Turner Classic Movies (one of the best channels on television) has been elevating its game this month with a Tuesdays-and-Thursdays series called "Race & Hollywood: Black Images on Film." The idea is to show a host of movies that run the gamut, from the pro-KKK storyline of Birth of a Nation to post-civil rights films like Spike Lee's Get On the Bus. It is, of course, the early stuff that fascinates, like the only movie Amos and Andy ever made, Check and Double Check. (I only caught about three minutes of that one, and yep, it's pretty grotesque.)
The other night I watched a movie called Judge Priest, not because it was part of this series but because I had never seen a Will Rogers movie and, living as close as I do to Will Rogers State Park, I was curious. As an added bonus, the film was directed by John Ford, whose work I've been exploring ever since creating a TiVo "wish list" (one of my favorite features of the TiVo, by the way).
I'm not sure this film quite reveals what the big deal was about Will Rogers. Sure he's folksy and amiable, and you definitely get the sense that he's warm and likable, and even finds a way to enjoy the company of the blowhards and the self-important. But the plot of this particular movie is just plain silly, Ford's direction is remarkably unremarkable (except for a bit of business with his brother Francis and a spitoon), and nowadays pretty much everything else gets lost amidst all those Kentucky-fried images of happy darkies singin' and struttin' in the South of the 1890s.
You get Hattie McDaniel (a superfluous "s" tacked onto her name because somebody at the studio couldn't be bothered to get it right), five years before Gone With the Wind, singing as she works, sometimes with three other black serving-women harmonizing behind her. (Although, notably, Rogers himself joins in a couple times, maybe not singing perfectly but certainly getting into the spirit.) You get the white characters, who all wear their Confederate memorial badges, practically bursting into tears every time their Glorious Cause is mentioned--and the stars-and-bars flag plays a major emotional role. (Please remember--my Confederate bona fides are substantial--but I remain wholly ambivalent about that flag.) You get a climactic moment when Judge Priest, having been forced to recuse himself from the really stupid trial at the center of the plot, urges a band of blacks to start playing "Dixie" outside the courthouse in order to help sway the jury. And in the middle of all that, you get Stepin Fetchit.
I had never seen one of his movies, either; only brief clips of him, here and there. His shambling "coon" act is really amazing to behold: damn near incomprehensible from the slurring, but then that may have been the point of it. (The idea of "coons" is controversial: on the one hand, it represents degrading white perceptions of blacks as shiftless and lazy; on the other hand, it may also be true that many blacks used this idea to their own advantage by playing up to these preconceptions and thus, essentially, flying under the radar. There is also the possibility that in all that incomprehensible muttering, often the blacks were finding a way to comment on their white bosses without the bosses ever knowing a thing about it.) Fetchit slumps and shuffles, stares with big vacant eyes, and tries to connive or steal whenever he can get away with it. There is even one startling moment when our hero Judge Priest, the much-revered Will Rogers, hears Fetchit's character Jeff refer to a song that isn't quite edifying to the Confederacy and jokes that if Jeff mentions that song again, he (Judge Priest) might just join in with the lynch mob. It's very obviously meant as a joke; but boy, talk about the passage of time sucking all the funny away.
Stepin Fetchit wasn't the man's real name, of course. He was Lincoln Perry, a Key West native who was every bit as literate and intelligent as Stepin Fetchit wasn't. (He was once a writer for the Chicago Defender.) The Fetchit character was created on the vaudeville circuit, and eventually it made Perry a millionaire. He was in fact the first black millionaire actor, and even though he squandered the money on pink Rolls Royces and Chinese servants, the fact remains that his success opened a door for subsequent black actors. He later became a Nation of Islam member and received a Special Image award from the NAACP.
Now, in context, I have come to see the tragic dimensions of Stepin Fetchit. Playing down to whites' low expectations made Lincoln Perry a millionaire; but he did his job so well that he became emblematic of the worst of white prejudices and, as a result, couldn't get work anymore. A true case of someone who was destroyed by his own success. From a fleet of twelve cars to the charity ward at Cook County Hospital, Lincoln Perry was a smart man who nonetheless couldn't keep up with the times. White prejudice elevated him, and it's a cruel irony that the slow fade of those prejudices helped to tear him down. There's a movie in this story, if anyone ever dares to make it.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Lingua Franca
It's no surprise, really, that with all this recent immigration fervor, there now comes a concomitant Congressional effort to "protect" English from those hordes of Others speaking whatever barbarian tongues they speak. (Do you ever get the feeling you're living in Rome and there are a bunch of Huns and Visigoths strapping on saddles? Do you ever get the feeling that there are vested interests who want you to feel that way?)
