Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Turning into a werewolf for a hot second
He always imagined it'd be a lot sexier.
Like, wouldn't his dick get all hard and rage-monstery?
What about his muscles? Wouldn't they bulge, like he always wanted?
If you're talking about wolfing out,
Wouldn't you expect at least a lengthening of the jaw?
Some spittle to shine your mettle
For you are now the beast everyone feared you were?
Man he just didn't realize
He'd be taking care of his kids,
Running logistics for his mate to hunt,
She's faster, and that's okay.
He thought he'd at least taste blood first
Instead of waiting, patiently,
For his pack to have their fill.
Man, wolf life is better on paper.
Monday, July 21, 2014
What being an ally for sufferers of abuse is like...
So I've been through abuse myself. Sexual. I should get that out of the way.
It was a long time ago, I was very young, it was by someone else who was very young and also taken advantage of, and didn't know what they were doing, and all in all, it was actually a pretty harmless & ultimately an event that has defined a lot of positive things in my life.
I know me talking about it may seem eventful or taboo, but I'm happy with the place I've put it in my life. Ultimately the harm outweighs the good.
What wasn't harmless, especially at the time, was the aftermath, and the ways in which very good, well-meaning people did what they thought was best and, in turn, left scars on my little boy brain that I still struggle with.
But that's not what this post is about.
I'm saying all this because I also am a survivor's ally (I hope to be many more survivors' ally) and I'm here to tell you, having experienced the aftermath in both ways, surprise surprise, is extremely hard. And it's something you absolutely need to go through.
I don't need to tell you that survivors of abuse feel effects remarkably similar to PTSD that are entirely individual to their personalities, cultural contexts, etc.
They feel shame, they feel anger, they feel depression, they feel remorse for not doing something different to avoid the abuse or seek justice for themselves or fight back.
They feel alone, because they alone experienced this particular event, and no one else can ever know what that felt like.
And they have every right to feel all this.
What's harder to know is that the fact of being an ally for someone who has survived abuse means that all of that, all the awful things they say about themselves which you know aren't true, all the feelings that survivors go through and express to you, because they trust you and you want to help them, can be extremely difficult to soak in.
Because in order to be an actual ally, you have to validate what they feel in the moment.
You don't need to agree with them, you don't need to believe that what they feel is permanent, or is a referendum on you or people like you, but what you do have to do is validate that these intense and overwhelming feelings they currently feel are real, and of value.
And that is incredibly hard thing to do.
To believe that that pain, that recurring torment, will subside.
That those feelings will move on, like weather.
That if you can just hold on and hold tight with that survivor, the worst will pass. It's very hard, in the moment, to remember that.
You're not going to know what to do.
You're going to want to fix everything, right away.
You're going to feel confused about how to help this person, how to avoid hurting them, how to make up for hurting them when you accidentally do.
You're going to want to calm, to soothe, to say "everything's okay," "everything's going to be alright," you're going to want to be nice and kind and avoid telling your survivor friend any hard truth that would cause them to erupt into another episode of anger or fear or shame or sadness.
They're going to tell you they want to die.
They're going to tell you it's the end of the world.
And all you're going to be able to say is "no it's not," and "no you don't," and you're going to feel the thinness of that response, in the moment.
The upside to all this, to being an ally, an open and listening and responsive ally, is that you're going to be able to gain what very few people outside this survivor's intimate circle has, which is their trust.
And then, once the storms subside, you're going to be able to help them, simply by being someone they can trust.
Trust wins you a lot, as an ally. It means when you speak to them and they're not dealing with all the torrent of feelings that panic attacks can have, they'll listen to you.
And then you can do amazing things.
You can tell them to get professional help, and they can listen.
You can tell them how much they are truly loved, and they can listen.
You can tell them to call the police, or involve school officials, or whoever, or whatever, might help them get justice, and they can listen.
You can tell them that their idea to share their story, to turn the experience of other survivors into art is a good one, and should be followed through.
You can help them make it a reality.
And you can, too. Right here: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=10934#about_project
It was a long time ago, I was very young, it was by someone else who was very young and also taken advantage of, and didn't know what they were doing, and all in all, it was actually a pretty harmless & ultimately an event that has defined a lot of positive things in my life.
I know me talking about it may seem eventful or taboo, but I'm happy with the place I've put it in my life. Ultimately the harm outweighs the good.
What wasn't harmless, especially at the time, was the aftermath, and the ways in which very good, well-meaning people did what they thought was best and, in turn, left scars on my little boy brain that I still struggle with.
But that's not what this post is about.
I'm saying all this because I also am a survivor's ally (I hope to be many more survivors' ally) and I'm here to tell you, having experienced the aftermath in both ways, surprise surprise, is extremely hard. And it's something you absolutely need to go through.
I don't need to tell you that survivors of abuse feel effects remarkably similar to PTSD that are entirely individual to their personalities, cultural contexts, etc.
They feel shame, they feel anger, they feel depression, they feel remorse for not doing something different to avoid the abuse or seek justice for themselves or fight back.
They feel alone, because they alone experienced this particular event, and no one else can ever know what that felt like.
And they have every right to feel all this.
What's harder to know is that the fact of being an ally for someone who has survived abuse means that all of that, all the awful things they say about themselves which you know aren't true, all the feelings that survivors go through and express to you, because they trust you and you want to help them, can be extremely difficult to soak in.
