V: Lizard Aliens as a Social Reminder

Screening Room
May 13, 2010 | 10 books mentioned 15 6 min read

Related Books:

1.
coverThe revamped V (for those who don’t tune in: V stands for Visitors) on ABC has me completely hooked. Crazy but true, I DVR Giada De Laurentiis cooking shows in the same click as human-munching reptile aliens. And I’ve got my husband addicted too. He’s been away in Salt Lake City since the show’s March return. During the commercial breaks, we dial each other like high school kids.

Me: “The kid just got lizard licked!”

Hubs: “Whatever, that’s a hot alien. I’d let her lick me.”

Me: “That’s her candy coating. Underneath she’s got snake eyes.”

Hubs: “Still, she’s hot.”

Me: “You’re despicable. Don’t you have any human pride?”

These are the not-so-adult conversations between us.

I grew up in a sci-fi loving home courtesy of my dad who’s a product of the Final Frontier generation—Shatner and Nimoy and the Lost in Space Robot. A child of the 80s, I was suckled on Star Wars and Quantum Leap. However, as I grew into adulthood, I became something of a sci-fi snob, rolling my eyes and shaking my head at laser beams and the Galactica crew heroics. I acquiesced to my dad’s 24/7 Sci-Fi Channel whenever I visited home, but beyond that my interest in extraterrestrials and spaceships was nonexistent. Until now. Like I said, I’m completely bewitched. Some of this could be blamed on my aforementioned childhood.

coverThe original V miniseries aired in 1983. I watched it, snuggled beside my dad who attempted to cover my eyes during the “bad parts.” To this day, my mom denies this memory—because she would never, never have allowed such a thing. And maybe so, but obviously she wasn’t invited to the daddy-daughter sci-fi party. I distinctly remember burying my face in my dad’s arm when Diana (the V leader) expanded her jaw and swallowed a guinea pig whole. My dad yelled, “Dadburnit, she’s a snake!” (Note: This is probably the basis of my fear of snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles.) It was terrifying! Yet even then, I was completely captivated.

coverThere was something about the miniseries that transcended the average “Beam me up, Scotty.” Despite the lizard thing, it was intellectual and deeply affecting. So it comes as no surprise it was inspired by Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. A novel chronicling fascism in the United States. According to television lore, the director-producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation of the book entitled Storm Warnings in 1982. NBC executives rejected it. Too heavy for average American viewers who were lining up at the box office for films like Tron and E.T. So they dumbed it down: made the American fascists into man-eating reptilian humanoids, and the show premiered to rave reviews on May 3, 1983.

Johnson later explained that the series was intended to be a political thriller and a Nazi allegory. From the Swastika-like emblems on the Visitor’s uniforms and the “Friends of the Visitors” youth movement to the mass broadcasting of messages mimicking Nazi radio propaganda. Humans in the show were forced to choose sides: collaborate with the occupying forces or join underground resistance movements, like the Fifth Column. While the brunt of Nazi persecution was targeted at Jews, the Visitors attacked anyone opposed to their dogma. Their infiltration of human society begins as a subterfuge but eventually transitions to a full-fledged military coup d’etat. The original series went so far as to incorporate a Holocaust survivor, the grandfather of Daniel Bernstein, who duly noted history’s repetition.

covercoverV ran roughly three hours and twenty minutes and was so successful in the ratings that the 1984 sequel V: The Final Battle was produced, supposedly to conclude the saga. But viewers couldn’t let go and the network wouldn’t pass up capitalizing on its popularity. V: The Series ran from 1984 to 1985 without Johnson as director. He left during The Final Battle after a disagreement with NBC executives on how the story should progress.

2.
Twenty-seven years later, the story is as fresh as it was in 1983. As fresh as it was in 1935.

Let’s face it—fascism still scares the hell out of us. The idea of social interventionism to promote the state’s interests is terrifying. Social indoctrination by way of state-regulated education and media propaganda makes our skin crawl. Eugenics for the purpose of social hygiene is monstrous. Discrimination based on culture, gender and sexuality is a nasty battle we fight daily. A hunger for expansionist imperialism, ideologically and physically, lingers on. Turn on the nightly news, tune into reality, and notes of Lewis’s novel and Johnson’s script continue to echo.

This may be exactly why V has seen such popularity with the 2010 audience. We live in a world where history repeats itself; where old ideas cloak themselves in various contemporary skins and pretty packages for each budding generation. The series continues to strike a chord because in a non-didactic way, it reminds us that the catastrophes of our past are but a handful of forgetful seasons away.

3.
Currently on the show, V spaceships loom over all the major cities. Anna (the 2010 V leader) promises peace, opens cure-all health centers and introduces advances in technology that surpass anything the world has ever seen. Using mass media, she seeks to indoctrinate a devoted following of humans involved in her Peace Ambassadors program. From the outside, the arrival of the V’s looks rosy, but beneath is a diabolical agenda to take over the Earth.

The updated series has been hit by a tidal wave of controversy. Rumor has it that it’s an allegorical representation of President Barack Obama’s administration. Many critics have pointed out the subtextual nods. In her review for The Washington Post, Lisa de Moraes noted that the series debuted on the first anniversary of Obama’s election, and that carefully embedded catchphrases like “hope”, “change”, and “universal health care” are frequently used by the Visitors.

Glenn Garvin of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the show was a “rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it’s also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president’s supporters and delight his detractors.”

Additionally, critical bloggers were quick to point out lines that hold an uncanny resemblance to quotes by Obama staff members. In one episode about a natural disaster that the V’s intervene to solve, Anna tells a news reporter, “There’s tragedy every day, all over your world—so many opportunities to help.” Likewise, Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is quoted as saying, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

At the 2009 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour session for V, the three producers Scott Peters, Jace Hall and Jeffrey Bell discussed the controversy. Peters explained, “Listen, I think that shows are open to interpretation. People bring subjective thoughts to it. And if you want to ascribe those words to the Visitors or to whatever is going on in our society, that’s sort of up to the viewer, but there’s no particular agenda to hone in on those specific things.”

Bell followed up, “We are talking about the metaphors and allegories here, and at a certain level, I just want to remind people it’s a show about spaceships on ABC at 8 p.m.”

Peters went on to clarify: The show is about the dangerous side of blind devotion. “ What happens when you don’t ask questions about the things you believe in?” he said. “And I think that can be applied across the board whether you are talking about a political issue or a religious issue or a relationship issue, any number of things.”