There is a surprisingly good AP report on the issue (ordinarily I think of the AP as a place to go for pure hard news, but this piece is a well-considered analysis). As a linguist named Walt Wolfram notes in the article, "Language (policy) is never about language." It's about feeling like a Roman citizen, hearing these Frankish tongues around the corner. It's about that American insularity that comes with having oceans on either side of us and a (mostly) English-speaking neighbor to the north. It's about feeling so comfortable with what you have that any perceived incursion by something Other becomes intimidating.
I've lived with the issue for a long time, coming as I do from Miami where Cubans are now the majority population. Even among good, open-minded and -hearted liberal Anglos there have always been natterings of discontent about how you "just can't go into a store anymore without hearing Spanish." In 1981 or so, when Senator Hayakawa first introduced a bill seeking to establish English as our national language, I wrote to him trying to set forth my reasons why our lingua franca should be left to find its own way, and he (or a staffer, probably) replied with a very polite letter sticking to his guns. Twenty-five years later, he still thinks what he thinks and I still think what I think, and I don't know that the "language problem" in Miami (or San Diego, or Santa Fe, or wherever) is really so much worse now than it was then.
The pattern I've seen has always been pretty consistent. Someone comes over as an adult from Mexico, from Cuba, from wherever, and they're already pretty firmly fixed in their habits. They establish localized communities where they can buy their own kind of food and, most importantly, speak their own language. Someplace where they feel comfortable in this alien land. Then they have children who grow up learning both languages and are much more Americanized. Then those kids have their own kids who are, almost universally, fully Americanized and speak only the one language. All this without any legislation trying to force the issue.
(The same thing has already happened, successfully, with previous waves of immigration--the Polish and the Germans, for example. In Chicago the Polish neighborhood still survives, but it's slowly shrinking, and I'm sure will eventually be gentrified right out of existence. But in their time, people were just as concerned that the Germans were threatening our good English tongue. Never mind that English is a Germanic tongue to begin with....)
I don't know that I have any real objection to Senator Salazar's version of the Congressional amendment declaring English to be a "common and unifying language"; I just don't see what the point is. Maybe it's like one of those declarations the Congress makes from time to time honoring the contributions of a retired general or politician, a formal We Like You sort of thing that doesn't actually mean anything but makes someone feel good. Nothing wrong with that--unless it takes too much time from other issues in a crowded Congressional docket.
Now, I readily admit that I only speak English. (But I speak it very well.) In Europe, where there are other nations and languages in every direction, it's extremely common for natives to speak more than one language, and I've always wished that in my younger days I had made the effort to learn some other language. I had a little bit of elementary-school Spanish and two years of poorly-taught high school French, so that I can do little more than ask where the bathroom is in a couple of languages. I am therefore just as guilty as any other American of allowing the isolation of monolinguialism to occur, so I feel ever so slightly uncomfortable about the whole notion of insisting that someone else learn my language so that I won't have to learn theirs. And I love English, I think it's a beautiful, supple, expressive (and maddeningly complex) language, plus it has Shakespeare to recommend and that's no small thing. Still, I just can't get behind the notion that the language needs to be protected.
All languages grow and evolve. That's how we got so many languages in the first place. Latin spawned German, French and Spanish, German spawned English, and so forth. Read a little Shakespeare and you will soon realize just how much English has changed in 400-plus years (not to mention how many words and common turns of phrase Shakespeare himself introduced into the language). This evolution is entirely fit and proper, and trying to stem that tide is, it seems to me, a bit like standing on the dock in New Orleans as the storm comes in, holding a single sandbag.
There is a surprisingly good AP report on the issue (ordinarily I think of the AP as a place to go for pure hard news, but this piece is a well-considered analysis). As a linguist named Walt Wolfram notes in the article, "Language (policy) is never about language." It's about feeling like a Roman citizen, hearing these Frankish tongues around the corner. It's about that American insularity that comes with having oceans on either side of us and a (mostly) English-speaking neighbor to the north. It's about feeling so comfortable with what you have that any perceived incursion by something Other becomes intimidating.
I've lived with the issue for a long time, coming as I do from Miami where Cubans are now the majority population. Even among good, open-minded and -hearted liberal Anglos there have always been natterings of discontent about how you "just can't go into a store anymore without hearing Spanish." In 1981 or so, when Senator Hayakawa first introduced a bill seeking to establish English as our national language, I wrote to him trying to set forth my reasons why our lingua franca should be left to find its own way, and he (or a staffer, probably) replied with a very polite letter sticking to his guns. Twenty-five years later, he still thinks what he thinks and I still think what I think, and I don't know that the "language problem" in Miami (or San Diego, or Santa Fe, or wherever) is really so much worse now than it was then.
