The Questions

I am lucky to live in a neighborhood with a rich diversity of inhabitants. As I was walking to the train the other morning, I heard a woman answer her phone in English, then immediately switch into a Chinese dialect. With the street traffic and the blowing wind, she had to raise her voice and it was clear that the person on the other end of the line had a hard time hearing her. What occured to me then is this: Is there a spoken language that lends itself more than the others to phone communication? At first, this seems like a silly question, but after some inspection it's pretty intriguing. It's true that the nuances of particular languages are mostly vocal, whereas others rely on physical signals (facial or whole-body) to illustrate the finer details of whatever is being spoken. Others have clear and distinct consonant sounds and crisp endings to the speech patterns. Some languages are simply more terse. Wouldn't it make sense that there is an optimal language to use when speaking on the phone?

We had a conversation the other day about the state of the world and knowledge, and an old chestnut was dug up: "Why is it that every time I talk to a person from (insert foreign country here - the most popular variant of this anecdote usually uses the more vague "European") they know so much about my country, and I'm embarrassed to say that I can't even tell them what kind of government they have." When it's flung into a conversation, most people nod their head in a display of earnest concern and then tell a similar anecdote, and as a result the whole conversation has been derailed and we all feel smug about how stupid our country is, and that we are so much smarter (than everyone) for having realized that. Does realizing our deficiencies count as knowledge? Isn't this missing a very important step - the step of fixing those deficiencies?

Is this even true? Now I realize how dangerous it is to ask this quesion - "oh, most assuredly, people in other countries know more about us than we about them," people will say. But is that information important? If its important for us to know who the leaders in Tanzania are, why don't we just pick up a book and learn? I guess the thing that irks me most about this is that there seems to be some idea that there is a failure of society - american leadership, education, and media, that leads us to our global deficiencies. Not only a failure, but a near conspiracy to keep that information out of our hands. This explanation just seems lazy to me, and absolves us of the responsibility to go out and learn these things on our own. There is no reason, in the age of the internet, why we can't exhaustively learn about the intricacies of other governments.

The truth is, Americans are very good at learning everything they need to know. We live lives almost completely isolated from the outside world, and as a result we are well educated in the things that impact our daily lives. This is an incredibly wide spectrum of knowledge that just happens to exclude the workings of (and location of!) foreign countries. The rest of the world is no different. They know exactly what they need to know, and often times this includes the ins and outs of other influential countries.... I am not an apologist here. It's sad that we aren't able to know where on this planet our neighbors come from, but from a practical standpoint it makes sense. It is another matter altogether, of course, if our leaders and those who influence policy don't know. And, I suppose, if you vote.... Ha. It's a precipitous slope. I suppose then, that in order to vote you should be able to pass a simple knowledge test about the subject matter.
This isn't going anywhere, I know, so I'll kill it now.

On Disappointment

The tempering of disappointment is a big part of considering art. Anymore, it is nearly impossible to approach a film, album or book without having some exposure to it beforehand, and usually this exposure comes in the form of a critical assessment. Blogs have forced this evolution, with many focusing on deconstructing work before it has been officially released, further complicating the issue by removing parts from context and then lauding or damning the whole based on a very limited view. I suppose this fits our current attentions, but it has to be remembered that this prejudiced intake, especially second-hand via our internetted compatriots, will never be able to give us an approximation of how we will really react. Our mood, hunger, or companions will of course color our appreciation, and though a critic's job is to objectively view things for her/his readers and present the art as though it were on a neutral canvas, the reader often forgets this. The result is disappointment. It's never as funny, as touching, as insightful as we had hoped. Never as beautiful or as fulfilling. The interesting thing about all of this is that we go through this exact same process for things that we've already experienced. Films from our past, favorite television shows and books. When we revisit them it is hard to hold them in the same esteem. Certainly the best of these get better, but by and large we end up disappointing ourselves. Is our memory as prone to hyperbole as the blogger fanboys? How does our cynical maturation affect other areas of appreciation? Am I missing out on experiencing good and beautiful things because I am just tired of being disappointed?