Alien spaceships making us pause in our prime time television consumption and (gasp!) think? Wouldn’t that be revolutionary! The producers’ comments may not lay the Obama controversy to rest, but we could use a little social reminder these days—even if it comes as science-fictionalized reptile aliens masked in hot human form plotting world conquest and mankind annihilation. Like the namesake characters, there’s more than meets the eye in V.

is the author of the international bestseller and 2012 Goodreads Choice Award nominee The Baker's Daughter (Crown) and The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico (Random House). Her novella The Branch of Hazel will be a part of Grand Central anthology (Penguin, July 2014). She is currently working on her third novel, to be published by Crown in 2014. You can learn more about Sarah at www.sarahmccoy.com or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.  Married to an Army doc, she currently lives in El Paso, Texas, but calls Virginia home.

Screening Room

Brodsky’s Cat: Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s A Room and a Half

Screening Room
January 29, 2010 | 10 books mentioned 2 5 min read
“What is a cat but a reduced lion?”  So muses the fictionalized Joseph Brodsky character in Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s whimsical and inventive film, A Room and a Half.  The film is a mesh of genres – bio-documentary, animated fairy tale, imagined fiction, non-fictional re-enactment; in other words, a distinctly contemporary approach (fragmentary, liberal in its notion of “facts,” unconcerned with delineations between objective and subjective) to discovering the “truth” of a man’s life and essence. The cat in question is both real and imagined, remembered and created.  Brodsky did have a pet cat as a child growing up in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) – and Khrzhanovsky would have us believe that Brodsky’s first poems may have been channeled through a cheeky chain-smoking cartoon cat of the boy Joseph’s daydreams.  At one point in the film, the pet cat becomes a more literal surrogate for Brodsky; his mother Masva (played by the wonderful Alisa Freindlich) speaks to the cat as if her now-exiled son were inhabiting its consciousness. How does a poet become a poet?  When does he know?  What drives his lyric impulse, of what is his soul made?  Such are the common questions posed in biographical works about artists; A Room and a Half explores them in delightfully uncommon ways. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was born in 1940, a little over a year before the siege of Leningrad.  His father was a photographer in the Soviet Navy and retired when Brodsky was still a young boy; thus Brodsky, an only child, enjoyed the loving attentions of both parents.  He began writing poetry when he was 17 and was soon lauded by Anna Akhmatova as a gifted lyric voice.  In 1964, he was sentenced to five years in exile in northern Russia at hard labor for "social parasitism.”  He served one year of that term, until the sentence was commuted in 1965, following protests by prominent Soviet and foreign literary figures.  In 1972, he was forced into exile abroad; after brief stays in Vienna and London, he moved to the United States, where he became naturalized in 1977.  Among many other awards and honors, Brodsky received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 and was U.S. Poet Laureate in 1991.  His essays on art and politics won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and he translated the metaphysical English poets, as well as the work of Czeslaw Milosz, into Russian – despite the fact that most of his own work has appeared only in the West.  Brodsky died of a heart attack in 1996, at age 56, having never again seen his parents nor returned to Russia despite ceaseless efforts to gain permission for his parents’ leave and/or for him to visit. It is no surprise that a central theme of Khrzhanovsky’s Brodsky story is return: an elder Brodsky - let’s say a fictional 57 – travels by ship to his native St. Petersburg.  En route, he remembers, narrates, imagines.  Animated cats, crows, and other winged figures (Khrzhanovsky is primarily known as a master animator) populate the screen, i.e. Brodsky’s memory and imagination.  In one of the film’s most memorable visual moments, young Joseph, who has just witnessed the selling off of the family piano (likely more of a confiscation than a sale, the first ominous signs of Jewish removal from Leningrad), imagines all the musical instruments of the city staging a kind of inspired/conspired escape, floating high above the monumental structures of history and politics, and reuniting to form a heavenly orchestra in the sky. In Khrzhanovsky’s version of Brodsky’s childhood Leningrad, there is dancing and music, silliness and sex, poet-cats and ice-skating crows.  A childhood is a childhood, he seems to suggest, Stalin or no Stalin.  In one scene, young Joseph mock-meows through choir rehearsal while a sizable bust of Stalin is being carried to the next room.  The two student couriers falter, the bust crashes to the ground; the students follow suit, bowing down to their fractured great leader.  Joseph, meanwhile, sneeks peaks at his choir mistress’s ample cleavage and panty lines. Russian absurdist comedy in all its glory, you might say; a genius for foreground/background reversals. But it’s not all fun and games; Khrzhanovsky tethers his alternating vaudevillian stage show/nostalgic fever-dream to fragments of Brodsky’s own essays, poems, and drawings, which, along with the conceit of the trip home to St. Petersburg and a general sense of chronology, creates a just-enough through-line for the viewer.  In the movement between real and imagined and back again, there is a sense of searching and longing, casting and reeling; a poetic interest in the elusiveness of knowledge. The film’s essential Russianness may be found in its embrace of nostalgia.  A Room and a Half not only allows for the fictional Brodsky’s particular nostalgia, but seems to suggest it as the indispensable poetic impulse.  For what is nostalgia but the memorializing of loss?  In my favorite animated sequence, the two crows – spiritual avatars for Brodsky’s parents – sit wrapped in one another’s affectionate wings, mesmerized by the graceful pair figure skaters (possibly Olympic/World Champions Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, who defected to Switzerland in 1979) performing on television. (Brodsky’s father is also shown a few times watching the same skating sequence on the television in their Leningrad apartment.) In a later scene, Brodsky phones his mother from the US, and he asks her to remind him of the lyrics of an old Russian folk song.  She begins to sing; Brodsky’s father, then the neighbors, join in; and by the end of the rousing chorus, mother Brodsky is overwhelmed - seemingly hollowed-out - by a sadness much greater than her original feeling of missing her son.  The contrast between the sweet crow scene and this one is clear; Brodsky’s parents and their generation have lost their children, their jobs, their homes; but also they have lost Russia – the glorious vibrancy and elegance of their culture. It fascinates me that Khrzhanovsky, a 69 year-old Russian native, would explore Brodsky’s life in such mild, domesticated tones.  A reduced lion, indeed.  Even the actor who plays the elder Brodsky, Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy, has none of the real Brodsky’s pointed features but rather more soft, bulbous ones.  In the end, A Room and a Half reminds us that we are each, first and last, someone’s son or daughter.  A great literary figure like Brodsky came from somewhere; he was a son of Russia (expelled), of Sasha and Masva Brodsky (beloved).  His poetry did not reach Russia, and his mother (in the film) claims that “We never really understood your poetry, you know.”  It was this lack of understanding that made young Brodsky crave solitude and rebellion as a youth, to flee the "nest."  But "then one day a man realizes that the nest is gone,” ruminates the Brodsky voiceover. “The people who gave him life are dead. He realizes that the only real thing in his life was that nest.” When the lights came up on A Room and a Half, I was left with a feeling of both sadness and elation.  Art and solitude, exile and loss.  The enlivening fantasy of return.  Loss rendered as both epically tragic and as everyday as it comes.  We remember, but we never recover.  A Room and a Half is an artfully-realized remembrance – ultimately a journey into the dream-reality of loss that has shaped both poet and filmmaker, and, the film suggests, anyone who has ever longed for home. A Room and a Half is playing at Film Forum in New York City through Feb. 2. [Image credit: Film Forum]
Screening Room
| 10 books mentioned 2 5 min read
● ●
Screening Room