The pattern I've seen has always been pretty consistent. Someone comes over as an adult from Mexico, from Cuba, from wherever, and they're already pretty firmly fixed in their habits. They establish localized communities where they can buy their own kind of food and, most importantly, speak their own language. Someplace where they feel comfortable in this alien land. Then they have children who grow up learning both languages and are much more Americanized. Then those kids have their own kids who are, almost universally, fully Americanized and speak only the one language. All this without any legislation trying to force the issue.
(The same thing has already happened, successfully, with previous waves of immigration--the Polish and the Germans, for example. In Chicago the Polish neighborhood still survives, but it's slowly shrinking, and I'm sure will eventually be gentrified right out of existence. But in their time, people were just as concerned that the Germans were threatening our good English tongue. Never mind that English is a Germanic tongue to begin with....)
I don't know that I have any real objection to Senator Salazar's version of the Congressional amendment declaring English to be a "common and unifying language"; I just don't see what the point is. Maybe it's like one of those declarations the Congress makes from time to time honoring the contributions of a retired general or politician, a formal We Like You sort of thing that doesn't actually mean anything but makes someone feel good. Nothing wrong with that--unless it takes too much time from other issues in a crowded Congressional docket.
Now, I readily admit that I only speak English. (But I speak it very well.) In Europe, where there are other nations and languages in every direction, it's extremely common for natives to speak more than one language, and I've always wished that in my younger days I had made the effort to learn some other language. I had a little bit of elementary-school Spanish and two years of poorly-taught high school French, so that I can do little more than ask where the bathroom is in a couple of languages. I am therefore just as guilty as any other American of allowing the isolation of monolinguialism to occur, so I feel ever so slightly uncomfortable about the whole notion of insisting that someone else learn my language so that I won't have to learn theirs. And I love English, I think it's a beautiful, supple, expressive (and maddeningly complex) language, plus it has Shakespeare to recommend and that's no small thing. Still, I just can't get behind the notion that the language needs to be protected.
All languages grow and evolve. That's how we got so many languages in the first place. Latin spawned German, French and Spanish, German spawned English, and so forth. Read a little Shakespeare and you will soon realize just how much English has changed in 400-plus years (not to mention how many words and common turns of phrase Shakespeare himself introduced into the language). This evolution is entirely fit and proper, and trying to stem that tide is, it seems to me, a bit like standing on the dock in New Orleans as the storm comes in, holding a single sandbag.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Gitmo Gotta Go
Been a while since I blogged 'bout politics, hasn't it? Wellllll then.... (Cracks knuckles with glee.)
This morning, four prisoners attempted suicide at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. When guards intervened in the attempted hanging of the fourth prisoner, other prisoners attacked them with "improvised weapons." Now don't get me wrong--in no way am I condoning the idea of suicide as political statement, but isn't that exactly what this feels like? Commander Robert Durand said he had "no idea of any intended message," but when you hear about four suicide attempts on the same day, don't you kinda get the feeling that it's a coordinated effort?
The United Nations Committee on Torture has called on the United States to close down the Guantanamo facility entirely, and I agree. My reasons are largely the same as those cited by the Committee in its report. Right from the start I have vehemently opposed the whole idea of detaining prisoners without any legal rights; it seems completely unAmerican to me, a violation of everything that I think most precious about this nation of ours. It is a particular travesty when U.S. citizens are held without rights, as Jose Padilla was. And as this article points out, the Bush administration escaped a judgment on the issue by finally allowing Padilla to enter the justice system just before the Supreme Court considered his case. Once that happened, by a 6-3 vote the Justices ruled the issue was moot.
Yes, I know there's precedent. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt all committed civil liberties violations during wartime, and as this interesting 2002 article from the New Republic asserts, the Bush administration's abuses were (as of 2002) less egregious. (I wonder if Mr. Rosen would say the same today.) But it doesn't matter: much as I revere FDR in toto, there were things he did that I just can't condone. (Mass Japanese detentions, anyone?) And really, wouldn't we as a society like to think that we're improving to the point that we don't make those same mistakes over and over again? Wouldn't that be nice?
