Narrative Cavity

Chicken Soup, Canned

2009-01-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

Canadian columnist Heather Mallick is one of my favourite editorialists but I'd lost track of her for a while. I spent four years pouring obsessively over two of the pulpy dailies, and then I took an extended leave. I am sorry, Heather.

She wrote this article a few days ago, which I read today and wanted to link to as an extension to my previous posts where I mention my "deflowered" capacity for sentimentality (here), and my pot shots at Oprah (there). Oprah has recently found herself yet again unwittingly promoting a memoir that turns out to have been significantly fictionalized. One of those great "true love conquers all" stories. Mallick writes:

[Winfrey] has made the managerial mistake of hiring people too much like herself, people so relentlessly high on self-belief and inspiration that skepticism must hide its face in shame at story meetings.

This is why she so often falls for the lure, indeed the syrupy narcotic allure, of sentiment. It's human, it's understandable and, to a certain extent, it's even praiseworthy.

She continues the article on the theme of how emotionally powerful the pull of sugared stories are, and on the strange twists such sanitized fictions take in the minds of the susceptible. (That includes me, sometimes. Diaper commercial babies can make me tear up on a bad day.)

After a few days of reading news updates and editorials on the Gaza situation, I'm even less a fan of cheap sentimentality lately. And by supporting wholesale the Israeli government's position against the Hamas, never mind the repression and starvation of Gaza civilians by Israeli blockades, Obama has already cast off his aura of enlightenment and oratory tokens towards unity. The political climate he's been elected into tends to support naked emperors.

Uhm, the title of this post makes more sense if you read the Mallik piece. Read it!

Parroting

2009-01-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

This is a quote on writing I really like. Nick Cave, one of my favourite musicians, was speaking about his acclaimed lyricism. Cave was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal (here) back in April 2008:

"The false things glare at you, but if you learn your craft, you know to get rid of them. Stealing of a line is a lesser thing than the false line."

I used to think of "stealing" as a clear-cut case of plagiarism, a concept I've abhorred since the Sixth Grade when my friend Andrea drew that portrait of a unicorn under a rainbow that I was sure she had copied from my own equally unimaginative art project. In an art class in Grade 11, again, I thought I had come up with an original concept, until another student asked me if I had been inspired by a particular movie. I had not.

It's taken the longest time but I think I finally and fully appreciate the difference between plagiarism and inspiration. Frequently, I will watch a movie in the same genre as a novel I am writing only to see them use the same plot twist. Even a year ago, I would wonder in dismay if I could still use my own instance anymore, or it might appear as if I had lazily stolen their idea rather than developed it on my own. Once they even used a line of dialogue I had already written on an episode of, like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I was irked until I realized there are so few ways to express that sentiment in that circumstance. Besides, being accused of "borrowing" from Joss Whedon is not the worst scenario facing a writer, and accusations of imitation can also be flattering in that sense. Virtually everybody is borrowing from others anyway, and everything has already been imagined. (Researchers recently recovered an ancient Greek comedy routine very closely resembling Monty Python's Dead Parrot skit. No parrot, but the mechanics of the joke are the same.) All we can do as writers is try to invoke a fresh spirit into the thing by recombining ideas or adding new elemental twists. (I retain the right to refine this idea later, probably by finding a better description of this dynamic written by someone else.) It's also important — as noted by Guy Gavriel Kay, quoted in an older local post — to investigate the source material and not find inspiration only in recent books or movies where even they may be borrowing superficially from other recent narratives.

Fortunately, that particular novel I'm writing contains the idea, both structurally and referentially, that everything is connected and the same ideas or events play out repetitiously over the ages with a slightly different tune, until we come to think that current ideas or events are a whole new song entirely. They are not.

As for inspiration, sometimes I find listening to music inspires me to write a line of poetry, even though what I wrote isn't the same as the lyric; sometimes I find watching movies inspires me to write some dialogue that is only tangentially related. It can jog my memory of an element I want to introduce, just by invoking the same emotional response or insight. And by reading novels, I am 'inspired' to avoid certain plot devices or writing styles or, more positively, by the rhythm and cadence of that writer's narrative. In that way, other people's creative output can get my own creative process churning.

Of Nick Cave, WSJ's Jim Fusilli writes:

[He] is a successor to Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Bob Marley and other artists who used narrative techniques to expand our perception of a rock song. He's the writer Jim Morrison thought he was, or might have become had he not flamed out early. When you enter a Cave song, the experience it most resembles is reading a piece of short fiction — except that the music by his fierce backing band alternately pounds and slithers across your body and Mr. Cave sings in a manner somewhere between that of a tent preacher and that of the world's most insistent lounge singer.

The whole article is interesting from a writer's perspective, as his career has included unconventional rock lyrics, screenplays, and a novel. He mostly speaks about the writing process itself, not so much his background as a musician.

OM Oh Bah Ma, Om

2009-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Here are two blogs that catalogue the cultural phenomenon of people trying to draw religious parallels between President-elect Barack Obama and Jesus or, alternatively, a Bodhisattva, depending on your spiritual persuasion. I was genuinely moved by Obama's election and his acceptance speech, and I have a nascent talent for finding parallels to religious narratives and current events as a kind of storied exercise in symbology; but, this? This is as sad as silly can be. He is going to make mistakes, and some people are going to be crushed and confused. Unless they decide his mistakes too are part of God's great plan, as did the evangelists in reading the failure of the McCain/Palin race. I'm not clear on why God would grant humans self-determination and then thwart their democratic process, but I envy the certainty of those who ignore such challenging counter-implications. Their logic may yet serve the Obamadans.