Please, Oh Please: On Madam Secretary and the Ladies of TV    

Screening Room
October 3, 2014 | 10 books mentioned 6 7 min read
1. The NBC Wednesday night lineup ad shows Debra Messing Mariska Hargitay, and Sophia Bush, side by side, sultry-eyed and pointing guns at the camera.   Lady cops, badasses all, and with great hair. There’s been much ado lately about powerful women on TV. Between Shonda Rimes's Olivia Pope and her newest creation, defense lawyer Annalise Keating -- both described as “authority figures with sharp minds and potent libidos” -- along with Homeland’s Carrie Matheson, Mad Men’s Peggy Olsen, and The Good Wife’s Alicia Florrick, a golden age of women protagonists seems to be upon us. Or is it? I’m a little concerned, frankly. True, we’re seeing a lot of women characters in high-powered jobs. And a decided feature in the current formula is that they are all extremely good at their jobs. But TV writers and showrunners also seem to be acting out the debate -- launched full-force in 2012 with Anne Marie Slaughter’s piece in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” -- around women, work, and family. When I look at these so-called powerful women on TV, I see a kind of Rorschach for audiences around two questions: Is this a woman whose life you’d actually want? And: Is this a woman whose life reflects any reality you know? 2. I had high hopes for Madam Secretary that the writing would be smart, the show would take on complex issues of the day, and that, yes, the portrayal of a woman in high office would be engaging. Téa Leoni is terrific and winning in the role of Secretary of State Elizabeth “Bess” McCord; on this most reviewers agree (not to mention the crack ensemble cast). She’s simultaneously intense and calm, assertive and disarming, sarcastic and sincere. You trust her, and you want her to succeed. She’s sexy in a sloppy, earthy sort of way, isn’t above or below using her feminine charms strategically; and in this particular way, she is nowhere near a Hilary Clinton knock-off: she is a different girlish-boyish animal altogether, of a younger generation who didn’t have to “act like a man, dress like a man” quite so strictly in order to rise and succeed. Like Alicia Florrick, she has natural instincts for the soft power/hard power one-two punch. She’s also, unlike Hilary (public Hilary, anyway), quite funny. But in the first two episodes, I’ve had the woeful “Oh, please” reaction to a few of the show’s story elements, all of which have to do with the “having it all” trope. Bess’s husband Henry (Tim Daly) is hunky, brainy, solicitous, maternal, and utterly content (and of course he’s never had as much as a dalliance with a short-skirted co-ed). Bess initiates hand-wringing bedtime talk about not having as much sex as they used to; he assures her, silly girl, that it’s all fine. When their eldest daughter quits college because she can’t handle being the daughter of a public figure, Bess says to her go-between husband, “I just wish she had come to me.” Ick! Argh! Oh, please! She is the Secretary of State: please tell me that a woman with such grave and innumerable daily responsibilities for ensuring peace and human rights around the globe isn’t whining about “only” having once-a-week-sex with her absurdly perfect husband and the fact that she can’t be available, in the midst of a Benghazi-like debacle, to hear her spoiled daughter (“I have to get a job? But I was going to finish my novel!”) complain about her mother being too famous and her father being too supportive. Those portrayals of Secretary McCord’s personal life are unworthy of her; the writers are not doing Bess, or Leoni, justice. Creator Barbara Hall told Politico that a driving question behind the creation of the character was, “How do you deal with the president of the United States in the morning and the president of the PTA in the evening?”  Herein lies the folly. The idea that leaders at the highest levels -- that anyone who’s chosen a profession requiring commitment beyond the pale, necessarily and rightly so -- can be a “normal” parent, is goofy. The disconnect is between the writers and their own character: I don’t see Bess McCord entertaining such notions or expectations. She’s a realist, and a grownup, and can tell the difference between what matters and what doesn’t. I see her recognizing priorities in any given moment, having sex when she wants it and not worrying when she doesn’t, entreating her children to rise to the challenge -- to neither be, nor expect to be, like everyone else. 3. It seems to me that Barbara Hall, and the proponents of the “have it all” camp, are perpetrating something analogous to what Naomi Wolf did with her book Vagina -- wherein she claims that women are not truly happy or whole if they are not having regular orgasms of the highest order. In response to the book, The New Yorker’s Judith Thurman said, brilliantly and hilariously: I would like to take issue with the idea that we should all have a happy vagina...It’s nice to have a happy vagina, I would hope everybody could have a happy vagina, but there are many times in a woman’s life where hey, she doesn’t have a happy vagina. And if you make her think that this is the goal, that she should be devoting her energies instead of to getting her PhD, or getting a better job or taking care of whatever it is… she needs to have a happy vagina.  She may not be able to have a happy vagina.  There are all kinds of people who are not in line immediately for a happy vagina. If Bess McCord does not have a hunky, happy husband, and if she is not attentive to/worried about frequency of sex, and if she is not skipping out of meetings in which terrorist attacks are being prevented in order to listen to her children talk about their day...then surely she is not truly fulfilled, nor doing her job(s) well. If the PTA is not as important to her as POTUS or ISIS, then she is not a model powerful woman. Me, I want my Secretary of State to be clear that, for as long as her job description includes tending to ISIS, then tending to ISIS is more important than the PTA. 4. Inherent in Thurman’s response is a worldview I happen to share: energies must be devoted selectively. We are only human, and there is only so much energy and so much devotion. Devotion, by its nature, has obsessive, singularly focused qualities. Multiple devotions compete. The idea that such competition can be eradicated from human experience -- in real life, or on TV -- strikes me as misguided, a YA version of adult life. There is a cost to excellence; else it be other than excellence. I’ll say something surely controversial: I think one can do right by one’s family and be exceptionally accomplished in high leadership, or art, or service; but I don’t think one can be truly great at both. I think we’d all be a bit more relaxed if we accepted, and stopped judging, this truth. Instead, Hall considers portrayals of more troubled figures -- characters whose professional devotion creates friction and/or specific sacrifices in their personal lives -- as “dark,” and has veered away from that toward, in her words, something more “entertaining,” and idealistic. These darker characters include compelling, if not always likable, characters like Claire Underwood from House of Cards, who decides not to have children because of her husband’s ambitions and their shared appetite for power; as well as Carrie Matheson, who deals with mental illness, alcoholism, sex-as-self-medication, and a disconnect with the idea of a “balanced life.” Perhaps also Peggy Olsen, who continually excels professionally while her love life fails and her family disapproves. I think of Sarah Linden from The Killing, who is obsessed with finding Rosie Larsen’s murderer, at the expense of devoted attention to her own son, and I think of Kima Greggs from The Wire, who’s much more interested in serous police work than the baby her partner has just given birth to. Even elegant Alicia Florrick has made choices: her kids and her career, but no happy vagina for her. I think, finally, of Leo McGarry, Chief of Staff on The West Wing, who -- in response to his wife’s desperate plea, “It’s not more important than your marriage!” -- declares, full-throated, Yes, yes it is: right now, while I’m doing it, it’s more important than my marriage. I think also of more farcical portrayals of powerful, talented women -- Selina Meyer in Veep and Laura Diamond in The Mysteries of Laura, who could give a shit about being perfect wives or mothers. It’s not that they don’t give a shit at all, but throwing off the perfectionism is what strikes me as a refreshing and more truthful brand of new feminism. Jill Lepore said it best: I think that’s so complicated for women...but I think it’s actually been a really pernicious part of the current climate of political consultancy. Political consultants are clearly advising women candidates left and right: Tell the story of how you took very good care of your children. You must tell that story, again and again and again. I think it’s really dangerous. I think it really diminishes and impoverishes the range of experiences that people running for office can have...It has a kind of traplike quality for women politicians that all smart women politicians are quite aware of, and I think it’s important to think about the consequences of it. We’re in an age of very good TV. Even network shows, I think, have leeway to be entertaining and complex and illuminating. Yes, yes it is: right now, what I’m doing is more important than a corny, conventional version of family happiness. Tell the truth, Madam Secretary; tell it slant if you have to, and with a sly wisdom, since you’ve shown in every other context so far that that’s your talent. If your husband bristles, if your kids get pissed, then let’s see how you handle that. How about, A great mom is sometimes not around, her vagina goes off duty, and she’s doing really important stuff. How about a new model, instead of a precious, poll-tested one. So, my Rorschach response: Bess McCord, in her current incarnation, is not living the life that I would want, because it reflects fantasy archteype more than reality. There is nothing real or true, or even interesting, about being Great at Everything, and that imposition both flattens and disempowers an otherwise appealing character. I’m all for a golden age; I’m not sure we’re there yet.
Screening Room
| 10 books mentioned 6 7 min read
● ●
Essays Screening Room