Military tribunals for foreign nationals suspected of terrorist involvement? Fine, I have no problem with that. But there have been too many mistakes to just allow the government to lock up whomever it wants. And if the person suspected as a terrorist is an American citizen, then he/she deserves full access to the American justice system. Period, end of sentence. Anything different makes us, and there's no other way to say it, just as bad as the people we're fighting against.
This morning, four prisoners attempted suicide at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. When guards intervened in the attempted hanging of the fourth prisoner, other prisoners attacked them with "improvised weapons." Now don't get me wrong--in no way am I condoning the idea of suicide as political statement, but isn't that exactly what this feels like? Commander Robert Durand said he had "no idea of any intended message," but when you hear about four suicide attempts on the same day, don't you kinda get the feeling that it's a coordinated effort?
The United Nations Committee on Torture has called on the United States to close down the Guantanamo facility entirely, and I agree. My reasons are largely the same as those cited by the Committee in its report. Right from the start I have vehemently opposed the whole idea of detaining prisoners without any legal rights; it seems completely unAmerican to me, a violation of everything that I think most precious about this nation of ours. It is a particular travesty when U.S. citizens are held without rights, as Jose Padilla was. And as this article points out, the Bush administration escaped a judgment on the issue by finally allowing Padilla to enter the justice system just before the Supreme Court considered his case. Once that happened, by a 6-3 vote the Justices ruled the issue was moot.
Yes, I know there's precedent. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt all committed civil liberties violations during wartime, and as this interesting 2002 article from the New Republic asserts, the Bush administration's abuses were (as of 2002) less egregious. (I wonder if Mr. Rosen would say the same today.) But it doesn't matter: much as I revere FDR in toto, there were things he did that I just can't condone. (Mass Japanese detentions, anyone?) And really, wouldn't we as a society like to think that we're improving to the point that we don't make those same mistakes over and over again? Wouldn't that be nice?
Military tribunals for foreign nationals suspected of terrorist involvement? Fine, I have no problem with that. But there have been too many mistakes to just allow the government to lock up whomever it wants. And if the person suspected as a terrorist is an American citizen, then he/she deserves full access to the American justice system. Period, end of sentence. Anything different makes us, and there's no other way to say it, just as bad as the people we're fighting against.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
New Ways to Stuff a Theater
Last night I went to see the David Gilmour concert again. Sort of.
A company called Big Screen Concerts has, for about a year now, been showing filmed concerts in regular movie theaters, and last night the David Gilmour show was screened in select theaters in select cities across the country. (No previews or commercials, either--we walked in at 8:02 for an 8:00 screening and it had already begun.) As this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution points out, there are several advantages to this sort of thing: a close-up view of the performers (when I saw Gilmour, I brought my binoculars but left them in the car because I do that sort of thing all the time), great sound, and--a particular advantage, given my complaints about the width of the chairs at the Gibson Amphitheatre--nice comfy seats.
There are advantages to concert promoters as well, not to mention theater owners. As is noted in the article, these concerts can either capture overflow audience for a sold-out show, or can recapture people like me who saw a show but now want a taste of that experience again. The presentation last night started, at first, a bit worrisomely, with the studio-produced video from Gilmour's new album and then a short documentary about the album that looked exactly like what you would see as a DVD extra. Only after this introductory material did they get into the concert footage, which in this case was shot at the Mermaid Theatre* in London. The introductory stuff, though, reveals the other great advantage to the artists and their promoters: psyching people up so that they will want to buy the album in question. (In our group of six last night, three had not gone to the live show; all of them came out of the film concert saying they would definitely buy the new album. Mission accomplished.)
And for theater owners, there are considerable advantages. Overall box office receipts are down this year from last, and last year from the year before. If the advent of good home theaters is leading to the slow death of the movie-going experience, then owners will increasingly feel compelled to find other ways to get audiences to come out and buy overpriced popcorn. Also, during the period when digital projection was first proposed, there was a mighty struggle between studios and theater owners over who would pay to have the equipment installed; and one of the arguments for owners to pay was that they could use the equipment for other purposes, like showing concerts or sporting events. Indeed, it looks like exactly that sort of thing is now starting to happen, and you'll probably see a lot more of it over the next couple years.
The concert last night was definitely digitally projected, although I don't think it was high-def. But the sound was good, the seats were comfy, and I was able to watch David Gilmour work the fretboard to my heart's content. Definitely worth the ten-dollar ticket. Gilmour gets more record sales, and the theater filled more seats on an off-night. Wins for everybody. Welcome to the latest wrinkle in the world of entertainment.
