Image and Word

I certainly can’t say that I liked the Masterpiece Theatre movie version of Jane Eyre better than it’s novelistic predecessor, one of my literary true loves, but nor can I say that it is inferior. It’s not a choice that I had to make. Unlike the recent film of The Golden Compass, this adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte classic demonstrates how a movie can, in fact, form a symbiotic relationship with the text from with is drawn, complementing and enhancing the original work.

Something about the character of Rochester, for example, always nagged at me when I read the book. He flirts with beautiful, haughty Blanche Ingram while teasing Jane about his supposedly pending nuptials, all the while knowing that it is his plain governess whom he truly prefers. This behavior has always struck me as verging on cruel. As embodied by Toby Stephens, however, the Rochester of the film is testing Jane rather than taunting her, trying to plumb the depths of her affections as he wrestles with the question of how to confront his own passion. He is torn between his desire for Jane and the knowledge that his previous marriage should make a union with her impossible.

The movie also revealed to me, far more clearly than repeated readings ever have, what is perhaps the essential reason for my love of the book; it is dark and it is weird. Unlike a more conventional romantic heroine, Jane is not beautiful and she is not vivacious, qualities that the film shows in Ruth Wilson’s wide, down-turned mouth and resolute jaw. (An aside: Would American producers allowed their protagonist to appear so genuinely plain? [Not that Ruth Wilson is inherently plain, but she is de-glammed here in a way an American production would not abide.]) Rochester is not dashing; quite the reverse, he is oppressed by his own past weakness and folly.

They find each other in a bleak landscape that the moviemakers show us as perpetually veiled in mist and cut with towering shadows. They are shot as small figures in the sprawling desolate rooms of Thornfield Hall. As their relationship progresses, no makeover transforms Jane into the radiant beauty that was hidden within her frumpiness and no emotional revelation softens the crusty heart of her master. They come together and find love on their own dark and tortured terms.

If watching this season of America’s Next Top Model has taught me anything, it’s that Tyra Banks’ commitment to effecting positive change in the world is growing as steadily as her resemblance to a drag queen. Sadly, however, she is far more convincing as a cross-dressing diva than she is as an earnest do-gooder.

It all started off innocently enough, with the inclusion of one or two “plus-sized” girls among the aspiring models over the last few seasons. When one group of finalist models travelled to Thailand shortly after the tsunmai of 2004, there was a poignant moment when Tyra urged them all to meditate for a moment on the enormity of that tragedy.

This season, however, she takes it to new levels. Early on, the 13 finalists were introduced to the vehicle in which they will be chauffered throughout the season, a “green” people-mover bus not entirely dissimilar to the one in which I went to my senior prom. The modelettes’ first photo shoot was for a public service “campaign” on the subject of how smoking is, you know, like, bad for you and stuff; as an added bonus, during panel Tyra announced that smoking by contestants would be banned this season. Add to this the requisite woman’s department model and a contestant with Asperger’s for a fully rounded portfolio of social conscience. I would be only mildly surprised if next week’s challenge involves putting together the perfect look for dishing out reheated canned goods at the soup kitchen: “You want to look fierce, but not too light-hearted.”

This season’s bent towards the socially responsible would be more admirable, if the show didn’t so desperately want to have it both ways.

It wants to embrace a positive body image for women of all shapes, yet it wants to punish those who carry around a bit of a gut. It wants to project an image of environmental-friendliness, yet it wants to carpet the inside of the green vehicle with fake grass–a more telling symbol pop culture may never have offered. It wants to tell us how brave Asperger’s sufferer Heather is for competing on national TV, yet it certainly doesn’t want to bother to learn how to pronounce the name of the disorder. It tries to claim that the model-making process is empowering for the girls on the show, yet doesn’t hesitate to do a photo shoot depicting the aspirants as murder victims, taken down by their own jealous rivals.

Without this pretense of activism, America’s Next Top Model could certainly have been called anti-feminist or degrading. This new shallow veneer of moral impetus, however, is even worse than none at all. It says that doing the right thing is neither more serious, more arduous, or more lasting than striking a pose for the camera.

Turning 30 is a very reflective time. And, being myself, I used the opportunity to reflect on my own petty quirks and preferences. I am sure I missed plenty of things I love in this compilation, so consider what is assembled here to be a pretty good estimation of the best 30 cultural and media items to cross my path lo these 30 years.

30. Danger Mouse: This droll British cartoon about a secret agent mouse and his cowardly hamster sidekick was the television equivalent of training wheels, preparing young funnybones for future enjoyment of Monty Python.

29. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: I have no argument for the impact or profundity of this weekly radio quiz show, but it is like audio-comfort food, and you just can’t argue with macaroni and cheese.

28. The first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

27. Screenwriter’s Blues, Soul Coughing: This song is aesthectically pleasing, in other words, “fly.”

26. Bird Books, in general: Ever since I was very young I could easily spend a good hour or so paging through these field guides, mentally catalouging the birds I have encountered, admiring the drawings and photographs, attempting my own sketches. Why? No idea. But I just bought a new bird book yesterday so clearly my obsession lives.

25. Heroes: It has only been one season, but even if it goes wildly downhill come the fall, Heroes will have been the brilliant meteor shower that you got up at 3 a.m. to go watch with your Dad when you were eight and remember forever as the one of the most amazing and entrancing things you’ve ever seen.

24. From Here to Eternity: This movie is more than the classic embrace-in-the-crashing-surf scene. Try not to tear up when Pvt. Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) plays a bugle salute to the fallen Maggio (Frank Sinatra) or not to hold your breath through the tempestuous first meeting between Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr) and Sgt. Warden (Burt Lancaster, embodying the term ‘barrel-chested’).

23. The State: Among many other reasons, for bringing us monkey research. No wait. “Research is such a restrictive term. I feel I’ve opened up a whole new arena of experimentation which I call ‘Monkey Torture.’”

22. No matter how many times I see it, I will flip to the channel showing A Few Good Men, just to hear this: “Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.”

21. Network, specifically the dialogue: The script of this movie is clearly the work of someone who simply loves the sound, the meaning, the rhythm and cadence or words.

20. Crazy, as sung by either Patsy Cline or Willie Nelson: Plaintive heartbreak at its most elegant. This song is spare, simple, and nearly perfect.

19. It Happened One Night: Once upon a time in Hollywood the double entendre was a finely-honed craft. Here, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert elevate it to a sly and sexy art.

18. Spongmonkeys: They have a pepper bar.

17. Cracker: If the crime-drama gods told me that, for the rest of my life, I could have one episode of Cracker, or the entire catalogue of all three Law and Order franchises the choice would be clear. The subtlety and the complex characters (and the British accents?) make even a little bit of Cracker infinitely more filling than an entire season of any American production in the genre.

16. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: I am still looking for the magic closet that will turn me into a mythical queen. In the meantime I will have to settle for regular re-readings of this first and best of the Narnia books.

15. Leaves of Grass: Just because.

14. Northern Exposure: If Northern Exposure were a new show today, would I like it or would I find it too full of self-conscious quirk? No matter, the talking trees, errant satellites, and especially the bohemian local DJ/armchair philosopher were irresistible to me in high school. And with that unique variety of nostalgia that high school obsessions can induce, I love it to this day.

13. This line of the American President: “My name is Andrew Shepherd and I AM the president.” Hey, I dig righteous indignation, especially as written by Aaron Sorkin (see also #22).

12. Ten: The 80s are in right now; grunge must be making a comeback soon. I am dusting off my flannels and army boots at this very moment.

11. The Green Sky Trilogy: In later years, I have come to find the books’ veiled politics a bit wearisome, yet the exquisitely sketched alternate world where the denizens glide from tree branch to tree branch on silken wings has never failed to captivate me.

10. Automatic for the People: It’s 1995. I’m feeling angsty. Lying on my bed in the dark, listening to Michael Stipe croon, “I will try not to breathe, this decision is mine…”

9. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock- “Let us go then, you and I…”

8. 10 Things I Hate About You: Unlike many other teen movies in which an outsider protagonist finds love and suddenly starts acting and dressing like his or her more mainstream classmates, in this high school-based adaptation of the Taming of the Shrew the character of Kat (Julia Stiles) gets her man, but never loses her fierce sense of non-conformity. Score one for the outcasts.

7. New Partner, by Palace Music: Just ask my college roomates if I ever get sick of this song.

6. Clue: The movie that taught us that the chief duty of butlers is to butle, and that “Monkeys’ brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.C.”

5. Colin Firth’s performances in Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and What a Girl Wants: No other actor in movies today is undone by love quite so well as Colin Firth. He plays it steely and distant and yet always clearly telegraphs the affection (whether paternal or romantic) that simmers beneath his icy surfaces. And when, in most of these films, he finally submits to his passion it is with a headlong rush that is all the more satisfying because of his previous sternness.

4. The Princess Bride: Yes, Fred Savage, the story on which this movie is base is indeed a kissing book. An awesome, awesome kissing book.

3. Sonnet #18: I probably shouldn’t even try to bother elaborating on why this most famous of Shakepeare sonnets is, you know, good.

2. Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson: I am indeed a transparent eyeball.

