This Movie Could Have Been An Email

On Sunday, December 22nd, I watched Joker: Folie à Deux. I didn't enjoy it. I thought I would after roughly the first third, but it descends quickly into grimness after that.

It's a movie that could have been an email. That email would go approximately like this:

From: Todd Phillips

To: Joker Fanboys

Some of you undersocialized incels* took the completely wrong message from the first Joker film. In response, here are three pumps and an apology. Now fuck off forever, weirdos.

With all due respect, which is none,

Todd

*For a nuanced discussion of the so-called manosphere and its relationship to misogyny and male supremacy, please listen to Jamie Loftus's manosphere series on her Sixteenth Minute (Of Fame) podcast.

Todd Phillips, you directed Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born; you know she deserves better than to play the audience stand-in in your fan disservice film. You owe her another movie in which her character is a  well-developed and fully rounded human being with complex emotions.

Which is not to say that Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga played their roles badly. I feel they did the best the could with the material they were given. Their dance sequences were lovely. The material simply wasn't very interested in their characters as much as it was interested in pathologizing (certain members of) the audience of the first movie.

Given the recent folk heroization of the 27-year-old man accused of murdering the CEO of United Healthcare, this movie was badly timed as well as uninterestingly written. Americans aren't very much in the mood for a lecture about how the televised murder of a wealthy elite is the worst thing that could happen, more punishable than the daily degradation and abuse visited upon the poor and disenfranchised.

Wasn't one of the intended messages embedded in the first film that Arthur, an abused 7-year-old boy failed by the social safety net, unable as an adult to access the medicine (health care) that would help keep him emotionally stable, deserved real help with his problems? Wasn't Joker in part about institutional failure?

A movie about how individual responses to institutional failure are pathetic, useless, wasted efforts performed by doomed sociopaths is a bit bleak for the moment, Todd Phillips. Sure, no one wants to watch a movie where people from Arthur's neighborhood run for the local housing commission seats and work together to provide more low-income housing for Gotham City's poor.

Still, Lady Gaga was there when Vice President Kamala Harris was inaugurated. She needs a less grim, more hopeful project.

"Lady Gaga enters the inauguration platform as she prepares to sing a rendition of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)." Carlos M. Vazquez II, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Arthur Fleck's defense attorney is played by Catherine Keener. She was in Hamlet 2, a goofy comedy about high school musicals. The actor who played her character's romantic partner in Hamlet 2 was Steve Coogan, and Steve Coogan also appeared in Folie à Deux as a smarmy tv journalist. That appears to be a coincidence; I didn't see anything that said Keener and Coogan were both friends with Phillips or that Phillips had anything to do with Hamlet 2.

Keener, of course, also played Ms. Nelle Harper Lee in Capote. Always and forever fascinated by Harper Lee and Truman Capote, I happen to be reading Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo. 

Everything always comes back to Capote, even the other movie I watched on the 22nd, Dear Santa, in which a middle school English teacher referenced To Kill a Mockingbird. And if that happens to pull once again at my Lucifer thread, then so mote it be.

___

A dream: Yesterday (April 25, 2016) I saw a screen capture from the "Book Job" episode of The Simpsons. In that drawing, a shelf of books about Southern vampires has one called Tru Blood. On the cover, Truman Capote is enjoying a blood martini.

Perhaps because of that cartoon doodle, I dreamed about Capote. In my brain's wacky scenario, I was in a 1960s prison with movie-Dick Hickok, as played by Mark Pellegrino.

I assume Perry Smith was also there, but I didn't see him.

Now, in theory, the male and female prisoners were supposed to be kept separate. In actuality, the prison looked a lot less like a prison and more like a coed dorm. My work detail involved cleaning rooms that women had vacated.

Ordinarily I was very scrupulous in my work. I didn't take any belongings left behind by the other women. But I take a small pink plastic bird and stick it in my pocket. I gave it to Dick because he told me he was saving up to buy a pigeon. He wanted to raise birds, like the Birdman of Alcatraz.

