What you really don’t want to do is compare Sam Mendes’s film adaptation of the 1961 Richard Yates novel Revolutionary Road to the AMC series Mad Men, which it superficially resembles in time and setting. I am a big fan of the TV series and found myself wrongly criticizing the first 30 minutes of the film on the basis of its lack of sharpness and sizzle.
Like Mad Men, Revolutionary Road is about America, post-Korea and pre-Beatles. The film, however, narrowly focuses on existentialist angst—two characters, the Wheelers (Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio), a young, upwardly mobile couple living in the suburbs, face the fact that they have compromised their true characters and adopted the false fronts society expects of them.
The film’s talkiness, its focus on dialogue over action, is part of its technique for revealing the ways language insists on and then reinforces conformity to norms. The story’s 1955 setting, like Mad Men’s early sixties setting, emphasizes for us, though, just how transient and circumstantial “norms” are.
The timeliness of both the film and the series is that now, in the early twenty-first century, we Americans find ourselves again steeped in pressures to conform—a definite stake has been driven through the heart of the free-wheeling sixties and seventies. Our society today is again intolerant of eccentricity that does not follow prescribed (even marketable) formulae, intolerant of those who refuse easy categorization, and insistent on the rightness of rather narrow and rigid codes of conduct, prefabricated opinion, and a notion of personal success defined by wealth, family, comfort, and security.
The couple’s surname, Wheeler, and the name of the street they live on, Revolutionary Road, both symbolize the circularity of custom and the arbitrariness of personal destiny.
The film begins with an explosive confrontation between the young and outwardly successful husband and wife. Subsequent scenes, through flashback and counterpoint, dissect the compromises expected of them—through nuances of word choice and diction and through the silences they accept—the slow alienation from self that society oppressively demands … in the names of “sanity,” of “duty,” of “common sense.”
Winslett, especially, and DiCaprio are richly deserving of whatever prizes and awards Hollywood chooses to throw at them in the next few months. Equally deserving are supporting performances by Kathy Bates (who costarred with the other two in Titanic, another sort of shipwreck) and Michael Shannon. Bates plays the real-estate agent whose doll’s-house sense of normality and decency is a torment to both herself and those around her. Shannon plays her mentally ill son, victim of numerous electro-shock treatments, whose lack of “balance” stems from society’s bad faith—and his mother is the archetypal emblem of that bad faith.
Bad faith, of course, is what the existentialists called the denial of one’s total freedom of will. It’s the tendency people have of blaming circumstances for failing to remain true to their own natures and dreams. As a character in the film points out, money is often posed as the reason we choose to do what we know is untrue to ourselves, but it is never the real reason.
Duty to work, children, parents, friends, and abstract ideals are likewise traps—convenient traps—to spare us from responsibility for our lives. We blame these things when we lack faith in what we know to be true in ourselves. Revolutionary Road is an intelligent, literate film about two people who face this dilemma.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Arithmetic
Here’s a word I have a sad fondness for all of a sudden.
It smells of milk money and raincoats.
I was in the hospital (pneumonia) during multiplication tables, and that I blame for my persistent inadequacy in math.
It has an aged elegance, like Bakelite and polka dots.
It’s like an insect you might want for a pet.
It smells of milk money and raincoats.
I was in the hospital (pneumonia) during multiplication tables, and that I blame for my persistent inadequacy in math.
It has an aged elegance, like Bakelite and polka dots.
It’s like an insect you might want for a pet.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Obamasvatta
Today Barack Obama, four days before his inauguration as 44th President of the United States, said he always thought Bush was “personally” a “good guy.”
I wish the President-elect would give his Jesus-wrapped-in-sunshine shtick a rest already. Sure, I admire Obama’s air of unruffled calm, his zen-like grace under stress, his ability to inspire hope in the midst of crisis. Even I, a conscientious pessimist, hope that Obama will be the Chesley Sullenberger of the financial crisis that Bush and his cronies launched with two expensive wars and eight years of handouts to obscenely wealthy “capitalists.”