Obama for Messiah '08

The creator — not, The Creator — writes at the bottom, "Barack Obama may be a great candidate but he’s not likely to turn water into wine at any point in the near future. This site is intended to poke a little fun at those who seem to be waiting for Christ to abdicate his throne to Senator Barack Obama." And to sell the related merchandise, like blasphemers are wont to do. He also provides a link to the next site.

Is Barack Obama the Messiah?

While the above is a fun, quick diversion, this site is way exhaustive. It's an ongoing blog with quotes from and illustrations by people who clearly do need another hero, yet find Mel Gibson's messiah-empathy complex unsettling or misdirected. Obama may smoke, but he has yet to demonstrate a paranoia towards Jews or a mocking disregard for women in authority. No, Obama loves everyone — sinners like Mel included — and speaks ill of no one. High Priestess Oprah Winfrey has proclaimed that he has "a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth." Note the capitals. They draw away from the laughably poetic imagery so favoured by people ordained in B-movies. If the thought contained genuine gravitas, it would not require Reinforced Gravitas. We should be glad that Oprah promotes fiction, and does not write it.

I was intrigued to read that he "carries with him a bracelet belonging to an American soldier deployed in Iraq, a gambler's lucky chit, a tiny monkey god and tiny Madonna and child." Not sure about the gambling chit as that represents Mammon, but tokens of Hanuman and a female-inclusive Christianity(1) is kind of reassuring. Maybe he really does love everybody. Or, maybe, in his hubris, he thinks of this as his family portrait. (Hanuman is an avatar of Shiva, one of the Trimurti gods in Hindu cosmology, considered the Supreme Being by one major Hindi sect.)

This is my favourite post so far, because I'm helplessly drawn to Platonic philosophy, all the more romantic because I know so little of it: "Barack Obama is the Platonic philosopher king we’ve been looking for for the past 2,400 years." Okay, but, the philosopher king I'm writing a (fictional!) story about would never, ever take political office. She's too wise.

(1) I'm considering this charm to be female-friendly based on the specific imagery, not the definitely non-inclusive dogma of the Christian sect that the Madonna is most associated with. This whole paragraph, I know I'm stretching.

Gen. Director

2008-12-17T21:27:00.001-08:00

This is from an interview with Ari Folman, director of Waltz With Bashir. EYE Weekly (Dec 11 2008) describes the animated documentary as a "stunning enquiry into the psychological after-effects of combat, as experienced by himself and other veterans of Israel's first war with Lebanon in the '80s."

Q: Movies like Persepholis and Waking Life have expanded ideas about animation, memoir and documentary in recent years. Did you look to any of these as models for Waltz With Bashir?
A: No, I was mostly influenced by books I read when I was younger: Joseph Heller's Catch-22, William Saroyan's Adventures of Wesley Jackson and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. All those books take a step backward and see war as this surreal, absurd, sometimes funny thing. And they're all by storytellers who were there. I think that makes a whole lot of difference. Sometimes with movie directors, they direct these big anti-war movies but they haven't been there and it's easy for them to fall in love with war. It's because they're like big generals on the set — they say "Action!" and five helicopters fly over and burn everything. In terms of ego, they go through the same experience as those generals, I think. That's why a lot of anti-war movies are not really anti-war movies — they put the glamour of war out front.
Q:The other thing that happens in movies is that wars get defined by heroic narratives rather than the more troubling and confusing experiences.
A:Yes, they want everything to be about manhood and brotherhood and valour and glory and sacrifice. I was completely not interested in that. The response I got from many people back home was that the most symbolic shot in the film, the one that represented war better than anything else, was the one of the armed vehicle going through the night and the soldiers shooting like crazy into the darkness without knowing where or why. A lot of people told me that's what war was like for them.

Echoes (echoes) ((echoes))

2008-12-01T14:33:00.001-08:00

A friend wrote a thoughtful blog post, about the recent terrorist bombing in Mumbai, which reminded me of a favourite quote I recently rediscovered.

I had written it carefully with pen in a small bound journal, along with other short texts I thought were pithy back in 1997. Many I found second-hand, in the books of writers who touched the idea in its original context and javascript:void(0)published the echo of that thought in addition to the din of their own. Eleven years later, my inky choices have either stood the test of time in a mind since deflowered of sentimentality, or have wilted in the face of my cynicism, which I had since built up and only recently partly deconstructed.

I have no idea who Donald Hogan is — or was. Google turned up many names when I asked, including Anna Nicole Smith's father, a dentist, a lawyer, and a writer who has been published in Harper's Magazine. Whoever this Hogan was, he made this statement in 1972 as "A Personal Testament."

I am not an idealist, nor a cynic, but merely unafraid of contradictions. I have seen men face each other when both were right, yet each was determined to kill the other, which was wrong. What each man saw was an image of the other, made by someone else. That is what we are prisoners of.

Aside from some quibbling about what constitutes "right," I do believe this. I can also try shouting this into the cavern — "This is only my image, made by someone else" — but terrorists who survive their own efforts are prisoners trapped mentally in solitary confinement, and they cannot hear me to answer back. I've wondered before, thinking particularly of Palestinian rebels, how many of them are now themselves shouting because no one listened to them until then; no one except those who convinced them to make these terrible choices, and who told them to listen to no one else.

