I recently took it upon myself to redo a good amount of my wardrobe. Not all of it--I'm too much of a sentimentalist for that, and besides, I have some awesomely nerdy shirts that make me smile enough to justify getting out of bed in the morning--but some rather large portions of it. Now, this topic is already boring me, so I'll jump, as per usual, to a "back-when-it-all-began" style of flashback.
Way back when I first came back to Arizona from my college in the far away land of Pennsylvania, there was a brief little period when I had trouble adjusting to life in a small-ish town, which is a nice way of saying that I had trouble adjusting to life, period. Back at school I formed a bit of a new identity for myself; I changed, or at least I thought I changed, but my change was location-specific. Part of the reason why I left my home state in the first place was because I knew I would be the same person if I stayed. Turns out I was right; the only problem was that I didn't account for what would happen when I came back. I never minded the person I used to be very much, but that person never seemed very accurate. He wasn't quite hitting the nail on the head when it came to being me, and even if I'm not at the point where I'm precisely hammering the nail, at least the head of the hammer is glancing off of it instead of banging into the wood, hitting nothing at all. (If that metaphor seemed a little...strange, that's because it's early and I don't feel like thinking about it for too long).
The hammer is my sexual identity, and the nail is...also my sexual identity, I guess. I'm tired.
So there I was, at the beginning of my summer vacation, trying to figure out what to do for three months--or, more accurately, trying to figure out what to do with myself for the rest of ever--and there showed up my catalyst for this story: a denim tuxedo vest.
Seriously.
This, but even less wearable, and meant for men (somehow).
I was supposed to be on my way to meet some friends at our old high school. Our task for the day would be to watch and give feedback for some World History final project presentations, the same project we had done three years earlier. I managed to drag myself out of bed, crawl lazily to my closet, pull it open, and look inside, and there it was, in all its disgustingly denim-y glory, a relic from some high school 80s dance that had since been gathering dust. It really only caught my eye for a second before I looked away, but that second was long enough to embed a thought into my half-functioning, 7 o'clock in the morning brainwaves.
Why not wear it?
It's worth mentioning at this point that for some obscure reason, I associate that vest with my first boyfriend. It's not entirely clear why; I didn't even meet him until months after the dance, and by our first date I had already forgotten that I had at some time thought it was a good idea to wear a denim anything-other-than-jeans. Maybe it is because both experiences--the school dance and my first date with him--both felt new; they were times when I cut loose and let go and just lived. The actual nights were different (though I was wearing snake-skin sunglasses for one and had my first male kiss at the other, so I guess both of them were extremely gay) but still they're tied together in my head, bound like a BDSM couple that can't remember the safeword: it doesn't matter if they want to be finished with each other, they're just gonna keep messing around until I can't tell one from the other. (That metaphor didn't really work either. Shut up.)
As I looked at it, for the life of me I couldn't think of a good reason not to wear it. Briefly it occurred to me that it wasn't my style, but then a clearer thought forced itself on me: I don't actually know what my style is.
A friend of mine recently told me that I dress like I'm unsure. I'm not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that I understand it for the sake of the story. It's not just a statement about me being all bisexual and stuff (dude, like, yeah) even though that's probably what she meant. It's deeper than that.
What we wear says a lot about us, but not just to other people (although that is a big part of it, seeing as a person's opinion of you is decided within a tenth of a second). What we wear tells us a lot about ourselves. Think about it. That choice in the morning of what you put on your body is a statement on your mood, your personality, what makes you happy, what you like, etc. etc. You can tell a lot about yourself by what you're wearing today. It might say something simple like "I just felt like being comfortable today" or "I like the color green", but at least that's something.
His wardrobe informs me that he must have an enormous penis. Obviously.
Looking into my wardrobe, no matter what outfit I choose for the day, you can (almost always) reach two conclusions about me. One: he has a nerdy sense of humor. Two: he really likes the color blue. A lot. Seriously, my entire closet is filled with witty t-shirts, and my pants drawer consists of two pairs of shorts and a crap-ton of jeans (a crap-ton is a universally accepted measurement, somewhat equivalent to four loads and eighteen bundles). Don't get me wrong, I love those shirts, but their ability to say something about me is limited to "I think I'm funny" and "I'm really lazy in the morning". No, strike that--what they really say are that I like it when other people find my shirts clever, or interesting, or anything other than ambivalently acceptable. They give me a personality, and if I'm being really honest they keep me from having to make my own.
So little by little, as a make a bit of money here and there and can afford to go, I've been treking down to Goodwill or Target or anything else in my price range to replace at least some of the arsenal of emotional distanciation that is my closet. It's not easy. They don't tell you how much those wardrobe shopping makeover montages cost in the movies. Spoiler alert: it's a lot of money.
"I'm going to take you out, spend all of your money on clothes, and then ditch you to bang your daughter. Interested?"
But somehow still I'm kind of pulling it off. I think. Mostly my expeditions have bought me a few button-downs and some plain t-shirts instead of my printed ones, but even that little step has me feeling better about myself. Not because those shirts aren't me. They just aren't all of me, and I can't expect to feel comfortable if they're all I'm wearing all of the time. I keep having to remind myself that what makes me interesting is that I'm multifaceted. I don't have to get all fancy all the time, or be funny all the time, or be athletic all the time, or be nerdy all the time. I just have to be me, as often as I can.
