** SPOILER ALERTS: In the following, I'm going to be discussing pretty specifically the ending of The Sopranos, as well as up-to-date talk on Dexter & Breaking Bad. Proceed with caution. **
I have long said that TV is the new novel. Whereas there is arguably merit in downing on folk who sit in front of the television for hours on end every night mindlessly looking for whatever's on, that same criticism can be levied against people who read trashy magazines/books just to read something. As far as I'm concerned, media is media, and it can all be good or bad, smart or dumb, worthwhile or vapid. I understand where the couch potato stereotype comes from, but we've had books for millenia; TV & movies are youngsters comparatively, and it's taking some time to work out the kinks.
Not that good TV or movies are brand new, but I'm of the opinion that it's getting better all the time. I'll cite Jon Gnarr as my favorite (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) example. He's the mayor of Reykjavik, and he announced upon his election that he wouldn't enter political coalition with anyone who hasn't watched the full run of HBO's The Wire. It sounds (and is) a little foolish as a political platform, but I agree with him. Cite your Stuff White People Like entries all you want; if you're at all invested in the characters and the show and spend any time thinking critically about it, you'll probably end up a better or wiser person for having watched it. Perhaps I'm lagging a little in how to play politics, but for me it opened up avenues of thought and self-reflection in the exactly same way that many of the classic novels do.
I'm not sure if it's my years of "training" in English literature that's done this to me. But, when I watch a series, I like to think about overarching plot, themes, etc. Telling a good story should be job one, but once a show succeeds in that, I like to think themes.
I'll start with the one I just talked about: in The Wire, through its constant perspective on both the "good guys" (cops) & "bad guys" (criminals), in five seasons it evolves into a show where sometimes the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good and they switch sides quickly or slowly and at the end of the day, everyone is judged on their individual merits rather than their labels. Season 4 brings youth into the picture, and it provides thought into how some of these good guys and bad guys come to be. Everyone has potential for good and evil, regardless of where they are in society. There's also politics; both the personal relationships & the show's actual political story are great thought exercises about the role of backroom dealings, and the final season's inclusion of the media helps to highlight this to the point of satire. The final episode, claimed by many to be the greatest series finale ever, ties everything together and closes off pretty much every loose end. Almost all of the characters live, and at the end of the day, the viewer sees where the characters are headed in their life in a way that's satisfactory at a bare minimum. The ending ties together the realistic narrative that the show kept throughout, bolstering the great story they've created.
Another one is The Sopranos. I actually watched the last scene of the last episode before even starting the series, just so I could understand that Hilary Clinton campaign spoof ad in '07. Though The Sopranos' ending didn't reveal nearly as much as The Wire, I've made peace with it for a couple of reasons.
First, it jived well with Tony as a character. One of the things that often (if not always) drove the plot in the show was Tony's tendency for indecision; he had the curse of empathy and always understood the moral and political ramifications of his decisions for better and for worse. In this way, it was only suiting that the final scene ended with a great indecision, wherein it's left to the viewer's imagination whether he dies or not.
Second, after doing a lot of reading online, I've come to believe that he does indeed get shot in the diner. Just Google it if you don't know where my head's at, there's a slew of explanations all over the internet that resonate with me, and it makes me happier with the series that I choose to believe them. Paul Auster's short story Ghosts actually does an awesome job on the same theme: discussing how, sometimes, a story is best told describing the lead-up to an event without spoiling the reader's perception of how things should happen.
Either way, the show is definitely a journey.
This brings me to shows that are currently running, and have announced that they are coming to their end, and how I'd like for them to go.
First off, my (apparently) favorite show to write about, Dexter. Last week's episode was amongst my favorite ever for a television series; though nobody died and there were no great cliffhangers, the show was a spectacle of parallelism. The episode's theme was definitely the crazy things that people will do for love, and it managed to include so many major and minor characters: Dexter, Deb, Isaak, Hannah, Quinn... and those were just the highlights in the montage. It was great, and Michael C. Hall's standard episode-ending voiceover was especially powerful because of the great job they did.
I've been thinking about this theme and where they're going to go with it, and I've come up with a skeleton sketch of how I'd love to see the show go from here.
First, housework: Dexter kills Isaak soon. Not long after, Hannah, too: he figures out he can't love someone who fits his profile. However, with the writers' skill in parallelism, I think the end of the season could be a straight parallel to the end of season 6: Dexter walks in on Deb killing a now-wiser LaGuerta. Then, the entirety of season 8 highlights Dexter's internal battle over whether he wants to kill his now-profile-fitting sister, after his Hannah-induced realization that he can't love a killer. In the end, Dexter either does or does not kill Deb (I haven't decided which I'd like better), but ultimately realizes that he fits his own profile because of his homicidal thoughts for Deb, and in an effort to protect her (if she's alive) and Harrison, he kills himself. Maybe, along the way, he finds out that Quinn's a dirty cop, and kills him, too: no doubt, more blood at Miami Metro would help spur his realization. This'd be a great tie-together for the whole story, and touch on the same kind of thing that The Wire does... though it eschews the realism that The Wire was so good at, it really thematically reflects on that same human-condition capacity for good & evil inherent in everyone.
Next up, Breaking Bad. I've been saying since some time in season 3 that I want the final episode to center on Walt dying of the cancer that started the whole thing. The whole time, we've just watched his character get less relatable, crazier, and overall vilified. In Season 1, he was an ironic hero who you couldn't help but cheer for because of his unorthodox way to make lemonade out of the lemons life had given him. However, with each passing season (especially the very end of season 4), his character has the approximate hardness of a bag of galvanized nails, and I think Vince Gilligan's goal the whole time would be to see how far he can stretch a viewer to cheer for a villain. I still think my idea for an ending would be particularly poignant; it'd really go on the tragic hero motif. Maybe Walt has a deathbed epiphany about life (a la Ivan Ilyich), or maybe he reinforces that he was a villain all along (a la Hagar Shipley); either way, he is undone and eventually succumbs to the the thing that he let ruin his life. Granted, given the ominous scene in S05E01 and given Hank's realization of Walt's crimes, I think this ending especially unlikely now. I don't know where they'll go or how they'll get there from where they left off, but I'm excited for the revelation of both the plot and the theme in the 8 remaining episodes.