* In case you noticed that sometimes I write "theatre" and sometimes "theater," it isn't accidental: in recognition of the European origins of the theatrical craft, I use the French spelling to denote a space devoted to the legit stage; and since movies are essentially an American creation, I use the American spelling for movie houses. And yes, I really do think that hard about that sort of thing.
A company called Big Screen Concerts has, for about a year now, been showing filmed concerts in regular movie theaters, and last night the David Gilmour show was screened in select theaters in select cities across the country. (No previews or commercials, either--we walked in at 8:02 for an 8:00 screening and it had already begun.) As this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution points out, there are several advantages to this sort of thing: a close-up view of the performers (when I saw Gilmour, I brought my binoculars but left them in the car because I do that sort of thing all the time), great sound, and--a particular advantage, given my complaints about the width of the chairs at the Gibson Amphitheatre--nice comfy seats.
There are advantages to concert promoters as well, not to mention theater owners. As is noted in the article, these concerts can either capture overflow audience for a sold-out show, or can recapture people like me who saw a show but now want a taste of that experience again. The presentation last night started, at first, a bit worrisomely, with the studio-produced video from Gilmour's new album and then a short documentary about the album that looked exactly like what you would see as a DVD extra. Only after this introductory material did they get into the concert footage, which in this case was shot at the Mermaid Theatre* in London. The introductory stuff, though, reveals the other great advantage to the artists and their promoters: psyching people up so that they will want to buy the album in question. (In our group of six last night, three had not gone to the live show; all of them came out of the film concert saying they would definitely buy the new album. Mission accomplished.)
And for theater owners, there are considerable advantages. Overall box office receipts are down this year from last, and last year from the year before. If the advent of good home theaters is leading to the slow death of the movie-going experience, then owners will increasingly feel compelled to find other ways to get audiences to come out and buy overpriced popcorn. Also, during the period when digital projection was first proposed, there was a mighty struggle between studios and theater owners over who would pay to have the equipment installed; and one of the arguments for owners to pay was that they could use the equipment for other purposes, like showing concerts or sporting events. Indeed, it looks like exactly that sort of thing is now starting to happen, and you'll probably see a lot more of it over the next couple years.
The concert last night was definitely digitally projected, although I don't think it was high-def. But the sound was good, the seats were comfy, and I was able to watch David Gilmour work the fretboard to my heart's content. Definitely worth the ten-dollar ticket. Gilmour gets more record sales, and the theater filled more seats on an off-night. Wins for everybody. Welcome to the latest wrinkle in the world of entertainment.
* In case you noticed that sometimes I write "theatre" and sometimes "theater," it isn't accidental: in recognition of the European origins of the theatrical craft, I use the French spelling to denote a space devoted to the legit stage; and since movies are essentially an American creation, I use the American spelling for movie houses. And yes, I really do think that hard about that sort of thing.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Da Vinci Crude
So I was in the grocery store and the paperback of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code had been released so I bought it. Had one of those 25%-off stickers on it, so what the hell.
I had already read another of his books, Angels and Demons, because someone handed it to me. It's a fair measure of a book to ask how much of it you remember a year after reading it, and this is what I remember about Angels and Demons: the writing itself was very bad, the historical stuff fairly interesting, the climax completely preposterous and unbelievable, but nonetheless it moved very fast, kept the pages turning. As for what the plot actually was, what happened in it, the only part of that I remember is the climax, precisely because it was so utterly absurd. (I mean, come on: Robert Langdon in freefall with only a coat or a blanket or whatever the hell it was? Gimme a great big break, please.)
I could say almost exactly the same thing about Da Vinci Code. I saw an article somewhere saying that Mr. Brown handles the writing and the plotting, while his wife does the historical research. This means that the person really responsible for the book's success is Mrs. Brown. The theory generating so much controversy is, after all, not Brown's; he acknowledges this himself, in the text of the novel. But the background, starting from the works of Leonardo and then expanding from there, is undeniably fascinating. (Leonardo is fascinating, period.) So even though those sections of Mr. Brown's novel that are purely expository can be a bit of a slog sometimes (is it realistic that these characters, under duress, would spend that much time laying everything out so damn thoroughly?), at least it's an interesting slog.
But the writing itself, qua writing? Really, really rotten. I have another way of measuring a book, one that I employ in bookstores before I ever buy: I call it the first-paragraph test. A book has an interesting cover, or it's by an author I've heard of but never read, whatever; I flip to the first page and read the first paragraph. If it sounds like something I've read before, I don't buy the book. Simple as that. And Da Vinci Code? It fails the first sentence test. If the first sentence of the first paragraph begins proper noun then verb, I'm outta there. It's a standard trope of thriller writing, and mystery-novel writing, and many other kinds of genre writing, most of it quite bad; and while there are exceptions to this rule, on the whole it serves me very well. And Mr. Brown's first sentence? "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." Blah.