I Can Has Clever Subgek Line?

2008-11-17T17:39:00.001-08:00

I was never completely sold on the whole internet Lolcats /"I Can Has Cheezburger?" phenomenon, but at Salon.com, Jay Dixit (of Psychology Today) explains it in a way that makes sense to me. I guess. This theory in particular is cute:

The comic form is generally a prophylaxis against sentimentality. By articulating profound feelings through cats and marine mammals speaking garbled English, we're able to shroud genuine emotions in pseudo-irony — which means those animals can evoke deeper emotions without fear of mockery or cheapness.

One problem though. People who abhor sentimentality will still hate these captioned kitties. I fall somewhere in between. For instance, I never use 'LOL' in an email.*

* I did use it once, actually.

Bed Head

2008-10-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

From "Erewhon," a novel by Samuel Butler, a 19th century English satirist:

The judge himself was a kind and thoughtful person. He was a man of magnificent and benign presence. He was evidently of an iron constitution, and his face wore an expression of the maturest wisdom and experience; yet for all this, old and learned as he was, he could not see things which one would have thought would have been apparent even to a child. He could not emancipate himself from, nay, it did not even occur to him to feel, the bondage of the ideas in which he had been born and bred.

As for the social bondage we are born and bred in:

For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organize our lust and our revenge. Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.

Shoelaces untied, he trips, but in the right direction...

2007-12-27T18:24:00.000-08:00

Something Jimi Hendrix said, quoted in the "Electric Gypsy" biography:

Listen, you want to talk about music. That's what I really know about. I don't want to say nothing about comparisons with other groups, because if you do, that puts you higher or lower than them, and that's just the same old cycle. Our music is in a very solid state right now. Not technically, just in the sense that we can feel around the music and get into things better. We don't have any answers this time, but we'd like to turn everyone on to all we know....We know for instance that Jesus was starting to get it together quite nicely, but that ten-commandments thing was a drag. The bogey man isn't going to come and get you if you don't tie your shoe. You don't have to be afraid to make love to one of your boyfriend's wives. Brand-name religions like Buddhism and Zen are just clashes. The Catholic Church is spreading and vomiting over the earth. The Church of England is the biggest landowner in England. Your home isn't America, it's the Earth, but things are precarious....You know my song, "I Don't Live Today...Maybe Tomorrow"? That's where it's at...

Haiku: funny cause it's true

2007-09-06T19:14:00.001-07:00

I'm now sitting on a handful of incomplete blog posts, including the one about how perfectionism keeps me from completing anything, so today I am submitting someone else's work. A selection of haiku poems by Tom Walmsley were published in the current issue of This magazine. These two struck most.

# 32
i generalize
just like everybody does
people amaze me

#76
i had a short dream
i shot our hateful leader
dreams will soon be banned

The word 'haiku' was formed by the Japanese words for 'amusement' and 'sentence.' I was more amused by what Walmsley says in the quote at the bottom of his entry in The Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre. I relate for sure, except for the daddy part or having been a heroin/alcohol addict; nonetheless, status quo be damned.

Mythinformation, Mythappropriation & Mythapplication

2007-07-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

Writing in the Globe & Mail's Books section, July 14, 2007, Guy Gavriel Kay adds justification to the value of mythology and the contemporary fantasy narratives that have grown out of these classic myths and legends. In the wake of excitement about the new Harry Potter book and movie releases, GGK wants us to "consider context and antecedents."

Keith Thomas, [in his book "Religion and the Decline of Magic," 1971], explores the tensions that emerged during the Enlightenment as science added its voice to that of the clergy in denouncing "primitive" rituals, beliefs, traditions. The irony? Science was denounced too, of course, and much of its own early history emerges from studies such as astrology or forbidden alchemy: men trying — wizard-like — to transmute one element into another in search of the elixir of life, or gold from lead.
An understanding of the enduring power of this idea of magic in the world, the notion of wizards (or witches) among us with arcane knowledge, and how this lies at the gates of our modern age, emerges clearly from reading Thomas's masterpiece. You will also know which way widdershins is.
Before Potter there was, of course, The Lord of the Rings. Any discussion of wizards in contemporary literature quickly reaches the figure of J. R. R. Tolkien. What too few readers might realize, especially those who know his vision only through Hollywood's rendering (or distortion) of his trilogy, is how brilliantly Tolkien the novelist made use of Tolkien the scholar.
This was a man who spent a lifetime reading and reflecting upon myth and folklore. Magic in Tolkien isn't arbitrary or superimposed. It is elegantly derived from traditions that go back to Anglo-Saxon epic poems (and riddles!), Icelandic sagas and the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, among many other sources.

Here is my favourite part:

The point (in this context, at any rate) is that Tolkien's wizards and his magic are grounded in elements of our culture reaching back a long way. There's nothing childlike in an awareness of these roots. Myth and legend, folk tradition, are the underpinnings of a society. Indeed, one might say that to be unaware of them leaves us at risk of being as children, oblivious to the origins of our own world and worldview.

And the last bit I'm quoting here, because it's an important consideration, even though it frustrates me that I have so much research to do for my own story project that borrows elements from religion and mythology:

In purely literary terms, no one writing fiction in this vein since, no one making use of the idea of a magic-wielding wizard, can honestly say they were not influenced — directly or indirectly — by Tolkien's work. But a great many of his horde of imitators have never bothered to go back to the sources as he did. It makes a difference.