One more quick hit: Mad Men. I think that this one is the least impactful of everything I've discussed. The show's raison d'etre seems to just be great drama and character interaction, and I expect they'll continue to do that. If anything, given the way they skip large time intervals in between seasons, I kind of expect the show to end like The Wire: loose ends will be tied off without a ton of boat-rocking or character death (if any), and you're free to imagine how and where the everyone ends up. Given that I've been stretching for comparisons in most of my other discussions, I see a real No Country For Old Men vibe. The show has been well tied to realism, and the overall theme may really just be the story itself. It gives the viewer insight into an environment they'd otherwise never have considered, and leaves the message that the world is the world, people are people, and things aren't really going to change.
In any case, this post just goes to show that all types of media are, to me, an addictive thing that can endlessly be compared and tied together.
tl;dr: TVTropes is an evil place and I avoid it like the plague.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
The Old Book vs Movie Debate (With A Twist)
In this post, I'm going to talk about two 2012 releases & how I've interacted with them. That discussion is going to require a bunch of spoilers, so be warned that after this paragraph, Vader is Luke's father. I want to take a moment, though, to say two things.
One: if you haven't seen Looper yet, I want to be the latest to tell you (because you've no doubt heard several times already) that no matter how silly it sounds, go see it. Tonight. It's a fantastic psychological thriller that dabbles in sci-fi enough for fans of the genre, but not so much that it will disgust folks indifferent to it.
Two: if you have the chance to check out Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, read it. I've just finished, and I'm still coming to terms with the ending myself, so I make no assurances about a satisfied ending for you (TWSS). I have to say though, I don't know that I've ever had a book that pained me this much to put down. Again, it's a psychological thriller, except with a whodunnit flair that's so pop-culture littered & postmodern that it'd hurt me if I didn't love those things.
So, on to more spoiler-y business.
Search your heart, Luke; you know it to be true.
I called Looper about twenty minutes into the movie. It was competent and well-told (that's always my disclaimer when I'm about to call something predictable), but I knew how the closing scenes would go from a mile away. I knew from the scene with Seth, the non-Levitt looper who's trying to escape the mob. His future self is fleeing in the present, but the mob catches his past self, and by amputating and disfiguring the past Seth, the future Seth changed live onscreen. It's a confusing paradox that's best explained by Bruce Willis' insistence to Levitt (&, more importantly, the audience) to just not think about the time travel mechanics too much.
So I didn't.
I instead thought about how this plot mechanic relates to the protagonist: Willis' Old Joe is a badass with a heart of mostly obsidian whose life was barely brought home from the realm of murder and drugs by his wife. Needless to say, he's a little attached to her, so much that he'll make a bloodbath of his past to save her. Knowing from the Seth scenes that Old Joe can be affected to what happens to Levitt's younger Joe, and having been introduced to Joe as a young man portrayed with a generally good heart who's just starting on the path that would stain it, I found it immediately apparent that once the movie was coming to a close, Joe would kill himself. I didn't see The Rainmaker's plot-twisty little attribute, nor did I predict the real life & online discussions I'd get into about whether The Rainmaker was actually another version of Joe or his brother or something (eventual conclusion: he's probably not), but I knew that the finale would hinge around Joe's self-eradication for whatever reason.
My immediate reaction after being right? I do sci-fi too much. I've read and watched dozens of time travel stories, each with their own variations on the mechanics, and this future-self-being-affected-by-past-self mechanic, with its persistence to it affecting the future self even when the future self was in the past... it just reeked of what was to come. By no means did this realization completely ruin an excellent movie for me. There was still the suspense of seeing if I was right, and I've been singing the movie's praises ever since regardless.
But still, by thinking hard on where it could go from the Seth scene, I'd robbed myself of the shock. Of the gravity. Of the oomph of a good, blindsiding plot twist. An oomph that, had I not correctly overthought, would've made an excellent movie even better. Mindblowing, even.
That'd be a great pun if Joe shot himself in the head instead of the chest.
Contrast all that with my interaction with my latest read, Gone Girl. In a very postmodern way, it's fragmented into two storytellers at different times: Nick Dunne and his wife, Amy. The narrator alternates with every chapter. Nick begins narrating live, on the day of their fifth anniversary. From then on, you hear about everything relevant to Nick except where Nick is and what he's doing during the four hours she goes missing. Then Amy begins her story, told through diary entries: beginning just as they met, and, chapter by chapter, converging with the present in a way that's intricately crafted to tell their history while telling the present story.
They start in pretty stark contrast: Amy writes lively and spirited, and Nick narrates like a psycho killer.
(Fa fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa far better.)
It really paints him as guilty. He details how he's come to hate his wife and that he's lying to the cops, while her diary is nothing short of adorable enough that I caught myself falling in love with a fictional character.
(No worries, though, I do that a few times a year.)
Anyway, the person who told me about the book told me that there's a few massive plot twists, so my brain is spinning as much as I can while reading the page turner. I'm thinking Fight Club, I'm thinking Memento; there are some surprises in store, and I'm going to do my best to out-think the author.
Imagine my surprise when I find out that Nick has a mistress.
No, I'm not being sarcastic. In fact, my surprise that Nick has a mistress was only outdone by my surprise at my surprise: 140 pages into a thriller, and it'd legitimately never dawned on me that a guy with a failing marriage who really, really, really appears to have killed his wife might have a mistress.
Tony, can we talk?
Have you ever read good fiction?
