Hawaii, Illness, and Burnout

I had a whole blogging thing planned for the trip to Hawaii. I even wrote a little in my notebook on the plane there and a few times while I was there so that I could record my experience for the posterity of all. A week has passed since I returned, however, and none of this delightful blogging has happened.

I caught the plague while in Hawaii, you see, because apparently I am allergic to paradise. My body rejects perfection. But really that’s no surprise to anyone.

And maybe it was deciding to attend a conference the first week of school; maybe it was getting sick and having to fly six hours to get home. Maybe it’s just the combination of last semester and this one, but I have embarked on a hermitage. Only recently have I willingly left my apartment for something other than required needs; only in the last two days have I felt like socializing, shopping, or...showering.

I could certainly blame part of it on being sick. I had a fever (which is always fun) and sinus issues and now currently still carry a really sexy cough. My voice sounds like I’m smoking two cartons a day of pure arsenic. But I think part of it is due to Hawaii itself.

I didn’t love Hawaii.

I feel like I’m betraying all that is good and holy in the world even typing such an admission, but living in Las Vegas has ruined me for tourism. I don’t like being on a beach surrounded by people. The conference was fine, but my experiences weren’t overwhelming. None of the souvenirs I saw were anything I couldn’t purchase on Fremont Street; all of the streets were lined with hotels, and ABC, the Hawaii equivalent of CVS.

We went to the North Shore one day and that was tremendous. On the North Shore we were away from the people and the tourism and the clearly presented “paradise” front. I saw twenty foot waves, I jumped up on a rock barely avoiding getting splashed (demonstrating dexterity to make a gazelle jealous I tell you) and I triumphed over the Dole Pineapple Plantation Maze. It’s possible that were I on a different island than Oahu I would be happier.

But because the conference fell on the first week of school (something I didn’t realize when I originally submitted) I was worried about classes and teaching and paperwork. Because I got sick I was acutely aware of needing to get home, and wanting to be home, and wishing I weren’t in a hotel room. There also wasn’t much in the way of restaurants and I was really looking forward to some tremendous food.

It was certainly beautiful, there is no denying that. And it felt really different to be off the continental U.S. But conferences the first week of school are a bad idea. As is getting sick. I have been sick more in the past seven months than I have for the past four years. Unacceptable.

So I’m sharing these gripes in an attempt to get myself back in the space of working, thinking, and studying. Hopefully if I can make myself sit down and type all of this I can make myself sit down and do some genuine work as well.

My failure to love Hawaii as I should is a sign, I believe, of Vegas finally eating away my soul. All that was good in me lasted here for two and half years--it was a decent run.

Oh Sir Guy...You Killer of Babies You

It’s a shameful day in my existence. There I am on the couch, just trying to do a little recoup before the semester gets back into full swing watching Robin Hood. It’s a fantastic show; I don’t know if the Brits do it better because it’s their story or because the BBC is, in general, more classy TV than what we got over here. Regardless I’m really loving the show, life, and most especially the part where I’m on the couch.

As I watch I’m reviled by the Sheriff of Nottingham who is like a short, midget version of Tim Curry and Alan Rickman shoved together; I’m disgusted by the Sir Guy of Gisborne, an undeniably more charismatic character than the Prince of Thieves version, but still appropriately evil. I’m thrilled by Robin and his band of merry men. The writing is good, the action invigorating, and the show is simply, overall, thoroughly entertaining.

And then the unthinkable happens...

Sir Guy of Gisborne looks up with his piercing blue eyes and his stubble-ridden jaw and his dark, dark hair and I feel a hitch just behind my rib cage. But this guy takes his illegitimate child and leaves it in the forest to lure Robin into a trap. There’s no way I’m going to find myself suddenly attracted to a character like this. And then the kitchen maid (the same one he lied to about giving the child a happy home to) says “you don’t know him like I do” and I scream at myself (SCREAM) that lines such as that, even when paired with icy blue eyes and stubble-ridden jaws are simply the way we talk ourselves into trouble. I’m too smart to think that a man who leaves his illegitimate child in the forest has a good side! I would never find myself fantasizing about strong jaws lined in stubble! THOSE ARE THE ACTIONS OF A CRAZY WOMAN!

And then he looked up and the camera angle, aligned to perfectly capture his profile, dark hair, stubble, and one piercing, icy blue eye seemed to sear into my soul. My heart did the thing where I can’t breath and before I even knew what was happening--before I could think, react, or remind myself that I don’t lust after baby killers--I was lost.