Bring the plane down, Barry, and save the passengers, if not the geese—but nobody, not even you, is ever gonna top Hayley Mills as Pollyanna. All right?
Bush is not a good guy. I’ve never understood how anyone ever accepted that he’d be a neat guy to have a beer with. Sure, if I really really needed a beer, I could do it … but for the beer, for Christ’s sake, not for some arrogant, privileged 62 year old with daddy issues who thinks he’s still at the frat house.
Not for some asshole who thought it was funny to snuff out cigarettes on other guys’ skin while he was at the frat house.
Not for a guy whose every achievement has been a free ride provided by his family and his family’s CIA, Fortune 500, and Saudi contacts. A fat Rolodex never made anybody neat or even basically decent.
Not for a guy, who as Texas governor, boasted over presiding over more death-penalty executions (152) than any modern-era governor and even had the vilely bad manners to make fun of one of them (Karla Faye Tucker) by imitating her in a high squeal: “Please please don’t kill me.” Damn, dude, even if I did back capital punishment, adding insult to injury is just mean.
Not for a guy who now brags that we haven’t had a terrorist attack on U.S. soil … at least not since the one he presided over on September 11, 2001. He may as well take credit for no more catastrophic hurricanes since Katrina.
Not for a guy who launched an unjust war against Iraq, sold to the world with falsified info, which has cost 4226 American lives, not counting the 90,000+ civilian deaths attributable to the war.
Not for the guy who defended extreme interrogation techniques like waterboarding so long as we didn’t use the “T” word.
Not for George Double-yuck Bush.
Why in the name of all that’s good and decent does Barack Obama think he has to say nice things about this guy? Admittedly, he qualified the remark by saying he thought Bush loves his family (Bush’s, not Obama’s) and the country. Faint praise indeed, when it’s common knowledge that despots generally love children and dogs—and no doubt their countries too as long as the citizens are flattened under their dictatorial thumbs. But why any praise at all?
Does he have his eye on a Nobel Prize or something? Or does he expect the Vatican to canonize him? Can’t he just be stiffly polite to Bush the way he is around the gay press—to which he communicates in “open letters,” issued like fiats?
OK, President Obama (and, yes, God, that still sounds awfully good), nobody really expects you to throw a shoe at Bush. That thunder’s been stolen. And I get it: you’re a nice guy, who reaches out, who includes everybody, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only United States. I respect that. America respects that.
But, listen, it’s enough that you’re our President. Be a good one. And give up on trying to be our personal savior, Boddhisvatta, and high-school counselor rolled into one.
I wish the President-elect would give his Jesus-wrapped-in-sunshine shtick a rest already. Sure, I admire Obama’s air of unruffled calm, his zen-like grace under stress, his ability to inspire hope in the midst of crisis. Even I, a conscientious pessimist, hope that Obama will be the Chesley Sullenberger of the financial crisis that Bush and his cronies launched with two expensive wars and eight years of handouts to obscenely wealthy “capitalists.”
Bring the plane down, Barry, and save the passengers, if not the geese—but nobody, not even you, is ever gonna top Hayley Mills as Pollyanna. All right?
Bush is not a good guy. I’ve never understood how anyone ever accepted that he’d be a neat guy to have a beer with. Sure, if I really really needed a beer, I could do it … but for the beer, for Christ’s sake, not for some arrogant, privileged 62 year old with daddy issues who thinks he’s still at the frat house.
Not for some asshole who thought it was funny to snuff out cigarettes on other guys’ skin while he was at the frat house.
Not for a guy whose every achievement has been a free ride provided by his family and his family’s CIA, Fortune 500, and Saudi contacts. A fat Rolodex never made anybody neat or even basically decent.
Not for a guy, who as Texas governor, boasted over presiding over more death-penalty executions (152) than any modern-era governor and even had the vilely bad manners to make fun of one of them (Karla Faye Tucker) by imitating her in a high squeal: “Please please don’t kill me.” Damn, dude, even if I did back capital punishment, adding insult to injury is just mean.
