Why I cried at Batman
See previous post. This NY Times op-ed gets at why I cried even better than I did. I only knew I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness and recognition at the reality painted in Gotham.
The author spent the summer secluded from the rest of the world up in Maine writing a book. When he emerged from seclusion, he watched the Dark Knight, now one of the most popular movies ever, up there with Titanic and Star Wars.
Three months later, “The Dark Knight” having been ratified as the movie we all desperately needed to see, we ought to understand.
Coming home afterward, I still didn’t. Instead, in a season bullied by whole families of hurricanes and bankruptcies, and with the less controversial of our simultaneous wars now meandering across the Cambodian — excuse me — the Pakistani border, and with a resurgently belligerent Russia apparently having inched into view across the Bering Strait when no one was looking, I felt disabled by the film, and demoralized [my emphasis].
In my confusion, I scurried for the shelter of Google. There I found affirmed what a certain yellow-shading-to-orange-alert panic I’d experienced in my multiplex seat had led me to fear, but I hadn’t articulated for myself: “The Dark Knight,” with its taciturn and self-pitying vigilante, its scenes of torture, rendition and interrogation, its elaborately leveraged choices between principles and human lives, might offer a defense of the present administration’s cursory regard for human rights abroad and civil rights at home, in the cause of reply to attacks from an irrational and inhuman evil. Poor Batman, forced again and again to violate the ethics that define him, to destroy the world to save it.
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Scene after scene presents a sensual essay in taking good-guy torture and a crumbling social and economic infrastructure equally for granted. No one in this Gotham can remember a time before the town’s ruin, and the movie declines to hint at a way out, only noting that our hero’s bitterness was predetermined by his failure — or was it the reverse?
Like the fogey I’ve become, I felt brutalized as I watched, but after the tide of contradictions had receded behind me I wasn’t stirred to any feeling richer than an exhausted shrug, as when confronted by headlines reminding me that we no longer have a crane collapse or a bank failure, we have the latest crane collapse, the latest bank failure.
…
The Joker’s paradox, of course, is the same as that of 9/11 and its long aftermath: audacious transgression ought to call out of us an equal and adamant passion for love of truth and freedom, yet the fear he inspires instead drives us deep into passivity and silence.
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No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.
…
It may be possible to see the nightly news in a similar light, where any risk of uncovering the vulnerable yearnings, all the tenderness aroused by, yes, the seemingly needless death of a promising young actor or of a brilliant colleague, all hope of conversation between the paranoid blues and the paranoid reds, all that might bind us together, is forever armored in a gleeful and cynical cartoon of spin and disinformation. Keywords — “change,” “victory” — are repeated until adapted out of meaning, into self-canceling glyphs. Meanwhile, pigs break into the lipstick store, and we go hollering down the street after them, relieving ourselves of another hour or day or week of clear thought.
Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership’s implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher’s resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another’s final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we’ve seen, only sure we’re primed for the sequel.
If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us.
The Complexity of Black Lives
When it comes to blacks in America, Ms. Gordon-Reed said, social history has trumped biography. “We tend to think of group identity instead of individuals,” she said, which leads us to “miss the complexity of black lives.”
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Ms. Gordon-Reed turns over the decisions that Sally Hemings and her family made throughout their lives, examining them from every side as if they were a Rubik’s Cube. She refuses to accept generalizations and easy conclusions; for instance, she rejects the assertion that all sex between master and slave must be viewed as rape, saying it strips black women of the singularity of their life stories and their dignity.
Prayer is beautiful
The sermon today was a mixed bag. Parts of it were remarkably like the Veggie Tales show I watched yesterday. Trust God! God is in control! You are not! (I ask again, what does that mean?) In some ways it was good for me to hear. I know I have very little control over the job market. But then I already knew that. What I don’t know, and what drives me crazy, is if I can make my documents good enough–not necessarily in other peoples’ perception, but in my own. (I guess–the question is can I control the part I can control…my application).
But there were a few things that touched me this morning. One, I was struck again at how beautiful prayer is. I don’t know what it does metaphysically, so don’t ask me. But I do think it brings people together in a really awesome way. It humbles us before something greater. And it allows us to express our greatest hopes and fears collectively. We can pray for people far away or close that are in need and it helps us emotionally connect with them. It is of course not a substitute for helping them as much as we can in this world. But the connection is beautiful.
