hahaist011's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- not long ago, i held these truths to be self-evident we all know that i ususally write as though bedeviled because i am too lazy and too mean to make sense. and nowadays, i guess, i am so much nicer than once i was, so i try to write in such a way that no one could ever disagree, etc. that said, kostrub, it's totally fun that you read my diary and wanted to comment. let me say: many a head has attempted to dissuade me from my too-passionate position on this movie. not that you are one of the Dissuaders. only that i am usually in no hurry to explain myself on this subject. you must be part of some special elite group of persons or something. okay, then. i feel compelled to say something about how i am in the mood to give kevin spacey a lot of leeway because forces have conspired to make me think about him a lot: reading LA Confidential and loving jack vincennes, gabriel byrne was on Fresh Air yesterday and was talking about how fun The Usual Suspects was, and finally (as always) i love bobby darin, too! in addition, i hate ragging on anything chris cooper does. ever. so unlike Garden State i have no problem, really, with the principals. they did what they could, i think. further: while you, kostrub, are all Integrative Arts major about the AB, i think i am all English major about it. full disclosure: i cannot remember the score at all (sorry i suck), and visually, yeah, it was decent. this means that our arguments are not necessarily in stasis, so maybe none of what follows will mean anything to you. but... so AB seemed to be trying to teach me something important, right? everyone else, at the time, seemed to learn something by seeing it. but the lessons seemed really lame when i saw it, and then--when everyone was walking around town preaching the lessons--i became anxious about the ill effects of the shit AB sells. i think i checked out of AB once and for all--even snickered and said something like 'oh my fucking god' in the movie theatre--when the Cool Teenage Boy told mena suvari that she was Ugly on the Inside. the movie seemed to turn on fake insights like that. and was i supposed to be enlightened? like: STOP THE PRESSES! Pretty Girl Ugly on Inside! other lessons AB taught me: --That lady down the street with perfect make-up, hair, and family? She will crack up if she can't be in control of everything! --Look at Mr. Middle-Age: he's successfully made a life for himself...or has he? He'd really rather listen to classic rock and smoke weed! --Homophobes are actually gay! me=snarky, but remember how everyone said Crash (um not the one with spader and holly hunter) was just a TV movie collection of stereotypes? well, AB was just a collection of all the Big Ideas people have had about suburban life since...forever. what, after all, was in AB that we didn't already know, thanks to The Organization Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. what in AB hadn't we already gleaned from Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows??? honestly, it's yet another captain louis renault moment. we are about as shocked to find out that the suburbs are rife with sordid desires and thwarted dreams as louis is to discover gambling at Rick's Cafe Americain. AB was like Suburban Confidential, right? and maybe, as a novel, it would work. there is some genius, probably, in just throwing together a bunch of old character types in order to satirize the way we think about ourselves. lots of people think nabakov was up to something kinda like that in Lolita, right? and arguably, that's why anyone would like The Corrections or White Noise, right? so, if AB was an updated Babbitt, i coulda dug it. all these character types dredged up from pop-psychology--The Hateful Pretty Girl, The Murderously Self-Loathing Homosexual, The Shrill Career Woman, etc.--could have been used to get us to think about how hard we are on each other. how we use these types to describe our neighbors in order to defeat them, defang them, make a show of stripping them naked and recoiling from their nakedness. (Feeling inadequate? Well, at least you didn't overstep your bounds and start making more money than your husband!) the thing is: while AB's use of these types must be self-conscious, it doesn't really read that way. and wasn't consumed that way. everyone who was going nuts over it (and my god, in state college, it seemed like actually everyone) wanted to say that they learned something true. and what most people seemed to learn was that they were special for seeing the beauty in the ziplock bag blowing around. (i laughed during that part of the movie. i thought it was supposed to be funny. like, haha teenagers are always doing that!) that they were special for understanding why the Cool Teenage Boy chose the Cool Teenage Girl over the Smokin'Hot Teenage Girl. that they were special for divining latent homosexuality. that they were special for understanding how perfectly matched floral patterns and career suits indicate a Bad Wife and Mother. this is how AB inhabits the same category as The Sopranos and Garden State in my head; they succeed by flattering the audience. AB puts out these reductive character types, and then congratulates people for understanding them. worse: if you can dig these types, you are special and cool. and hey, sometimes the Special and Cool people have to be brutal with the not-so-savvy types. so go ahead and say something astonishingly brutal like, "you are ugly on the inside." if said-ugly-on-the-inside person objects, remind them that you're just the messenger. in conclusion, i spent the very-late -90s and early '00s going around saying that AB is evil. postscript: when AB came out, edward min and i were heavy into hal hartley. we were watching/talking about hartley movies on the daily. Surviving Desire was huge for us, and of course, Henry Fool became a touchstone of sorts. hartley was really really really helping us both understand a lot of things about life and people. and it did hip me (god, finally) to the transcendental side of life. (cut to me scratching my head: "but wait, i thought that existence preceded essence!") we both became better--and by "better," i mean more empathetic, more forgiving--people. so imagine my dismay when this Deep Movie--this American Beauty--that everyone says is going to rock my world ends up seeming like an argument against real empathy. here's this movie that could be maybe alright/not that bad, but it's being hyped as an intellectually and emotionally stimulating film. meanwhile, it's about as philosophically groundbreaking as "Fitter, Happier" from OK Computer, and i'm left like "oh fuck, what?!" so ed and i--and then, happily--talli (frequently called eu or tony) become the the Fellowship of the Knowing How Shitty American Beauty Is. the end 2:43 a.m. - 2007-04-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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