Because in order to be an actual ally, you have to validate what they feel in the moment.
You don't need to agree with them, you don't need to believe that what they feel is permanent, or is a referendum on you or people like you, but what you do have to do is validate that these intense and overwhelming feelings they currently feel are real, and of value.
And that is incredibly hard thing to do.
To believe that that pain, that recurring torment, will subside.
That those feelings will move on, like weather.
That if you can just hold on and hold tight with that survivor, the worst will pass. It's very hard, in the moment, to remember that.
You're not going to know what to do.
You're going to want to fix everything, right away.
You're going to feel confused about how to help this person, how to avoid hurting them, how to make up for hurting them when you accidentally do.
You're going to want to calm, to soothe, to say "everything's okay," "everything's going to be alright," you're going to want to be nice and kind and avoid telling your survivor friend any hard truth that would cause them to erupt into another episode of anger or fear or shame or sadness.
They're going to tell you they want to die.
They're going to tell you it's the end of the world.
And all you're going to be able to say is "no it's not," and "no you don't," and you're going to feel the thinness of that response, in the moment.
The upside to all this, to being an ally, an open and listening and responsive ally, is that you're going to be able to gain what very few people outside this survivor's intimate circle has, which is their trust.
And then, once the storms subside, you're going to be able to help them, simply by being someone they can trust.
Trust wins you a lot, as an ally. It means when you speak to them and they're not dealing with all the torrent of feelings that panic attacks can have, they'll listen to you.
And then you can do amazing things.
You can tell them to get professional help, and they can listen.
You can tell them how much they are truly loved, and they can listen.
You can tell them to call the police, or involve school officials, or whoever, or whatever, might help them get justice, and they can listen.
You can tell them that their idea to share their story, to turn the experience of other survivors into art is a good one, and should be followed through.
You can help them make it a reality.
And you can, too. Right here: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=10934#about_project
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Why I (A Man) Call Myself A Feminist
I have always been confused by the aversion to the word "feminist."
Particularly to men avoiding calling themselves "feminists."
And I don't want to conjure up or play into that stereotype that we can all imagine, at times, of the bros who all graduated together from their fraternities, slobber-mawed and grabby-hands, who respect women about as much as they respect the dusty beer pong ball they lose after a night of intense binge drinking, because I a) don't believe in the truth of stereotypes and b) know plenty of "bros," culturally, who are absolutely feminists.
But they don't call themselves that.
Take it from CBS. In 2009, they did a poll on the whether the Women's Movement (I guess another way to call the Feminist's Movement) has made your life better. Good news: 77% of women attribute the women's movement of their mothers' generations to contributing positively to their opportunities in life. The system works! Progress is inevitable! Yay female power!
Now for some bad news.
Only 47% of men say that the women's movement has improved their lives. 46% say it hasn't.
But the kicker here is, for both women and men, when asked if they consider the label "feminist" an insult, a compliment, or neutral:
Men
The term feminist is …
Compliment
10%
Insult
24%
Neutral
59%
Women
The term feminist is …
Compliment
12%
Insult
17%
Neutral
64%
This is clearly a problem when only 10-12% of those polled believe being a feminist is a compliment. For men, almost a QUARTER believe it's an insult.
Why?
Is it that people are uncomfortable about being defined by something that causes confrontation? Something that upends the status quo? Are men who don't like to call themselves feminists just not calling themselves that because in mixed (or all-male) company, they don't want to be misunderstood as aggressively anti-men or anti-capitalism or anti-bras, and don't want to rock the boat?
Now try this. When they were given the DEFINITION of feminism before being asked, the numbers shoot up dramatically:
A FEMINIST IS SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES IN SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC EQUALITY OF THE SEXES.
DO YOU THINK OF YOURSELF AS A FEMINIST OR NOT?
(Among women)
Yes
65%
No
32%
Men
Feminist (definition provided)
Yes
58%
No
39%
Men are still overall less likely to call themselves feminists than women, but a majority of them still, once they hear the definition, go "oh yeah, duh, of course, women and men should be treated equally."
So where does the insult come from?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an incredible speaker and writer whose Ted Talk "We Should All Be Feminists" is highly worth viewing (linked here & also inserted above). She makes a good twenty amazing points about men and women and the label "feminist," but I want to draw up one point to get to something I want to add.
She says, very fairly, that in general men don't think about gender very much. They don't think about dressing too "manly" for an important job interview (unlike women, who have to think, do I want these people to take me seriously? I shouldn't dress too feminine, a much more reasonably imagined and actually lived out scenario).
Men don't think about the privileges they receive, unasked for, for being men.
An amazing director/theatre artist and blogger and continual source of inspiration for me, Adrienne Mackey, wrote Thank you for not assuming on her blog Swim Pony Musings, and helped frame it for me in the best way in her post.
She quotes another writer who describes a story of a man biking home from work one day, whizzing by all of his usual landmarks much quicker than he usually does. And he thinks to himself "huh all that hard work and training is finally starting to pay off! I'm really going fast today!" and then he flies by a flag pole, and sees that the flag is blowing the same direction he is. So he stops and realizes that a very strong wind that has been blowing at his back the entire time. Hence the advantage.