So I wore the damn vest. My friends laughed, a lot, and one of them spent the entire day complaining about it, but I waited to take it off until I was good and ready. I kept it on, and as they asked me repeatedly why I was wearing it, I gave them half answers. I didn't feel like I owed them much of an explanation. Just like the clothes I'm buying now, the words I'm about to post, and the human body that was rotting in the trunk of my car last week, it only tangentially had to do with my friends.
Basically, my first reaction was: well, this is bullshit (sorry Kylie). 30 days for a hate crime is nothing, and this was a hate crime no matter how you slice it. Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, whether they intended it to get that far or not, caused Tyler Clementi to kill himself.
But then I thought about it, and I looked up more information, and I examined it from every angle I could. I pride myself on my ability to not jump to conclusions, and it immediately became apparent to me that this was prime conclusion-jumping. So I looked around, and unsurprisingly, everyone seems to have an opinion on the trial. Some are heated opinions, some are not. In fact, that's not true; most are not. My conclusion? Nope, still bullshit, thought I'd give it a rating of "understandable bullshit".
First, the facts, for any of you readers who haven't heard about this (somehow) or, at the very least, don't know the specifics (or, if you know the specifics, jump past the picture of Ravi for the rest of my post):
On September 19th, 2010, Ravi--Clementi's roommate--set up (accidentally or not) a web-cam pointed towards Clementi's bed after Clementi asked to have the room for the night. Ravi, with Wei (a friend from down the hall), turned on the web-camera for a short period of time and viewed Clementi kissing an unnamed man. The camera was then turned off, and the video was never released to the public. Later that night, Wei (without Ravi present) turned the camera back on with 5 other friends to view Clementi once more.
On September 21st, 2010, Ravi planned to spy once more, this time inviting his twitter followers to watch with him and giving directions on how to watch remotely. A number of text messages and twitter updates were posted by Ravi, detailing the planned event. Clementi discovered the plot, and disconnected the computer. The next day, Clementi asked for a room change and asked for disciplinary action against his roommate. After being confronted by a resident assistant, Ravi began to text apologies to his roommate. That night, Clementi posted on facebook, from his cellphone, "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry" and committed suicide.
Since then, Ravi has been indicted on 15 counts, including invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, tampering with evidence, and witness tampering (the latter two counts springing from Ravi's deletion of around 100 text messages to Wei and his attempts to convince Wei to change her story of the events to fit his). Wei pled guilty, testified against Ravi, and received a 3 year intervention program including community service and counseling in exchange for all charges being dropped (this action was supported by Clementi's family, who believed she held far less blame than Ravi in the case). In March, Ravi was found guilty on all counts. Two days ago, he was sentenced to 30 days in prison, 3 years probation, $10 thousand in fines, and 300 hours of community service.
Dharun Ravi during his sentencing.
You might notice that I haven't made a joke here yet. Even when I'm talking about stuff that I consider serious, I tend to pepper the posts with pop culture references and self-deprecating humorous quips ("he tells himself, secretly wishing that one day he could truly be funny"). But there isn't going to be any of that here, because try as I might, I cannot think of a joke here that would be funny. I'm looking at the picture of this guy on my screen (I now have a picture of on my computer, and just that little bit of him in my life makes me want to destroy all technology that I own) and it's kind of hard to find anything funny right now.
I went out of my way to be as neutral as possible in that outline of events, because the evidence against him is pretty bad. Some of the text messages that were deleted were recovered, and they don't sound good. The timing of his messages to Clementi--namely, that they were sent immediately after he realized how deep of a hole he had dug himself--speak less of remorse than of oh crap I have to cover my ass. But that's not even really my point, at least I don't think it is. Am I angry at him? Maybe. Am I angry at the judge and the legal system? Also maybe, but that's not fully it.
If you look at the culture around us, being gay is sensationalized. In fact, it's not just being gay, it's the entire idea of gayness, the fact that gay people exist, that drives people into a frenzy. Simply put, people don't know how to deal with us. I'm not really talking about people on an individual level (I'm sure you're an exception, you smart person you), but people as in the same people that are talked about whenever someone says "you know what they say" or "people these days" or "some people just can't hold their arsenic."
They're probably all lesbians.
The media is a great example of this. Quick, think of a blockbuster (and by that I mean a major production, costing at minimum $45 million) that starred a gay character. Thinking reeeeeally hard, aren't you? Can't come up with one? That's because they don't exist. There's an argument that a character from V for Vendetta (2006) would count, and I mostly agree, but he plays a fairly minor role in the film. And don't try to say Dumbledore, he doesn't count; there is absolutely no way you could know if he was or wasn't gay by watching the film. Basically, almost none of them exist.
Rubber nipples be damned, this doesn't count.