1. Pride and Prejudice: The mini-series, the movie, and, above all, the book. “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on the subject forever.” Sigh.

In the beginning, there were the spongmonkeys. And they were good.

With crazed, gravelly voices, the hamsteresque duo of Photoshopped rodents sang to us of warm toasty Quizno’s subs and the virtue of a sandwich shop with a pepper bar. The one in the bowler tackled the lead vocals while levitating in the foreground, and his pirate hat-clad sidekick accompanied him on guitar.

From an advertising perspective, the spongmonkeys were genius. They accomplished what every ad campaign is hoping to; they cut through the clutter. They were so remarkably bizarre that they were impossible to ignore. People talked about them, wrote about them, wanted to know more about what these strange singing hairballs were doing on their televisions. Despite this brilliance, however, Quizno’s eventually fired the spokes-rats–something about vermin not being appropriately appetizing pitchmen for a food service establishment.

Since that time, the use of wacky attention-getting images and characters in advertising has proliferated. But the technique no longer cuts through the clutter; it is the clutter. No product category is immune from this phenomenon of forced whimsy–the use of random quirk to signify hipness and relevance. What the consumer ends up getting is cynical 30 second spots that are more grating than engaging. They feel like calculated interpretations of what a boardroom full of advertising execs thought would appeal to the youth demographic.

Case in point: this loathsome ad for Starbust Berries and Cream, shrill and unfathomable. It is far too proud of its own departure from convention. This smugness makes the viewer an outsider, who is just not in on the very strange joke.

What, then, about the Geico cavemen, who were so successful as commercial characters that they are getting their own sitcom? I would argue that the cavemen, though an undeniably peculiar premise, escape the trap of off-putting foreced whimsy. The ads achieve this by incorporating dry humor and meticulous details: wry jokes about mother issues, casually unbuttoned shirt collars, well-timed grimaces of exasperation. Over the course of the campaign’s several different installments, the cavemen become empathetic likable characters.

The lesson that the makers of the Starburst spot and its ilk need to learn is that ultimately, it is the humanity under the caveman make-up that makes those ads work. Outlandish concepts may catch viewers’ eyes, but it takes more to win their hearts.

I never watched Sex and the City until recently, when I discovered that WGN (the Superstation) airs episodes before my 11:30/Midnight double-dose of Scrubs.

At the peak of the show’s popularity, however, I worked in a corporate office, where cross-cube chat among my female coworkers frequently revolved around which of the characters they most identified with. The ultimate aim of the conversations was questionable, however, because the participants nearly unniversally agreed on their answer; everyone, it seemed, was precisely like Carrie Bradshaw.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that a show that garnered such critical and popular acclaim should have as its central character a woman with whom anyone can identify. In fact, now that WGN is allowing me to look closely at the figure of Carrie, it seems to me that the program’s creators have taken painstaking care to make sure that nothing about her could rub viewers the wrong way.

Visually, Sarah Jessica Parker is striking (in a vaguely equine way), but not classically beautiful. What makes her undeniably compelling are her intangible qualities of confidence and elegance. When the average woman looks in the mirror, she cannot convince herself that she looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones. She may, however, be able to believe that she possesses a style or charisma or…something…that sets her apart from the crowd.

Carrie’s personality is a blank slate; she has few distinguishing character traits and none of any distinction. She enjoys sex but longs for love, she is a good friend but occasionally self-absorbed. Her vices are few and mild: smoking and a slight shoe-focused shopping addiction.

The actual personalities are reserved for the members of her posse: promiscuous Samantha, idealistic Charlotte, cynical Miranda. The three are essentially pigeonholed into these descriptors, but they are at least defined by something, rather than the vague nothingness in which Carrie exists. Their bold character traits make them infinitely more intriguing than the show’s bland protagonist. Samantha’s bold sexuality may incite harsh disapproval from some viewers. Miranda’s cynicism makes one wonder about the personal history that led her to such disillusionment with humanity.

Of course, to give all four main characters such strong personalities would have been to risk alienating viewers who found Charlotte too naive or Miranda too cold. Carrie’s blandness, perhaps, is a necessary evil, but the widespread embrace of her mediocrity need not be.

It just appeared one day last week, wedged between Bravo and the National Geographic Channel. Johnny Cash, it showed me, on a hunting trip. He had shot at a crow but had not been accurate, and the bird fell to the ground injured but alive. Johnny picked it up and carried it with him, inspecting its wounds, laughing when it nipped at him with its sharp beak. For one long sustained shot, the pair simply sat on a rock while Johnny crooned to the captured crow in his gravelly voice.