Let us take, for contrast, an earlier historical thriller that was also made into a movie, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Straight off the top, he begins his work of fiction with a second layer of fiction: "On August 16, 1968, I was handed a book written by a certain Abbe Vallet...." Eco then lays out his narrator's history with the supposed book, what the book deals with, and how he approached his "translation" of the book. All this before ever beginning his plot, which is even more historically complex--not to mention being more credible as history per se. (And yes, I know--the sentence quoted above has a proper noun and a verb, right there up front; but Eco knows he's working in genre territory, and immediately tweaks it with that layer of interesting metafiction. Therefore, it works for me.)
And yet, as I said, the book moves fast. On my flight to Florida I read a hundred pages; on the flight back I read another hundred and finished it. (All this while also working on a rewrite of Beaudry, till my laptop battery died.) The guy in the row ahead of me was reading the book too. There's no denying that it holds your attention and keeps the pages turning, even if you're saying to yourself "Okay, could Sophie possibly sound less French?" Obviously this strength, together with the historical research of Mrs. Brown, has made the book a raging success; and there's an old rule of thumb that bad books make good movies, so who knows, it could turn out to be a great Hollywood thriller. Fair enough. Obviously it all works: even with my steadfast rule about bad writing, I made an exception, read the book and, on the whole, enjoyed it well enough. Bravo to Mr. Brown for that, at least.
I am, however, firmly on Mr. Brown's side when it comes to the legal argument over whether he plagiarized Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and again on his side as the Vatican tries to convince people to boycott the movie. As the Slate article linked above points out, if writers are presenting a theory as truth, then they have to accept that other writers must be free to then cite that theory and present it in their own fashion. I wrote a screenplay based on the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.; some of my sources are seriously in the public domain (Herodotus, Plutarch, etc.); some are not. The more contemporary histories of Marathon differ on what exactly took place during the fighting; if it were true that I chose to go with one historian's set of facts more than another's, would that leave me open to plagiarism charges? If I didn't use his language but simply accepted his version of what we know about the facts, how could that be plagiarism?
And the Vatican? Well, they just don't get it. The book isn't anti-Christian, it's anti-Catholic church. It suggests (and here perhaps is the novel's real value) that the importance of Christ was not his divinity but his message, which is unsullied by any questions of whether he married or not, had children or not. With this I am in complete agreement. But the Vatican has never liked having its turf challenged, and so, as they did with Last Temptation of Christ, they are trying to organize a boycott. But it didn't work then and it won't work now; in truth, Last Temptation isn't a very good movie, and if they had just left it alone it wouldn't have drawn nearly as much attention as it did. Granted, a Ron Howard film starring Tom Hanks based on an incredibly popular novel is going to draw attention no matter what; but the Vatican's attempts to reduce the number of attendees is, again, just about certain to have the opposite effect. Those of us who might be on the fence about going to see a simple thriller are probably more inclined to go, just to thumb our noses at this attempt at artistic repression.
The Vatican certainly has every right to argue that the novel is based on a whole series of flawed assumptions and bogus history, and in fact I'm inclined to think that they're probably right. But a boycott is just plain silly, and counter-productive; what's worse, it makes people that much more inclined to think that maybe the book's right, otherwise why would the Vatican be expending so much effort to try and suppress it? Silly, silly Vatican.
I had already read another of his books, Angels and Demons, because someone handed it to me. It's a fair measure of a book to ask how much of it you remember a year after reading it, and this is what I remember about Angels and Demons: the writing itself was very bad, the historical stuff fairly interesting, the climax completely preposterous and unbelievable, but nonetheless it moved very fast, kept the pages turning. As for what the plot actually was, what happened in it, the only part of that I remember is the climax, precisely because it was so utterly absurd. (I mean, come on: Robert Langdon in freefall with only a coat or a blanket or whatever the hell it was? Gimme a great big break, please.)
I could say almost exactly the same thing about Da Vinci Code. I saw an article somewhere saying that Mr. Brown handles the writing and the plotting, while his wife does the historical research. This means that the person really responsible for the book's success is Mrs. Brown. The theory generating so much controversy is, after all, not Brown's; he acknowledges this himself, in the text of the novel. But the background, starting from the works of Leonardo and then expanding from there, is undeniably fascinating. (Leonardo is fascinating, period.) So even though those sections of Mr. Brown's novel that are purely expository can be a bit of a slog sometimes (is it realistic that these characters, under duress, would spend that much time laying everything out so damn thoroughly?), at least it's an interesting slog.