Without my conscious choice I began concocting alternate plot lines in my head. He was nearby; the baby wasn’t really in trouble. He used it for bait and that is wrong, but he made sure the baby was safe the whole time. He’s broken, wounded, confused by life and really just needs the love of a woman like Marion (or me) to make him better.

It’s not fair. It’s not my fault. It’s like an addiction. You show me a clean cut bad guy and I’m safe, clear, no problem. I mean, there was that one time with Universal Soldier and the necklace of ears, but I wouldn’t really date that guy. Honest I wouldn’t. But Sir Guy of Guisborne...it’s taken all of my not inconsiderable writing skills to manipulate the plot of Robin Hood into one where his character is savable. He’s been under spells, he’s been drugged, he’s been misunderstood, he’s been secretly working as a spy for King Richard to keep the Sheriff under watch...

Seriously it’s exhausting having a crush on this character and trying to justify it to myself at the same time. I keep trying to rationalize it away and I, the queen of rationalization, am almost outmatched. Hence my deep and overwhelming shame.

But I just can’t fight this feeling anymore. Apparently the way to my heart is to convince me there’s a large chance you’ll kill me someday with psychopathic remorse shining from your eyes.

And people wonder why I stay single.

Epic Trashy Romance Fail

So I’m reading a trashy romance novel (like you do) and I am appalled, though not shocked, by the unacceptability of this sketchy story. This particular author, Jacquelyn Frank, has bordered on sketch before, but I was in need of something to read and she had a new book out and I thought why not? It’s not like I won’t enjoy it.

Except I hadn’t counted on her latest story being built around a world where punishment for the female criminals is forced prostitution. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but anytime the word “forced” gets attached to a sexual act I just go ahead and call it rape. I find it so much more simple.

In the book’s defense the heroine makes the argument this system of “justice” is heinous and I will finish the story to see if Frank somehow saves the story by demonstrating, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how incredibly unacceptable such a civilization is. But I don’t have high hopes because it’s hard to fall in love with a hero (sort of the point of the trashy romance) who doesn’t get why giving someone some pretty clothes doesn’t make up for forced sexual activity.

I mean, I love this argument that the hero makes. Well, it’s not like we’re killing them. They know the consequences of breaking the law, so if we punish them by forcing them into prostitution instead of killing them they should thank us for feeding them and clothing them and letting them live! Obviously. Never mind this particular storyline revolves around a society near extinction due to severe lack of females so the free women are “cherished” and “kept indoors” and “protected.” No, I don’t know why that sort of lifestyle would drive anyone crazy do you? I know I just love not being able to go outside or be an individual because my duty to the “colony” is more important.

I mean...it’s almost like someone thought to themself “Self, how can we make jess the most disgusted and angry she could possibly be? Oh I know, create a fantasy world where we somehow surpass Victorian England for bad gender roles, rape is an acceptable form of punishment, and women must allow themselves to be caged birds so that the world may survive!”

And my problem here, the reason this book is driving me insane (and yes if I were smart I would stop reading trashy romance, but I resent the fact that I can’t find ethical, intelligent romance that doesn’t depend on ridiculous hurtful expectations of domination and submission) is that I never have and never will agree that the good of the many outweighs the right of the one to choose. So the colony is short on women. That’s cool; if a woman wants to choose to be gilded and accept her role as necessary to colony survival I support and respect that choice. But she gets to choose. And she, while perhaps first in line for sustenance and shelter, is not turned into some form of statuary.

Because, aside from the whole it’s unethical to force someone to support others thing, it’s also unethical to torture somebody. And when you torture them instead of kill them it’s a big deal. You are too dangerous to be allowed to live? Okay, if this is a world where the death penalty is used then you kill them. I’m cool with that (I have strange libertarian impulses it’s true) but you don’t torture them. If you want to afford your women the opportunity to breed because you’re so short on females you work something out, but you don’t sell them. It’s torture; it’s slavery, and just cause you do it to the “criminal” women doesn’t make it okay. Not even considering the implications for the women who are criminals, it makes the society worse. It makes each member of society a worse person to agree to such an act and to be complicitous in it.