'How to Think' by Alan Jacobs #NonFictionReview

This was a relatively quick read and introduced many interesting subjects that have to do with biases and how we perceive others who have beliefs different from our own. One of the main ideas that I took away from reading this book was the concept of "escalation of commitment."

Escalation of commitment is a psychological concept. When human beings - and all of us are prone to this - commit ourselves to something financially, philosophically, socially, or otherwise, then when we become faced with evidence that said thing is wrong/incorrect/a bad investment/bad for our health, etc., we do an irrational thing. We defend that thing even harder. 

The classic example of escalation of commitment is the gambler who keeps losing, but has already sunk so much money into the game, the gambler refuses to stop playing. A more contemporary example, hinted at but not explicitly stated in this book, is the behavior of those American voters who voted for Donald Trump for president. Now they see what a truly incompetent, unkind, and potentially dangerous person he is -- but they root for him even harder. They just can't psychologically bring themselves to cut their losses at this point. That's escalation of commitment. 

Perhaps an even more egregious (or just as egregious) contemporary example is the candidacy of Judge Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate special election in Alabama. Although many credible witnesses have brought forth testimony that Moore attempted to sexually assault, seduce, or at best sexually harass them when they were under the age of 18, Moore is nonetheless primed to be the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama. The voters who support him have escalated commitment to the point that they're willing to overlook these credible accusations. Worse, some of them are blaming the victims of these alleged incidents for their own roles in their "seduction." 

I have been thinking about Alabama a lot because Tit Elingtin and I watched a live performance of the stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird a few weeks ago. I wish all Americans could be periodically reminded of To Kill a Mockingbird. I wish we all understood that Tom Robinson is the good guy. 

Alabama, Judge Roy Moore is the Tom Ewell of your story. He doesn't deserve your vote. If he did those things he's credibly accused of, he deserves public shame and humiliation, and possibly criminal indictment. Alabamans, now is the time for you to be more like Atticus Finch and less like the people on Tom Robinson's jury. 

It's kind of a shame that the people who could most benefit from this kind of reflection on the thought process are not the ones most likely to read this book. However, ever single literate adult speaker of the English language could stand to benefit from this refresher course on thought bias and how to treat our fellow human beings with a little less contempt and a little more humanity. 

I received this book from BloggingForBooks.com for this review. My next Blogging for Books pick will be:

The Comic Book Story of Video Games: The Incredible History of the Electronic Gaming Revolution by Jonathan Hennessey and Jack McGowan

Thoughts on 'Go Set a Watchman'

On Thursday, August 13th, Mr. Elingtin and I visited the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library at 340 N. Senate Avenue, in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The book I took with me to read in the car was Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. It is the second novel she published, although she wrote it before her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird.

The docent at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library told me he was still deciding whether or not to read this book. I understand this impulse. From the moment those of us of a literary bent read the first chapter as published in the Wall Street Journal, it was apparent our long-serving image of Atticus Finch as a force for colorblind morality would be altered by his character development in this book.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird once, either in the sixth or seventh grade, as assigned to me in junior high. I liked the book then and it's stayed with me ever since.  I think many people who didn’t conform to strict gender stereotypes have identified with the tomboyish Jean Louise “Scout” Finch over the years. I’m among them. (I’m not the most “girlish” of girls, although I do love glitter and pink things.)

I decided before GSAW came out that I would have to have it immediately. To that end, during my lunch hour on Tuesday, July 14, I went to Forever Books and paid full retail price for a brand-new hardcover copy. I had, after all, waited more than 20 years for a second Harper Lee novel. (It wasn't the longest possible wait, since the novel was originally published in 1960, the year my parents each turned 8.) As soon as I finished Paper Towns, I started GSAW.

Titular Allusion: The Jewish Bible, Isaiah 21:6. In the King James version, “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” In the novel, the watchman is literally a “citizens’ council” of highly dubious intent and, figuratively, Scout’s conscience.

The bit of character development that Scout Finch – aged 26 – undergoes in the novel is discovering that the father she idolizes has feet of clay. He belongs to the citizens’ council whose purpose is to counter the actions of the NAACP, and he sits by, tacitly affirming its virulently racist rhetoric.