That gives a sense of what male privilege is. Unseen, unfelt (most of the time, or particularly when you're focused on striving for something), but it's there. And it creates an advantage.
The fact that I am a man means that I am more likely to get a job that a woman is just as qualified for as I am. The fact that I am a man means when I make a piece of art involving masculinity, I am not seen as a "masculine writer" or a writer only interested in masculinity. I am represented in democracy and in leadership positions around the world way way WAY more than my fellow women, even though globally they actually comprise 52% of the population. (These points are culled and repeated from Mackey's article and Adichie's talk, echoed in my own language.)
I don't feel the way the wind is at my back. Unlike these guys:
There are a lot of psychological reasons for men's lack of notice (a bias we have towards attributing all our successes to our own efforts and all our failures to factors outside of ourselves comes to mind), but it also is a hugely cultural reality that many men simply do not acknowledge, at least not openly.
Why?
To return to the notion of "feminist" as insult, I think the "insult" comes from an socialized, emotional place.
Men are taught that they have to be invulnerable, strong, in control. They cannot be to blame. They can't be weak, or guilty, they have to always be in command of their world. Quite literally, men are socialized to "man up," provide for themselves and their families, be independent, be strong. There's no room for failure.
So when someone asks a man if they're a feminist, knee-jerk reaction could be, "well, no, I heard something about feminist women hating men for being oppressors, you must mean I contribute to this imbalance of masculine dominance, I'm at fault for benefiting from sexism, I'm guilty of being an oppressor, I'm not wrong, I'm strong, no, no, no, I'm insulted! Grr! Arg! Let me show my power by being angry!"
Then, you add the definition.
"Oh. Equality of the sexes. Well, that's not so bad. I can agree with that, intellectually. I myself wouldn't want to be treated unfairly. I guess I am a feminist."
The definition deflects blame, puts the focuses on the present and the future, and not on the past.
Though I will say, being a feminist DEFINITELY means you have to acknowledge and own the past. Because this world IS imbalanced for a reason, and it's not because men biologically have more muscle mass than women.
We still chose, over centuries, to use our physical prowess to rule, to take power, and to oppress and deny power to women.
I'm doing a lot of research on women in antiquity, since the project I'm directing and co-producing with amazing feminist theatre artist, blogger, and my partner Colie McClellan over at Feminist Musings, involves Greek myth and modern feminism.
And it strikes me, going deep into a book like Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves by Sarah Pomeroy, that women were all oppressed, back in early Greek and Roman times, because men predominantly transferred their stuff, their money, their power, through blood lines, through heirs, because you didn't exactly have credit cards back then, and the number one cause of anxiety and strife amongst men and women was knowing whose child it was, who would inherit all their stuff.
The simplest answer to knowing who fathered a child was to shut the woman off from society, control her every move, and place their only responsibility and right on producing heirs.
Now there's a whole other capitalist issue I see here (why is the STUFF so freakin' important??!), but apart from that, men very often in antiquity only dealt with their wives when it came to procreation and solidifying family, and ultimately, political power.
Love and lust and sex and meaningful relationships? Not in marriage. More often than not in concubines, in fellow soldiers (homosexuality was pretty much not a big deal back then), or slaves. Wives, legitimate citizen wives, were for the baby-making and legacy-leaving. Men only married when they were in their late thirties (too old to fight in wars), but their wives were fourteen, thirteen. They didn't exactly have too much in common anyway.
Obviously in dark ancient Greek times, physical prowess was everything if you wanted to survive, and if you wanted to thrive, holding the most power, the strongest city-state, the largest population of male soldiers, involved producing more of a population. Eventually, as war made producing a population harder, the laws surrounding women's rights were mildly relaxed (thanks Peloponnesian War!) and men even were encouraged to have multiple wives (now citizens) to produce more citizen children, to keep fueling the war effort.
But all of this was artificial. Stuff, money, power, control, it's all illusory, as I'm sure it was felt in Greek life in ancient times as it is in Greek life in modern colleges across the country.
Which brings me back to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Another great quote in her Ted talk, which I'm going to all-caps here:
I am a culture maker. I make plays. I write them, I direct them, I perform them, I produce them.
I want them to reflect the world as it is. And men and women are equal. And deserve equal rights. Equal representation.
And that actively involves correcting an imbalance. It involves placing women in more roles of authority, of creativity, and of visibility. It means hiring more women, creating more parts for women, collaborating more with women than with other men. All in the service, I might add, of telling better stories.
All the Way, the Bryan Cranston vehicle about LBJ and the Civil Rights Act that's getting TONS of attention because of Breaking Bad & Broadway? BORING.
Why?
Mostly men, mostly white, jockeying for power that no one else has access to. Three women in the 20-odd numbered cast, and they maybe said 12 lines between the three of them. And when they did, they were entirely sexualized or victimized. They were never powerful, even the First Lady.
BORING.
Being a feminist means living your life like a feminist.
I recently discovered that I actually love the role of caretaker, which is predominantly a "feminine" role in society. I like taking care of my partner. I like doing certain chores. I'm even getting better about laundry (I know, Mom! Who'd've thunk it!). But I ultimately see myself, when I have kids, as wanting to be a big part of their lives, as a primary care taker. I want to be a stay at home dad.
Which isn't to say I don't have career aspirations, or I'm not ambitious in my desires or dreams for my career as a culture maker.
