow missed Baldwin all my life and found his discussion of race relations in America brilliant. It should be standard reading in all American high schools. The book comprises two essays: a short letter to Baldwin's nephew giving advice on how to weather life as a young African American man and a long discourse on race relations with extensive personal examples. Along the way, he addresses his own conflicted youth, the Holocaust, the Cold War, school integration, and the Nation of Islam movement of Elijah Muhammad, among other social and historical moments.
I feel ill qualified to comment on the book but will venture a few observations. Baldwin was ahead of his time and--at least as far as mainstream discourse of the white hegemony goes--is still ahead of ours. His discussion of the blindness of white privilege (though he doesn't use this term) feels right out of contemporary racial discourse.
But Baldwin's challenge runs deeper than exposing power relations and demanding they be acknowledged. He is correct that the dominant discourse on race in the US (he is mainly concerned with African Americans and whites) frames the problem as the need to elevate black people to the status of white people. If black people become as socially mobile, wealthy, professionalized, well represented in various fields, etc. as white people, goes the argument, then the task of integration will have been accomplished. As far as I can tell, this is still the dominant discourse fifty years after Baldwin's book.
Baldwin rejects this entire formulation. This is not to say that African Americans wresting greater economic power in the US is not important. But it is not, Baldwin argues, the soul of the problem: to truly address racism, the whole identity of America must change. This includes instilling and enhancing a sense of worth and purpose in black people, but it demands a greater change in whites. Not only must whites learn to see that their own identity is shaped the presence--by the oppression--of blacks. They must be willing to let go of their privileged status--economically, socially, and psychologically--and learn from blacks. It is through black experience, Baldwin argues, that the true nature of America becomes evident, including the hypocrisy of its stated values, the impoverishment of its spiritual life (not just religious life but the deeper needs of the human--especially white--consciousness).
If I'm recapitulating this awkwardly and perhaps inaccurately, one may well attribute it to my own white privilege. Often in reading Baldwin's book, I saw myself in the white assumptions he exposes, and while I could see him expose them, there is a gulf between sensing a truth expressed and knowing the truth in one's own heart. I am blind to many of the truths about my own white identity and the importance of African American presence and history to its construction. I am only beginning to see. But The Fire Next Time is a consummate, rhetorically beautiful call to stop turning one's eyes away. I should read it again.
I feel ill qualified to comment on the book but will venture a few observations. Baldwin was ahead of his time and--at least as far as mainstream discourse of the white hegemony goes--is still ahead of ours. His discussion of the blindness of white privilege (though he doesn't use this term) feels right out of contemporary racial discourse.
But Baldwin's challenge runs deeper than exposing power relations and demanding they be acknowledged. He is correct that the dominant discourse on race in the US (he is mainly concerned with African Americans and whites) frames the problem as the need to elevate black people to the status of white people. If black people become as socially mobile, wealthy, professionalized, well represented in various fields, etc. as white people, goes the argument, then the task of integration will have been accomplished. As far as I can tell, this is still the dominant discourse fifty years after Baldwin's book.
Baldwin rejects this entire formulation. This is not to say that African Americans wresting greater economic power in the US is not important. But it is not, Baldwin argues, the soul of the problem: to truly address racism, the whole identity of America must change. This includes instilling and enhancing a sense of worth and purpose in black people, but it demands a greater change in whites. Not only must whites learn to see that their own identity is shaped the presence--by the oppression--of blacks. They must be willing to let go of their privileged status--economically, socially, and psychologically--and learn from blacks. It is through black experience, Baldwin argues, that the true nature of America becomes evident, including the hypocrisy of its stated values, the impoverishment of its spiritual life (not just religious life but the deeper needs of the human--especially white--consciousness).
If I'm recapitulating this awkwardly and perhaps inaccurately, one may well attribute it to my own white privilege. Often in reading Baldwin's book, I saw myself in the white assumptions he exposes, and while I could see him expose them, there is a gulf between sensing a truth expressed and knowing the truth in one's own heart. I am blind to many of the truths about my own white identity and the importance of African American presence and history to its construction. I am only beginning to see. But The Fire Next Time is a consummate, rhetorically beautiful call to stop turning one's eyes away. I should read it again.
January 17, 2013
Obligatory Hobbit Movie Reaction Post
I liked the Hobbit movie a lot more than I expected to, which, I suspect, has everything to do with not having read (or fully reread) the book since I was a kid and having little investment in canonicity. I also went in expecting the film to feel bloated and self-indulgent, so I was psychologically set up to be pleasantly surprised. All in all, the almost three hours went by very fast, and I look forward to seeing it again and to seeing the next film.
Below, a good/bad review and some personal reflections. Light spoilers.