Scout’s reaction to learning about her father’s hidden racism is to become violently physically ill, take to bed for 12 straight hours, then to lash out at the members of her family who approve of what she considers morally abhorrent behavior. Scout’s natural instinct, nurtured in her by Atticus during the first 25 years of her life, is to judge people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

While many will be disappointed with Atticus in his old age, one could make the case that Scout remains essentially the same person she was at age 10 (her age in TKAM, set in the mid-1930s). She’s still stubborn, independent, not overly burdened by societal views of traditional femininity, brilliant, creative, and empathetic. Atticus has changed, but Jean Louise is still the Scout we know and love.

Another of the pleasures of this novel is in its several flashbacks to the 1930s, when Scout was still a girl and her older brother Jem was still alive. (We learn he’s died suddenly from the same heart defect that killed the Finch children’s mother.) These are highly amusing, including an incident in which Scout fundamentally misunderstands where babies come from and plans to kill herself, under the mistaken impression that she’s pregnant.

In another great scene, Scout, Jem, and their summer neighbor Dill (whom Lee based on Truman Capote – another author of American classics, although sadly he is no longer with us, unlike Ms. Lee) play a game of pretend. They pretend to have a religious revival, much to the dismay of Dill’s aunt/temporary guardian. She catches Dill dressed as the Holy Ghost (wearing a bed sheet with eye holes cut out) and attempting to baptize the Finch children in a goldfish pond. Atticus, as it happens, had the pastor over to dinner that night, but rather than being dismayed by his children’s antics, Atticus merely conceals himself on the back porch to laugh out of the pastor’s earshot.

So, although it has us rethinking everything we thought we knew about the moral character of Atticus Finch, I say go ahead and read Go Set a Watchman. It’s still a pleasure to spend further time with Scout Finch. Some will also be able to make the case that Calpurnia’s character is developed in further depth than the way we saw her in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Sidebar: Truman Capote died in 1984 (I was 7) in the midst of a battle with liver cancer, compounded by years of alcohol and drug abuse. I remember reading “A Christmas Memory” in elementary school and being disappointed to learn that Capote was no longer living. Visiting my classroom during this discussion the school principal, Mr. John Farthing, told us (non-judgmentally) that Capote was gay. He recounted to us a bit about the famous Black and White Ball and Capote’s flamboyant personality. I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s shortly after that. I still have my first copy.

By the way, one may also visit the preserved mid-Victorian home of the poet James Whitcomb Riley while visiting Indianapolis. I haven’t, and I fear it would bore Mr. Elingtin to death if I did.

We did, however, go to the Indiana State Fair. Neither of us had ever been to it before. It had everything you’d expect an agricultural fair to have, including an enormous number of booths serving foods of questionable nutritional value. Okay, I admit it: I had a sandwich made with a pressed pork patty, dill pickles, and barbeque sauce. (It wasn’t great. I’d have been better off with a nice Greek salad or even some fried okra from the Jamaican food booth. I’d also considered some French-style beignets and/or a peach cider slush.)

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is small, but worth visiting. I got to type on Vonnegut’s personal typewriter, as visitors are encouraged to do. The current exhibit focuses on the Mother Night film, and a typewriter belonging to Nick Nolte is on loan, but visitors are not allowed to type on it.

For further reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/books/bookstores-plan-rollout-for-next-harper-lee-novel.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/book-blog/article_a0f1ec1b-ae96-5fd5-9069-ca252937a2d5.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67442-first-chapter-of-harper-lee-s-go-set-a-watchman-published.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67482-early-reviews-hype-watchman-interest.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67484-authors-reflect-on-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/67508-historic-day-one-sales-for-watchman.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/67521-rethinking-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67578-watchman-cements-1-spot.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67645-watchman-sells-220k-in-week-two-stays-put-at-1.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/67620-watchman-print-king-of-the-digital-era.html

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/15/how-should-schools-deal-with-the-new-atticus-finch

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/13/harper-lee-third-novel-lawyer-tonja-carter