I can give you a grand total of two: Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), both of which were fairly recent. Scott Pilgrim features a few minor characters that are gay, and I'm being generous by allowing that to add up to one main character (also, Stephen Stills is awesome), which leaves Dragon Tattoo as the only major blockbuster in the past ever featuring an LGBT main character. That's not exactly an encouraging number, guys, and I'd argue that as a film it still proves my point. It's success is, sure, partly because it's a good movie, but not all good movies do well. It was successful in large part because behind all of its style, everything that happened on screen was shocking to the viewers. Sure Lisbeth Salander might be a bisexual, but she's a bisexual in a film that's drowning in BDSM, sex, and the abuse of every woman ever. Her sexuality is less a character trait and more a feature of the genre that she finds herself in; people don't know how to deal with gayness, in the same way that they don't know how to deal with Lisbeth Salander anally violating a man with a dildo.
Look at the current events today, and you'll find more proof of this. Marvel comics recently announced that they would feature the first gay wedding in comics, to which people of course freaked out. In a twisty bit of wordplay that is meant to attract readers and is also in no way helpful to anyone, multiplenews sources are reporting President Obama as "coming out" in his support of gay marriage and touting him as "the first gay president". When was the last time you saw a positive article about a gay politician? I remember when: it was during a Daily Show comedic report on an extremely rare example of bipartisan cooperation. Since then? Nothing. That's because every time a gay politician is in the news, it's for a scandal or an eye-popping headline.
This might all seem like a departure from my point, so now I'll bring it back. This is the world that a gay teenager--hell, a gay anybody is living in. Sure, we get Glee, Modern Family, Lady Gaga, and Adam Lambert (I'm grasping with that last one and I know it) telling us that it's OK to be ourselves, but those few instances easily get drowned out by the storm of people who, if they aren't outwardly telling us that they'd like to put us into concentration camps or telling us that God is killing soldiers and it's all our fault (don't click on that last link, it's legitimately one of the worst things ever), then they only want us in their lives as long as we keep things interesting for them, some news to make their everyday tedium a bit less droll.
I count myself among the number of the LGBT youth, and I'm still guilty of everything that I've said. A number of times I've had conversations with my friends about which of our friends do we think is still in the closet, or who will come out in the near future and shock everyone. I have those conversations, then I look back on them and I realize just how offensive they are; being gay, even on that small level of joking among friends, is a headline, not a part of life. We're kept separate by the simple fact that we're interesting.
The cynic in me would point to the widespread coverage in the media of LGBT teen suicides over the past few years as yet another example. Hearing about a bullied kid who takes his or her own life is personally distressing to me, but as far as the news media is concerned, it's another tragedy that'll bring in another several thousand to their audience. If you don't believe me, check out this video by YouTuber and vlogger Philip DeFranco, where towards the end he dissects a few new bits of information coming out of the Treyvon Martin case from Florida, and how new headlines are dramatized to get attention. It happens all the time.
So let's go back to Tyler Clementi.
With all of this in mind, imagine the distress that would come from suddenly being thrust into the spotlight of that kind of a world. Sure, the video wasn't broadcast to the entire world, but even on a smaller scale the impact would be extremely distressing. The spread of an event like this around the dorm (especially with Ravi literally advertising it to his friends) would make a gossip wildfire. It's understandable that eventually it would feel like too much. Of course I don't know the specifics of the situation; there might be other factors in his life that made him feel insecure. But this, timing-wise, is unarguably the tipping point that caused the death of a kid.
Obviously I'm coming from a position where I understand the world and the consequences of operating in such a world a bit better than Ravi did. I understand the feelings that Clementi must have been having. But that's not the point. The point is that Ravi exploited his roommate for a few laughs, and this was what came next. Actions have consequences. Just because we didn't know the baseball was going to smash the window doesn't mean we don't have to pay for it.
And you know what? That's a terrible analogy, because Ravi did know that he was breaking a window. He knew well enough to know that he was going to get a hell of a lot of attention from his actions, and he didn't care about any casualties that would have resulted. The weight for this case falls onto his shoulders.
And he gets a month in prison for it. I'm having trouble proving the "actions have consequences" line.
I mentioned before that I was angry, but not really at Ravi. Am I furious that he did what he did and getting a slap on the wrist in return? Sure. But this is obviously a kid who didn't understand the way people think, or the way the world worked. If I allow myself to assume that Ravi was just a kid that made a mistake (which is taking a conscious effort), then this is still a doozy of a mistake, a literally life-ending one.
It needs to be understood what this kind of action can do to a person. What happened at Rutgers is just an example of the pressure that gay youth are under in this country, facing a world that looks at us as a fad to pass the time rather than as a group of actual human beings. When a sentence comes down on a case like this, it sends a message. And the message this judge sent to the world is that what Ravi did isn't that bad.
That idea makes me sick.
PS. - This entire post has been mostly doom and gloom, and since I don't want to leave off on that, here's a video from Pixar proving that the "people" I was mentioning before aren't the only ones out there. Just because they're the loudest doesn't mean they're the most important.
