On Frozen (spoiler alert)

The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On Frozen (spoiler alert)

The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On a pink suit

When I saw her in her pink suit, it, of course, looked to be a medium shade of gray. She was a grown woman, I was but a child of four. The tragedy unfolding before my eyes was difficult to understand, and it was only much later that I began to understand what the word “assassination” meant. When I finally got to see the films on a color television, perhaps a decade after the events of that day, I realized the bitter irony of that bright pink dress, an elegant pink wool outfit that contrasted violently with the death of her husband. To me she was just another grown up mixed up in the complicated and mysterious world of adults. Four-year-olds have a very limited sense of tragedy or loss or complexity. I knew the president was dead, and I knew that this affected his wife, but my primitive understanding of the world could not comprehend the immensity of what had happened. I remembered that she looked beautiful, neat and trim, dutiful. As I watched television that fateful day, watched the long faces of the newsmen, listened to their terribly stern words, witnessed their disbelief, I knew something important was happening. She wore a pink dress that day.

On a pink suit

When I saw her in her pink suit, it, of course, looked to be a medium shade of gray. She was a grown woman, I was but a child of four. The tragedy unfolding before my eyes was difficult to understand, and it was only much later that I began to understand what the word “assassination” meant. When I finally got to see the films on a color television, perhaps a decade after the events of that day, I realized the bitter irony of that bright pink dress, an elegant pink wool outfit that contrasted violently with the death of her husband. To me she was just another grown up mixed up in the complicated and mysterious world of adults. Four-year-olds have a very limited sense of tragedy or loss or complexity. I knew the president was dead, and I knew that this affected his wife, but my primitive understanding of the world could not comprehend the immensity of what had happened. I remembered that she looked beautiful, neat and trim, dutiful. As I watched television that fateful day, watched the long faces of the newsmen, listened to their terribly stern words, witnessed their disbelief, I knew something important was happening. She wore a pink dress that day.

On Henry James’ "The Beast in the Jungle"

I first read this longish short story over thirty years ago, and I was just as floored then by the ending as I was last night when I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. The complexity of the author’s discourse, a labyrinth of syntactic juggling and back-tracking, embedded clauses, and hyperbolic double-talk, is daunting because he manages to talk about love and falling into it for the entire story without ever saying anything directly. The story revolves around the dynamics of a couple, May Bertram and John Marcher, who definitely are a couple, but they never marry, have children, or formalize in any serious way their informal relationship. Everyone who knows them understands that they are a couple. May considers them to be a couple, but Marcher just can’t seem to formalize the relationship even though he participates fully in the relationship as if they were married, but they aren’t married, and are not having sex, which their particular society would frown upon. On the other hand, Marcher is obsessed with some imaginary “great thing” to which he will be exposed and which will change his life significantly. He has shared this delusion/idea/tragedy with May, and she agrees to “watch” with him for the horrendous event. He dismisses the question of love almost outright, but he enlists the help of May to help him watch for this “great thing” he is to experience. They discuss the nature of this “great thing” but one gets the sensation that Marcher is only ever more clueless about what this great thing might be, and one also understands, as does Marcher at some point, that May Bertram knows exactly what the “great thing” will be. She knows, he doesn’t, awkward moment. Over the decades through which the relationship endures they grow to love each other to the exclusion of all others, but they each maintain a dwelling, so they are never in an economic situation which might force them into living together–getting married, that is. Marcher is an independent fool who cannot get past his own ego, cannot understand that he is a man like all others, cannot understand that he is much more common than he pretends to be. He believes himself to be “above average” or “special” but the entire story only proves that he is of the most common type of man who lives under the delusion that he is in some significant way special. May, on the other hand, is paralyzed by the fear that if she expresses her love for Marcher that he will disappear and never come back. For her, his companionship is enough, going to the opera, the theater, out to dinner, eating dinner at her home. Their intimacy is mental and occurs through their conversations about Marcher’s “great thing.” Since their intimacy is not centered on sex, their verbal intimacy, based solely on their conversations, their shared meals, their public companionship, serves to bring them together in a way that is much more emotionally based than physical. Since they go together so well, their natural interactions are taken for granted by Marcher and treasured by May. Only when she gets sick and things happen, does Marcher realize what their relationship has been about all along, and he has been an all-too-willing participant. Whether the story is a bitter ironic comedy or a stone-cold tragedy is for each reader to decide. In the end, the reader is the only witness to Marcher’s comic/tragic suffering. Ultimately, one must decide to live in each day, never take anyone or anything for granted, and take great joy in relationships no matter what form they might take.