The Good
* The acting and casting overall. Some highlights...
Martin Freeman: Perfect as Bilbo. An excellent casting choice and an excellent actor. He didn’t put a furry foot wrong ever.
Ian McKellen as usual.
Ian Holm and Elijah Wood -- not too much to do but good reprises of their characters and a nice bridge between films.
Hugo Weaving! He was too old to play Elrond circa 2000, and as far as I can tell, they air-brushed him for this, which was necessary, but damn... I was never fond of his Elrond in LotR. I found him too dour and disapproving and too limited in emotional range. He undid all that here, striking a really nice balance between impressive and authoritative, but also personable and, well, deep--not in the sense of philosophically deep but in the sense of having deep roots in a long life, of being at ease with himself.
Dwarves: they were all good and nicely differentiated. And nice accents.
* Pacing. I was pretty sure the film would feel padded to Michelin Man proportions, but it didn’t. While Bilbo got a little lost as protagonist, the interweaving of the Hobbit plot with preamble on the War of the Ring was quite well done. It all felt relevant, and it trekked along at a good clip.
* Radagast. He’s been a pet favorite of mine since I was a kid, truly one of the unsung heroes. And while this Radagast bears little superficial resemblance to the Radagast in my fanon, it was lovely to see him, and his essence came through so well: a believable mix of bumbling, eccentric hedgehog hermit and very wise and powerful wizard.
* The Goblin King: hilarious in a very Hobbit-appropriate way, and on a more serious note, a nice contrast to the more severe Mordor-style Orcs. This gives a welcome sense of cultural variation and, in the context of the whole series, creates good rising tension toward a more grim showdown with Sauron.
* The Ring: as in Fellowship, convincingly powerful and scary, even without Bilbo realizing it.
* Production values: high as always--sets, scenery, etc. Much prettiness.
* The music: nice across the board and good song inclusions.
The Bad
* Too many fight scenes. This can be broken down into three problems: 1) Too. 2) Many. 3) Fight Scenes.
1) (Too much.) They were over the top and suffered from the classic Hollywoodish problem of making fighting so fantastically unrealistic that it ceases to have any emotional impact. I really don’t buy that a bunch of beleaguered Dwarves, however well trained in the martial arts, can batter their way through endless Orcs and Goblins for what seems like hours and show no fatigue and virtually no injury. And that makes me not suspend my disbelief and not care.
2) (Too many.) If the pacing suffered anywhere, it was here. It got repetitious and boring.
3) (Fight scenes.) As a friend observed, this is not what The Hobbit is about, and whether or not one cares about being true to the book, that’s a legitimate point. Drama, heroism, adventure, danger, sacrifice--these things can all exist in the absence of sword swinging, and most often do, and that less-sung heroism is what The Hobbit foregrounds, what it is designed to teach its child audience to value, a heroism not dependent on violence. This was particularly undercut in making Bilbo charge to Thorin’s defense with Orc-slaying kickassery. That’s not Bilbo and not the point. Of course, fighting happens, but a lot of more quirky and interesting stuff, like outsmarting Trolls, got overpowered by the CGI Orc hoards. Speaking of which...
* CGI. I’m tired of it. It’s not just The Hobbit, and it’s not Peter Jackson’s fault the whole industry is like this, but it looks fake. And here’s the ironic bit: Ralph Bakshi’s Orcs are scarier than Peter Jackson’s. Because they look real. Because they are a bunch of actors in SCA costumes being shot in silhouette, jerking around restlessly and irritably against a suitable soundtrack of snarling and muttering. I wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night: Check it out. I can’t imagine meeting Jackson’s Orcs because they don’t look real.
* Galadriel. I’m glad she was there. The film needs a woman (also glad Bilbo’s mum got a mention). And I do appreciate that playing an incredibly wise and powerful 10,000-year-old woman who looks young and gorgeous is a tall order when a) no actor can be as amazing as she’s supposed to be and b) “young and gorgeous woman,” in our society, defaults to not old, wise, and powerful. But there has to be a better way than standing stock still and speaking at one-half normal speed with almost no inflection or facial expression. That doesn’t look badass; it just looks like trying too hard. Now, this mostly worked in Fellowship because when the Fellowship meets Galadriel, she’s acting as the Lady of Lothlorien and trying to wow them. But there’s no reason for her to put that act on indefatigably while chatting alone with Gandalf or in a private meeting with a couple of wizards she known for millennia and her son-in-law. It undercut her presence, and that’s a shame because I want her to be awesome.
* Thorin’s Orcish arch-enemy. Dull and unnecessary.