I clearly and distinctly remember my first horror movie, even though the context that led to it happening has turned into somewhat nebulous and blurry. I know that I was young, and I know that I was way too young to be watching a scary movie. I know that it was at a friend's house for some sort of a party, either for Halloween or for a birthday. Beyond that, I have nothing; for all I know, the house was actually an underwater bunker and immediately before the movie we had hunted for killer dolphins with harpoon guns.
The dolphins fought back. It was a dark day.
At some point during the party, someone (probably not an adult figure, because otherwise I have to question their parenting skills) turned on the television. The screen immediately cast a sinister glow over the otherwise darkened room, filling it with malice. My eyes caught sight of a knife glinting in the moonlight, and my tiny little heart--ok, I'm dramatizing, but you get the point. Scary things were flashing, knives were stabbing, blood was blood-ing, and my tiny little soul screamed out in pure terror. I remember walking slowly away, as nonchalantly as a somewhere-between-eight-and-ten year old could manage (I was surrounded by my friends, I didn't want to seem like a wuss). I made my way up the stairs, and as soon as I was out of sight I booked it into the closet, where I buried myself in a few towels, and cried for about an hour (during which time, for some reason, no one came to find me) before I was able to come out, knees wobblin' and shakin' like I had the devil in me.
Pictured: Where those terrible chaperones must have assumed I disappeared to for an hour.
For weeks afterwards I had nightmares. They had nothing to do with that particular horror movie, of course, or even with a knife. In fact, they were entirely about Pokemon (I don't know either, it doesn't make any sense). In my nightmare, Jessie and James from Team Rocket would show up and threaten to kill me if I didn't go with them. I would sit there and wet the bed, but they refused to take no for an answer. When I tried to run, they killed me, at which point I woke up with my breath caught in my throat and a distinct inability to close my eyes ever again.
Kind of like this, but with cartoons instead of brainwashing.
But how the times have changed! I may not seek out horror movies, but I can certainly stand to watch them. I never cry for more than five minutes now, I only wet myself a teensy bit, and my screams only have the most minute hint of pain and anguish beneath the copious amounts of fear. I'm just as jumpy as most people are, and the tension of the films does make my heart beat slightly faster, but it isn't all that different from watching an action sequence in a mindless blockbuster; I'm more curious about what's going to happen next than I am dreading it.
Now, I've posted about horror movies before (damn was that a long time ago), and it strikes me now that it was the traditional horror movie that I didn't even find remotely scary, or even thrilling. The Exorcist, for all of its critical acclaim and cultural significance, barely fazed me. Before I concluded that I was desensitized to violence and scary stuff, but I don't think that's looking at the full picture.
Tonight I went to yet another movie night (we seem to have a lot of these), where we watched Hide and Seek, an old Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning scary/thriller/horror/something movie, and let's just say I don't exactly have to worry about any nightmares tonight. About fifteen minutes in, I predicted the main plot twist from a few cliched lines of dialogue and the unfolding of the first supposed-to-be-scary scene (don't mind that noise, it's just me patting myself on the back), and though I jumped with all of my friends whenever a cat jumped out of a closet (really, Hollywood?) I never felt one moment of actual fear. The movie itself was OK. The plot was fairly bad, but all of the performances were approaching perfect and never over the top and I never felt the urge to laugh in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. I just did not find it scary. I found it to be just the same as all of the tropes and previous plot-twisty horror flicks before it.
Contrast that to my friends, and you come up with a problem. Everyone else in the room was terrified, and rather vocally so. Repeatedly did I hear that this was a really good movie, that it was really scary, etc etc. And I just wasn't with them. Don't miss my point, though. This post is not about how nothing scares me and how I have nerves of steel.
This is, unfortunately, not me.
Paranormal Activity still freaked me out immensely, and The Blair Witch Project was approaching unwatchable for me. Meanwhile, multiple of my friends have told me that Paranormal Activity was terrible, including one of the friends at tonight's movie night who was immensely freaked by the jump scares of Hide and Seek. So what gives? Why do the wrong things scare me? How is it that the state of complete nothingness that fills up the screen of Activity and Blair Witch make me want to gouge my eyes out while the things that legitimately everyone else has proven that they are afraid of (I'm assuming people must be scared of these things, otherwise someone would have to stop making them) don't even make me blink.
Rewind back to February 12th. I know the day because it was the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead, and AMC was running an all-day horror extravaganza. Me and a few friends of mine were sitting in the main lounge on the 6th floor of our dorm, and someone or other switched to the channel in passing. Lo-and-behold, the terrifying scene from my childhood popped up on the screen. I was horrified for all of five seconds before I realized that what I was watching was ridiculous. The movie in question? Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Seriously. Tiny me didn't even have the decency to have his life temporarily ruined by a decent film. We watched it for a bit, but really it just depressed me so I left the room to think for a bit. That movie had literally changed my life. For a good seven years afterwards I didn't watch another scary movie. Hell, I couldn't even play the video version of Clue because it's mildly suspenseful murder plot haunted me as a kid. But now I sit down and watch it, and that is what comes on screen?
Seriously, this happens. Whose idea was this?