But the writing itself, qua writing? Really, really rotten. I have another way of measuring a book, one that I employ in bookstores before I ever buy: I call it the first-paragraph test. A book has an interesting cover, or it's by an author I've heard of but never read, whatever; I flip to the first page and read the first paragraph. If it sounds like something I've read before, I don't buy the book. Simple as that. And Da Vinci Code? It fails the first sentence test. If the first sentence of the first paragraph begins proper noun then verb, I'm outta there. It's a standard trope of thriller writing, and mystery-novel writing, and many other kinds of genre writing, most of it quite bad; and while there are exceptions to this rule, on the whole it serves me very well. And Mr. Brown's first sentence? "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." Blah.
Let us take, for contrast, an earlier historical thriller that was also made into a movie, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Straight off the top, he begins his work of fiction with a second layer of fiction: "On August 16, 1968, I was handed a book written by a certain Abbe Vallet...." Eco then lays out his narrator's history with the supposed book, what the book deals with, and how he approached his "translation" of the book. All this before ever beginning his plot, which is even more historically complex--not to mention being more credible as history per se. (And yes, I know--the sentence quoted above has a proper noun and a verb, right there up front; but Eco knows he's working in genre territory, and immediately tweaks it with that layer of interesting metafiction. Therefore, it works for me.)
And yet, as I said, the book moves fast. On my flight to Florida I read a hundred pages; on the flight back I read another hundred and finished it. (All this while also working on a rewrite of Beaudry, till my laptop battery died.) The guy in the row ahead of me was reading the book too. There's no denying that it holds your attention and keeps the pages turning, even if you're saying to yourself "Okay, could Sophie possibly sound less French?" Obviously this strength, together with the historical research of Mrs. Brown, has made the book a raging success; and there's an old rule of thumb that bad books make good movies, so who knows, it could turn out to be a great Hollywood thriller. Fair enough. Obviously it all works: even with my steadfast rule about bad writing, I made an exception, read the book and, on the whole, enjoyed it well enough. Bravo to Mr. Brown for that, at least.
I am, however, firmly on Mr. Brown's side when it comes to the legal argument over whether he plagiarized Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and again on his side as the Vatican tries to convince people to boycott the movie. As the Slate article linked above points out, if writers are presenting a theory as truth, then they have to accept that other writers must be free to then cite that theory and present it in their own fashion. I wrote a screenplay based on the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.; some of my sources are seriously in the public domain (Herodotus, Plutarch, etc.); some are not. The more contemporary histories of Marathon differ on what exactly took place during the fighting; if it were true that I chose to go with one historian's set of facts more than another's, would that leave me open to plagiarism charges? If I didn't use his language but simply accepted his version of what we know about the facts, how could that be plagiarism?
And the Vatican? Well, they just don't get it. The book isn't anti-Christian, it's anti-Catholic church. It suggests (and here perhaps is the novel's real value) that the importance of Christ was not his divinity but his message, which is unsullied by any questions of whether he married or not, had children or not. With this I am in complete agreement. But the Vatican has never liked having its turf challenged, and so, as they did with Last Temptation of Christ, they are trying to organize a boycott. But it didn't work then and it won't work now; in truth, Last Temptation isn't a very good movie, and if they had just left it alone it wouldn't have drawn nearly as much attention as it did. Granted, a Ron Howard film starring Tom Hanks based on an incredibly popular novel is going to draw attention no matter what; but the Vatican's attempts to reduce the number of attendees is, again, just about certain to have the opposite effect. Those of us who might be on the fence about going to see a simple thriller are probably more inclined to go, just to thumb our noses at this attempt at artistic repression.
The Vatican certainly has every right to argue that the novel is based on a whole series of flawed assumptions and bogus history, and in fact I'm inclined to think that they're probably right. But a boycott is just plain silly, and counter-productive; what's worse, it makes people that much more inclined to think that maybe the book's right, otherwise why would the Vatican be expending so much effort to try and suppress it? Silly, silly Vatican.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Surprise!
Q: Hey, Bob, where've you been lately?
A: Well, Robert, I was on the road.
Q: Really? I had no idea! Where were you?
A: I went home to too-sunny Florida, in order to surprise the family.
Q: Surprises? We like surprises!