The Mixed
* Gollum. I have the same feelings here as I did in LotR. For one thing, I wish he weren’t CGI; I want him to feel like a person. I do appreciate the effort to make him sympathetic, to emphasize his Hobbitish characteristics and drive home that he wasn’t born evil but is just a person the Ring destroyed. But Gollum is terrifying, too, precisely because he is just a person the Ring destroyed. Metaphorically, he could be any of us. And he needs, at certain points, to be terrifying, not just badly behaved or unpleasant to be around in a big, baby blue-eyed, Donald Duckish way. These movies use him too often for comic relief. Yes, sometimes he says and does funny things, but he is not a comic character, and I want him to have more weight. For instance, his final screaming about hating Baggins forever is scarier in the Rankin-Bass cartoon than in this film. I mean, in the Rankin-Bass cartoon.... It was scarier because the acting/direction was more extreme and underwritten by a freaky echo, and it sounded like a curse hurtling down through the ages, whereas here it sounds like a manic weirdo is ranting a bit, and it’s not enough.
* Thorin as Aragorn. I liked the handsome, heroic Thorin overall. I understand the cinematic desire for a handsome, noble action hero. His acting was good. But it does seem a bit repetitious. And I wonder why it just can’t be enough to have a quirky, traditionally Dwarvish Thorin. What’s the message really? That Bilbo’s heroism isn’t heroic enough? That understated guys from the Shire risking their lives for their friends can’t be sexy? I’m not sure I’m happy with the underlying assumptions. (Again, this is a broad social complaint more than a complaint about this movie, which is doing what it supposedly has to to earn back it’s massive budget.)
Personal
I cried--not because the movie was especially a tear-jerker but because The Hobbit is one of the oldest stories in my constellation. It was a major part of my mental landscape when I was three, which is about as far back as my conscious memories go. And while I’ve since largely detached from it and become closer to LotR, they are all entangled, and watching the story retold is a little like watching a lot of family members on screen, reliving their lives... not least because, in my head, several of my fanonical OCs or canon characters from the Middle-earth were, in fact, watching several of their family members being reenacted on screen. These are big emotions. And the Ring is always heavy.
(Reposted from my Dreamwidth blog.)
Below, a good/bad review and some personal reflections. Light spoilers.
The Good
* The acting and casting overall. Some highlights...
Martin Freeman: Perfect as Bilbo. An excellent casting choice and an excellent actor. He didn’t put a furry foot wrong ever.
Ian McKellen as usual.
Ian Holm and Elijah Wood -- not too much to do but good reprises of their characters and a nice bridge between films.
Hugo Weaving! He was too old to play Elrond circa 2000, and as far as I can tell, they air-brushed him for this, which was necessary, but damn... I was never fond of his Elrond in LotR. I found him too dour and disapproving and too limited in emotional range. He undid all that here, striking a really nice balance between impressive and authoritative, but also personable and, well, deep--not in the sense of philosophically deep but in the sense of having deep roots in a long life, of being at ease with himself.
Dwarves: they were all good and nicely differentiated. And nice accents.
* Pacing. I was pretty sure the film would feel padded to Michelin Man proportions, but it didn’t. While Bilbo got a little lost as protagonist, the interweaving of the Hobbit plot with preamble on the War of the Ring was quite well done. It all felt relevant, and it trekked along at a good clip.
* Radagast. He’s been a pet favorite of mine since I was a kid, truly one of the unsung heroes. And while this Radagast bears little superficial resemblance to the Radagast in my fanon, it was lovely to see him, and his essence came through so well: a believable mix of bumbling, eccentric hedgehog hermit and very wise and powerful wizard.
* The Goblin King: hilarious in a very Hobbit-appropriate way, and on a more serious note, a nice contrast to the more severe Mordor-style Orcs. This gives a welcome sense of cultural variation and, in the context of the whole series, creates good rising tension toward a more grim showdown with Sauron.
* The Ring: as in Fellowship, convincingly powerful and scary, even without Bilbo realizing it.
* Production values: high as always--sets, scenery, etc. Much prettiness.
* The music: nice across the board and good song inclusions.
The Bad
* Too many fight scenes. This can be broken down into three problems: 1) Too. 2) Many. 3) Fight Scenes.
1) (Too much.) They were over the top and suffered from the classic Hollywoodish problem of making fighting so fantastically unrealistic that it ceases to have any emotional impact. I really don’t buy that a bunch of beleaguered Dwarves, however well trained in the martial arts, can batter their way through endless Orcs and Goblins for what seems like hours and show no fatigue and virtually no injury. And that makes me not suspend my disbelief and not care.
2) (Too many.) If the pacing suffered anywhere, it was here. It got repetitious and boring.