Not for a guy who now brags that we haven’t had a terrorist attack on U.S. soil … at least not since the one he presided over on September 11, 2001. He may as well take credit for no more catastrophic hurricanes since Katrina.
Not for a guy who launched an unjust war against Iraq, sold to the world with falsified info, which has cost 4226 American lives, not counting the 90,000+ civilian deaths attributable to the war.
Not for the guy who defended extreme interrogation techniques like waterboarding so long as we didn’t use the “T” word.
Not for George Double-yuck Bush.
Why in the name of all that’s good and decent does Barack Obama think he has to say nice things about this guy? Admittedly, he qualified the remark by saying he thought Bush loves his family (Bush’s, not Obama’s) and the country. Faint praise indeed, when it’s common knowledge that despots generally love children and dogs—and no doubt their countries too as long as the citizens are flattened under their dictatorial thumbs. But why any praise at all?
Does he have his eye on a Nobel Prize or something? Or does he expect the Vatican to canonize him? Can’t he just be stiffly polite to Bush the way he is around the gay press—to which he communicates in “open letters,” issued like fiats?
OK, President Obama (and, yes, God, that still sounds awfully good), nobody really expects you to throw a shoe at Bush. That thunder’s been stolen. And I get it: you’re a nice guy, who reaches out, who includes everybody, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only United States. I respect that. America respects that.
But, listen, it’s enough that you’re our President. Be a good one. And give up on trying to be our personal savior, Boddhisvatta, and high-school counselor rolled into one.
Monday, January 12, 2009
“Things do not change; we change.” Walden (1854), by Henry David Thoreau
An NPR report this morning put Obama and Bush talking points side by side to show just how alike the outgoing President and incoming President are beginning to sound.
Obama, for instance, campaigned saying he would shut down Guantánamo Bay and ban torture, upon taking office, but now says he won’t be closing the controversial prison during his first 100 days in office. “It’s more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” he says. (No shit.) He’s also beginning to show a lot more admiration for the security and intelligence community, and while still vowing to ban torture, he says he doesn’t want these highly “talented” professionals to constantly be looking over their shoulders.
I saw this coming a long way back. It’s not just that things start looking different after one gets a White House briefing, though there is that, and it’s not just that Presidential candidates say anything to get elected, even things they can’t possibly back up, though there is that too.
Fundamentally, it’s a matter of there being a narrowly constricted prototype for who gets to run for President in either major party, superficial differences of style and tone aside—ambitious, narcissistic, malleable front men (and women) for the interests of the real (mostly out of the spotlight) powerbrokers. “Liberal” and “conservative” stopped being anything more than branding at the top levels of government long ago. Goodbye, Adlai Stevenson. Goodbye, Barry Goldwater. Hello, Mickey Mouse.
I’m not saying there weren’t important differences between Obama and McCain. There were. But the principal differences were stylistic, tonal, and symbolic—citrus-scented gel versus ocean-breeze foam.
McCain downplayed the God theme (letting his running mate pick it up in alto), while Obama played it up—not so much as to carry the whole tune, but certainly enough to be resoundingly heard, particularly in churches in the South. Both candidates swore to keep America rich, heterosexual, family centered, and gun toting … if not bearing those arms in Iraq, then perhaps in Iran. No less than the Republicans, the Democrats find it necessary to assuage the key lobbies—for China, Israel, oil, and banks and other lenders … what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” in his unheeded warning to Americans as he left office back in 1961.
And I’m not saying that the Presidency cannot be a tool for real change. It can … and usually is. The change, however, is mostly subtle and cultural—not so much a revolution, as emerged repeatedly with varying success during the Enlightenment, as a makeover … you know, like pink is the new tan, or whatever.