You know, the kind both inspired by and rife with the juiciest drama imaginable?
Aren't you the same guy who claimed a couple weeks ago that you correctly predicted a season's main plot twist in Dexter after three episodes?
...But you can't figure out that a wife-killer might be fucking someone else.
Next on the reading list: Goodnight Moon. I wonder if the protagonist falls asleep?!
I won't go into much more Gone Girl detail than that, but I'm not really sure how the author pulled off the surprise... or if I've pulled it off myself. Honestly, I was blind to one of the oldest tropes. While trying to grasp at the tiniest and most distant straws, the bale of hay fell on my head.
Speaking of terrible cliches, that's one way I feel like she pulled it off: her plot twists were there, they were often huge, but they weren't cliche. There were minor twists before the mistress and huge ones after, and I was always delighted by them to the point that I actually managed to shut my brain off as much as possible and just enjoy the ride. If I can give credit to the author rather than my interaction with fiction, this is why.
Hell, the greatest impact the book had on me wasn't even a plot twist, nor anywhere near the end. It came a little while after one of the big plot twists, and for anyone who's read, it was the passage that started with "I hope you liked Amy. She was meant to be likeable. Likeable by someone like you."
Until I read that line, I'd never understood that, when folks described something in fiction as spine-tingling, it was an actual thing that could actually happen, and not just a cliche thing we say.
My point: I love how I felt while experiencing Gone Girl. Though my surprise varied, I was never like "Oh. I guess.", even when it had been done before. It was done tastefully, and revealed in just the right way. But then, most agree that Looper has these same traits... except that I hadn't stolen the book's shock from my later self, despite my attempts.
The worst part about this blog is that I'm not coming to some grandiose conclusion about how to better experience plot twists in fiction. Though I've got some clues, I can't piece together what kept the gravity in Gone Girl but took it out of Looper. There are too many factors: one's a book, one's a movie. One's a futuristic sci-fi universe, the other is set three months ago in almost exactly our world. One has Bruce Willis, one has OJ Simpson (sort of).
If nothing else, I guess I can thank Gone Girl for forcing me to question if I can better interact with my fiction, or whether it's just the most subtly clever psychological thriller that I've come across in years.
Also, if anyone's seen the movie & read the book, I'd love to hear how you felt about both.
One: if you haven't seen Looper yet, I want to be the latest to tell you (because you've no doubt heard several times already) that no matter how silly it sounds, go see it. Tonight. It's a fantastic psychological thriller that dabbles in sci-fi enough for fans of the genre, but not so much that it will disgust folks indifferent to it.
Two: if you have the chance to check out Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, read it. I've just finished, and I'm still coming to terms with the ending myself, so I make no assurances about a satisfied ending for you (TWSS). I have to say though, I don't know that I've ever had a book that pained me this much to put down. Again, it's a psychological thriller, except with a whodunnit flair that's so pop-culture littered & postmodern that it'd hurt me if I didn't love those things.
So, on to more spoiler-y business.
Search your heart, Luke; you know it to be true.
I called Looper about twenty minutes into the movie. It was competent and well-told (that's always my disclaimer when I'm about to call something predictable), but I knew how the closing scenes would go from a mile away. I knew from the scene with Seth, the non-Levitt looper who's trying to escape the mob. His future self is fleeing in the present, but the mob catches his past self, and by amputating and disfiguring the past Seth, the future Seth changed live onscreen. It's a confusing paradox that's best explained by Bruce Willis' insistence to Levitt (&, more importantly, the audience) to just not think about the time travel mechanics too much.
So I didn't.
I instead thought about how this plot mechanic relates to the protagonist: Willis' Old Joe is a badass with a heart of mostly obsidian whose life was barely brought home from the realm of murder and drugs by his wife. Needless to say, he's a little attached to her, so much that he'll make a bloodbath of his past to save her. Knowing from the Seth scenes that Old Joe can be affected to what happens to Levitt's younger Joe, and having been introduced to Joe as a young man portrayed with a generally good heart who's just starting on the path that would stain it, I found it immediately apparent that once the movie was coming to a close, Joe would kill himself. I didn't see The Rainmaker's plot-twisty little attribute, nor did I predict the real life & online discussions I'd get into about whether The Rainmaker was actually another version of Joe or his brother or something (eventual conclusion: he's probably not), but I knew that the finale would hinge around Joe's self-eradication for whatever reason.
My immediate reaction after being right? I do sci-fi too much. I've read and watched dozens of time travel stories, each with their own variations on the mechanics, and this future-self-being-affected-by-past-self mechanic, with its persistence to it affecting the future self even when the future self was in the past... it just reeked of what was to come. By no means did this realization completely ruin an excellent movie for me. There was still the suspense of seeing if I was right, and I've been singing the movie's praises ever since regardless.
But still, by thinking hard on where it could go from the Seth scene, I'd robbed myself of the shock. Of the gravity. Of the oomph of a good, blindsiding plot twist. An oomph that, had I not correctly overthought, would've made an excellent movie even better. Mindblowing, even.
That'd be a great pun if Joe shot himself in the head instead of the chest.
Contrast all that with my interaction with my latest read, Gone Girl. In a very postmodern way, it's fragmented into two storytellers at different times: Nick Dunne and his wife, Amy. The narrator alternates with every chapter. Nick begins narrating live, on the day of their fifth anniversary. From then on, you hear about everything relevant to Nick except where Nick is and what he's doing during the four hours she goes missing. Then Amy begins her story, told through diary entries: beginning just as they met, and, chapter by chapter, converging with the present in a way that's intricately crafted to tell their history while telling the present story.
They start in pretty stark contrast: Amy writes lively and spirited, and Nick narrates like a psycho killer.
(Fa fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa far better.)
It really paints him as guilty. He details how he's come to hate his wife and that he's lying to the cops, while her diary is nothing short of adorable enough that I caught myself falling in love with a fictional character.