Zen Cohen

2007-05-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Leonard Cohen, in an interview with Sarah Hampson, Globe&Mail's Weekend Review, May 26, 2007:

You have to take responsibility because the world holds you accountable for what you do. But if you understand that there are other forces determining what you do, then there's no pride when the world affirms you, no shame when the world scorns you.

What would Jesus's DNA do?

2007-02-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, there was some exciting news in biblical archaeology. A site of ossuaries, possibly containing the family of Jesus, possibly including his son and wife, has been publicly revealed by the filmmakers of a new documentary. DNA test results are forthcoming. There are lots of fascinating details in the article I read today, and my VCR has a date with the doc that will air in March. Among other things, they will raise questions about the biological veracity of the virgin birth, the celibacy of Jesus, Mary Magdalene's supposed inferiority to the male apostles, and the notion of the resurrection.

But for all the attendant speculation, what difference will conclusive test results really make? Some will ignore or refute the evidence indefinitely. For every question answered, the faithful who are willing to entertain the possibility of meaning outside of literal biblical interpretations will find themselves new questions, new narratives, to keep the myth alive. I know these religious narratives are simply stories, but I still experience a profound emotional resonance in them because they wrestle with the big, timeless themes of existence. (No, I don't fall asleep easily. And I haven't even started reading my Nietzsche collection yet. He'd not sympathize with the Christians as much as me, no doubt.)

It's in our nature to create new stories when the old ones lose their punch, but our collective imagination is limited so we pretty much just build on old ideas and narrative structures. (Inspired individuals may have less restricted creativity but their ideas don't always broadcast to the rest of us or they take time to trickle into the mainstream feed.) That's okay, because when stories are living, instead of entrenched, and we don't get too attached to the details that flesh out the story in a temporal context, the flash of inspiration stays alive too. (Hey Friedrich! Freddy? I bet if 'God' really does exist, it's in that flash right there — that vivid encounter between an active mind and a good story.) That's why it's important imaginations are encouraged; at the very least, allowed to fully develop. That's why it's so tragic when so many minds are coerced into slavish adherence to the same interpretations of the same stories handed down to them by, let's call them 'publishers,' who have vested interest in submissive audiences. Since most of us have had our imaginations hobbled — if not by churches that decide what we should think about the really old stories, told in a way that empowers the professional shepherds instead of the flock, then by the constant stream of passively consumed entertainment from competing publishers — we must rely on new storytellers to update the essential narratives in terms that refresh our suspension of disbelief and allow us to get excited about the story and characters again. Sometimes that can be achieved through satire; it definitely shakes up our lazy imaginations. So this letter to the editor in today's Globe&Mail from Ken DeLuca seems like a pretty neat little adaptation for our times, which is to say imagined in a time slightly ahead of our own with an updated political/ social/ scientific context.

I see a Tom Robbins/Dan Brown collaboration here with a twist of John Le Carré. The plot: Raelians steal a sample of the DNA of Jesus and successfully clone cells for in vitro fertilization into the womb of a virgin. Her child, J2-C2, is raised by a secret "End of Days" cult dedicated to fulfilling the prophecies of the Book of Revelations. In time, the Miracle Child discovers the secret of cold fusion and saves the world from global warming. But the multinational oil companies conspire to assassinate him because he is a threat to their power.

I can already see the movie. Sadly, the only part that seems entirely plausible, in this or any version of the Christ story, is that some body or group with too much power to lose or too little to believe in gaining any for themselves would arrange for our hero's murder. Happily, as long as our collective imaginations are fired up about stories of heroes who consider us worth saving, there's a chance one day we might collectively consider saving ourselves with the same passion. In the meantime, if Jesus's DNA proves that he was entirely human, maybe we'd start believing in humanity more. I know... what's possible isn't necessarily plausible.

Betty, la verde

2007-02-09T16:19:00.000-08:00

Last night on primetime TV, Betty was outed as a "green girl" who loves the musical Wicked. Cool coincidence; I quoted lyrics from a Wicked number in my last post when I also brought up Ugly Betty, about girls who are green. I called it first! Also under the sphere of quirky coincidences, Hillary Rodham Clinton — who I also mentioned in that post — has since cited "Wizard of Oz" as one of her favourite movies. Given she refers to the movie rather than the book, this may offer some insight as to why she seeks the stage even though or perhaps because she's already seen what's behind the curtain, and I wonder if she's channeling more Judy than Dorothy at the podium.

I haven't seen Wicked or memorized the words like Betty, just leafed through the lyrics and thought, "Ah. Yes." It was still exciting to see my unoriginal-but-heartfelt line of reasoning was in line with the lines in one of my favourite shows. Yes, I did snark about a beautiful girl playing someone referred to as ugly. Otherwise, the writing is clever, the acting is spot-on for the genre, the characters keep developing depth while remaining sparkly, the level of sincerity is balanced with a wicked (!) sense of humour, and the plot twists are like those cherry red twizzlers that show up in your local corner store when you least expect it. I'm looking forward to upcoming episodes when, I hope, Henry realizes that the grass is greener where he hasn't already been.

My other new eyeball magnet on TV is Heroes, if that wasn't obvious below. Now I'm waiting for the geneticist (or the cop, or "the Haitian," or the daddy who doesn't need doors) to proclaim that his special power makes him hypersensitive to the green wavelength of the colour spectrum. It happens to be around 510 nanometers, by the way. Grass appears green because all of the colours in the visible part of the light spectrum are absorbed into the blades except for green. It's just something I know, Henry.