On Henry James’ "The Beast in the Jungle"

I first read this longish short story over thirty years ago, and I was just as floored then by the ending as I was last night when I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. The complexity of the author’s discourse, a labyrinth of syntactic juggling and back-tracking, embedded clauses, and hyperbolic double-talk, is daunting because he manages to talk about love and falling into it for the entire story without ever saying anything directly. The story revolves around the dynamics of a couple, May Bertram and John Marcher, who definitely are a couple, but they never marry, have children, or formalize in any serious way their informal relationship. Everyone who knows them understands that they are a couple. May considers them to be a couple, but Marcher just can’t seem to formalize the relationship even though he participates fully in the relationship as if they were married, but they aren’t married, and are not having sex, which their particular society would frown upon. On the other hand, Marcher is obsessed with some imaginary “great thing” to which he will be exposed and which will change his life significantly. He has shared this delusion/idea/tragedy with May, and she agrees to “watch” with him for the horrendous event. He dismisses the question of love almost outright, but he enlists the help of May to help him watch for this “great thing” he is to experience. They discuss the nature of this “great thing” but one gets the sensation that Marcher is only ever more clueless about what this great thing might be, and one also understands, as does Marcher at some point, that May Bertram knows exactly what the “great thing” will be. She knows, he doesn’t, awkward moment. Over the decades through which the relationship endures they grow to love each other to the exclusion of all others, but they each maintain a dwelling, so they are never in an economic situation which might force them into living together–getting married, that is. Marcher is an independent fool who cannot get past his own ego, cannot understand that he is a man like all others, cannot understand that he is much more common than he pretends to be. He believes himself to be “above average” or “special” but the entire story only proves that he is of the most common type of man who lives under the delusion that he is in some significant way special. May, on the other hand, is paralyzed by the fear that if she expresses her love for Marcher that he will disappear and never come back. For her, his companionship is enough, going to the opera, the theater, out to dinner, eating dinner at her home. Their intimacy is mental and occurs through their conversations about Marcher’s “great thing.” Since their intimacy is not centered on sex, their verbal intimacy, based solely on their conversations, their shared meals, their public companionship, serves to bring them together in a way that is much more emotionally based than physical. Since they go together so well, their natural interactions are taken for granted by Marcher and treasured by May. Only when she gets sick and things happen, does Marcher realize what their relationship has been about all along, and he has been an all-too-willing participant. Whether the story is a bitter ironic comedy or a stone-cold tragedy is for each reader to decide. In the end, the reader is the only witness to Marcher’s comic/tragic suffering. Ultimately, one must decide to live in each day, never take anyone or anything for granted, and take great joy in relationships no matter what form they might take.

On creativity

My muse has been absent during the month of February. Muses are like that, disappearing when you most need them. Being creative is the hardest part of creativity. When writing I am often assailed by the thought that other writers have already plowed this ground and that my time would be better employed as either a dog catcher or sign painter. Poets, writers, philosophers have often fought the idea that they have arrived late to the dance, that other writers and thinkers have already recorded their original ideas, and that their efforts are going for nothing. My muse has always been a little cranky and cynical, as if she got up on the wrong side of the inspiration, but most of the time she has some great ideas about remodeling or menu suggestions or a new paint color for the bathroom. I would like to write about transcendental ideals that guide the human psyche to do good, to be less egotistical, to work for world peace, and to resolve the persistent human problems of hunger, violence, and isolation, but I don’t get any good vibes about any of that. Being creative is hard. My muse is always bugging me about being derivative, about stealing my ideas from other writers, about not being open to new ideas. She says I’m always playing it safe with subjects, verbs, and compliments, writing complete sentences, observing the rules of proper grammar and syntax. She says I’m conventional to the core and no fun at all, a typical liberal tree-hugging granola eater who fears death and global warming, wears comfortable shoes, knows enough to come in from the rain, eats sensibly, and doesn’t speed. Boring, she says. You need to learn how to juggle chainsaws. You know, you’re not Picasso. Yes, I know I’m not Picasso, but then again, does the world really want or need another crabby Spaniard cubing the world into an unrecognizable mess of disassociated lines and disembodied body parts? You call that creativity? Some people do, I guess. To be a creative failure, one must sink below the creative horizon into a tired mire of overused metaphors, trite phrases, and tired symbols, and believe that the junk you write should be original, as if that last word had any real meaning at all, and that thinking for yourself is the real road to creating avant-guard trends in new film noir with a sort of neo-negative potential in epistemological endeavors. You are too sober, she says, as if I need any help in making myself look stupid. The riddle that is creativity is an insolvable conundrum enclosed in a mystery. We “get” creativity when we see it, and we know when someone is ripping on someone else’s mojo, covering someone else’s creativity. From the time we are taught to cut out our first circle from a square by trimming off the corners of a square, we are reminded that nothing is original, that creativity is an illusion, and that everyone has arrived late to the creative party. Perhaps creativity is more about being surprising, and less about being original, which is impossible anyway. So stop being interested in being creative, my muse coos between sips of coffee. Since there is nothing new under the sun, forget about creativity and do what you want. All circles are the same, except for size, color, texture, and imperfections, so in cutting out a circle, we re-invent the wheel and follow the yellow brick road. I just got a text message from my muse: don’t write about creativity. It’s make you maudlin and God knows you don’t need any help with that. No such thing as creativity anyway.