I've been having trouble putting all of this into perspective, because I kind of like the idea that I'm in some small little way better than other people. I can survive watching a horror movie without freaking out, which obviously puts me into an upper echelon of people (in my opinion, us higher beings should be the only ones allowed to breed). It might be a tiny victory, but I don't typically get very many of those. But at the same time I know I'm oversimplifying. Me being able to see through Hide and Seek has nothing to do with my steely nerves, or my superior intellect (just because horror movies have nothing to do with my intellect doesn't mean it doesn't exist). It has to do with what I'm actually afraid of.
I won't pretend to know what that is. It would be great if I could wrap this all up with a slick line about how my "fear of the unknown" has crossed over into my interpretation of pop culture (and feel free to read this as me saying that, 'cause that actually makes me seem kind of deep in a moody poet sort of way), but I doubt that's actually the case. Go out on the street and ask someone what the scariest movie they have ever seen is, and you'll get a ton of different answers. The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, Rosemary's Baby, Jennifer's Body, Ghostbusters, Alien, Dumbo, the list goes on. I'll be you'd even get a few Hide and Seek answers, too, judging from my friends' reactions.
Racism scares me, okay?
My point is--well, I guess I have two points, really. First is that people are different. We all have different tastes, different fears, all that jazz. But more importantly (because no one really cares about people in general), I am different. I'm not that little kid anymore that cries when Michael Myers stabs into the laundry chute. I've grown past that into something...else. Someone who, when he watches a movie like that, he notices the god-awful plot and the above-par acting. Maybe that's not really better. Maybe my point still stands from my last post on horror movies, and I'm desensitized to some moderately important things. But at least it's a change. At least I'm growing.
Screw it, that's a terrible ending theme. Obviously my fear of the unknown has crossed over into my interpretation of pop culture, negatively impacting my viewing of all films in the horror genre. There.
I talked in a previous post about The Hunger Games, both the book and the movie. Because I'm obsessed with the series (not really, I mean, the entire previous post was about how much I hate/want to take a broadsword to fan-girls/boys/gender-neutrals who take the source material too seriously), you guys get to have a full review of the movie! Congratulations! Woo! I know you don't care but I'm going to keep using exclamation points so that you'll think this is important and keep giving me attention! (But seriously, if no one is paying attention to me at any given moment, I revert to my true form as DJ Jazzy Jeff.)
Don't let this happen to me.
First, a quick, vague synopsis of the movie for anyone who has managed to steer clear of this particular phenomenon: The Hunger Games may or may not follow Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who might lives in a dystopic future. Something might have happened in the past, and the area that used to be the grand ole' US of A could now be known as the Capitol and the 12 districts (the rest of the world either doesn't exist anymore or doesn't interact with this particular dystopia). The Capitol, due to the actions of the districts 74 years earlier, might possibly but probably not have created the Hunger Games--an gladiatorial event where each district sacrifices one boy and one girl to fight to the death for the entertainment of the whole of the country--to keep everyone in line. Katniss potentially becomes said female tribute after her sister is or is not drawn from the lottery and Katniss volunteers. What may or may not fictionally and theoretically follow is a literal (in the literal sense, not a figurative literal or even a concrete literal sense) blood bath, where we watch the games unfold and the children die.
The movie is a doubly troubling one to review, both because of I am so familiar with the source material and because of the emotions that the movie generates. As much of a stink as I made about obsession with source material before, it's still extremely difficult to separate what you expect the movie to do from what the movie actually ends up doing. Multiple times I found myself having to adjust to the movie's viewpoint and universe and pushing the book to the back of my mind. That being said, all of the changes that I saw were necessary shifts; the original events would not have been able to work as a direct translation from page to screen.
For those not familiar with it, the book is told entirely from Katniss's perspective. After several chapters, the reader starts to feel just as isolated as Katniss is (OR IS SHE?!?!?). Because the movie would become incredibly frustrating without either a) a voice-over of Katniss's thoughts or b) complete silence on the events as they unfold around her, the director and the screenwriter (who happened to also write the book) sacrifice--in a smart move--a bit of the isolation for a lot of the explanation. It's a move that takes a bit of the pressure off of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and pushes some of the acting responsibilities to the supporting cast, but everyone steps up to the plate.
I can't call the acting flawless (mostly because of Josh Hutcherson's inability as Peeta to make me believe the majority of his emotions at any time he is on screen), but most everyone delivers. Lawrence is stunning and powerful in every scene, taking every trial and disaster truly affecting and heartbreaking. Other supporters, particularly Woody Harrelson (as her mentor, Haymitch) and a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Banks (as the annoyingly effervescent Effie Trinket), truly embody their characters and breathe just the perfect amount of comedic relief and connection to solid ground that a movie like this could easily lose.
The moral theme, one that tends to be either simplified or entirely lost in blockbusters like this, is strong but not forceful. In my film class we talked recently about reflexivity in film, or when a movie explicitly acknowledges the fact that it is a movie. I wouldn't say The Hunger Games goes that far, but it does take a few big steps in that direction, using its plot to show the moral bankruptcy that must exist for a populace to enjoy watching a bunch of children dying while showing us at the same time that we are, in fact, enjoying children dying. By placing the audience on the same level as the gluttonous Capitol, the movie reaches a level of directness that the book is unable to achieve: the bad guys are not just out there, we are the bad guys, and we need to feel as terrible about it as the movie makes us feel.