It's not easy being green

2007-01-16T14:11:00.000-08:00

Once I'm with the wizard / My whole life will change / 'Cuz once you're with the wizard / No one thinks you're strange ... and all of Oz has to love you / When by the wizard, you're acclaimed / and this gift - or this curse - I have inside / Maybe at last, I'll know why / When we are hand in hand - The wizard and I! / And one day, he'll say to me: Elphaba, a girl who is so superior / Shouldn't a girl who's so good inside / Have a matching exterior? / And since folks here to an absurd degree / Seem fixated on your verdigris / Wouldn't it be alright by you / If I de-greenify you? / And though of course / That's not important to me / "All right, why not?" I'll reply / Oh what a pair we will be / The wizard and I...
— from the musical Wicked, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

It can be difficult, being an unattractive woman in a world obsessed with female beauty. Or being ambiguously attractive. In our mainstream culture, it's pretty much the same thing.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, at a record store far from the mall, where I work as a retail serf, a senior manager enthusiastically stopped the CD carousel to put on Janis Ian's live album. Declaring it "the best plain-girl song," he started playing her early hit "At Seventeen." He then proceeded to discuss the lyrics with me, clearly not aware I was in practiced denial that I should have any special insight into the subject. Not into following links? The song is about a young woman's disappointment with her physical appearance. Having lost the expectation of someone else's desire, she learns to entertain herself with her imagination while the pretty girls are out on dates. I nodded as he cited his favourite lines and I allowed the subject to drop as nonchalantly as possible. Clearly someone in her (early!) thirties should already have come to terms with her plain-girl reality. He is right to expect that I would have, just as he expected that I could relate. I did, and it hurt to be reminded.

The Janis Ian incident set off a maelstrom of internalization, followed by reflection on my troubled history with the mirror. And cameras. And reflective surfaces in general. There are times, peaceful stretches of months even, when I am completely at ease with my looks. The self-consciousness drops, the envy subsides. Then there is the rest of the time. The Fugly Time. This time around, it took me weeks to regain my equilibrium. In the wake of my self-fuglellation, there is the lingering dismay that I can become so preoccupied over something so clearly superficial. Can I plead poor programming? As I entered adolescence, I was taught at home to be vigilantly preoccupied with other people's perceptions of me, most particularly regarding physical appearance. I had other teachers; besides the ever-present television, I brought some guides back home with me.

Throughout my teens, I read too many girl/women's magazines. I bought too many; I read them all. I remember one teen-oriented magazine encouraged readers to send in a photo of only their best feature, thus teaching girls in media-glutted countries around the world to itemize their beauty and compare their own features part by part. This particular approach was unusual in that it at least directed us to fixate on the features about which we felt most confident, assuming there were any. Normally, women's magazines operate from a premise that we must loathe ourselves in general. In any case, we learn to minimize the problem areas of our bodies with the products advertised by those very same glossy manuals which had first instructed us into our insecurities. By the time Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth passed into my hands, the damage was already done. I had become thoroughly convinced of my fugliness. Witness, my facile facial inferiority complex! (Just don't look at me.) The occasional compliment that contradicted this self-condemnation would be quickly forgotten or discredited. Worse, it became impossible to escape the freakishly beautiful magazine ladies who I willingly invited into my home before I knew better. They began to proliferate on huge billboards around the city, as well as bus shelters, subway ads and all those persistent TV commercials. (Studies show that women who watch less television feel better about themselves. Other studies claim less attractive people are less successful at getting hired and make less money when they are. Maybe it's better if they can't afford cable.)

There is also an established popular social narrative that links beauty with moral superiority and trustworthiness, while positing that outer ugliness reflects inner ugliness. As Glinda, Witch of the West, informs Dorothy, once she's done giggling, "Only bad witches are ugly." This maxim originated from the studios of MGM, circa 1939. L. Frank Baum, the author of the original The Wizard of Oz series, "portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West as a coward, in keeping with his other villains whose evil derives from weakness of character, rather than the icon of evil she appears in the film." Obviously, that and other subtleties were lost on the majority of us who only know that most famous of movie adaptations. (Also significant is that Baum and his illustrator W.W. Denslow wanted to impart the lesson that "everyone possesses the resources they need if only they had self-confidence." (I'm circling around to that, sorta...)

I was reared on many other children's fantasy movies with similar messages. They were typically populated with princesses who require a prince to rescue them, require rescue from some witchy bitch who resents their beauty and grace, and, with the divine intervention of a fairy godmother, their trials and tribulations are rewarded with inclusion or ascension in the royal ranks by virtue of marriage. Some message of personal validation. (In tandem, my mom recently urged me to find and marry a rich man, as she has times before. Love is secondary to the plot she envisions me starring in, but the leading man should look like Justin Trudeau. My mom adores Justin Trudeau. She used to send me letters telling me to send Justin letters. She doesn't know I'm not interested in men who are prettier than me. If you don't live in Canada or remember his dad Pierre, arguably one of this country's greatest past leaders, Justin is regarded by the media as the Crown Prince of Canada. As if our constitutional relationship to the British monarchy isn't lame enough.) For the purposes of this blog, I've been fast-forwarding through fewer commercials lately and I can attest that those fairytale values and desires are still being fed to us as adult women, mothers notwithstanding. We unwittingly binge and purge on a succession of trendy diet plans. Who do you think made the adult fairytale "Pretty Woman" a box-office success? Highest-grossing film among romantic comedies? Not so much the men, despite Julia Roberts' short skirts and those thigh-high, black-vinyl fuck-me boots. At sixteen, I envied Julia's character for her effervescent charm and only slightly off-kilter beauty — but simultaneously found myself disgusted at the movie's shallowly illustrated Cinderella premise.