That’s the part that all these crazy romance novel authors don’t seem to get. Yeah, it sucks for the person suffering from abuse, be it rape, gilded cage syndrome, etc., but it also destroys the person allowing, endorsing, or doling out the abuse. Not only is your world unacceptable because you’ve created some monstrous perversion of society, but your hero is unacceptable cause he’s a big, dumb rapist! Not hot. I mean really, has any of us ever just found ourselves with heaving breaths upon the realization that the one we love sometimes pays society for the right to have sex with another person? If it were prostitution I might not be so irate (though let‘s be honest, still irate) but it’s forced prostitution. I mean, the only difference to me is that it’s rape with a free dinner after! Well la-di-dah. That just makes everything okay doesn’t it?

I know, I know--I need to stop reading trashy romance. This happens every time. I know it’s bad for me and I do it anyway and then I get mad and then I rant about it for awhile. I have no one to blame but myself for my current heartburn and I accept that responsibility.

I’ll go back to watching Robin Hood on the BBC now. Which, incidentally, is really awesome and I am so Little John (you see why romance and I just aren’t meant to be). More on that later.

The Grass is Greener and I Suppose It’s Always Complicated

I’m hoping that if I force myself to write about some of the movies I have been watching of late it will get me back in work mode. Here’s to hoping.

I recently watched both It’s Complicated, recently released with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, and The Grass is Greener, an old movie starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Both dealt with marriage, infidelity, and divorce and it was only quite by accident that I watched them both in the same day. It made for a really interesting experience, however; The Grass is Greener is designed to be a comedy and the whole situation of marriage, adultery, and wedding vows is treated humorously and (dare I say it?) lightheartedly. Oh, as a viewer you know that these are serious issues, but Cary Grant isn’t nearly as distraught in this film as he is in, say, An Affair to Remember (best chick flick ever). It’s Complicated, however, endeavors to show, much more realistically I might argue, the realities of adultery.

I think the reason both got me to thinking was because in Grass Cary Grant gives a very good speech about how marriage is “for better or for worse” and that one spouse shouldn’t simply walk away from the other one when they reach the “for worse” part of marriage. It’s a good speech; I won’t argue that. But contrary to Mr. Grant’s very charming rhetoric, I think adultery is sometimes a good reason not to be someone. It just doesn’t seem very sporting (I’ve been watching a lot of Cary Grant lately so if my syntax seems British just go with it) to sit around an empty house and wait for your cheating spouse to come home and, hopefully, love you again. That’s not cricket.

On the other hand, if you’ve got ten or twenty or thirty years of marriage under your belt and a few kids to boot one little affair (or two or three) might not seem worth calling the whole thing off. I suppose it’s dependent upon how necessary trust is for the particular two people involved and how that trust is defined. Maybe, if you’re Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, you don’t worry about fidelity, but you trust that said adulterous spouse will always come home at the end of the day.

But if you require fidelity from your spouse are you a failure if adultery makes you demand divorce? And there are levels of adultery right? First base--worth getting angry and a mild cold shoulder. Some second or third base action--definitely within rights to throw something at someone’s head. Homerun--all bets are off. And how many times has it happened? What were the circumstances surrounding it?

And there is the other question both films play with: if your spouse cheats first are you allowed to cheat back? Obviously my answer is going to be no because I’m not big on that whole “revenge gig” but I think what has me going here, what I’m really after, is that when it comes to affairs of the heart, love, the unspoken rule is that love, and lack thereof, justifies everything. If our husbands don’t love us we get to cheat on them. If our wives don’t sleep with us we get to have sex with someone else. If we really feel a connection with someone then we can’t possibly be expected to control ourselves. Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, The Bridges of Madison County, etc., etc., etc. And I make concessions for Guinevere, it wasn’t like she could exactly divorce Arthur, but so many movies purport the romance of the affair. At least in An Affair to Remember (I feel I have to acknowledge what it is since I admitted to loving it ever so much) their decision to be together is made with the simultaneous decision to end their current relationships. There’s no hemming and hawing there. (I hate the hemming and hawing.)

And it’s not like these things are easy; I think they probably are always complicated, but lack of ease is so often used as an excuse for wrong behavior. I edited that previous sentence from “bad” to “wrong” because I don’t really think the choice to cheat is often a “good” or “bad” one, but it is a wrong one. Unethical behavior is always wrong, even when understandable or expected. And perhaps that’s what I’m driving at here.