Also, I love Ecclesiastes. The pastor started off this series by pointing out that the author is a realist (as compared to an optimist). He asked us all to raise our hands for which we were. E looked at me expectantly when he asked the optimists, I think only because I get frustrated with E’s very focused realism. I don’t know that I’m either. I think maybe I’m a depressed optimist. 
Anyway. I love Ecclesiastes not so much because the author is a realist, which is why the pastor loves the book, I think, but because he sounds depressed. Like me. And yet he finds hope. I love this (I am a sucker for beauty and life enjoyment):
What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
Maybe my next bit of acting could be memorizing the book and delivering it as a revery / speech.
Gideon Tuba Warrior
I read a review of the Veggie Tales show Gideon Tuba Warrior awhile ago and was surprised at its vehement hatred of the whole thing. I can’t find the review now (probably on the NY Times, given my diction, but searching hasn’t shown up anything yet). So I stuck it on my Netflix list and forgot about it. It just showed up and we watched while continuing to unpack (being rained out of the Ren Faire).
The primary complaints about it that I remember–
- The show (which is very close to the Bible Story) asks for complete trust in God beyond personal sense for no clear reason.
- Trusting God leads to genocide (which the show doesn’t portray–they just chase the Midionites away).
- All the bad guys seem more like people of color, while the good guys seem to have more proto-typically white culture. There is definitely one part where a hand comes out of the cloud that is very peach. The Midionites don’t really have personalities, but they do come across more middle east (beards, vague accent, side curls).
It brings up my whole problem around trusting God. There are no angels today. I trust my own sense most of the time; I do my personal best.
What do the phrases “God is control” “God knows what he’s doing” “We just have to obey” (from the commentary) mean?
Veggie Tales was one of the first pieces of Christian media I’d ever seen that were actually well done. I have fond memories of them coming from my younger years. Unlike the reviewer, I don’t think the problem here is Veggie Tales. Gideon Tuba Warrior follows almost exactly Gideon from the Bible, with some jokes thrown in and the genocide tempered for the kiddies.
Makes me wonder yet again if (when) I have kids what in the world to teach them about life. What I was taught seems unsatisfactory, but I’m not sure what else…
I think the most striking thing for me about watching this Veggie Tales video is that it feels as complicated a moral as I get from a lot of Christian society (more church than bible study, but even studying Genesis with my friends I hadn’t answered this question more deeply.) Part of my problem is definitely a continued resistance to studying my questions more deeply. I just let them stew without seeking out thinkers who might actually answer my questions. When I read outside of my research, I want to read novels. Good ones give me a more complicated view of the world. But no wonder I feel so often like I’m in a corner with the same questions, the same answers, and nowhere to go.
Continued horror at McCain
Or Why I Hate Campaign Ads
On NPR’s News and Notes blog:
What John McCain Could Learn From Omar Little:
I saw John McCain’s new campaign ad today, where he attacks Barack Obama on his stance on teaching sex education to kindergarteners. The image is, to put it quite bluntly, jarring and to expound, perverse and disturbing. The screen juxtaposes the smiling image of a black man beside the emblazoned terms KINDERGARTEN and SEX as if to send the subliminal subtext that the happy Negro on the screen is some type of hypersexual creature waiting to come after your children or children you may know.
It is, in some senses, the most base level and disgusting political ad I’ve seen since Lee Atwater introduced the world to Willie Horton in 1988 (and yeah, I was only 10 back then and I knew it was f*cked up.).
Du Bois on perfection
Du Bois to Abram Harris, 1933:
I hope you [...] will stick to your resolution to get out a book at the earliest possible date, even though it is not perfect. Frankly and confidentially, perfect books are few and far between.
Personal Politics
I mentioned last Sunday how I’ve been thinking about individual choices surrounding education. Where middle class parents choose to send their children has an aggregate affect on education in this country, meaning that many urban schools are devoid of middle class kids. Choosing public or private schooling is a political choice. (full disclosure-I went to public school all the way through. My brother briefly spent some time in a Christian private school because of how awfully he was treated in a public junior high). Sandra Tsing Loh has an interesting blog post in today’s NY Times about where the candidates have chosen to send their kids (all private except for bulldog PTA mom Palin).