And, actually, I don't think most people would think that of me anyway. In fact, they'd mostly applaud me for being so forward thinking, even though that really is the last thing I want.
Why the applause? Because I'm a guy. A woman wants to be a stay at home mother, and today it still is, "well what about your career?" Because apparently all careers need constant pressure and upkeep and capitalist engine fuel to be successful.
A woman wants to be the major breadwinner? Callous. Unloving mother. An ambitious, venomous Lady M.
BORING.
I do want to raise a son or a daughter someday. I do want them to watch movies and read books and have their minds blown by amazing plays and go to museums and travel to cities and indulge in the world, both as it is, and as it could be.
And I want them to feel, no matter what body they are given, masculine, feminine, transgender, bisexual, homosexual, asexual, heterosexual, I want them to feel like they have every right to exist as everyone else.
So I want them to be feminists.
Feminism is about a present, historic, cultural, sociological, and economical imbalance. It's not an insult. It's not about blame, but it is about action.
And, really, honestly, it's about realizing that life is not a zero sum game about STUFF, Men Vs Women, who has more, who has less, who wins, who loses, etc. It's about nurturing and empowering everyone to succeed at what they alone can do, given what they have. It's about lifting everyone up.
So, to my fellow men, please, ease off from the defensive position. You do not need to front on this issue. Be men. Love everyone, men and women included. It's okay, you can do it. Call yourself a feminist.
Particularly to men avoiding calling themselves "feminists."
And I don't want to conjure up or play into that stereotype that we can all imagine, at times, of the bros who all graduated together from their fraternities, slobber-mawed and grabby-hands, who respect women about as much as they respect the dusty beer pong ball they lose after a night of intense binge drinking, because I a) don't believe in the truth of stereotypes and b) know plenty of "bros," culturally, who are absolutely feminists.
But they don't call themselves that.
Take it from CBS. In 2009, they did a poll on the whether the Women's Movement (I guess another way to call the Feminist's Movement) has made your life better. Good news: 77% of women attribute the women's movement of their mothers' generations to contributing positively to their opportunities in life. The system works! Progress is inevitable! Yay female power!
Now for some bad news.
Only 47% of men say that the women's movement has improved their lives. 46% say it hasn't.
But the kicker here is, for both women and men, when asked if they consider the label "feminist" an insult, a compliment, or neutral:
Men
The term feminist is …
Compliment
10%Insult
24%Neutral
59%Women
The term feminist is …
Compliment
12%Insult
17%Neutral
64%This is clearly a problem when only 10-12% of those polled believe being a feminist is a compliment. For men, almost a QUARTER believe it's an insult.
Why?
Is it that people are uncomfortable about being defined by something that causes confrontation? Something that upends the status quo? Are men who don't like to call themselves feminists just not calling themselves that because in mixed (or all-male) company, they don't want to be misunderstood as aggressively anti-men or anti-capitalism or anti-bras, and don't want to rock the boat?
Now try this. When they were given the DEFINITION of feminism before being asked, the numbers shoot up dramatically:
A FEMINIST IS SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES IN SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC EQUALITY OF THE SEXES.
DO YOU THINK OF YOURSELF AS A FEMINIST OR NOT?
(Among women)
Yes
65%No
32%Men
Feminist (definition provided)
Yes
58%No
39%Men are still overall less likely to call themselves feminists than women, but a majority of them still, once they hear the definition, go "oh yeah, duh, of course, women and men should be treated equally."
So where does the insult come from?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an incredible speaker and writer whose Ted Talk "We Should All Be Feminists" is highly worth viewing (linked here & also inserted above). She makes a good twenty amazing points about men and women and the label "feminist," but I want to draw up one point to get to something I want to add.
She says, very fairly, that in general men don't think about gender very much. They don't think about dressing too "manly" for an important job interview (unlike women, who have to think, do I want these people to take me seriously? I shouldn't dress too feminine, a much more reasonably imagined and actually lived out scenario).
Men don't think about the privileges they receive, unasked for, for being men.
An amazing director/theatre artist and blogger and continual source of inspiration for me, Adrienne Mackey, wrote Thank you for not assuming on her blog Swim Pony Musings, and helped frame it for me in the best way in her post.
She quotes another writer who describes a story of a man biking home from work one day, whizzing by all of his usual landmarks much quicker than he usually does. And he thinks to himself "huh all that hard work and training is finally starting to pay off! I'm really going fast today!" and then he flies by a flag pole, and sees that the flag is blowing the same direction he is. So he stops and realizes that a very strong wind that has been blowing at his back the entire time. Hence the advantage.
That gives a sense of what male privilege is. Unseen, unfelt (most of the time, or particularly when you're focused on striving for something), but it's there. And it creates an advantage.
The fact that I am a man means that I am more likely to get a job that a woman is just as qualified for as I am. The fact that I am a man means when I make a piece of art involving masculinity, I am not seen as a "masculine writer" or a writer only interested in masculinity. I am represented in democracy and in leadership positions around the world way way WAY more than my fellow women, even though globally they actually comprise 52% of the population. (These points are culled and repeated from Mackey's article and Adichie's talk, echoed in my own language.)