Scissoring, Othering, and ‘The Handmaiden’

Essays Screening Room
November 7, 2016 | 10 books mentioned 19 9 min read
When it came out in 2005 -- midway through my senior year of high school -- Brokeback Mountain rocked American culture. For all its critical acclaim and star-studded cast, the media seemed to fixate on the most titillating feature of the “gay cowboy movie:” two men falling in love and having sex. From news coverage to late-night talk shows to viral videos, you couldn’t escape the sophomoric parodies any more than you could the predictable conservative outrage A decade later, Carol drummed up a respectable amount of excitement of its own. Fans of lesbian pulp fiction were thrilled to see the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt bucking the long history of unhappy endings in stories about lesbian, bisexual, and queer women. The fanfare, however, was mostly just that; what little controversy, or heterosexual hilarity, it generated was buried under its accolades and award nominations. The advancement of American LGBT rights in the decade between these movies is certainly one explanation for the differences in their reception (though I can think of plenty more). Since Brokeback Mountain premiered, same-sex marriage has been legalized, and 17 states have adopted legislation prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing, or public accommodation; even non-binary genders are inching toward legal recognition. For depicting two working-class men falling in love against the backdrop of rural America, Brokeback Mountain was considered truly transgressive. Ten years later, Carol was merely a long-awaited boon for lesbian cinema. Regardless, even in 2016, a mainstream movie about gay people isn’t exactly standard, and I was looking forward to The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook’s lesbian-revenge fantasy par excellence. A fan of Park since my sister turned me on to the Vengeance Trilogy as a teenager, my lofty expectations for his newest erotic thriller, inspired by Sarah Waters’s Victorian-era novel Fingersmith, were tempered by my own reservations as a queer movie-goer in the midst of an upswing in mainstream stories about queer people. As movies like The Danish Girl have demonstrated, it’s become popular to render female LGBT experiences -- particularly those of trans women -- for trendy but toothless Oscar bait. Any follower of Park, however, knows that progressive brownie points are not among his priorities (if you’re thinking about the sexually predatory female prisoner in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, you’ll know what I mean). In his hands, I wondered, would Fingersmith be worthwhile, or would the story just get bogged down in all that male gaze? For that matter, as a white American with a limited knowledge of Korean cinema and culture, would I even be able to tell the difference? As opening weekend approached, I vacillated between high hopes and dismal apprehension. Naturally, Park delivered with predictable complexity: The Handmaiden managed to meet all of my expectations, both optimistic and otherwise. Intricate and visually stunning, with an airtight cast of expert actors who brought love, lust, and heartache to life with consummate skill and pitch-black humor, it was everything I could have hoped for from Park as a director and writer. Recalling the erotic texts hoarded by the villainous Kouzouki -- a Sade-ean nobleman obsessed with Japanese culture, and our protagonists’ greatest enemy -- The Handmaiden plays out as a reverse palimpsest. When laid across the first act, the second reveals and then resolves, in the same graceful motion, the story’s dark subtext; is that a heart beating beneath the tatami of subterfuge, or is something far more sinister trapped down there? Everything in this movie about lesbians was perfect, with the exception of the lesbian sex itself. As the mysterious noblewoman Hideko and her would-be con-artist ladies maid Sookee (played by Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-Ri, respectively) came together for the first time, my girlfriend and I began to squirm in our seats, and not in a sexy way. The camera bouncing frenetically over their bodies, their first tentative kisses swiftly transform into hysterical scissoring, culminating in an impressive display of immediate sexual mastery, the likes of which are tough to swallow, even when taken into account alongside the film’s other larger-than-life elements. Park’s work in the bizarre has long bordered on the magical, but within this revenge fantasy (in which the second word carries as much weight as the first), it’s hard not to be reminded of a certain genre of “lesbian” porn made for straight men -- defined by foreplay-less arousal that somehow morphs into screaming orgasms over the course of a few seconds -- and even harder not to snicker at such transparent tourism. In The Handmaiden's final scene, we watch Hideko and Sookee, again unaided by foreplay, or even a little lube, rapturously inserting fist-sized ben wa balls into themselves before beginning to scissor yet again, the chimes inside them sounding like some victorious invocation of #LoveWinning. Though impressed by the movie in every other respect, my girlfriend and I walked out of the theater rolling our eyes. What is it with straight people, especially straight men, and scissoring? Among the many sexual acts that queer women perform with each other, this one seems, at least in our experience, to be the one that fascinates them the most. More than strap-ons, fisting, or cunnilingus, it holds a space in the straight imagination that manages not only to reduce us to what’s between our legs, but to even limit the sexual possibilities therein. It was certainly distracting enough to make it difficult for an alternative analysis, one entertaining Hideko and Sookee’s sex as a calculated artistic choice, rather than mere fetishization. Was this highly stylized porniness perhaps in conversation with, or a foil for, The Handmaiden's themes of Japanese erotica, sexual deceit, or femme resistance to colonialism? Who could know for sure? It’s a distraction I’ve been mulling over since my very first queer relationship. When I came out, I was living with two straight guys, who were nice enough, for bros. So when one of them began to tease me about scissoring -- demonstrating, with the index and middle fingers on both his hands, how two lesbians go about having sex: by repeatedly mashing their crotches together -- I took it in stride. He wiggled his substantial eyebrows to show me it was all in good fun, and though I felt uncomfortable, I always laughed it off. That bro continued to make those jokes until I moved in with said girlfriend a very unadvisedly short time later, and we began seeing far less of each other. By then, my discomfort with his sense of humor had