3) (Fight scenes.) As a friend observed, this is not what The Hobbit is about, and whether or not one cares about being true to the book, that’s a legitimate point. Drama, heroism, adventure, danger, sacrifice--these things can all exist in the absence of sword swinging, and most often do, and that less-sung heroism is what The Hobbit foregrounds, what it is designed to teach its child audience to value, a heroism not dependent on violence. This was particularly undercut in making Bilbo charge to Thorin’s defense with Orc-slaying kickassery. That’s not Bilbo and not the point. Of course, fighting happens, but a lot of more quirky and interesting stuff, like outsmarting Trolls, got overpowered by the CGI Orc hoards. Speaking of which...
* CGI. I’m tired of it. It’s not just The Hobbit, and it’s not Peter Jackson’s fault the whole industry is like this, but it looks fake. And here’s the ironic bit: Ralph Bakshi’s Orcs are scarier than Peter Jackson’s. Because they look real. Because they are a bunch of actors in SCA costumes being shot in silhouette, jerking around restlessly and irritably against a suitable soundtrack of snarling and muttering. I wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night: Check it out. I can’t imagine meeting Jackson’s Orcs because they don’t look real.
* Galadriel. I’m glad she was there. The film needs a woman (also glad Bilbo’s mum got a mention). And I do appreciate that playing an incredibly wise and powerful 10,000-year-old woman who looks young and gorgeous is a tall order when a) no actor can be as amazing as she’s supposed to be and b) “young and gorgeous woman,” in our society, defaults to not old, wise, and powerful. But there has to be a better way than standing stock still and speaking at one-half normal speed with almost no inflection or facial expression. That doesn’t look badass; it just looks like trying too hard. Now, this mostly worked in Fellowship because when the Fellowship meets Galadriel, she’s acting as the Lady of Lothlorien and trying to wow them. But there’s no reason for her to put that act on indefatigably while chatting alone with Gandalf or in a private meeting with a couple of wizards she known for millennia and her son-in-law. It undercut her presence, and that’s a shame because I want her to be awesome.
* Thorin’s Orcish arch-enemy. Dull and unnecessary.
The Mixed
* Gollum. I have the same feelings here as I did in LotR. For one thing, I wish he weren’t CGI; I want him to feel like a person. I do appreciate the effort to make him sympathetic, to emphasize his Hobbitish characteristics and drive home that he wasn’t born evil but is just a person the Ring destroyed. But Gollum is terrifying, too, precisely because he is just a person the Ring destroyed. Metaphorically, he could be any of us. And he needs, at certain points, to be terrifying, not just badly behaved or unpleasant to be around in a big, baby blue-eyed, Donald Duckish way. These movies use him too often for comic relief. Yes, sometimes he says and does funny things, but he is not a comic character, and I want him to have more weight. For instance, his final screaming about hating Baggins forever is scarier in the Rankin-Bass cartoon than in this film. I mean, in the Rankin-Bass cartoon.... It was scarier because the acting/direction was more extreme and underwritten by a freaky echo, and it sounded like a curse hurtling down through the ages, whereas here it sounds like a manic weirdo is ranting a bit, and it’s not enough.
* Thorin as Aragorn. I liked the handsome, heroic Thorin overall. I understand the cinematic desire for a handsome, noble action hero. His acting was good. But it does seem a bit repetitious. And I wonder why it just can’t be enough to have a quirky, traditionally Dwarvish Thorin. What’s the message really? That Bilbo’s heroism isn’t heroic enough? That understated guys from the Shire risking their lives for their friends can’t be sexy? I’m not sure I’m happy with the underlying assumptions. (Again, this is a broad social complaint more than a complaint about this movie, which is doing what it supposedly has to to earn back it’s massive budget.)
Personal
I cried--not because the movie was especially a tear-jerker but because The Hobbit is one of the oldest stories in my constellation. It was a major part of my mental landscape when I was three, which is about as far back as my conscious memories go. And while I’ve since largely detached from it and become closer to LotR, they are all entangled, and watching the story retold is a little like watching a lot of family members on screen, reliving their lives... not least because, in my head, several of my fanonical OCs or canon characters from the Middle-earth were, in fact, watching several of their family members being reenacted on screen. These are big emotions. And the Ring is always heavy.
(Reposted from my Dreamwidth blog.)
Diary of a Readerly Writer (and Writerly Reader)
Truth is I prefer my dear old blogging home since 2009 on Dreamwidth:
https://labingi.dreamwidth.org/
It contains thoughts on fandom, reviews and meta, and general thoughts. Dreamwidth members I grant a ...more
https://labingi.dreamwidth.org/
It contains thoughts on fandom, reviews and meta, and general thoughts. Dreamwidth members I grant a ...more
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