Both films, I felt, didn’t take a strong enough stance against the wrongness of willfully hurting another human being. Now, some would argue it hurt’s them to divorce them, but that’s a false argument. Either you still love them and don’t want to divorce them, in which case you’re simply too lazy to be a good person, or you don’t actually want to be with them but are too lazy to change. At the end of the day if you don’t love someone as they deserve, have no intention of ever doing so, and stay with them out of guilt, laziness, or usury, it’s a sublimation of their life to yours and that’s not okay. Vows or not, I’m gonna go on record and say that’s not okay. And, if you’re the wronged party hurting back the person that hurt you only makes you as wrong as they were. More understandable perhaps, but understanding does not go inevitably with condoning.

It seems to me, after watching these movies and thinking about it, that too often we equate understanding (shit happens) with the need to condone (well it wasn’t that bad you’re right) and I think that’s lazy ethics. And I’m not preaching judgment here, I hope I’m not preaching at all, but putting forth the idea that allowing ourselves off the hook for our bad behavior because it’s understandable only furthers more bad behavior. We all have excellent reasons for why we do the crazy things we do, but how does one work on themselves (assuming of course that one wants to) without acknowledging, painful as it is, that one has screwed up? And, this might be even more tricky, attempting to not make the same mistake again. That second part is key. A revolving door of acknowledged bad behavior doesn’t really get the job done either.

And so, thinking on both of these movies, I have to say I still think one bad does not justify another and adultery, while always wrong, can also be understandable. And I kind of wish both movies would have taken a harder line on that.

But hey, I’m the friend that when you ask “is it wrong?” after sleeping with your ex-husband who is currently remarried answers, “it’s wrong.” Just call me the dreamslayer.

Avatar or Wow...Shiny

I can’t exactly not talk about Avatar. It would be ridiculous of me, me the girl who watches more movies than any living human being ought and reads (or used to read) more fantasy books than any living human being ought (as opposed to dead human beings who are judged by entirely different standards) to watch Avatar and not talk about it.

The problem is I don’t know exactly what to say. We’ll start with the things that are important:

1) Watch it in a good theater with 3-D; I recommend IMAX if available.
2) Part way through, when you’re thoroughly caught up in the world, try to remind yourself that none of the things you are watching are real. You’re brain probably won’t be able to process that.
3) Try to count all the lines/characters/stories that are blatantly ripped off of other movies and/or video games.

Avatar is a really, really beautiful movie and the effects are everything they were cracked up to be. It was a truly tremendous movie watching experience. The problem was the story; the story was good enough for the effects, but that was all. The story absolutely couldn’t stand on it’s own...at least not solidly.

But that, by itself, is another problem. Even as I wished the story (think Pocahontas) could be different, I have no idea how it might be different and still be the story that Cameron is telling. At times he does some really brilliant things--he plays with the hero quest in an unexpected way, he plays with gender roles in a manner I’ve grown to expect and love him for, he attempts to make what has become a joke something serious in its own right. I actually respect the attempt to present a nature based culture as not hoakey; the problem is he doesn’t exactly succeed. Partly I think because he relies too much on cliché and stereotypical Native American tropes, but mostly because as I was watching it I could feel how hard it was trying. A story should be like any other creative act; the audience should never know how hard it was to present.

A story should feel seamless, easy, and inevitable. Regardless of whether we can predict what will happen next, if we feel the plot is exactly the right plot for the story being told we forgive it. None of us doesn’t expect the hero to succeed and live happily ever after, and, in fact, many of us will be incredibly irritated if we aren’t presented with an ending that fulfills those requirements acceptably. But, the story can’t feel forced, preachy, or stolen. Nothing is original (and I really mean that) but everything great is individual. The problem with Avatar’s story was that it didn’t feel like James Cameron’s story. It felt like a lot of James Cameron’s stories, plus Independence Day, plus New World, plus Starcraft/Warcraft with a dash of Star Wars thrown in a blender and mixed around.

And the parts that were original to this movie, the parts that you felt encapsulated the movie best sometimes felt forced. Like Cameron had this great idea for a world where biology is magic and life and connection...but he just didn’t have the time to make it work in a narrative. That made me sad.

But it was good enough. It was good enough because the visual aspect of the movie was so stunning that as a viewer I didn’t necessarily care about the finer points of storytelling while I watched it. The story was solid enough that, while at times I was pulled out of the imaginary world, most of the time I could accept it and enjoy the sensation of seeing my childhood imagination brought to life...quite literally at times.

So it’s worth it. You have to see it in the theater, and you absolutely should do whatever you can to see it in a good theater. And if, at times, you find yourself finishing the quote from Empire Strikes Back that has been lifted directly, just concentrate on the shiny things. There are a lot of them and they are very cool to look at in this movie.