expanded, because as it turned out, my girlfriend and I didn’t actually engage in scissoring (or tribadism, as the act has been known historically). Though curious and confused, our newly queer sex was also exciting and experimental -- and yet it never included the very act that the two of us had been reduced to by that man, and many others. I knew it was something that porn actors did, but I also understood that porn didn’t necessarily have anything to do with reality. And that was just the thing: other than porn, there were few cultural resources that I could draw from to learn what this whole queer sex thing was really all about. Desperate for information, I spent my baby dyke years immersed in a variety of queer communities, both online and off. I also assigned myself cultural homework, burning through my college library’s DVD selection of Lesbian/Gay movies. This gave me welcome exposure to indispensible queer cinema like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Happy Together, but I found little enough about the kind of sex that people like me were having. This isn’t to say that, outside of porn, the practicalities of intercourse are being served up on a platter to young heterosexual people, even these days. But for straight people raised in straight households, almost all examples of intimacy, affection, partnership, romance, and even implicit sexuality are performed by heterosexual adults. In schools lucky enough to have it, sex ed is unrelentingly cisgender and heterosexual -- and why shouldn’t it be? Beyond school, the mechanics and textures of acceptable sex that are hinted at, or performed, in the non-XXX discourses that make up our society’s art, religion, and culture, are nearly as straight. Overcoming the suffocating sense that there is a right way to do sex is daunting for most. For queers, and for queer women and non-male people, it’s especially hard. Whether you’re looking for a model of what to be, or for something less didactic -- representation, for example — there still isn’t much out there if you don’t have the benefit of a queer community, or access to queer art, queer literature, and the study and research by and of queer people, all of which is niche by definition. That presence is undeniably spreading in the mainstream, but it’s an uphill battle, and one taking place on a front that was demonstrably fiercer when I was newly queer (which wasn’t all that long ago). Back when the Internet was still relatively new, back before I had discovered the cornucopia of queer experiences to be found in on sites like Tumblr, like many queer people, I had only porn. Some of it was wonderful and eye-opening and educational; a lot of it reinforced oppressive power structures and behavior, which I internalized harmful ways[1]. Either way, it was all I had. So when, as a baby dyke, my ignorance butted up against the monolithic ignorance of heteronormativity, of the story being told about me and my sexuality through the myths and generalizations and creepy “jokes” of straight people, I was at a loss. Was that bro telling me something true about myself, or something false? Was he seeing me as I was, or was he not seeing me at all? In watching the love story of Hideko and Sookee, by turns tender and tempestuous, unfold over the course of The Handmaiden, I had that same feeling of confusion. Was this attributable to cultural differences, and the whiteness of my own gaze, or even to Art gone over my head? In feeling as if I wasn’t being seen, and therefore taking this story about lesbians all too personally, was I committing an erasure of my own? Like all rhetoric, the concept of “visibility” tends to flatten the real issues affecting those living on the margins. The public debate surrounding the civil rights of trans people and the assimilation of national LGBT organizations (which despite their growing power seem loath to serve the interests of anyone other than white and cis gays) are just two of the many issues that counteract the often overwhelming mandate to be seen. In the 21st century, “We’re here, we’re queer!” feels less like a rallying cry, and more like an exhausting redundancy. This isn’t to say that visibility, a humanization of us in the general culture, hasn’t benefitted certain queers (in many ways, myself among them). But for others, that being seen is not always a blessing, especially when it doesn’t come with other tangible benefits. When I think of the maelstrom of anger targeting trans teens who just want to use the bathroom, or of Chelsea Manning’s nightmarish struggle for humane treatment, let alone gender-affirming medical care, I’m reminded of Michel Foucault: “Visibility is a trap;” at the very least, it’s a mixed bag. Still, ask me to choose between a man threatening to rape the gay out of me and an immature college boy who can’t imagine how queer women might fuck without a dude present, and without hesitation, I’ll take the latter. As I gradually came into my own as a queer person, absorbing the shibboleths and inside jokes of the various communities available to me, I noticed that for many queer women, scissoring was rarely a neutral issue. I can’t count the times I’ve heard a queer woman exclaim that female frottage is a myth, a fantasy catering to men, and one that betrays straight people’s limited understanding of what sex between two queer people is, or could be: If “normal” heterosexual intercourse means connecting “corresponding” genitalia between a cis man and a cis woman, surely homosexual intercourse between (implicitly cis) women is an attempt to approximate that. Needless to say, scissoring in practice is actually a lot more complex than the crotch-mashing in my bro friend’s “joke,” or even as it’s depicted in The Handmaiden. Having done it myself, I should know. It’s probably unwise to rely on art for information, let alone representation. It’s probably equally unwise for those who haven’t yet seen this movie to trust my interpretation rather than see it for themselves. My personal distaste for their lovemaking doesn’t outweigh the gravity of Hideko and Sookee’s wrenching toward self-actualization, as Jia Tolentino describes it in her excellent review of the film, but neither, I think, does it negate the movie’s tribadism problem. Park is known for his earth-shattering plot twists, and The Handmaiden has several. But its greatest maneuver is that it manages to completely to skirt and subvert cliché, and yet simultaneously fall into its trap completely. It turns out that othering, as a machine that makes myths of other people, is also a double-edged sword, an implement far more treacherous than a pair of scissors.     [1] Although I’d like to be clear that neither his harm nor this reinforcement is limited to pornography as an industry, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Essays Screening Room
| 10 books mentioned 19 9 min read
● ● ●