(No worries, though, I do that a few times a year.)
Anyway, the person who told me about the book told me that there's a few massive plot twists, so my brain is spinning as much as I can while reading the page turner. I'm thinking Fight Club, I'm thinking Memento; there are some surprises in store, and I'm going to do my best to out-think the author.
Imagine my surprise when I find out that Nick has a mistress.
No, I'm not being sarcastic. In fact, my surprise that Nick has a mistress was only outdone by my surprise at my surprise: 140 pages into a thriller, and it'd legitimately never dawned on me that a guy with a failing marriage who really, really, really appears to have killed his wife might have a mistress.
Tony, can we talk?
Have you ever read good fiction?
You know, the kind both inspired by and rife with the juiciest drama imaginable?
Aren't you the same guy who claimed a couple weeks ago that you correctly predicted a season's main plot twist in Dexter after three episodes?
...But you can't figure out that a wife-killer might be fucking someone else.
Next on the reading list: Goodnight Moon. I wonder if the protagonist falls asleep?!
I won't go into much more Gone Girl detail than that, but I'm not really sure how the author pulled off the surprise... or if I've pulled it off myself. Honestly, I was blind to one of the oldest tropes. While trying to grasp at the tiniest and most distant straws, the bale of hay fell on my head.
Speaking of terrible cliches, that's one way I feel like she pulled it off: her plot twists were there, they were often huge, but they weren't cliche. There were minor twists before the mistress and huge ones after, and I was always delighted by them to the point that I actually managed to shut my brain off as much as possible and just enjoy the ride. If I can give credit to the author rather than my interaction with fiction, this is why.
Hell, the greatest impact the book had on me wasn't even a plot twist, nor anywhere near the end. It came a little while after one of the big plot twists, and for anyone who's read, it was the passage that started with "I hope you liked Amy. She was meant to be likeable. Likeable by someone like you."
Until I read that line, I'd never understood that, when folks described something in fiction as spine-tingling, it was an actual thing that could actually happen, and not just a cliche thing we say.
My point: I love how I felt while experiencing Gone Girl. Though my surprise varied, I was never like "Oh. I guess.", even when it had been done before. It was done tastefully, and revealed in just the right way. But then, most agree that Looper has these same traits... except that I hadn't stolen the book's shock from my later self, despite my attempts.
The worst part about this blog is that I'm not coming to some grandiose conclusion about how to better experience plot twists in fiction. Though I've got some clues, I can't piece together what kept the gravity in Gone Girl but took it out of Looper. There are too many factors: one's a book, one's a movie. One's a futuristic sci-fi universe, the other is set three months ago in almost exactly our world. One has Bruce Willis, one has OJ Simpson (sort of).
If nothing else, I guess I can thank Gone Girl for forcing me to question if I can better interact with my fiction, or whether it's just the most subtly clever psychological thriller that I've come across in years.
Also, if anyone's seen the movie & read the book, I'd love to hear how you felt about both.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Words About Words
I love the English language.
Well, I'd probably love all the other ones, too.
But, as my parents and elders always warned with everything that sounded like a lame waste of time, I regret not taking the time to learn anything other than l'Anglais.
Tolkien, an author famous for his abundant (& often overbearing) use of descriptive words thought and wrote at length on the inherent beauty of language. He thought at such length about it that he'd even chosen a word that he thought the most beautiful in the English language: cellardoor. Tolkien loved the C that sounds like an S and just the way the word flows perfectly. While I do see his point, I stumbled upon a word I liked even more one evening while watching Jeopardy: I think the world circumlocution is probably the one I'd hang on my wall in a frame fit for a melting clock or a can of soup.
I don't really know why. I just like it. Turns out, I'm not Tolkien.
Surprise!
Still; there's actually a certain class of word that I have thought a lot about, and come to love on my own terms. I love words that are self descriptive.
I need to be precise: I'm not talking about onomatopoeia, here.
(Everyone get your memory of childhood PBS ready for spelling that: O-N-O. M-A-T. O-P-O. E-I-A.)
Onomatopoeia, of course, is when a word describes the source of the sound the word describes. That's a Tolkien-esque mouthful, but it's not a hard concept to grasp. Bang! BOOM! Snap. Crackle. Pop.
Rice Krispies are actually the best lesson in onomatopoeia there is.
& they're part of this nutritionally balanced breakfast!
No, I mean words that describe an action or feeling, and in their spelling or pronunciation actually embody that same action or feeling. I got thinking on writing this post after reading over the blog entries I'd written already; I noticed that the word "coolly" popped up in both of the lengthy ones. It's a word that, when I wrote the Dexter post, I had to Google to make sure it wasn't something I was making up as I was going along. Indeed, it's a word, and I love to use it! Before I even get to the verb I'm describing, I feel it'll be as cool as a thirties jazz lounge; the word coolly just exerts this cool aura. By typing or saying coolly, you've made something sound cool before even knowing what it is. The adverb does the work.
In a similar vein, say the word smooth out loud for me. The sm- & -th flow like bookends, and we wouldn't ooh (or aah) at impressive things if that didn't flow smoothly out of the mouth. All those letters and only one syllable? The word smooth is smoother than I'll ever be.
Here's another great one: awkward. Ks are one of the rarer letters in our language (worth 5 points in Scrabble; topped only by Q, J, X & Z for rarity), and if I had to guess, it's because it's not really versatile. There are languages based on the Roman Alphabet that omit it altogether because it's a little superfluous.
(Sidebar: do you really need eleven letters to say what superfluous says? The word length, if you ask me, is a little superfluous.)
Back to business; when you put a W on each side of a K, it's just cumbersome. On a scale of one to ten, awkward rates at least a 9 on most awkwardly spelled words.
And cumbersome, with those Ms & that B, is definitely a little cumbersome to say.