Visually, the movie is a treat as well, and not in a way that most summer movies would be. The cinematography is stunning, jarring when it needs to be but eerily still when the situation calls for it. One particular shot (which you can see in most of the trailers, so I don't count it as a spoiler) which shows Katniss's walk to the arena, flanked by two Peacekeeper guards, sticks in my mind just as clearly as the Curly Hill scene from Nightmare Before Christmas or the first shot of an eye opening on Lost. It's just that good.
That's not to say the movie is visually perfect, however. A bunch of the actual special effects leave something to be desired. There's a lot of work with fire in this movie, and it's pretty hit or miss. This can partly be chalked up to the descriptions in the book that, though they could not really be omitted from the movie for continuity's sake, don't really translate well from the descriptive to the visual. The movie succeeds in its realism, but its not-so-much realism (such as a dress that is wreathed in flames) looks almost comically out of place. Katniss's costumes (in both of their appearances supposed to be awe-inspiring and geniusly designed) are about as breathtaking as Papa Smurf.
'Sup.
Those isolated moments aside, the rest of the film shines and would be among the best I'd seen all year if it hadn't been for awards season (it doesn't exactly stand up to The Artist, but it isn't exactly meant to). I'd give it 3.5 out of 4, and seeing as in two days it made more money for its creating studio than any other film it had made, we can probably expect to see the final two installments in the series hitting theaters in the near future.
P.S. - My mother's friend brought up an interesting point about how unwatchable and unenjoyable the film is not just because it is violent because it is violent towards children. Although I didn't feel this way personally, I can see it being a problem. For me the violence served a purpose and was never glorified or excessively cruel. Never did a death seem trivial, and never was there too much gore to appreciate the harshness of the attacks.
I recently read a review here that disagrees with a lot that I've said, saying that the movie does not delve into its theme enough and does not inspire enough disturbance. The claim goes something like "more violence would have made this a truly great movie because I would have been extremely uncomfortable watching it instead of entertained". I entirely disagree, and I think that anything more would have been excessive. But I feel like that's kind of like saying asking a hit-and-run driver to run back over his victim because you enjoyed the first hit too much and you think the second time will make you really feel the right emotions.
Don't just keep driving, he's probably still alive in there.
Anyway, I disagree with him, and with the other side of the issue, but if you agree with either of them you are either a) slightly creepy and should get that looked at or b) probably not morally bankrupt like the rest of us. Either way, this movie might not be for you.
Edit: oopsie, missing paragraph in the middle replaced. Not sure how that happened. Stupid blogger (he said to pretend that it wasn't his own fault).
As a self-proclaimed pop culture buff, any time a new franchise starts it's almost obligatory for me to give it a try. Things have reasons for becoming phenomenons, even if they are vapid, soulless adaptations of vapid, soulless writing (that was not a shot at Twilight, Edward, please don't bite me). Even the aforementioned series deserved a chance; I read the first book, attempted to begin the second, vomited, watched the first to movies, never stopped vomiting, and now I can mock them while being reassured to the fact that I know the source material. Name your franchise and I've at least sampled it. I'm obsessed with some (here's looking at you, Firefly,mon amour) and some I refuse to watch anymore because there's only so many brawling robots that one can take without wanting to see some actual acting ability.
That was all mostly just to establish my credibility. Even though I might look like a mild mannered 19-year-old college student with no actual use to the world, I'm actually a mild mannered 19-year-old college student who will appreciate your semi-obscure pop culture references and can give you his opinion on most movies, TV shows, comic books, comic book movies, comic book TV shows, books, movies based on books, TV shows based on books (why does the Vampire Diaries exist?) and any other permutations of hybrid culture that you'd like to hear.
But with great power must come great responsibility. There's a difference between knowing and revering the source material and using the source material as a broadsword to slice through the souls of the undeserving masses that have seen the movie and assume that it was so much better than the book could ever be.
"Frodo's a whiny douche, you say? FEEL THE WRATH OF MY SWORD."
Allow me to point out something that I feel should be painfully obvious to people: a book and a movie are not the same thing. When was the last time you went to watch a book or read a movie. Can you imagine how painfully boring those two activities would be? "Hey guys, let's go to the library so we can do some book-watching! I hear there's a new one on the top shelf that's a perfect example of how books gather dust! Let's go watch!" It'd be like if a movie was only as interesting as its subtitles or if everyone judged the books they read by their covers and nothing else.
You won't read him because he has a sad cover. He's sad because you won't read him. It's a vicious cycle.
There's an important distinction to be made between love of the book and love of the movie (or whatever the transition may be). Sure, the book was good and the movie was great or the book was great and the movie was good, or maybe they were both awful and you've just realized that you're Stephanie Meyer and you hate yourself, but the reason that you like one better is because they are fundamentally different things, and really only has a little bit to do with faithful to the source material or not.