15 comments:

  1. I am more curious than ever to watch this show now that I have read Sarah’s comments. Thank you for your insightful take on this series.

  2. Pingback: Essay on The Millions: Reptilian Humanoids! « sarahmccoy.wordpress.com

  3. One vital aspect of the original miniseries: Kenneth Johnson had read WAR AND PEACE before starting work on the script, and the alien component came later. In other words, Johnson had always planned grand things to say about the human condition (and he would later go on to produce the ALIEN NATION television series with similar success). So for Peters, Hall, and Bell to declare their vile remake merely “a show about spaceships” says more about their chicanery, their lower artistic ambitions, and their capitulation to market forces. You also have to remember that in the 1980s, it was still possible to sneak subversive subtext into genre television. But it was becoming less possible, as Harlan Ellison learned with his infamous “Knackles” script for the 1980s Twilight Zone series. At least you didn’t have producers outright denying their artistic intentions the way they do today — whether it’s the V bunch outright denying their reactionary agenda or the LOST producers claiming that they always had a grand masterplan.

  4. One more thing (while I’m on the subject). Sam Egan, one of the writers for the 1990s OUTER LIMITS series, has worked on the V remake. (Curiously enough, he also worked for Kenneth Johnson during THE INCREDIBLE HULK.) He wrote some of the best episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS, including “Tribunal,” which dealt with Auschwitz., often embedding his scripts with interesting moral questions. That a writer of his talent hasn’t been permitted the same degree of latitude with the V remake says much about how genre television has drastically changed in the past twenty years.

  5. I get the subtext, the subversiveness, and the scaly satire. What I can’t get past is the bad acting and even more dreadful dialogue.

    That being said, my wife and I religiously TiVo “V,” unable to resist the embedded subliminal messages to “Watch or Die.”

    We don’t however, sit on the couch and give each other lizard licks.

  6. I’m with David on this one. My husband and I watch it weekly–we even started watching it with friends lately. But that’s only because we’ve started to play a V drinking game along with it: drink when Tyler gets HUGZ, drink when someone talks to a marble, drink when there’s obvious CGI (clearly, we drink a lot!). The concept is great, but the execution is just resoundingly terrible, and the science fiction conceits are very poorly thought out. As a fan of Kenneth Johnson, I’m afraid, very afraid, for what’s coming with the Alien Nation reboot.

  7. Holy wow do I ever have an issue with how this new twisted V has caused you to have a majoy lapse in terminology. This may be a very small point but it is one Kenneth Johnson has loudly defended. It’s in this sentence:

    “when Diana (the V leader) expanded her jaw”

    The V leader? Good lord, V never ever was used in the ridiculous way the new series uses it! Are you assuming your readers have bought into the ridiculous notion that these aliens were called the “V”s in the original? It’s a term MANY old time fans (and many new comers from what I read all over the web) still finds sounds absolutely laughable! (oh and I could go on and on and on about how they’ve completely twisted his story into a senseless pile of…)

    They were the Visitors in the original, plain and simple without a species name. V always and always has stood for Victory- as in the “V” that was flashed throughout the world for Victory during the second world war, which was what V originally was an allegory for!

    You do Kenneth Johnson’s brilliant V a huge disservice by applying this nonsense when describing his V.

    It’s a quibble I agree but it strikes at the very heart of why many, many see this new V as a piece of garbage (and I’m not even talking about the horrible plotting, acting, 2-dimensional characterizations and shockingly bad green-screen effects!).

    On this one, I stand firmly behind KJ and his attempts to bring his V back to the big-screen.

    Sorry for the little rant but I’m such a huge fan of KJ and his V that it breaks my heart seeing what they’ve done to his amazingly dark, adult and complex vision!

  8. also… “This may be exactly why V has seen such popularity with the 2010 audience” ummm where did this come from? It’s on the verge of being canceled with consistently under-performing ratings. How does that translate into being popularity with the audience?

    If ONLY what the producers squawk about constantly in articles (and as quoted above) actually showed up onscreen! They go on and on about social commentary this and WTF moments that but it’s all ends with cardboard characters, painfully obvious cliffhangers and “just HOW many times can we fit v-daughter into her underwear in an episode” moments!

    Hopefully by next Tuesday it’ll all be over with it’s cancellation and maybe, just maybe some intelligent sci-fi can take it’s place.

  9. Thank you to everyone for your comments! I knew this topic would illicit some impassioned responses.

    Lady by the Lake, I’m happy you enjoyed reading!

    Edward, Great information. Thanks for adding to the dialogue!

    David, Glad to hear you and your wife don’t lizard lick. I imagine it’s a good way to get a wretched hairball.

    Phoebe, Hilarious! I may have to give your game a shot.

    Christopher, You are a true V aficionado! The 2010 series has obviously not stood up to your expectations. So it is with many remakes of 80s classics. (I hear they are remaking The Karate Kid and I balk!) Actually, V did well enough in its January 2010 premiere to solidify a March comeback. And, yes, while longtime fans might despise it, V has captured the attention of a new generation, applying many of the fundamental issues of Sinclair Lewis’s novel to today’s society. As bad as the show may be in some opinions, it is stirring emotions, thoughts and perhaps even action, which is never a bad thing.