I'll talk a little more about what the letter B did there in the word cumbersome. Or even further back in bang & boom. It's the strongest sound in the words. What a letter! I bet you can't name me a word where the B would be silent. Such a strong consonant is not meant to be subtle.
Reading this must be becoming arduous by now. I'm rambling a little. Wait, how do you pronounce that one? Ard-you-us? Ard-jew-us?
Man, it's a labor to even think about.
I'd also be remiss to skip the holy grail of cusses: the word fuck is in a class its own. It's so powerful and inherent that it should almost be onomatopoeia... but a fuck in the noun/verb sense definitely doesn't sound like that.
So, no onomatopoeia.
Still, there's a video that's as old as the internet that explains that it can do everything. I'm sure it's partially psychology at this point, but it's just satisfying. For a word that can be any part of speech and means pretty much everything, it still manages to speaks for itself.
It's ubiquitous.
(What does ubiquitous even mean? I've never looked it up, but I see it everywhere.)
Contrary to a word that always makes sense, there's another class of word I've come to love: words that don't make any fucking sense.
...anymore, that is.
The evolution of language is an awesome thing, rivaled in complexity and intrigue perhaps only by the evolution of things that breathe.
Think about your car. It has a dashboard. We've all been raised to know that a dashboard is what's in front of you, facing you, when you sit in your car. We spend our teen years searching for paradise by its light. But did you ever actually question why it's called that? I guess it sort of resembles a board, insomuch as a contoured plastic surface covered in buttons and lights can resemble a flat plank of wood. And, dash makes sense because...
...
...
no, it really doesn't.
This is because the word dashboard is a relic from the horse & buggy days. With so many horses on the roads, they'd often get quite muddy, and if your horse was performing to its maximum potential (one horsepower!), it could kick that dirt all over you. So, for when the horse dashed, you installed a flat board in front of you to keep the mud off. That word has persisted until today, just like measuring car capability in horsepower.
How about the word rewind vs fast forward? Fast forward makes sense; you're quickly zipping through content to get to a particular point. So its opposite should logically be... fast backward? Shouldn't it?
This is one that I don't have to explain to many reading this, but I will anyways: VHS tapes & cassette tapes stored their media on literal reels of tape that slowly unwound from one reel to another, and were read by headers. When you finished, it was considered a common courtesy to re-wind that tape from the second reel back to the first for its next user or for your future self. Obviously, this technology has been made obsolete with the digital revolution.
In the future, like a dashboard, that Be Kind, Rewind movie will be a nomenclature puzzle unlocked only by the most curious of watchers, instead of a common cute catchphrase that's the video store's equivalent of "don't be a dick".
Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody watched that when it was new, let alone in the future.
Furthermore, you'll have to stop that sentence to explain what a video store even was.
I'm going to cut this entry here because I could spend a fortnight typing about words that just don't compute in a purely literal sense anymore.
Proof positive: there were at least two in that sentence.
Well, I'd probably love all the other ones, too.
But, as my parents and elders always warned with everything that sounded like a lame waste of time, I regret not taking the time to learn anything other than l'Anglais.
Tolkien, an author famous for his abundant (& often overbearing) use of descriptive words thought and wrote at length on the inherent beauty of language. He thought at such length about it that he'd even chosen a word that he thought the most beautiful in the English language: cellardoor. Tolkien loved the C that sounds like an S and just the way the word flows perfectly. While I do see his point, I stumbled upon a word I liked even more one evening while watching Jeopardy: I think the world circumlocution is probably the one I'd hang on my wall in a frame fit for a melting clock or a can of soup.
I don't really know why. I just like it. Turns out, I'm not Tolkien.
Surprise!
Still; there's actually a certain class of word that I have thought a lot about, and come to love on my own terms. I love words that are self descriptive.
I need to be precise: I'm not talking about onomatopoeia, here.
(Everyone get your memory of childhood PBS ready for spelling that: O-N-O. M-A-T. O-P-O. E-I-A.)
Onomatopoeia, of course, is when a word describes the source of the sound the word describes. That's a Tolkien-esque mouthful, but it's not a hard concept to grasp. Bang! BOOM! Snap. Crackle. Pop.
Rice Krispies are actually the best lesson in onomatopoeia there is.
& they're part of this nutritionally balanced breakfast!
No, I mean words that describe an action or feeling, and in their spelling or pronunciation actually embody that same action or feeling. I got thinking on writing this post after reading over the blog entries I'd written already; I noticed that the word "coolly" popped up in both of the lengthy ones. It's a word that, when I wrote the Dexter post, I had to Google to make sure it wasn't something I was making up as I was going along. Indeed, it's a word, and I love to use it! Before I even get to the verb I'm describing, I feel it'll be as cool as a thirties jazz lounge; the word coolly just exerts this cool aura. By typing or saying coolly, you've made something sound cool before even knowing what it is. The adverb does the work.
In a similar vein, say the word smooth out loud for me. The sm- & -th flow like bookends, and we wouldn't ooh (or aah) at impressive things if that didn't flow smoothly out of the mouth. All those letters and only one syllable? The word smooth is smoother than I'll ever be.
Here's another great one: awkward. Ks are one of the rarer letters in our language (worth 5 points in Scrabble; topped only by Q, J, X & Z for rarity), and if I had to guess, it's because it's not really versatile. There are languages based on the Roman Alphabet that omit it altogether because it's a little superfluous.
(Sidebar: do you really need eleven letters to say what superfluous says? The word length, if you ask me, is a little superfluous.)
Back to business; when you put a W on each side of a K, it's just cumbersome. On a scale of one to ten, awkward rates at least a 9 on most awkwardly spelled words.
And cumbersome, with those Ms & that B, is definitely a little cumbersome to say.