A: Everybody likes surprises. In this case, my dad and my step-mother just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, so I conspired with my brother and sister to just kinda show up at a restaurant and surprise the heck out of them.
Q: And did it work? Boy, I sure hope so!
A: Yep, it worked just great. The trick was, because I was using frequent-flier miles, I had to take whichever flight American Airlines would give me, and the one I got put me in Ft. Lauderdale at 6:45 p.m. Saturday night. That meant I had to go from the airport straight to the restaurant, and if my flight was delayed, the whole thing could go south in a hurry.
Q: But that didn't happen, did it?
A: In fact the flight got in half an hour early. Clearly, the stars were aligned right. My step-mother was surprised, my dad was surprised, everything turned out just perfectly.
Q: Perfectly? So there wasn't a single glitch?
A: Well, okay, a little one--there was no way of knowing that Dad had a business trip on Monday, so actually I got to see very little of him. But hey, what can you do?
Q: Sounds like a terrific trip.
A: That's not really a question, is it?
Q: Work with me here.
A: Okay, fine. It was a terrific trip. As an added bonus, my grandfather and aunt (both on my mother's side) each have milestone birthdays in May, so on Sunday Mom and I drove up to Port St. Lucie to see them. I was therefore able to celebrate several occasions all at once, for what you might call family bonus points. A good time all around.
Q: Nifty keen. And your flight back? How was that?
A: You would have to bring that up. Turns out President Bush was also in South Florida, and he managed to delay me twice. First when his motorcade shut down parts of the freeway and snarled traffic, so that I got to the airport later than I had planned and made it to my plane with less than ten minutes to spare; then, after the plane pulled away from the gate, we were informed that because Air Force One was about to take off, all other flights would have to wait. That meant a further 45-minute delay, just sitting there on the tarmac, wedged in next to the football player with shoulders out to here.
Q: Does this mean you're about to wax political? Take some cheap shots at the President?
A: No I'm not, as a matter of fact. When the captain made his announcement he stressed that this is standard operating procedure with Air Force One, as true for Bush as for Clinton. It's a fair point, and you won't catch me trying to make hay out of it. (Much.)
Q: That's very admirable of you.
A: You know, it really is.
A: Well, Robert, I was on the road.
Q: Really? I had no idea! Where were you?
A: I went home to too-sunny Florida, in order to surprise the family.
Q: Surprises? We like surprises!
A: Everybody likes surprises. In this case, my dad and my step-mother just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, so I conspired with my brother and sister to just kinda show up at a restaurant and surprise the heck out of them.
Q: And did it work? Boy, I sure hope so!
A: Yep, it worked just great. The trick was, because I was using frequent-flier miles, I had to take whichever flight American Airlines would give me, and the one I got put me in Ft. Lauderdale at 6:45 p.m. Saturday night. That meant I had to go from the airport straight to the restaurant, and if my flight was delayed, the whole thing could go south in a hurry.
Q: But that didn't happen, did it?
A: In fact the flight got in half an hour early. Clearly, the stars were aligned right. My step-mother was surprised, my dad was surprised, everything turned out just perfectly.
Q: Perfectly? So there wasn't a single glitch?
A: Well, okay, a little one--there was no way of knowing that Dad had a business trip on Monday, so actually I got to see very little of him. But hey, what can you do?
Q: Sounds like a terrific trip.
A: That's not really a question, is it?
Q: Work with me here.
A: Okay, fine. It was a terrific trip. As an added bonus, my grandfather and aunt (both on my mother's side) each have milestone birthdays in May, so on Sunday Mom and I drove up to Port St. Lucie to see them. I was therefore able to celebrate several occasions all at once, for what you might call family bonus points. A good time all around.
Q: Nifty keen. And your flight back? How was that?
A: You would have to bring that up. Turns out President Bush was also in South Florida, and he managed to delay me twice. First when his motorcade shut down parts of the freeway and snarled traffic, so that I got to the airport later than I had planned and made it to my plane with less than ten minutes to spare; then, after the plane pulled away from the gate, we were informed that because Air Force One was about to take off, all other flights would have to wait. That meant a further 45-minute delay, just sitting there on the tarmac, wedged in next to the football player with shoulders out to here.
Q: Does this mean you're about to wax political? Take some cheap shots at the President?
A: No I'm not, as a matter of fact. When the captain made his announcement he stressed that this is standard operating procedure with Air Force One, as true for Bush as for Clinton. It's a fair point, and you won't catch me trying to make hay out of it. (Much.)
Q: That's very admirable of you.
A: You know, it really is.
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