In the aftermath of my disappointing adolescent transformation from an adorable, pretty little girl to... uhm ... I used to wish against reason that my own personal fairy godmother would show the hell up and externalize my inner princess. "Make me beautiful, and before you leave, could you perform a universal mind sweep so that everyone who ever saw me will forget what I used to look like? Please?" For extra headgaminess, and because the moral duality of fables is a given, I would wonder, "If I were offered the choice between great beauty and great intelligence, would I have the strength of virtue to make the right choice?" Today I would, but the opportunity would still give me pause and I would still secretly hope that I'd get both as reward for choosing the one correctly. Disney would let me.

Later in life, I still kinda sorta hoped that my prince would come and, if not make me beautiful by some prescribed action — the magic kiss, a dramatic declaration of love, the grand gesture, whatever — at least convince me that I was beautiful enough. For the most part, I've since come to accept that there are advantages to being physically imperfect. I once knew a girl who made the ugly-duckling-to-swan transformation and became a megalomaniac in a disastrous way; disastrous for her and the men who became the focus of her subsequent obsessions. Lawsuits followed. They do not follow me, any more than those modeling contracts most young women fantasize about. I wonder how much differently my character would have developed if things — jobs, men, prizes — came to me too easily. Another advantage is that I appear to be easily approachable, as evidenced by all the people asking me for directions on the street. I appreciate that I don't intimidate people and may even attract conversational approaches from differently-attractive men and women. By extension, other women "don't hate me because I'm beautiful." Nor do I need to worry that any man has me on his arm as a mere trophy, all shiny surfaces and empty interior. I was also thankfully never harassed by any of the closet creeps who seem to be employed at every school in the continent, except maybe that one shop teacher who was an equal-opportunity neck breather.

There are also obvious disadvantages outside of the job search stats. While beautiful women attract their share of beauty-fixated jerks, we, the less physically intimidating, are also likely to attract men with their own appearance-related neuroses. Here, I'll draw upon the more disappointing dates in my history. There's the man who resents beautiful women for all those perceived slights experienced in and outside the bar. (What a compliment that you chose me.) There's the older divorcé who prefers less attractive women in the next lower age bracket because we are presumably more grateful for the attention and — bonus! — he can play the sophisticated, mature lover. There are the self-admittedly desperate single men in their thirties who, having admitted they are desperate, wonder in acrimony why we (gently) decline their requests for a date. (Hey, backhanded compliments are not helpful. Informing us that you have a "white knight complex" may impress some and be heralded as a warning sign to others, which is helpful.) Notice the power shifts in these scenarios. Presumably, women have the control on the basis of our prerogative to reward or rebuke these advances, but the expectation of longing fulfilled remains on the male side of the equation. In this prevalent scenario, sufficiently attractive women are treated as objects of desire, rather than partner-worthy subjects. Unless, that is, the subjects are two gorgeous actors showing us how people are supposed to look during those special scenes that warrant the movie's adult rating, performed in carefully choreographed poses. Which is ridiculous, of course. As Margaret Cho says, "I like to get ugly when I fuck." The day I overheard another male manager opine that women who aren't beautiful can still be sexy — it's attitude, baby — was like a revelation. The day I realized he was giving disproportionately more shifts to a cute female coworker whom he had been having dreams, dreams about them sharing adult situations as enforced by their alien abductors... that was illuminating in other ways.

In the interest of refuting moral superiority, I admit I am occasionally stricken from the ability to form sentences when extremely attractive men patronize the store I work in. There's a reason why "stunning" is a synonym for "beauty." Yet I can counter that, for myself, I am often physically attracted to men who are not conventionally handsome — they can render my loss of vocabulary as well. What I look for is in their eyes; not the colour, but that current of thought and curiosity about the world around them. (Confidence is sexy too but easily confused with arrogance.) Can I not expect from men an equal return in desire for unconventional beauty and unique characteristics? Indeterminable, for even some of the smartest men I know still express, nay, prioritize, a preference for The Pretty. If not, they may face peer pressure to reach for the trophy. A male roommate recently told me that his friends had expressed which of his past girlfriends they liked best, and the criteria turned out to be based solely on physical appearance. If you believe biology is destiny, this might not be so surprising; supposedly men are typically attracted to female beauty as it suggests reproductive health, whereas women are typically attracted to men of certain social stature to provide greater stability and opportunity for their offspring. I think resorting entirely to the theoretical biological imperative is a cop-out, but that deserves a separate blog diatribe.

With respect to the growing ranks of self-conscious men, it is a true phenomenon and not surprising given that they are being increasingly targeted as a market for grooming products. This is not an equal comparison — yet! — because male actors who are portlier and less GQ handsome (recent example: Jack Black) now play leading parts in heavily-bankrolled movies and popular TV series. Meanwhile, the female actors who play the parts of the plain sister, friend, or any other modest supporting role — cast so as not to overshadow the lead female — are actually quite beautiful but linger ever so slightly outside the narrowest of parameters. Women widely acknowledged as exceptionally beautiful are even cast to play less comely characters by way of prosthetic noses, chins, uni-brows, and braces. America Ferrera, who plays "Ugly Betty," is vivacious and beautiful, if fuller figured than a model, but she is done up in fugly face. Two men who have acted in prosthetic noses, and who come readily to mind for playing variants of the Cyrano de Bergerac character, are more disputably attractive and yet have played leading roles in romantic comedies. Neither Steve Martin or Gerard Depardieu are exemplary examples of male beauty, but it is entirely conceivable that such humanly-visaged male actors will soon break out of the rom-com ghetto and play leading roles in more serious romantic dramas. Or, if you're Mr. Martin, you can write your own role, produce your own movie, and cast your own damn self.