On creativity

My muse has been absent during the month of February. Muses are like that, disappearing when you most need them. Being creative is the hardest part of creativity. When writing I am often assailed by the thought that other writers have already plowed this ground and that my time would be better employed as either a dog catcher or sign painter. Poets, writers, philosophers have often fought the idea that they have arrived late to the dance, that other writers and thinkers have already recorded their original ideas, and that their efforts are going for nothing. My muse has always been a little cranky and cynical, as if she got up on the wrong side of the inspiration, but most of the time she has some great ideas about remodeling or menu suggestions or a new paint color for the bathroom. I would like to write about transcendental ideals that guide the human psyche to do good, to be less egotistical, to work for world peace, and to resolve the persistent human problems of hunger, violence, and isolation, but I don’t get any good vibes about any of that. Being creative is hard. My muse is always bugging me about being derivative, about stealing my ideas from other writers, about not being open to new ideas. She says I’m always playing it safe with subjects, verbs, and compliments, writing complete sentences, observing the rules of proper grammar and syntax. She says I’m conventional to the core and no fun at all, a typical liberal tree-hugging granola eater who fears death and global warming, wears comfortable shoes, knows enough to come in from the rain, eats sensibly, and doesn’t speed. Boring, she says. You need to learn how to juggle chainsaws. You know, you’re not Picasso. Yes, I know I’m not Picasso, but then again, does the world really want or need another crabby Spaniard cubing the world into an unrecognizable mess of disassociated lines and disembodied body parts? You call that creativity? Some people do, I guess. To be a creative failure, one must sink below the creative horizon into a tired mire of overused metaphors, trite phrases, and tired symbols, and believe that the junk you write should be original, as if that last word had any real meaning at all, and that thinking for yourself is the real road to creating avant-guard trends in new film noir with a sort of neo-negative potential in epistemological endeavors. You are too sober, she says, as if I need any help in making myself look stupid. The riddle that is creativity is an insolvable conundrum enclosed in a mystery. We “get” creativity when we see it, and we know when someone is ripping on someone else’s mojo, covering someone else’s creativity. From the time we are taught to cut out our first circle from a square by trimming off the corners of a square, we are reminded that nothing is original, that creativity is an illusion, and that everyone has arrived late to the creative party. Perhaps creativity is more about being surprising, and less about being original, which is impossible anyway. So stop being interested in being creative, my muse coos between sips of coffee. Since there is nothing new under the sun, forget about creativity and do what you want. All circles are the same, except for size, color, texture, and imperfections, so in cutting out a circle, we re-invent the wheel and follow the yellow brick road. I just got a text message from my muse: don’t write about creativity. It’s make you maudlin and God knows you don’t need any help with that. No such thing as creativity anyway.