    I hate to point this out, but I see a pattern in sci-fi TV history. Shatner was criticized as ridiculous; Star Trek was panned and canceled after only three seasons. They ran it in syndication through the 70s and now look at it. I’m not saying V will have the same good fortune, but you can’t discount that it has an audience that for one reason or another simply can’t turn it off.

    It’s great to hear so many people’s opinions. Keep them coming!

  10. And, yes, while longtime fans might despise it, V has captured the attention of a new generation, applying many of the fundamental issues of Sinclair Lewis’s novel to today’s society.

    Sarah . . . really? Where are you seeing/hearing this? I’m genuinely curious (and as a Trekkie and a huge SF fan generally, I don’t think you can accuse me of anti-SF bias!), as even my 20-something, LOST loving peers seem to view V with either complete disinterest or derision. I mean . . . action?! What action has it inspired?

  11. Shatner was criticized as ridiculous; Star Trek was panned and canceled after only three seasons. They ran it in syndication through the 70s and now look at it. I’m not saying V will have the same good fortune, but you can’t discount that it has an audience that for one reason or another simply can’t turn it off.

    First off, Roddenberry, for all of his faults (and there were many), was careful to hire Grade-A talent to write the scripts (Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, just to name a few) in the first season. And it was the WRITING that caused Star Trek to endure. Just as it was the WRITING that causes the original V to be remembered s fondly in this thread. Just as it is the BAD WRITING that causes the V remake to be roundly ridiculed and not particularly likely to find some future syndicated gold.

    As Ring Lardner once pointed out, it is the writing that matters first and foremost THAT is the pattern to study. And it is the basis for all the complaints in this thread.

  12. Phoebe, Maybe I hang around too many sci-fi lovers bantering about the show. When I say “action” I’m referencing this very moment if nothing else. The fact that people are willing and wanting to fervently discuss, defend and/or criticize the series. That fans and anti-fans are looking past the cartoonish CGIs to the message–to the writing! As Edward so wonderfully pointed out.

    Edward, Bravo! I wholeheartedly agree. As I wrote in the essay, the original V rose above the average because of its underpinning–the excellent script inspired by Lewis. I’m no fortune-teller. I can’t foresee how history will remember the revamped series. What I can say is that it’s caused a ripple, however small. It’s been controversial and brought the original series with all its inspirations back into the momentary spotlight. I can’t help but be excited by that.

    Note: I’m somewhat playing the devil’s advocate. I’m interested in hearing all sides–lovers and haters. So THANK YOU for your thoughtful comments. Nothing beats a witty parley with intelligent readers!

  13. But Sarah, regardless of what history will remember about this series, you’ve yet to say anything about what makes the series compelling or interesting beyond its concept (which, of course, is a retread, and thus you’ve got to wonder why you’re not just recommending that we watch the original on DVD or something). I don’t mean to come poop in your blog entry or anything, but it seems like you’re being a bit obtuse about the show’s very obvious flaws, instead choosing to talk in broad strokes and platitudes about history repeating itself and people “taking action.” I mean . . . do you find the characters interesting and believable? The writing well-thought out and well-developed? The concepts firm, the science fiction conceits effective?

    I hang out with sciffy folks, too (proofread for the mag Strange Horizons, for one), and I’ve yet to hear any banter about it, impassioned or not; in fact, this, and the equally baffling, but at least more explicitly explained, fairly positive recaps over at tor.com (which frequently get a resounding lack of comments) by Mur Lafferty are pretty much the only positive reception I’ve seen of the show by SF fans. I can’t help but shake my head, mostly in disbelief.

  14. I think Phoebe nailed it. To praise the new V series without citing specific examples why it is so compelling (which I would likewise be curious to hear), while simultaneously suggesting that it will be a big hit in years to come is a very disingenuous position, regardless of your amicable intentions. The “controversy” you purport to identify here has less to do with something vanguard or revolutionary (such as Ralph Bakshi’s films, PINK FLAMINGOS, Bret Easton Ellis’s AMERICAN PSYCHO, Lars van Trier’s films, et al.), but more to do with derivative writing or pedestrian filmmaking that props up a facile reactionary viewpoint that the very producers don’t possess the guts to address. So explain yourself, Sarah. Why is the V remake the best thing since sliced bread? Where is the vital “social reminder” that these new folks have cooked up? Is there any indication that they’ve even read Sinclair Lewis?

    “Revolutionary” art doesn’t reinforce the artistic status quo. It advances the form with a fresh take. It need not even be left-wing. (TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and THE BIRTH OF A NATION are both revolutionary films, even if the intent is reactionary.) But there’s no such advancement of the form with the V remake, despite its second season renewal. Nor, I would argue, is there much in the way of a “social reminder” other than the entrails taken from the original. Rather than err on the side of caution, as you have in this essay, I’m wondering why you can’t just tell it like it is.

  15. Folks…
    Let’s not get too haughty with our exhaustive critiques of a sci-fi, pop culture resurgence. Apparently the slouches at salon.com don’t castigate the retreaded “V’s” as such an abomination ( http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/v/index.html?story=/ent/tv/feature/2010/05/18/v_original_vs_remake_open2010 ). So let’s call a spade and spade and not seek the panacea to moral turpitude in a prime time show about reptillian world domintation.

    Thoughtful piece, Sarah, and a nice throwback to my youth.

Add Your Comment:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

● ●
Screening Room

What does Stephen Gaghan know that Charlie Kaufman doesn’t?

Screening Room
August 29, 2006 | 10 books mentioned 2 2 min read
As many of you no doubt have read in the trades (Wait, you don't read the trades? What town do you live in, anyway?), Stephen Gaghan, the writer of such sprawling, multi-narrative films as Traffic and Syriana, is set to adapt Malcolm Gladwell's latest quasi-scientific non-fiction potboiler, Blink (IMDb). Anyone who's read the book can tell you, it ain't going to be easy. Blink follows no central character, takes place in a multitude of settings, and covers such diverse topics as law enforcement, ancient art, and advertising.On the surface, this seems like pure folly, destined to lead to a Charlie Kaufman-esque exercise in navel gazing and postmodern self-reference. This Variety article seems to support this claim (By the way, check out the gaudy sum of money Gladwell pockets in this deal). According to the article, Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star as a jury selection expert who has a sixth sense about people based on first impressions. If that ends up as the plot of the film, it would be the worst adaptation since The Lawnmower Man (IMDb).But the more I thought about it, the more Gaghan seemed like the right choice, maybe the only choice, to adapt the book; furthermore, the book seemed like the perfect project for him. His last time out, Gaghan took two or three paragraphs from Robert Baer's CIA memoir See No Evil and turned it into a two hour feature film that dealt with practically every aspect of the oil industry. The finished project looked so different from the book that it was nominated for the Academy Award in the best original screenplay category (The official credit says that the book "suggested" the movie, whatever that means). Putting his three major scripts in perspective, it would seem that Stephen Gaghan has hit upon a new and arguably better way to adapt non-fiction to the screen. He doesn't aim to duplicate every twist of plot, every detail of character, but rather to hone in on the theme, the mood, and the message of whatever material he's adapting and to riff on it. The result is a movie that works on the same level as the book, discussing the same subjects with a similar tone, but also functions as a work of art separate from its original source material. While this wouldn't have worked for, say, The Godfather ("What? Why is Sonny's character now combined with Fredo's?"), it seems like the only way to tackle a book like Blink. Maybe if Charlie Kaufman had taken this approach, there might actually have been a film version of The Orchid Thief.
Screening Room
| 10 books mentioned 2 2 min read
● ● ●
Screening Room