Obviously I'm talking almost entirely about The Hunger Games now. If you somehow missed this particular pop culture phenomenon that is now the most successful opening weekend for a non-sequel, the biggest spring release, and after two days had already become the most successful movie for Lionsgate in the history of ever, The Hunger Games is a movie based on a book by Suzanne Collins that is currently making a run at the theaters right now. I'll probably do a full review of the movie later, but as of right now I'll leave it at I loved it and I highly recommend it to most people who love movies and hate feeling good about themselves.
"Children dying makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside!"
Here's my little anecdotal evidence that led me to write this article (there are some slight spoilers below, so beware):
As I was leaving the theater on Friday morning, thoroughly satisfied that I had seen all I the child killing and maiming action that I was due, there was one type of person that qualified as being annoying and deserving of a righteous broadswording, even more than the people who didn't like the movie when I did.
Peeta was too feeble. Not enough time was spent with Gale and Katniss together (Sidenote: anyone wearing a Team Gale or Team Peeta shirt will be broadsworded on sight). The ending was rushed. The Muttations didn't look human. Her dress was not nearly as fiery and magnificent as it should have been. Where was Madge? Darius? Why was there so much cutting away from the games to explain stuff when we already know it? Where did that riot scene come from, that wasn't in the books--oh dear god, shut up.
This happens legitimately every time a movie is adapted from the books. Remember Tom Bombadil? No? That's because he was dropped from The Fellowship of the Ring because a) he mattered zero to the plot and b) he was ridiculously bizarre. Nitpicking about every little thing that doesn't make the jump from the page to the screen is useless. Why? Because things that are on the page don't always make sense when they're on the screen. Have you even been reading this post? Imagine if Katniss had voice-overed the entire movie with her thoughts in an effort to be faithful to the book. I probably would have walked out of the theater after having to hear her whine about whether or not Peeta was truly on her side for the fifteenth time in two hours.
Every change from book to movie was, I thought, logical and served the purpose of what the movie was trying to say to the highest degree. Did Rue get less screen time than in the book? Sure. But the movie was two and a half hours long. You can't push it much farther than that without losing the attention of half of your audience. The pacing has to be precisely on target. That's not even to mention some of the problems that existed in the book; first person POV is always intensely unreliable, and Katniss often gave her input of the situation even when it was not honest even to herself. That can make for an annoying experience. The movie removed a lot of this flaw. Did it create other flaws in the process? Sure. No movie can be 100 percent perfect. There's no such thing as a movie on Rotten Tomatoes that 100 percent of the public (not the critics) liked, because, well, you can't please everyone. But The Hunger Games movie managed the impressive feat of shifting what worked in the book to something that works as a film, at least most of the time. You can't fault it for giving you something that you didn't expect. That's what we go to the movies for in the first place, isn't it? To be surprised?
Quick, name your favorite movie. It's probably Twilight, isn't it? Never mind. I guess that one can be surprising sometimes too.
HE'S STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU OH GOD.
My favorite movie is probably Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron. The movie constantly defies expectations, killing off multiple characters early in the plot who seem like they should be more important than they are and producing shot after shot of unhappy, grim shots. Name any great movie and it doesn't stay on the path that you'd expect. Gandalf dies, the Wizard of Oz is a lying prick, Obadiah Stane is consorting with terrorists, the dog at the beginning of The Thing wants to eat your face. Anything we find enjoyable has to be different. So don't fault the movie for, y'know, actually being different in its efforts to entertain you. It's just doing its job.
That's not to say that there aren't of course, exceptions.
Nothing about this is acceptable.
But we can't judge a movie by its book's standard. If a movie isn't good, let it not be good. If a movie is great, it isn't just because of its source material. Get over yourselves, fangirls and fanboys. It doesn't matter who gave her the damn pin.
I am 18 years old (at least for the next eleven days), and I feel like this is a milestone in any aspiring adult's life. I am officially considered an adult in the eyes of the government. I can die for my country, I can smoke cigarettes, I can buy all of the kinky lust-infused pornographic content that my puny little not-fully-grown-and-all-too-sexually-repressed mind can imagine. But most importantly to me, right at this moment, here and now, is this:
I can sign my social security card.
So here I am, sitting in the lounge of my dorm floor (which, I'm also realizing, I probably haven't actually made a blog post about in all of the time that I've been here), staring at my social security card with a pen in my hand that I stole from a church somewhere (just in case my homosexuality was not enough to ensure my place in hell, I figure stealing a pen will do the job with finality), and for some reason I cannot muster up the nerve to sign my name on that goddamn line. (Pardon my French--no, wait, I don't know how to speak French. Silly idioms).
F@$#%^er.
Part of that is my usual helping of social awkwardness: anything that has any ounce of finality to it causes my brain to scream out with all of the expletives that apply and several that don't. My irrational side tells me that maybe I'll do it wrong, there's no taking it back, if my hand slips then I'll be down one social security card and I'll be, as they say, fucked from here to eternity. (That darn French again. Someday I'll get a handle on it). Or a million other things will go wrong--I'll press down to hard and rip the paper, I'll sneeze when I'm writing and the pen will go everywhere, the friction of my pen against the paper will cause the card to burst into flames that will travel up my arm and onto the table and spread to everyone in the room, killing them all in a glorious yet fatal Hollywood-style explosion the kind that mankind had ever seen--and my brain makes its case for why I should just put my pen down and pretend that the card is just as valid without my signature. But even when I manage to ignore my brain telling me that the end is nigh, I still can't get around the feeling that I'm not ready yet.