I don't feel the way the wind is at my back. Unlike these guys:
There are a lot of psychological reasons for men's lack of notice (a bias we have towards attributing all our successes to our own efforts and all our failures to factors outside of ourselves comes to mind), but it also is a hugely cultural reality that many men simply do not acknowledge, at least not openly.
Why?
To return to the notion of "feminist" as insult, I think the "insult" comes from an socialized, emotional place.
Men are taught that they have to be invulnerable, strong, in control. They cannot be to blame. They can't be weak, or guilty, they have to always be in command of their world. Quite literally, men are socialized to "man up," provide for themselves and their families, be independent, be strong. There's no room for failure.
So when someone asks a man if they're a feminist, knee-jerk reaction could be, "well, no, I heard something about feminist women hating men for being oppressors, you must mean I contribute to this imbalance of masculine dominance, I'm at fault for benefiting from sexism, I'm guilty of being an oppressor, I'm not wrong, I'm strong, no, no, no, I'm insulted! Grr! Arg! Let me show my power by being angry!"
Then, you add the definition.
"Oh. Equality of the sexes. Well, that's not so bad. I can agree with that, intellectually. I myself wouldn't want to be treated unfairly. I guess I am a feminist."
The definition deflects blame, puts the focuses on the present and the future, and not on the past.
Though I will say, being a feminist DEFINITELY means you have to acknowledge and own the past. Because this world IS imbalanced for a reason, and it's not because men biologically have more muscle mass than women.
We still chose, over centuries, to use our physical prowess to rule, to take power, and to oppress and deny power to women.
I'm doing a lot of research on women in antiquity, since the project I'm directing and co-producing with amazing feminist theatre artist, blogger, and my partner Colie McClellan over at Feminist Musings, involves Greek myth and modern feminism.
And it strikes me, going deep into a book like Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves by Sarah Pomeroy, that women were all oppressed, back in early Greek and Roman times, because men predominantly transferred their stuff, their money, their power, through blood lines, through heirs, because you didn't exactly have credit cards back then, and the number one cause of anxiety and strife amongst men and women was knowing whose child it was, who would inherit all their stuff.
The simplest answer to knowing who fathered a child was to shut the woman off from society, control her every move, and place their only responsibility and right on producing heirs.
Now there's a whole other capitalist issue I see here (why is the STUFF so freakin' important??!), but apart from that, men very often in antiquity only dealt with their wives when it came to procreation and solidifying family, and ultimately, political power.
Love and lust and sex and meaningful relationships? Not in marriage. More often than not in concubines, in fellow soldiers (homosexuality was pretty much not a big deal back then), or slaves. Wives, legitimate citizen wives, were for the baby-making and legacy-leaving. Men only married when they were in their late thirties (too old to fight in wars), but their wives were fourteen, thirteen. They didn't exactly have too much in common anyway.
Obviously in dark ancient Greek times, physical prowess was everything if you wanted to survive, and if you wanted to thrive, holding the most power, the strongest city-state, the largest population of male soldiers, involved producing more of a population. Eventually, as war made producing a population harder, the laws surrounding women's rights were mildly relaxed (thanks Peloponnesian War!) and men even were encouraged to have multiple wives (now citizens) to produce more citizen children, to keep fueling the war effort.
But all of this was artificial. Stuff, money, power, control, it's all illusory, as I'm sure it was felt in Greek life in ancient times as it is in Greek life in modern colleges across the country.
Which brings me back to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Another great quote in her Ted talk, which I'm going to all-caps here:
"CULTURE DOES NOT MAKE PEOPLE, PEOPLE MAKE CULTURE"
I am a culture maker. I make plays. I write them, I direct them, I perform them, I produce them.
I want them to reflect the world as it is. And men and women are equal. And deserve equal rights. Equal representation.
And that actively involves correcting an imbalance. It involves placing women in more roles of authority, of creativity, and of visibility. It means hiring more women, creating more parts for women, collaborating more with women than with other men. All in the service, I might add, of telling better stories.
All the Way, the Bryan Cranston vehicle about LBJ and the Civil Rights Act that's getting TONS of attention because of Breaking Bad & Broadway? BORING.
Why?
Mostly men, mostly white, jockeying for power that no one else has access to. Three women in the 20-odd numbered cast, and they maybe said 12 lines between the three of them. And when they did, they were entirely sexualized or victimized. They were never powerful, even the First Lady.
BORING.
Being a feminist means living your life like a feminist.
I recently discovered that I actually love the role of caretaker, which is predominantly a "feminine" role in society. I like taking care of my partner. I like doing certain chores. I'm even getting better about laundry (I know, Mom! Who'd've thunk it!). But I ultimately see myself, when I have kids, as wanting to be a big part of their lives, as a primary care taker. I want to be a stay at home dad.
Which isn't to say I don't have career aspirations, or I'm not ambitious in my desires or dreams for my career as a culture maker.
And, actually, I don't think most people would think that of me anyway. In fact, they'd mostly applaud me for being so forward thinking, even though that really is the last thing I want.
Why the applause? Because I'm a guy. A woman wants to be a stay at home mother, and today it still is, "well what about your career?" Because apparently all careers need constant pressure and upkeep and capitalist engine fuel to be successful.
A woman wants to be the major breadwinner? Callous. Unloving mother. An ambitious, venomous Lady M.
BORING.