There's a further beauty hypocrisy, affecting both sexes actually, whereby idiosyncrasies like extreme shyness are adorable when the character is beautiful. When she is not so physically attractive, her shyness and other neuroses make her pitiful; you can sometimes see her being saved by the beautiful lead character. Yet imagine "Amelie" played by an average looking woman rather than Audrey Tatou, who in this role closely approximates the gamine look popularized by Audrey Hepburn. In Hollywood idealism, no one less sympathetically beautiful could have played the scion of Jesus either. On the male axis, this is similar but not as pronounced as the character of Declan on Mysterious Ways, whose increased social ineptitude and occasional moments of sheer dorkiness during a short story arc that gave him a clear love interest would not have been so charming if the character weren't gorgeously portrayed by current Heroes star Adrian Pasdar. But for myself, I find the same actor so much less attractive — not even — in his new role as the clean-shaven, slick-haired and arrogant politician. Attitude strikes out!

Here, it gets more complicated. It often happens that any woman who puts herself out there in the public eye will be dismissed if she is not universally attractive. If she is intelligent, accomplished, immensely talented, or any combination thereof, it will not matter to the masses if she is not also a hottie. By that same token, all anyone has to do to dismiss her is critique her lack of beauty. Even if you are relatively attractive, the very first resort of the loudmouth louts who want to hurt you or put you in your place is to call you ugly. (Second choice is 'fat' so long as the target isn't irreproachably thin.) This also works by proxy. Think of how the women around Bill Clinton were attacked during his presidency based on their physical appearance: Monica, to great glee, for the great crime of not being Marilyn; young Chelsey, whose potential ugly-duckling transformation was loudly speculated on by the lower participants of the media who had availed themselves of photo imaging software; and, more recently, Hillary. Except now, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has become significantly more powerful than First Lady in recent years, and thus has earned her place as a primary target. Incidentally, a "left-leaning" Fox news anchor referred to Nancy Pelosi as the Wicked Witch of the West within a day of her being appointed House Speaker. George Bush may have publicly approved of this landmark for women in U.S. government, but pay more attention to the men behind the curtain. Meanwhile, here in Canada, our female politicians are bitches, not witches. The House of Commons is a castle with a very muddy moat, only visible on one side as a deceptively clean-looking river, and there are no knights in Ottawa laying hankies down in their path. Not even the mounted ones.

Conversely, beauty is also sometimes perceived as a detrimental quality. Beautiful women are routinely attacked on the basis of their intelligence, presumably lower. (The sharks must be frustrated that their natural first resort of ugly-taunting is too hard to support.) Naomi Wolf was accused of being a hypocrite by some critics because she is, in fact, quite conventionally beautiful and probably looks wonderful in any lighting scenario. I'm sure if she were not, she'd have been equally criticized for writing her analysis of the manufactured culture and commodification of beauty out of mere bitter envy. See how it works? If you're a woman, more often than not, you will be automatically disqualified from the ranks of the respectable no matter what you look like, but precisely because of what you look like. Worse, women are conditioned to turn on each other, like many of Wolf's critics did on her, based on the above criteria. This effect is a natural by-product of the crazy and crazifying culture in which we have come of age.

Days after the Janis Ian incident, I realized what I needed was a re-screening of the sequel to Shrek. (In my DVD library, it is transitionally sandwiched between Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail and the Princess Bride.) Watching a 90-minute cartoon may not seem like the choice of a (semi-)rational adult woman. Just consider the possibility that the Shrek movies, which are loosely based on William Steig's storybook for children, are wonderful, cleverly-written responses to the whole pop culture fantasy we sometimes mistake for reality. They definitely provide a creative counter-potion to those ubiquitous animated fables and princess primers which had earlier insinuated unrealistic expectations in our minds before we were old enough to develop the power of reason.

In the first movie, the big-hearted but outwardly gruff ogre — Shrek! — rescues a damsel in distress — Fiona! — who turns out to be much more resourceful and strong-willed than that daft ninny Snow White. Her fairy-tale curse is that at night she transforms from a slim, beautiful woman worthy of a contract with L'Oreal into a chubby green ogress who doubts even an ogre could love her. In the end, she chooses to remain green like her one true love who accepts and loves her as she is. The second movie picks up on their honeymoon, where they enjoy all kinds of ogrely activities not mediated by the crass commercialism, pretensions to social class and demands of perfection found in Fiona's home kingdom. However, their honeymoon is quickly followed by a royal summons: Fiona must bring her new husband home to meet the parents and attend a ball in celebration of their matrimony. Fiona's curse was supposed to be 'cured' by the kiss of Prince Charming who, having come too late to rescue her, is royally pissed to find out that his betrothed is away on her honeymoon. Fiona's parents, King and Queen of Far Far Away, are also initially disappointed when their precious daughter turns up as a full-time ogress on the arm of an uncouth, green monster. Also, despite her beauty and power, Fiona's fairy godmother turns out to be a bad witch. She even arrives in a bubble like Glinda's. (I also note the Sir Justin poster in Fiona's old bedroom. Her mom probably put it there.) The rest of the movie is a fun but wise send-up of the social pressures to conformity, aspirations of fairy-tale perfection, and the manipulations we can fall prey to when we doubt our own worth. Ultimately, Fiona is presented with the choice of remaining in her previously perfect daytime body, in tow with a Shrek done spell-rendered a gorgeous human stud muffin, or returning to the forms they had before Fiona's family reunion. This palatial upgrade is a result of Shrek's resourcefulness in finding a solution, however temporary and misguided, to the problem he's been convinced he created. He does this entirely for his true love's benefit and, after a brief floundering about in hopelessness, he does this despite being made to question his own qualities and his place in a princess's life. Fiona may keep all that she was groomed to expect and desire out of life, yet she opts out. She reforms as a green ogress along with her ogre husband, content in their swamp cottage far from the graces of castle life. This is naturally the correct choice; however, she does not get the bonus reward of fairy-tale beauty. She merely gets to be herself.