"Burn I say. BURN."
I realized today that I have this habit of creating "rites of passage" out of nowhere. My graduation from high school? Rite of passage. My last debate tournament? Rite of passage. Signing my social security card, even though it makes no sense whatsoever and has no significance in my life other than me putting a pen down onto the paper (and potentially lighting the world aflame)? Rite of passage (somehow). My brain twists every experience into something significant for my life. Except not everything has some sort of significance. Today I went to the first day of a new book club (don't judge me, they were giving out free pizza). Will that change my life? Maybe, I dunno. Will the world burst into flames and/or musical numbers because of it? Probably not.
Conclusion, my brain needs to take a chill pill. You might say it needs some brain freeze, amiright?
Pictured: A perpetual state of brain freeze.
Ice puns aside, though, I tend to overthink things. It's like a storm going on inside of my head, and all of the different arguments are brawling with each other to escape the storm but none of them are really fast enough so they get swept away. Or something along those lines.
This may sound like a sudden revelation, but it isn't really. I mean, this entire blog is built around the idea that each post is about the first day of something, but that's kind of misleading. In fact, I already discovered this about myself over winter break, when I was at home and thinking about all of the funtimes that were to come with my newest semester and first day in classes that are in my actual major and--aw, to tell with it. Nothing that big was changing, and my rational mind knew it. So my rational mind fought back, and as I was packing my suitcase, I slipped a stuffed dog into it.
His name is Paunch, and I've been cuddling with him nightly.
I figure it's a good bit of rebellion against the irrational voices in my head: do something irrational enough that even my irrational mind didn't see it coming. Plus, it's just childish enough to convince my brain that I'm regressing instead of progression in my development (at least as far as maturity goes), so I think that counts as double points. Level up!
Bowser, digivolve to... SKULLGREYBOWSER.
Paunch doesn't judge me for my childish tendency to look at every new day as a turning point in my life. Paunch just cuddles. And he's good at cuddling, too. He's a great cuddler. Paunch understands me. Shut up.
But in all seriousness, I'm not really sure what possessed me to think hey, I'm in college, now's a good time to pick up that old habit of sleeping with stuffed animals that I kicked when I was 7 but whatever it was, I pat that little maniacal genius on the back.
I kind of just wanted to use this picture again. Feel free to draw some sort of meaning from it.
I've actually started getting more sleep. I don't know why, but it helps me relax. And college produces a lot of unnecessary stress. I'll be the first to admit it: I'm an English major, I don't really deserve to have stress. But the lack of work-related stress gives way to life-related and insecurity-related stress, enough so that my work suffers and everything morphs into work-related stress in a cycle that I'm sure was invented by college administrators so that they could take our money for two years before we drop out and make room for a new group of unsuspecting young freshies.
So if it helps you to explain my behavior, let's just say that I've picked up my new 'sleeping-with-the-dogs' habit due to my irrational thought processes that are tied to my lack of sleep, all stemming from my inability to see normal days as anything other than monumental.
I figure if I keep taking giant leaps backwards like this, I'll be able to sign my card in about four years. Maybe faster if I can work up the nerve to wear a diaper, but I doubt the likelihood of that particular one. Until then, I'll just stare at my card, pen in my hand, sobbing uncontrollably. Or maybe I'll just throw a party to celebrate the placing of the signature. I think I like that one better.
I realized that, oddly enough, no matter how much writing I've put on here, I haven't actually posted any writing samples for anyone to take a look at. I might open up a separate blog to hold all of those (probably not, I barely post on this single one as it is), but maybe every once and awhile, when I feel like gracing you all with the spectacularity of my scribblings and stylings, I'll just post something I've been working on up here. I was going to post my zuihitsu on here, but I realized that might be an issue. One: no one actually knows what a zuihitsu is, and I would be completely lost in trying to explain it because my easiest definition is that it is whatever I want it to be because I said so. Two: I kind of mention a few personal things about other people that would probably not want me to share those things, and to the people who know them it would be easy enough to identify them. I'm all for sharing personal stuff about myself, but I gotta respect my friends so that I can delay them realizing that I'm a complete and total ass.
Anyways, instead of that, here are some things I've written over the past few days for my poetry class, plus an oldie that a lot of my friends have seen already that people seem to like. Enjoy. And by that I mean read them. Repeatedly.
The Second Night of Halloween
It is 5:08 in Pittsburgh on a Monday, one day
after Halloween and the trees know it, yes it is
2011 and the leaves stop clinging to their branches
because it seems like a good time to hit
me in the face, Halloween is gone and people
are no longer smiling.
The girls go out as crayons,
colored dresses with black electrical tape around
just enough of the dress that it won’t
come off if they pull at it. Before
they go we brainstorm because there are so many slutty