I do want to raise a son or a daughter someday. I do want them to watch movies and read books and have their minds blown by amazing plays and go to museums and travel to cities and indulge in the world, both as it is, and as it could be.
And I want them to feel, no matter what body they are given, masculine, feminine, transgender, bisexual, homosexual, asexual, heterosexual, I want them to feel like they have every right to exist as everyone else.
So I want them to be feminists.
Feminism is about a present, historic, cultural, sociological, and economical imbalance. It's not an insult. It's not about blame, but it is about action.
And, really, honestly, it's about realizing that life is not a zero sum game about STUFF, Men Vs Women, who has more, who has less, who wins, who loses, etc. It's about nurturing and empowering everyone to succeed at what they alone can do, given what they have. It's about lifting everyone up.
So, to my fellow men, please, ease off from the defensive position. You do not need to front on this issue. Be men. Love everyone, men and women included. It's okay, you can do it. Call yourself a feminist.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
What's Spanish for Inches?
When I looked outside my windows this morning, or, really, a little into the afternoon, it looked mildly cold. Wet from an earlier rain, the first of browned and oranged leaves pasting the ground, like the oversized paper ones that plastered my kindergarten and grade school halls in my forever-fall Halifax memories.
My espresso grounds were old, and I wanted caffeine before I tackled the mountain of dishes I had vowed to myself and my girlfriend I'd clean in the morning. She made dinner, I do the dishes. It's only fair, and I rarely accomplish anything before 4pm anyway. A good goal, baby steps, to start a mite sooner.
So groundless and caffeineless, I threw on my oversized cardigan I got as a Christmas gift last year, which I love in a "I can imagine myself being an old guy, maybe a professor, but definitely a writer" sort of way, and shuffled off to the corner Starbucks, lost in remembering teaching theatre to kids in similarly autumn leaf-adorned kindergarten and grade schools, thinking of all the Starbucks cups I drained waiting for the trains to get there.
Inside, the Asian-American barista took my order, and while she did, half asked her Hispanic-American colleague, who started to make my coffee, what the word for "inch" was in Spanish. He earnestly shook his head, and said he didn't know. I said I didn't think there was a word for "inch," because both Spain and Mexico use the metric system, which, I then felt necessary to mention, doesn't use inches.
If I could measure seconds in centimeters, we swam an Olympic sized swimming pool together, entirely doubting each other's knowledge and education, before she smiled pleasantly and handed me a croissant. America, it seems, goes on for another day.
My espresso grounds were old, and I wanted caffeine before I tackled the mountain of dishes I had vowed to myself and my girlfriend I'd clean in the morning. She made dinner, I do the dishes. It's only fair, and I rarely accomplish anything before 4pm anyway. A good goal, baby steps, to start a mite sooner.
So groundless and caffeineless, I threw on my oversized cardigan I got as a Christmas gift last year, which I love in a "I can imagine myself being an old guy, maybe a professor, but definitely a writer" sort of way, and shuffled off to the corner Starbucks, lost in remembering teaching theatre to kids in similarly autumn leaf-adorned kindergarten and grade schools, thinking of all the Starbucks cups I drained waiting for the trains to get there.
Inside, the Asian-American barista took my order, and while she did, half asked her Hispanic-American colleague, who started to make my coffee, what the word for "inch" was in Spanish. He earnestly shook his head, and said he didn't know. I said I didn't think there was a word for "inch," because both Spain and Mexico use the metric system, which, I then felt necessary to mention, doesn't use inches.
If I could measure seconds in centimeters, we swam an Olympic sized swimming pool together, entirely doubting each other's knowledge and education, before she smiled pleasantly and handed me a croissant. America, it seems, goes on for another day.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Felina/Finale, the Uncertainty Principle Breaking Bad Thinkpiece
***If you can't tell, this is going to involve major Breaking Bad spoilers. So, don't read any of this if you don't want to know what may or may not have happened in the finale.***
So.
There exists on the internet these days a certain subgenre of thinkpieces that have generated themselves all summer at an exponentially rabid/rapid pace. This is, of course, the Breaking Bad Thinkpiece.
And of course, now that the series is over, and we've had a few days to digest the experience and implications of the finale, these kind of thinkpieces are replicating themselves with wild abandon.
I am throwing my hat into this well-traveled ring because I am, like all other writers of these thinkpieces, an unabashedly devoted fan, I can't help but have strong opinions about it, and I was honestly fairly disappointed with the story of the finale. Not the production of it, nor the experience of it entirely, even, but the story, and its implications for the series as a whole.
I went onto Gchat and spent a few hours in post-show analysis over several days with my best friends. I gorged myself on every review of the finale, every point of view I could find about what had happened. I just couldn't decide what I felt. What I was settling for. What I wish had happened.
It was sincerely difficult to articulate, because I felt like I was missing something that maybe I wasn't even really supposed to catch on to. My brain, which always tries to make things the most complicated they can be, couldn't figure out how to reinterpret this fairly-straight-forward and ultimately-semi-victorious hail Mary pass by Walter White, which, miraculously, it seems, all works out in his favour. Is it really ending this simply?