I'll talk a little more about what the letter B did there in the word cumbersome. Or even further back in bang & boom. It's the strongest sound in the words. What a letter! I bet you can't name me a word where the B would be silent. Such a strong consonant is not meant to be subtle.
Reading this must be becoming arduous by now. I'm rambling a little. Wait, how do you pronounce that one? Ard-you-us? Ard-jew-us?
Man, it's a labor to even think about.
I'd also be remiss to skip the holy grail of cusses: the word fuck is in a class its own. It's so powerful and inherent that it should almost be onomatopoeia... but a fuck in the noun/verb sense definitely doesn't sound like that.
So, no onomatopoeia.
Still, there's a video that's as old as the internet that explains that it can do everything. I'm sure it's partially psychology at this point, but it's just satisfying. For a word that can be any part of speech and means pretty much everything, it still manages to speaks for itself.
It's ubiquitous.
(What does ubiquitous even mean? I've never looked it up, but I see it everywhere.)
Contrary to a word that always makes sense, there's another class of word I've come to love: words that don't make any fucking sense.
...anymore, that is.
The evolution of language is an awesome thing, rivaled in complexity and intrigue perhaps only by the evolution of things that breathe.
Think about your car. It has a dashboard. We've all been raised to know that a dashboard is what's in front of you, facing you, when you sit in your car. We spend our teen years searching for paradise by its light. But did you ever actually question why it's called that? I guess it sort of resembles a board, insomuch as a contoured plastic surface covered in buttons and lights can resemble a flat plank of wood. And, dash makes sense because...
...
...
no, it really doesn't.
This is because the word dashboard is a relic from the horse & buggy days. With so many horses on the roads, they'd often get quite muddy, and if your horse was performing to its maximum potential (one horsepower!), it could kick that dirt all over you. So, for when the horse dashed, you installed a flat board in front of you to keep the mud off. That word has persisted until today, just like measuring car capability in horsepower.
How about the word rewind vs fast forward? Fast forward makes sense; you're quickly zipping through content to get to a particular point. So its opposite should logically be... fast backward? Shouldn't it?
This is one that I don't have to explain to many reading this, but I will anyways: VHS tapes & cassette tapes stored their media on literal reels of tape that slowly unwound from one reel to another, and were read by headers. When you finished, it was considered a common courtesy to re-wind that tape from the second reel back to the first for its next user or for your future self. Obviously, this technology has been made obsolete with the digital revolution.
In the future, like a dashboard, that Be Kind, Rewind movie will be a nomenclature puzzle unlocked only by the most curious of watchers, instead of a common cute catchphrase that's the video store's equivalent of "don't be a dick".
Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody watched that when it was new, let alone in the future.
Furthermore, you'll have to stop that sentence to explain what a video store even was.
I'm going to cut this entry here because I could spend a fortnight typing about words that just don't compute in a purely literal sense anymore.
Proof positive: there were at least two in that sentence.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
#PowerOfNL: Of Mad Men & Muskrats
Ever watch Mad Men?
If you haven't, you're missing out. It's a drama that's won a slew of Emmy Awards that centers around an advertising firm in the sixties. Regardless of your reason for watching, you can find a home in how well the show is set. Personally, as your average twenty-something male, I tend to gravitate towards how utterly novel it is that Don Draper (the male protagonist) sits in his office drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes all day while working. Alternately, some of my more fashion-aware friends love the costuming and how they really capture the setting. Either way, the show is a period piece that does a great job of making the watcher feel like they're actually witness to the inner workings of an advertising company in the sixties. (Whether this is caricature or accurate, I don't know. I'm not in advertising.)
There's an oft-repeated quote from that show; in one episode, Don tells Peggy (the female lead) that “The reason you haven't felt [love] is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.” Other implications aside, the quote coolly catches the spirit of advertising: you're convincing a potential customer that they want (even need) something that you can provide them—for the low, low price of $29.99.
Or $6.2 billion.
Whatever.
David Cochrane recently pointed out on twitter that the Muskrat Falls project we've been hearing about in Newfoundland was first announced almost two years ago. It's billed by its supporters as way for NL to retcon the Churchill Falls mishap & reliably provide ourselves with our own power. We could even sell some on the side to our great friends in Nova Scotia or Quebec. However, due to its handling over time, it's morphed from this ideal future project to a giant political talking point shrouded in unanswered questions.
So giant, in fact, that it now generally falls under the old “politics and religion” criteria of things you don't talk about in polite company. For the rare few of you reading this who didn't get here from a link I posted on twitter, it's a well established fact that I work with folks from the older generation who generally lean conservative. Don Cherry is the second coming of Christ, and wouldn't you know it, Danny Williams is the third. Needless to say, I'm one of the few there who doesn't rigidly believe that Muskrat Falls is going to fix all of our energy problems, god dammit!
...It's a topic best not discussed if we want to keep from heated discussions. They're fun, but distracting.
The reason I'm rambling on these points today is because the proponents of Muskrat Falls have started a new publicity campaign, promoting the slogan (& hashtag) I Believe In The Power of NL. I can see the need to put a new faceplate on this whole situation; it's getting more politicized and more divisive by the day. So, when you tweet about #MuskratFalls, it's sort of hard to not bring at least some negative energy to the table, regardless of your leaning. Conversely, when you tweet about #PowerOfNL, you're talking about literally the shining hope of our province, forever and ever amen.
That slogan, of course, plays cleverly on a double entendre: not only are you talking about literally powering NL with electricity, but you're metaphorically referring to the strength-y sort of power that NL can have politically. We've been lifting weights, and the next time that mean Quebec kid comes and tries to take our lunch money or our waterfall money, we'll show them THE POWER OF NL!!!
I don't really have the internet clout (or klout, as you social media kids refer to these days) to really be heard by many other than a few friends and acquaintances, but this sort of hyperbole is exactly why I was tweeting in jest with that hashtag this morning after the launch. It was a silly play on the oldschool Newfoundlander stereotype. The tweets were:
"#PowerOfNL? b'ys! can't be usin' that as a hashtag. too confusing! there's the Powers from up the shore, Powers from Botwood, Powers from..."