Now I remember, I am waiting not for my prince, but my ogre. (Sorry Mom, the dream died last year when Sir Justin married a telegenic media princess from his own social tier. The magazines say that they are very happy together and that the charming princess has healed the fractures within the royal family.) Eventually I might even realize that I don't need anyone to show up at all in order to embrace my inner Fiona. As fellow green girl Elphaba sings, if you're flying solo at least you're flying free. Of course, that's the part in the story when the witch hunt begins.

This challenge to be green could be easier if I didn't live so close to the centre of commerce — the Estate of Here And Now — where pretty princesses are prancing about in their designer jeans while painted in expensive makeup that doesn't crease. Counterwise, living in the city means I'm a ten minute walk from several independently-owned bookstores where I can pick up a worn, used copy of Wolf's Beauty Myth for a much-needed refresher.

I haven't forgotten Janis Ian. She is a terrific lyricist, with songs that are sharp and witty. But before I walk out the door, it's the Sam Phillips song Same Changes that I play for a preemptive reality check. I sing along karaoke-like and then I feel much, much better. Whatever I look like or whatever other people see, I feel green.

How now, brown-sleeved Mao?

2006-12-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

While working on a piece for this blog, about popularly/commercially defined beauty, I tried paying more attention to beauty product ads so I could review the related slogans. Then I saw something newly jarring and I lost interest in the rest of the cosmetics commercials.

I saw a TV spot in which two teen-aged Chinese students transgress Communist dictatorship by using Alberto VO5 hair products. (See the clip.) They are surrounded by a pseudo-Cultural Revolution backdrop. Rain connotes dampened spirits. Unlike real contemporary Chinese students, these kids attend school wearing dreary colourless uniforms with bright red scarves and are marched into class in gender- segregated lines. Two of the students, a boy and a girl whose attraction to each other is being discouraged, gel up in class and sit back with gleaming eyes to the great dismay of their scorn-faced teacher. Apparently, this forbidden product bestows upon them the spirit of freedom and they run away together after being kicked out of class for their defiance.

At first this premise seems entirely ridiculous and therefore harmless. A hair gel that revives a spirit broken by totalitarianism? Slimy goop as a means of encouraging individuality? But I think what this commercial may really imply is something disturbingly more subversive, if unintentional. That is, the solution to the extremism of a Communist dictatorship (which to many is stereotypically representative of any form of socialism) is to inject the system with the opposite extreme of rampant capitalism (which to many is stereotypically expressive of a fully functional democracy) where it is possible to get and use any product we want. In reality, this quasi-democracy the rest of us live in has cultivated a very real backdrop of hyper-commercialism along with a culture of style over substance that has infected even the political realm of our "free" society. There's no individuality herein either, but marketers (and their political cohorts in public relations) are well-paid trying to create the impression that their clients' products will reveal our inner spirit, if not lead us to sublime transcendence.

It may seem like I'm oversimplifying the scene, but the more people I meet, the more editorials and letters to the editor I read, the more aware I am of the prevalence of black-and-white thinking in our society. Propaganda — whether overtly political or apparently superficial — is so widely successful because it takes advantage of this starkly duo-tone perspective. It often works to deceive the public by playing to our fears of the undesirable extremes we've identified, whether we recognize them in vague terms or in sharp focus. Sometimes people's fears are expressed through ridicule, in which case the ad campaign has capitalized by making fun of the example (as above with the most radical and inflexible form of socialism) and thus earns viewers' interest in the product or idea by making them feel like they are in on the joke. Then the pitch anesthetizes those fears, or rewards those misconceptions, with the option of purchasing and using their products. I'm not above slipping into black-and-white thinking myself. It is so very easy to do. I also use hair care and styling products; in particular, those made by that company that wants women to believe they're on our side, by soothing our self-image problem which was ostensibly created by those other beauty product ads.

Detached observation can be very revealing and doesn't require purchase. Just observe commercials more critically for a while — turning off the sound sometimes helps — and you will start to see more than the obvious tricks. For example, it may be clearer to a distanced Canadian viewer how manipulatively certain American automotive commercials appeal to red-white-and-blue patriotism, more poignantly in a time of war, but it may not be as readily apparent how our coffee & donuts are cast as bringing Canadians together even when we're overseas playing peace-keepers.

Sometimes the peripheral is political.

(Here's a better description of the VO5 ad with a different analysis than mine.)