Walt dies on his own terms. He finally tells Skylar the truth, that he did this all for himself, because he loved it, because he was good at it, because it made him feel alive. He ends Heisenberg's career in an epic badass rain of jerry-rigged machine gun murder, he finally refuses the seduction of MORE money after he has safely used his fearsome alter ego to threaten his former colleagues/privileged khaki clowns into ensuring the money he DID save from calamity will end up in his family's care after all, and he even gets to be the guy who, when he learns of his former partner/son-turned-rat's suffering, lets him go, freeing his enslaved Ariel to the winds, where perhaps he can find true freedom and peace with his resplendently-lit woodcarved boxes.
It all felt so good, to see him do that, it was nearly perfect, 92% pure, it was fantastic. A fantasy. And, therefore, not what I was expecting from the series that had just pummeled us into the To'hajilee burial ground with the consequences of Walt's Heisenbergian ways.
I read desperately all the tweets and reviews that said the finale was perfect. I convinced myself to justify that Walt really didn't get everything right, that he still caused all this mayhem and is still dying alone, having destroyed his family and the empire he fought so hard to create. That the long-anticipated final finale surprise was, as Vince Gilligan said, the fact that there were no surprises.
That it basically went as mass-hoped, as planned. That we all were slavering to see some redemption, and Walt started to get a little but it was too late. That he broke bad, only to break good again with not enough time to make it all work. We wanted to see this show go out in a blaze of glory, and we got it, Walt's glory. Walt wins, but it's a thin victory. Surprise! We didn't surprise you this time, and that's the best surprise!
Hm. Maybe.
Then someone tweeted about Norm Macdonald's finale theory just as I was trying to go to sleep the night before last, and I spent the next three hours awake by the glow of my smartphone, reading every letter of Norm's tweets. And my too-complicated-by-half brain found what it had been looking for. Another way to read the finale.
This is worth digging through on your own, though the later you read this the more it will be obscured by football tweets, but basically, Norm puts a slightly different spin on the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum's disappointed review of the finale, which says that the finale DID feel like Walt's dying fantasy of what he WOULD do, if he could get back to Albuquerque. Maybe this Felina finale is his dying wish, that he really dies alone in that car, mid-plotting and planning, and really we'll never know what happens to Jesse, Skylar, Marie, the neo-Nazis, Todd, Lydia, or any of the horrific machinations he set in motion the day he started cooking blue meth.
Norm goes further than Emily, though, because what he suggests isn't that "it's all a dream" and that Gilligan even overtly expresses this in the finale. First off, Norm doesn't care what Vince has to say about it at all, actually. The work speaks for itself. Even though all the writers basically say they meant the finale to be taken literally, Norm isn't having it. Not the way it's written, executed, cinematographed, etc.
No, when Walt exhales as the harrowing world-ending sound of police car tires against snow pull away and the red and blue lights of capture fade, it's his dying breath. From the keys dropping from the sky onward, things work out for the broken bad Mr. White, because they are symbolic. He works out how he would end his life, had he the time, had he the ability. What we see is a largely egocentric fantasy of this truly broken man setting it as right as he can.
The evidence that Norm brings to this is heartening, too. This is a supposedly nation-wide manhunt, that necessitated Walt being shipped in an oil truck all the way to New Hampshire, yet he glides back into town in a stolen car after calling the cops to him. He creeps into the Schwartz' new house unimpeded, and does so everywhere else. Skylar's new place, where the cops are watching. His old house, staring at his reflection in broken mirrors. He watches his son through double windows, a la Christmas Carol. Carol's name, of course, is made a big deal for no otherwise apparent reason. He is gaunt, his movements are slow, shuffling, unfrantic as we've known him, finally sure, finally, it seems, at some kind of peace.
The cinematography certainly lends itself to almost a dreamlike state. Jesse's fantasy of wordworking, the "clue" for the finale that everyone harped about in press events, is lit in single-source, golden, holy organ music-playing light, all sensual, tactile, a Creator with his creation, all going right. The same single-source, half-face-shadowing light, happens in Skylar's apartment. At the end, in the Nazi's clubhouse. The camera moves slower, lurking, Walt is revealed in places by magic. It is shot, Norm posits, intentionally, for us to feel it is unreal.
A note, too, about the shadows. Jesse is tortured until he really seems to have half a face, and is lit, and shot, in that half-face darkness. As is Walt many times. Repetitions of images of Gus, with half his face blasted off. And the pink teddy bear from the plane crash. Manifestations of Walt's destructive power. Two-faced. Janus. We see what the lies of Heisenberg has wrought. And Walt dies by his own hand but saves his surrogate son, and has the time to go be with his equipment, his Precious, a distorted shot of his face and blood on the only thing he ever truly loved. He did it, it wasn't all for nothing.
Or, if you believe Norm's theory, he didn't do it. He didn't actually do any of those things. He died in the car, frozen, alone, still plotting, fantasizing about the final gambit he never actually gets to make. The cancer gets him and it is, indeed, all for nothing.
If you can't tell, I rewatched the last two episodes of Breaking Bad yesterday, to see this theory in action for myself. And I have come to the conclusion that it does work, but probably not for the reasons you think.
There are definitely holes. If Walt is imagining this final conversation with Skylar, then how does he know about Todd's visit to their house, threatening her not to reveal anything she knows about Lydia? There definitely is not a jump cut in Walt's scene in the car, where we think he might be dead but then he flips the visor and the keys fall out! It's one continuous cut. Walt doesn't clearly seem to die and then revive.