Recently, I revisited an old favorite, a book from my childhood called "The Magic Pudding." It was written by the Australian Norman Lindsay, and first published in 1918. I, of course, didn't get it until the early 80's, where it would was read to me at bedtime with dramatic enhancement by my dad. It is pure silliness, about a koala that goes out into the world and discovers a sailor and a penguin who have ownership over a magical replenishing (and ornery) pudding, and the adventures they have in keeping it out of the hands of pudding thieves. The songs, the strange characters and the amazing illustrations have stayed with me since, and rereading it now I am certain that it has had a major influence on my sense of humor and general aesthetic, even though it has been at least 20 years since I've had any meaningful exposure to the text. Today, I am happy to report to you that this one is one of the rare things that didn't disappoint. It's appeal is immediately apparent. Though I couldn't have appreciated all of the jokes and innuendo as a child, the book is written in a tone that does not condescend. All manner of things, both serious and ridiculous, are presented with a matter-of-fact simplicity that seems designed to disarm cynics. It is brilliant, and I will simply say that this is a true classic of the genre. By any measure, either of neutral criticism or in biased memory, the work succeeds in creating happy satisfaction. When was the last time you could say that about anything?

If you follow the link above you will be able to read the first few pages as part of Project Gutenberg, albeit without the illustrations. It is still in print, however, and reissued as part of The New York Review Children's Collection. I'll leave you with a representative passage, from page 32 or thereabouts:

...Bill insisted on closely inspecting everybody he met, in case they should be puddin'-thieves in disguise.

To start off with, they had an unpleasant scene with a Kookaburra, a low larrikin who resented the way that Bill examined him.

"Who are you starin' at, Poodle's Whiskers?" he asked.

"Never mind," said Bill. "I'm starin' at you for a good an' sufficient reason."

"Are yer?" said the Kookaburra. "Well, all I can say is that if yer don't take yer dial outer the road I'll bloomin' well take an' bounce a gibber off yer crust," and he followed them for quite a long way, singing out insulting things such as, "You with the wire whiskers," and "Get onter the bloke with the face fringe."

Bill, of course, treated this conduct with silent contempt. It was his rule through life, he said, never to fight people with beaks.

See? Brilliant.

Once more, with sadness

I saw 3:10 to Yuma on Sunday, and liked it quite a bit. I knew the background - it's remake of a 1957 Delmer Daves film with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin - and both are based on an Elmore Leonard short story. I also know the genre - I grew up in Montana, and where there was a television, odds were good that a Western was playing. At first, I wasn't partial to that world: at playtime, I was by default The Indian and was usually required to die some ridiculous death at the hand of - well everyone else. It was tiresome and simplistic, and for many years I wrote the genre off. After I moved from Montana, however, nostaglia took over and I began to reassess this uniquely American art form. I'll admit, movies like Tombstone, Last of the Mohicans, and even Legends of the Fall helped drum up the romance a bit. Sweeping vistas, tragic heroes, and iconic capability all made me, by proxy, proud of my "cowboy and indian" roots. In turn, I revisited the classics - High Noon, Shane, The Searchers - and found in them the morality I grew to admire about my home and upbringing. Take responsibility for yourself. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Sure, it sounds silly and facile here, as I "blog" about it, but when Gary Cooper is facing his death with nary a whimper, respect has to be paid. It's impossible to deny the appeal of that kind of conviction. And that's what I always took away from the best of the westerns. The stoic conviction with which the hero either kills or marches toward death. He takes the hard road. He doesn't cry about it.

And that's what was so surprising about this latest Yuma. After the film had ended, and I had some time to digest it, I couldn't shake this feeling that the overall tone of the film was not violence and machismo, as the posters and trailers would have you believe, but sadness. It's what propels the film, and elevates it above the cartoonish violence of most everything else out there with a similar body count. All the best westerns are sad at the core, and I was pleasantly surprised to see respect paid to the genre without being cliched or derivative.

It's not a "clean" film. The ending will anger many, I'm sure. The morality is wrapped up in pride and vengeance, and there is no reward for good behaviour here. Yet despite this - because of this - I loved this movie. As a film, it was one of the most satisfying dramas I've seen this year. As a western - well, as a western I am a bit hobbled. I can only judge westerns on that original, skewed scale of mine: Do they make me proud to be a Montanan? This one does, and as I sit here typing on my laptop I can't help but think that trading this computer and apartment for a horse and some scrub-land to homestead may be just what I need to get back on track. I've always thought that. Only let that homestead have broadband.

The Inevitable

Coming up with blog name is not unlike choosing a band name: it's gotta be provocative without being too literal, concise without being limiting. The problem is, as with naming a band, that once you "try" it becomes pretty apparent that the effort behind it is not equal to the payoff. Disappointment is inevitable. For those familiar with the film I've namechecked, you are probably familiar with how much of a letdown things can be. Too many words. Not enough action. Sometimes, though, there isn't any other way; let the disappointed be.

And so we press on....