In my cynicism, I believe that no substantive change will happen in America without another bloody revolution and that Americans today have no stomach for revolution, bloody or bloodless. Like “liberal” and “conservative,” the word “change” (bandied by both parties last year) has become just another unique selling proposition, like “new and improved,” which legally requires only a change of marketing—i.e. adding “new and improved” to the package makes a product new enough and improved enough to satisfy government standards for truth in advertising.
Still, it is my “hope” (vague word—desperately in need of substance) that Obama’s symbolizing of change can stimulate real systemic and cultural changes for the better of the nation and the world. As a student of art and literature, I know that symbols have considerable weight—they affect behaviors, attitudes, choices, and meaning, and they can sway history. But we have to remember that change is not inevitably for the good, so we need to bolster our hopes with wariness, inquiry, and shitloads of clamor.
Obama, for instance, campaigned saying he would shut down Guantánamo Bay and ban torture, upon taking office, but now says he won’t be closing the controversial prison during his first 100 days in office. “It’s more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” he says. (No shit.) He’s also beginning to show a lot more admiration for the security and intelligence community, and while still vowing to ban torture, he says he doesn’t want these highly “talented” professionals to constantly be looking over their shoulders.
I saw this coming a long way back. It’s not just that things start looking different after one gets a White House briefing, though there is that, and it’s not just that Presidential candidates say anything to get elected, even things they can’t possibly back up, though there is that too.
Fundamentally, it’s a matter of there being a narrowly constricted prototype for who gets to run for President in either major party, superficial differences of style and tone aside—ambitious, narcissistic, malleable front men (and women) for the interests of the real (mostly out of the spotlight) powerbrokers. “Liberal” and “conservative” stopped being anything more than branding at the top levels of government long ago. Goodbye, Adlai Stevenson. Goodbye, Barry Goldwater. Hello, Mickey Mouse.
I’m not saying there weren’t important differences between Obama and McCain. There were. But the principal differences were stylistic, tonal, and symbolic—citrus-scented gel versus ocean-breeze foam.
McCain downplayed the God theme (letting his running mate pick it up in alto), while Obama played it up—not so much as to carry the whole tune, but certainly enough to be resoundingly heard, particularly in churches in the South. Both candidates swore to keep America rich, heterosexual, family centered, and gun toting … if not bearing those arms in Iraq, then perhaps in Iran. No less than the Republicans, the Democrats find it necessary to assuage the key lobbies—for China, Israel, oil, and banks and other lenders … what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” in his unheeded warning to Americans as he left office back in 1961.
And I’m not saying that the Presidency cannot be a tool for real change. It can … and usually is. The change, however, is mostly subtle and cultural—not so much a revolution, as emerged repeatedly with varying success during the Enlightenment, as a makeover … you know, like pink is the new tan, or whatever.
In my cynicism, I believe that no substantive change will happen in America without another bloody revolution and that Americans today have no stomach for revolution, bloody or bloodless. Like “liberal” and “conservative,” the word “change” (bandied by both parties last year) has become just another unique selling proposition, like “new and improved,” which legally requires only a change of marketing—i.e. adding “new and improved” to the package makes a product new enough and improved enough to satisfy government standards for truth in advertising.
Still, it is my “hope” (vague word—desperately in need of substance) that Obama’s symbolizing of change can stimulate real systemic and cultural changes for the better of the nation and the world. As a student of art and literature, I know that symbols have considerable weight—they affect behaviors, attitudes, choices, and meaning, and they can sway history. But we have to remember that change is not inevitably for the good, so we need to bolster our hopes with wariness, inquiry, and shitloads of clamor.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Funniest Blogs ... Ever
Ever seen a cute animal that needs to be put in its place? Ever wondered what Jesus really thinks about Christmas? Ever wondered why white people like The Wire? These blogs may be the lifeline for you.
Fuck You Penguin
Mrs. Betty Bowers America's Best Christian
Stuff White People Like
Fuck You Penguin
Mrs. Betty Bowers America's Best Christian
Stuff White People Like
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