Let us not even touch the term “community organizer,” so buffeted about, by both sides, like a balloon at a rock concert. Let us just say that if Mr. and Mrs. Obama — a dynamic, Harvard-educated couple — had chosen public over private school, they could have lifted up not just their one local public school, but a family of schools. First, given the social pressure (or the social persuasion of wanting to belong to the cool club), more educated, affluent families would tip back into the public school fold. And second, the presence of educated type-A parents with too much time on their hands ensures that schools are held, daily, to high standards.
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And yes, I know I appear to be ranting on like a pit bull without lipstick, which brings me to the final nail in the coffin in this sorry election year. As a Democrat I am horrified that Sarah Palin is the one who snagged the deeply profound — and absolutely ignored by professional smart people — emotional real estate of “P.T.A. mother.” I too am, in fact, not just “my kids’ mom” but their Title I Los Angeles public school P.T.A. secretary. This unheard female howl is, for better or worse, what Ms. Palin has set out to tap into; it is real, and I am sick that we’ve let the Republicans charge this ground.
Sarah Palin’s children went to what looks like a humble little public school: Iditarod Elementary on Wasilla Fishhook Road. The school’s score on www.greatschools.net is a 4. That’s a lot of street cred, for a gun-totin’, snow-mobilin’ creationist-lovin’ lady.
One of the first to respond had this to say:
writing, writing, writing
So many choices to be made……. I decided to frame part of this chapter, which requires a lot of introductions, by using transportation idioms (leaving home at 137 street, getting on the subway, arriving at Grand Central, reconnecting with others…) Some of this I know. Some I am hypothesizing–I know they worked at a certain place, I know they took the train, but I don’t know if they took the subway or if they left from home or work. It’s a literary device to get to the meat of the matter without endlessly repeating so and so, who worked at such and such, was invited. But it makes me nervous, nonetheless. Am I playing too freely with the “truth” or rather filling things in that shouldn’t be filled?
Also, there is a dissertation out there about this same conference. I read it last Spring Break and have ignored it since. My advisor claims it’s existence shouldn’t bother me. And yes, my other chapters are different from his. But the central chapter…….which I want to turn in as a writing sample…….I just looked at it because I couldn’t find a bio detail any where else and he has looked at all the same materials I have………..
I have to perform magic this week. I basically have to get my writing sample done this week in order to be ready for the first applications and to request letters of recommendation. I thought I was pretty close, but then junked most of it Friday and started over again because the previous draft was Terrible. Note the capital T. I have 40 pages of this draft, but with so much crap highlighted in yellow, so many sources to re-cite (I started over again by not being bogged down in citation), so many transitions to provide. So much to smooth out. So much writing-poverty to ignore.
I am so happy not to be teaching. It is the one thing preserving my sanity. But I have no idea how I could possibly get a job this year. I’m not ready and my work doesn’t feel worthy. The other guy’s dissertation got him so far as teaching at a Maine community college. Then again, I would be happy staying in Ann Arbor another year and my department might take me back to teach. E would be sad, though. He’s bored at his job and looking forward to going back to school when I get a gig.
Women’s voices
I kept trying to place Palin’s voice Wednesday night–was that an Alaskan accent? It had sort of vague undertones of a Canadian or Minnesotan accent, but I wasn’t sure. I do know that my advisor made fun of her voice yesterday as unbearable to listen to. Judith Warner in an awesome invective against Palin has this to say:
“Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night.
“But that wasn’t held against her. Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.
“Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?”
The incredible outpouring of attack against Palin from educated women (including myself) reminds me of the quote in C&P’s comment about gender that caused such a flurry of comments last month. What is going on here?
Ok, the reason for the title. I’ve been thinking a lot about women’s voices lately. Some know that I’m adicted to audio books and podcasts. I listen when I’m driving, when I’m exercising, when I’m copying microfilm, when I’m cleaning, etc. Some women clearly sound full of authority–Terry Gross for example. But many women sound just plain young. There is a woman, Rachel Donadio who just got made the head of the Italian office for the New York Times that has contributed to the NY TImes Book Review for a few years now. She does Notes from the Field for the back page of the Review and the Podcast. I always assumed she was two steps away from her internship, yet during her final broadcast this week, she started to delineate all of the different places she has lived and worked. She’s probably older than I am.
I know I dislike my own voice and think it sounds young. I think probably young-ish women’s voices are more the majority than the older sound. Why is this? Is my ear somehow tuned to think women younger than they are and men older than they are? Is this yet another aspect of the social construction of gender? Has anyone studied this? Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
What do you guys think is the ethical choice here–towards community or towards individual family?