On Marilyn Monroe

A true movie star if there ever was one, Marilyn Monroe was a larger than life figure who embodied, literally, a wide-open sexuality that revolutionized puritanical America, its films, its entertainment industry, its cultural icons, its politics, its sexual mores and practices. Even with three husbands in her column, whether Marilyn herself ever participated in this revolution remains to be seen, but the long-lasting effects of her image, her movies, her photos, her charisma, are still felt today. She came of age as an actress in an extremely repressed post-war America that had long since lost its innocence on the battlefields of Europe and the atolls of the Pacific. After so much violence and killing, there was no possible way that the millions of returning soldiers could live in the pre-war innocence of their childhoods. They had seen too much, killed to many, been wounded, lost friends and colleagues, opend up concentration camps. They were jaded, cynical, tired. The image of the blond bombshell, i.e., Jean Harlow et al., had been around for awhile, but a sexually repressed America had always shoved these images to the margins of culture by designating all such women and images as sinful, dirty, or bad. Marilyn came along and changed all of that, bringing sexuality into the mainstream of the American conversation, eventually changing the way America looked at itself and the way it discussed sex. The reception of a novel such as “Peyton Place” is proof of that. These changes in American post-war culture were not brought on by Marilyn, but Marilyn and others certainly nudged Americans to question such important issues such as equal rights for all, racial or sexual. Questions of economic equality would have to wait decades. We are known by our repressions, and the interest of pop culture in Marilyn as an icon of sexual desire suggests that social repressions only last so long before older generations are swept away and younger generations re-evaluate what is going on and how they will deal with it. Some of Marilyn’s movies are important, if not unforgettable, but the revolutionary nature of her presence is what changed how America talked about sex, desire, bodies, and relationships–“The Seven Year Itch” is a prime example of this change. She and her image became an economic venture developed by Hollywood to take advantage of her marketability as a desired object of the male gaze. Regardless of who Marilyn Monroe was as a person, it was her appearance as a sexually desirable woman which still gives life to her iconic image some fifty years after her tragic death. Even actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor or Jane Russell, both of whom were very present in post-war film never achieved the giant iconic status of Marilyn Monroe. Taylor, especially in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or “Suddenly Last Summer,” was as alluring or desirable as Monroe, and Russell was more blatantly sexual, especially in “The Outlaw,” than Monroe ever was. Yet in a movie such as “Some Like It Hot” where sexual roles are played footloose and fancy free by the entire cast, Monroe’s character oozes a white-hot feminine sexuality that eclipses all other performances in the film. After America makes those films, any of them, they could not put the genie back in the bottle and pretend like sex doesn’t exist, which, of course, was very bad for all three actresses, taking an enormous toll on their private lives and tormented relationships. Today, we live in a very wide-open society that, although it still has many hang-ups and repressions, is finally able to at least discuss sex without blushing, turning away, or giggling too much. Yet, for Marilyn the price was high: no privacy, tormented relationships, possible drug usage, paparazzi everywhere, insomnia, which caused her to be difficult and unpredictable. She was fired from her last film for not appearing on set for the shooting schedule. She died of a drug overdose, possibly suicide, in 1962.

On smiling

It seems that it takes, according to experts, lots of muscles to smile, but that babies learn to smile before they can even talk, imitating the faces that their parents make at them. I am no expert, but I think that trying to analyze what a smile is, exactly, takes all the sunshine right out of a smile. Perhaps the most positive sign of affirmation that anyone can receive is a smile: when we do something right, when we meet again after a long absence, when we need reassurance, when we wake up in the morning. We all smile for lots of different reasons: we are glad to see someone, we are feeling happy, we are getting exactly what we want, we want to reaffirm the efforts of someone else, we are euphoric, we are relieved, we are in love, we want to cheer up someone who might not be smiling. When I see others smile, it warms my heart even when I am not involved in the conversation. Seeing that someone else is happy, reaffirmed, right, creates in me a positive light in a dark world. With all the tragedy, chaos, and sadness that troubles our world (and has always troubled our world, let’s face it, we are far from perfect creatures), a smile is like a beam of sunlight on a cold winter’s morning when you know it’s not going above zero that day. A smile reaffirms the idea that this whole business of life is worth pursuing for a bit longer. Smiles are also sexy, and in the right situation, speak about desire, pleasure, love, longing, intimacy, craving. Smiles between a man and a woman are about more than anything that might expressed in words, and perhaps there are no words to express those kinds of feelings. Poets, philosophers, play-writes, mystics, barbers, bartenders, and theologians have tried to express the ideas and emotions behind the smile, but they have been at it for several millennium without getting it exactly right. What the smile communicates is complex, positive, and happy, and it’s happiness that illusive thing that we all pursue? In a world which often seems arbitrary, cold, and uncaring, a smile is often a light for a soul lost in the dark night of life. I would suggest that smiles, even when we are alone and only smiling to ourselves, are a sign of mental health, of an upbeat, positive view of the world. Of course, we have all seen creepy smiles on the faces of sales people, receptionists, and others who are paid to smile regardless of how they feel. I wonder if smiling actually helps them deal with tough situations (customer service, blech) in which those fake smilers must deal with unhappy and demanding and unsmiling folks who are bringing trouble–me, for example, when I have to take back a defective product. Could a smile be a shield against ill-will and anger? Does a smile defuse and angry heart? In the end, a smile, as opposed to a frown, seems almost to carry with it supernatural powers for healing, loving, caring in a world of frowns, of negative energy, of violence and chaos. So we smile at each other–non-verbal communication–and hope that the message gets across, but maybe a smile is not just a one-shot deal, maybe it’s a promise, or an ethos, or pathos, unwritten rhetoric of hope that cannot be truly expressed in words or any other verbal way. Maybe smiles are more about communication and less about words?