"you tells bas power & mose power they're tarred wit the same hashtag, they'll be rotted! especially seein' there's hash involved.#PowerOfNL"
Hey guys, I can play on the word "power", too!
I'll throw my cards on the table. I'm at best a casual follower of politics. I'll vote, I'll watch debates, I'll leaf through major points of party platforms. But it's not my job, nor my passion. I won't read a 100-page release, I'll wait for a couple three-page summaries to pop up somewhere online and see what I should care about. So my opinion doesn't even matter, really.
I'm still going to share it.
I have a math degree, I'm a numbers guy; I sell car parts, I'm a practical guy. I don't know how I'm going to feel about this project until you can tell me exactly what it pulls out of my pocket, exactly what it puts back into my pocket, and those same vital points about any alternative plans. Sure, a coal lobbyist tells me coal would be cheaper but... well... that's his job, regardless of the truth, isn't it?
That's exactly what my personal beef and mockery of #PowerOfNL comes down to. A clever double entendre loaded with implications... that doesn't just sound like a PR strategy meant to convince me on an issue; no, with the website launch and emergence of that campaign, I feel like I'm outright being sold something that I don't know if I need. It feels like they're cheaply trying to gain public sway by retiring that dirty, unmentionable #MuskratFalls and making it so that, even if you're being critical, you're still acknowledging the #PowerOfNL. They're invoking Newfoundland pride (something even more abundant in these parts than natural resources) to sway popular opinion. Flagrant marketing tactics. I don't like it, and today I trust everyone involved with the whole racket less than I did yesterday.
I don't believe in the power of NL.
The power of NL doesn't exist.
The power of NL doesn't exist.
The Power of NL was invented by guys like Don Draper to sell me nylons.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Dexter: Why it's good when it's good, and why it's just okay when it's not.
** SPOILER ALERT: If you place a rear spoiler on a Chevy Cavalier by choice, you're probably an idiot **
** SPOILER ALERT II: While I'll mostly be taking broad strokes & speaking generally in this post, the way I'm about to write will probably tell you more about Dexter S07E01 than you'd like to know, and definitely more about some preceding seasons. I'd recommend that you watch it before you read this, or at least be warned that here be dragons **
So, Dexter came back last night for its seventh season. While Breaking Bad is on its way to a blazing crescendo, while Boardwalk Empire is coolly getting more intense and convoluted by the episode, while Mad Men continues to slowly (but ultra-interestingly) pace itself towards an ending that'll rival The Sopranos for how little is actually resolved, and while The Walking Dead continues to be about killing fucking zombies, Dexter has kind of become that forgotten TV show child to me that just hasn't been the best thing on TV anymore for a while now.
I mean, sure. The framework near the end of season 6 has this season set up for things to get real. Again.
And again, to the show's credit, even at its lowest point and most infuriating cop-out (Deb: I'MA LET YOU FINISH. STAY BEHIND THAT SHEET WHILE I LEAVE), or its most predictable trope (Hands up those of you who hadn't figured out that Edward James Olmos plot twist by episode 3 or 4?), the show has never been badly written or poorly executed. But with some of the moments that preceded, and with some of its contemporaries, Dexter has just felt weaker than it used to. It lacked oomph. Even during the suspenseful closing moments of season 6, it was less of an "awwwwwwww shit!" and more of an "oh... shit."
Not so in season 7.
I'll be honest, twenty minutes in I was ready to give up. They made it too easy yet again, almost like the thirteen & a half pointless red herrings that killed The Killing, or the anti-shark repellent that Adam West's Batman used to carry. Deus ex machina again, ho hum. However, I was thankful at how mad the writers made me, because the final scene of the episode had the hair standing up on the back of my neck in a way that even the best dramas can only pull off once or twice a season. I've been saying for weeks that the scene at the end of S05E07 of Breaking Bad is possibly my favorite ever in a show, and that instantly came to mind after finishing this latest of Dexter: in a short scene, the writers have created a sudden & chilling overarching plot shift that at once changes the direction of the show while confirming the traits of the characters that you have come to know and love. Needless to say, to pull that off with a premiere leaves me excited for what's to come.
Then I got to thinking.
I think the problem I've had with the show in recent seasons, and sometimes even in season 3, is that the whole thing is episodic rather than overarching. You could chop pretty much the entirety of season 5, and tell viewers what they need to know with a minute or two scrolling text at the beginning of season 6. There are brief moments of character development, but Lumen has by and large stayed forgotten and Dexter is dealing with Rita's death & single fatherhood in exactly the ways you'd expect after getting to know this character for four seasons. Even season 6, with Deb's promotion, its strange intern, its cliffhanger ending, and its growth of some characters isn't entirely canon. It gets a lot of points for tackling religion and having some really jarring FX & imagery, but still not all that much happened that couldn't be told in a short comic book or in an internet miniseries. Going back to Jimmy Smits in season 3, things there often felt like fluff, and the whole thing was wrapped in a neat little package without characters growing enough between seasons 2 and 4 that they'd be unrecognizable if the whole thing was skipped.
So then, look at the other seasons: in season 1 you meet all the characters & things are really wild the whole time. In season 2, there is a major character death, and the serial killer/person of interest is someone who'll live throughout the show's run (presumably). In season 4, another major character death along with a ton of growth in pretty much every character. These seasons do still tell an episodic story, but they shake up the overarching plot in a way that can't be glossed over, while S3/S5 (and to a lesser extent, S6) are like short spin-off stories of what's happening in Miami in between all these serious events. Again: good TV, but not TV you can't miss.