OvationTV this wonder called itself and I was enthralled.

Since that time the unexpected and magical channel has showed me Elvis in his early days, Kurt Cobain in his final days, and Martin Scorcese contemplating the films that have most influenced his own work.

It is like the anti-MTV with movies and dancing thrown in for good measure. Not single moment of the station seems audience-tested or edited with the assumption that us modern folk simply don’t have the attention span we used to (see above re: crow serenade). You know those nights when you can’t sleep and, flipping through your hundreds of television stations you happen across a bizarre and wonderful old movie or archival documentary that seems to your fatigue-addled brain to be somehow revelatory? That is what every moment of Ovation is like: somehow wrong, somehow out of step with all you have been taught to expect from modern TV, and yet, somehow, so very, very right.

It has been a couple of weeks now since the unsatisfying and occasionally odd series finale of Veronica Mars and finally I can clear the tears from my eyes long enough to pay proper respects.

All of the other post-mortems have used words like “feisty,” “stylish,” and “smart.” Fair enough, but hardly sufficient.

The show’s big strength was the utter seriousness with which it treated the lives of its characters. Though the plot points sometimes bordered on the outlandish, they were presented a sincerity and emotional urgency that prevented the show from ever sliding into soap opera territory. When Logan told Veronica in the Season 2 finale that he thought their story would be epic, my heart, she almost burst. That one moment invoked precisely what it was to be a teenager, the simultaneous uncertainty and fierce need.

In the end, though, we were unable to really say goodbye. The final announcement of the cancellation came only after taunting rumors of a possible resurrection. Then there was the highly inappropriate pairing of Veronica and Piz. And the episode itself didn’t just fail to resolve lingering questions, it almost went out of its way to create new ones: what was the significance of Lily’s father’s involvement in the secret society? What would happen to Logan after he punched out the thug with mob connections? And, most importantly, would Logan and Veronica’s story really be epic?

Comedy Central this weekend screened a pair of movies whose celebration of the outcast and carefully orchestrated quirkiness make them relatives of a sort. The Royal Tenenbaums and Napoleon Dynamite do share a certain aesthetic and similar subject matter. Wes Anderson and Jared Hess have both made finely detailed examinations of the lives of tortured misfits. And both films display a meticulous aesthetic: each shot is a painstakingly created composition of character, costume, and setting.

But beneath the carefully observed surfaces are two entirely different cinematic experiences. Where Anderson evinces an actual affection for his characters, Hess is cold–even cruel–to his creations. Anderson is the enthusiastic child, scripting dramatic scenarios that he will later act out with his stuffed animals and action figures; Hess is the boy who zealously skewers live butterflies then watches, studiously, as they wriggle on the pin.

The (radically oversimplified) reason we–or at least I–enjoy the quirky geek movie, is that we can identify with the central characters. Perhaps, like Luke Wilson’s Richie Tenenbaum, we know the pain of hopeless love. Or maybe, like Napoleon, we simply don’t fit in. The satisfaction in seeing our angst-filled couterparts paraded across the screen is the confirmation that despite being unloved, unattractive, unpopular, we may still be seen and understood by someone out there. Even if we don’t see our dreams of a happy ending played out on the screen (Richie, after all, does not attain the object of his desire), the very presence of misfits like ourselves is validation in itself.

The transformation, however cannot occur, if the character in question is, like Napoleon, so thoroughly unlikable as to engender contempt rather than identification. He is not simply socially inept; he is humorless, crass, self-aggrandizing, and perpetually indignant. And he never gets his proper redemption. Though some reviewers have interpreted his climactic dance performance as an compelling transfiguration, a triumph of self-confidence over reality, I could only see a moment in which the movie finally makes completely explicit its invitation to gawk at the spastic efforts of the hopeless geek, to see Napoleon not as a person, but as a side show.

The members of the Tenenbaum clan, on the other hand, are certainly caricatures of a sort, but their stories are full of humanity. Ben Stiller’s Type A widower Chas is overbearing and unforgiving, but the flip side of these traits is his fierce protectiveness of his two young sons. Estranged father Royal (Gene Hackman) manipulates his way back into his family’s life only when he is rendered homeless, but is quickly frustrated by his self-made alienation from his own sons and daughters.

The Royal Tenenbaums is, ultimately, an examination of what happens when people must reconcile the promise that childhood once held with the less-than-satisfying realities of adulthood. The film uses its quirky characters and highly stylized settings to create a slightly fantastical atmosphere that suits its themes. In Napoleon Dynamite, however, the carefully planned details are more like the machinations of an exceptionally well-crafted prank–so slick and clever that you almost forget to feel sorry for the butt of the joke.