“Baster” and The Switch

Screening Room
August 24, 2010 | 10 books mentioned 2 5 min read
In 1999, Sofia Coppola adapted Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Virgin Suicides into her debut film. The movie was remarkably faithful—perhaps too faithful—to the book, preserving the languid mood, reverential but impersonal treatment of the doomed Lisbon girls, and unusual, first person plural narrative voice. Last Friday a very different Eugenides adaptation, The Switch, hit the big screen. Based on a short story called "Baster," which was originally published in 1996 in The New Yorker, the film stars Jennifer Aniston as Kassie, a 40-year-old single woman who decides to get pregnant using a handsome sperm donor. What she doesn’t know is that Wally, her neurotic best friend (and one-time boyfriend), played by Jason Bateman, has replaced the donor’s sample with his own during the drunken party to celebrate her insemination. Adapting a short story is a different animal from book-to-movie adaptations, and a challenge I’ve been thinking more about after spending the summer working at Zoetrope: All-Story. Francis Ford Coppola founded the magazine with the idea that short stories are more akin to film (and perhaps better source material) than are novels, as both stories and movies are meant to be consumed in one sitting. Each issue of Zoetrope includes a story that has been adapted to the screen: Steven Millhauser’s “Eisenheim the Illusionist” (The Illusionist, 2006), Alice Munroe’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (Away from Her, 2006), and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008’s movie of the same name), among many others. “Baster” is a good opportunity for an adaptation. It’s funny, with a high-concept plot, and it’s not impressionistic or experimental. (Neil Burger, who wrote and directed The Illusionist, called the Millhauser story that was his source “unfilmable.") The story lays solid groundwork, but its length—only 6 pages—and unresolved ending gives the screenwriter freedom to make it his own. And individual short stories rarely have a large audience, so aside from, uh, people writing on literary websites, there aren’t fans of the original telling the writers/directors how they messed up or didn’t honor the source. In a June interview with The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog, Eugenides said, “You might say that 'Baster' is to The Switch what cello is to cellophane.” Besides pointing out the differences in plot and the like, that comment captures the slide from a rarefied form to something made for mass consumption. The Switch is not an Oscar-bait, “serious” literary movie: directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck made a splash directing the cavemen commercials for Geico, and their first feature film was the Will Ferrell figure skating spoof Blades of Glory. The movie is less broadly comedic than their resume would indicate. But it’s striking how, on the road to the Hollywood happy ending, the story has been shaved of the barbed edges that make it worth revisiting in the first place. The plot of “Baster” takes up only the first act of the movie. The story ends just after the baby is born, with Wally’s betrayal undiscovered, still hovering and threatening like an airborne grenade. The screenplay, by Allan Loeb, sends Kassie (renamed from the story, where she’s Tomasina) from New York City home to Minnesota to raise her child, then picks up seven years later, when she moves back to NYC with her neurotic son. Loeb, who also wrote the Halle Berry/Benicio Del Toro drama Things We Lost in the Fire and the upcoming Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, is currently a hot-shot screenwriter, with 11 scripts in production or development. He is sure-handed in expanding the story, and the best parts of the movie are his own: the tender relationship between Wally and his son; the amusing character of Wally’s friend/mentor/boss, played by Jeff Goldblum; the virtuoso scene in which Wally, on a first date with a younger woman, spins the imaginary tale of the next 20 years of their relationship, ending in depression and resentment. But overall, the movie feels like those “sequels” to Jane Austen novels. Some curiosity may be satisfied, but the original author’s voice, characterization and specific vision have been distorted. And the deep essentials of “Baster”—the main characters’ chemistry, history, motivations—get lost or softened under rom-com formulas and the golden glow of Aniston’s hair. The biggest example is Tomasina’s past abortions, which are absent in the movie and vivid in the text: She thought about them, the little children she never had. They were lined at the windows of a ghostly school bus, faces pressed against the glass, huge-eyed, moist-lashed. They looked out, calling, ‘We understand. It wasn’t the right time. We understand. We do.’ … But with three abortions, one official miscarriage, and who knows how many unofficial ones, Tomasina’s school bus was full. When she awoke at night, she saw it slowly pulling away from the curb, and she heard the noise of the children packed in their seats, that cry of children indistinguishable between laughter and scream. Crucially, one of those children was Wally’s, conceived during their brief, intense fling (which is muted in the movie). Abortion remains more of a taboo in Hollywood than even five young women killing themselves, as in The Virgin Suicides. It’s a shame that the movie just won’t go there. Wally and Tomasina having a child together resonates differently if they’ve aborted one, and their history creates more motivation for the switch—it’s not just Wally passive-aggressively acting out because Kassie doesn’t think he is attractive enough to want his sperm. The story makes the switch an insidious violation, done intentionally and knowingly (though under the influence of alcohol). Wally is spawning the “little heir” that he had “waited ten years to see.” The movie plays the switch as a bumbling drunken accident, and the blacked-out Wally doesn’t even remember his transgression. In “Baster,” Wally casts relationships and procreation as a Darwinian struggle: “It was becoming clear to me—clearer than ever—what my status was in the state of nature: it was low. It was somewhere around hyena.” And such is often the status of the fiction writer. In the New Yorker interview, Eugenides says, “As a novelist, I pity film directors their lack of autonomy. And I’m sure film directors pity just about everything about novelists.” But while The Switch is a middling dramedy, it’s Eugenides’ story that has the power, sinewy calculation and bite of a wild animal.
Screening Room
| 10 books mentioned 2 5 min read
● ●
● ●