Season 7 of Dexter has already elevated itself well past the point where you could skip it and not miss much, and it's got me excited again about a show that I've only half cared about since 2009. If it can keep up this momentum for however many episodes/seasons remain and find itself a fitting ending, it'll leave as a can't-miss masterpiece like The Wire, instead of fizzling into mediocrity and having to hire Laurence Fishburne to try and maintain its once enrapt audience.
PS: I was trying to find somewhere to say this in the above, but it sounded better as an afterthought. For reference, here are my favorite seasons of Dexter in descending order: 4 / 1 / 2 / 6 / 3 / 5.
** SPOILER ALERT II: While I'll mostly be taking broad strokes & speaking generally in this post, the way I'm about to write will probably tell you more about Dexter S07E01 than you'd like to know, and definitely more about some preceding seasons. I'd recommend that you watch it before you read this, or at least be warned that here be dragons **
So, Dexter came back last night for its seventh season. While Breaking Bad is on its way to a blazing crescendo, while Boardwalk Empire is coolly getting more intense and convoluted by the episode, while Mad Men continues to slowly (but ultra-interestingly) pace itself towards an ending that'll rival The Sopranos for how little is actually resolved, and while The Walking Dead continues to be about killing fucking zombies, Dexter has kind of become that forgotten TV show child to me that just hasn't been the best thing on TV anymore for a while now.
I mean, sure. The framework near the end of season 6 has this season set up for things to get real. Again.
And again, to the show's credit, even at its lowest point and most infuriating cop-out (Deb: I'MA LET YOU FINISH. STAY BEHIND THAT SHEET WHILE I LEAVE), or its most predictable trope (Hands up those of you who hadn't figured out that Edward James Olmos plot twist by episode 3 or 4?), the show has never been badly written or poorly executed. But with some of the moments that preceded, and with some of its contemporaries, Dexter has just felt weaker than it used to. It lacked oomph. Even during the suspenseful closing moments of season 6, it was less of an "awwwwwwww shit!" and more of an "oh... shit."
Not so in season 7.
I'll be honest, twenty minutes in I was ready to give up. They made it too easy yet again, almost like the thirteen & a half pointless red herrings that killed The Killing, or the anti-shark repellent that Adam West's Batman used to carry. Deus ex machina again, ho hum. However, I was thankful at how mad the writers made me, because the final scene of the episode had the hair standing up on the back of my neck in a way that even the best dramas can only pull off once or twice a season. I've been saying for weeks that the scene at the end of S05E07 of Breaking Bad is possibly my favorite ever in a show, and that instantly came to mind after finishing this latest of Dexter: in a short scene, the writers have created a sudden & chilling overarching plot shift that at once changes the direction of the show while confirming the traits of the characters that you have come to know and love. Needless to say, to pull that off with a premiere leaves me excited for what's to come.
Then I got to thinking.
I think the problem I've had with the show in recent seasons, and sometimes even in season 3, is that the whole thing is episodic rather than overarching. You could chop pretty much the entirety of season 5, and tell viewers what they need to know with a minute or two scrolling text at the beginning of season 6. There are brief moments of character development, but Lumen has by and large stayed forgotten and Dexter is dealing with Rita's death & single fatherhood in exactly the ways you'd expect after getting to know this character for four seasons. Even season 6, with Deb's promotion, its strange intern, its cliffhanger ending, and its growth of some characters isn't entirely canon. It gets a lot of points for tackling religion and having some really jarring FX & imagery, but still not all that much happened that couldn't be told in a short comic book or in an internet miniseries. Going back to Jimmy Smits in season 3, things there often felt like fluff, and the whole thing was wrapped in a neat little package without characters growing enough between seasons 2 and 4 that they'd be unrecognizable if the whole thing was skipped.
So then, look at the other seasons: in season 1 you meet all the characters & things are really wild the whole time. In season 2, there is a major character death, and the serial killer/person of interest is someone who'll live throughout the show's run (presumably). In season 4, another major character death along with a ton of growth in pretty much every character. These seasons do still tell an episodic story, but they shake up the overarching plot in a way that can't be glossed over, while S3/S5 (and to a lesser extent, S6) are like short spin-off stories of what's happening in Miami in between all these serious events. Again: good TV, but not TV you can't miss.
Season 7 of Dexter has already elevated itself well past the point where you could skip it and not miss much, and it's got me excited again about a show that I've only half cared about since 2009. If it can keep up this momentum for however many episodes/seasons remain and find itself a fitting ending, it'll leave as a can't-miss masterpiece like The Wire, instead of fizzling into mediocrity and having to hire Laurence Fishburne to try and maintain its once enrapt audience.
PS: I was trying to find somewhere to say this in the above, but it sounded better as an afterthought. For reference, here are my favorite seasons of Dexter in descending order: 4 / 1 / 2 / 6 / 3 / 5.
I now have a weblog for the... sixth?... time ever!
I find myself wanting more than 140 characters to express something I'm thinking or feeling lately.
Since I got tired of trying to blog about a song a day for nobody to read, and since I grew up enough that my highschool/early university blog makes me want to vomit on my younger self, I've subsisted pretty well by succinctly tweeting whatever musings I might have. A couple times in the last few weeks, though, I've had this want to write. Ideas for vicious tirades or sprawling fictions boil up inside of me until I get distracted enough by something else in my life to forget about it. I think I'm at least interesting (if not occasionally original), and those around me are at least polite enough to humor me most of the time--so why don't I write?!
Mostly, because nobody gives a fuck.
& so they shouldn't.
But still, I miss writing.
So this is for me.
However, it does feel at least a little silly to write up documents about my thoughts and just save them in a word file on my computer... so, while this is primarily for me, the thought that someone might read or listen will encourage me a little, and probably help me filter my thoughts to at least the point where they might resemble coherence.
I have no idea what's in store. I might delete this tomorrow. But feel free to join me from now until whenever.
(Probably tomorrow)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)