And in terms of everything going right, magic things have happened for Walt all the time. He is incredibly lucky, and resourceful, and admittedly brilliant, even if his arrogance and pride cause him to miscalculate, or, in the case of Jesse, completely underestimate his allegiance.
Breaking Bad has had otherworldly-seeming things happen more than I remembered. The Cousins are shot and move like Death itself, coming for Walt's life in ways that are beyond human. I mean, Walt meets Jane's dad at the bar before he goes back to Jesse's place and watches her die, and this causes a cataclysmic plane crash? WHAT are the chances of THAT?! Hank discovers Walt's true identity because he leaves a copy of Leaves of Grass on his toilet seat?? HOW would that have actually happened?!
So Walt evading all the police forces of Albuquerque isn't too terribly hard to believe. Him sneaking ricin into a Stevia packet doesn't seem to be too farfetched, when he knows she always sits in the same cafe at 10am on Tuesdays, and she always wants Stevia. He put a fake ricin pill into a cigarette and planted it, somehow, in Jesse's Roomba, so that Jesse would stop worrying about accidentally poisoning someone.
Walt takes advantage of a universe that offers him up chances all the time. This universe offered him up some big breaks at the end, and he took advantage of them like he always did. He just now has his priorities in order. Which, given months in solitude in the woods, dying of cancer, paying a stranger $10,000 just to stay for a game of poker, isn't a stretch to see him come to the conclusion that with his dying strength, he needs to nut up and provide for his family at all costs. Gretchen and Elliot appear on Charlie Rose, and suddenly he has his plan. He sees his way out.
But should he be allowed to carry through his plans? The show, or, really, MY experience watching this show, has always been so UNCERTAIN about Walt. He's bad, but we still identify with him. He does worse after worse thing, and especially after Ozymandias, we SEE just how much of a monster he truly is. But he's not all monster. So should he get a chance at redemption?
Well, I think yes and no. And I think this finale actually gives us the chance to see both, even though they are diametrically opposed. At the same time.
I think Felina/finale is actually a quantum finale.
Heisenberg, remember, is the name of the scientist attributed mostly for coming up with the uncertainty principle, which, in quantum physics, is all about the fact that we can't know everything about a particle all at once, and whenever we "check" to see, for example, a particle's location, we can't determine the direction of its spin exactly. You follow this to the Schroedinger's cat conclusion, and if you put the cat in the box with poison, until you check, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Truly. Actually. You can't know for sure until you check.
Breaking Bad has always been hyper aware of its audiences' expectations. Its job is solely to tell a good story, and it has definitely done so with the Felina finale. But what it's also done artistically, which the literal finale sort of walks back, is create a truly Shakespearean, Euripidean character of negative empathy.
Paula Vogel talks about this in this video, which I can't figure out how to embed but will try to more later.
Her gist, though, is that great dramas used to be made where we are meant to struggle, as an audience, to decide what is right and wrong with these characters' actions. They are compelling, human, faulty, destructive monsters and we identify with them, we see the human inside them, we see the monster inside us. We don't like these characters, but we also really do. What should happen to them? Should Hamlet kill Claudius? Should Richard III gain control over everything? Should Lear get Cordelia's love back?
In most cases, the characters both win and lose, and tend to get more glory than actual peace or happiness.
I think, now that I've seen the finale, I definitely wanted Walt to fail. I wanted to see him denied the glory he sought. I wanted him punished for his sins, somehow, even if he gets everything he wants, because I don't want to live in a world where there aren't consequences to doing wrong, to doing evil. Breaking Bad, for me, is about how possible it is to delude yourself into thinking you're doing good, even as you set in motion actions that cancer everything around you, that destroy all you claim to be fighting for.
Is the world that just, that fair? Does karma exist? Can a man, even as loathsome as Walt, be judged so harshly, if he attempts to make good at the end?
I don't know. And I don't think Breaking Bad does either. But as artists, I think Norm's theory IS there, really, like any great work of literature does, to offer the alternative to the sexy, ratings-and-audience pleasing version. The literal interpretation.
I think both exist simultaneously. I think Walt's both dead and alive in that car, and until we check, until each one of us goes through that thought process for ourselves and determines what we truly believe or value about the universe, about America, about the actions of this flawed anti-hero, he has to both accomplish what he does, and also fail to accomplish it.
THAT ending, that sophisticated, do you really trust your senses, what do you think of this story, you be the scientist, you decide, or, if you'd prefer to be an artist like me and keep both options in mind at the same time, and/both instead of either/or, you get to decide what world you live in.
Breaking Bad is, therefore, to me a quantum reflection of what you think bad is. And what the world does with the bad and the good. You check, you decide.
So.
There exists on the internet these days a certain subgenre of thinkpieces that have generated themselves all summer at an exponentially rabid/rapid pace. This is, of course, the Breaking Bad Thinkpiece.
And of course, now that the series is over, and we've had a few days to digest the experience and implications of the finale, these kind of thinkpieces are replicating themselves with wild abandon.
I am throwing my hat into this well-traveled ring because I am, like all other writers of these thinkpieces, an unabashedly devoted fan, I can't help but have strong opinions about it, and I was honestly fairly disappointed with the story of the finale. Not the production of it, nor the experience of it entirely, even, but the story, and its implications for the series as a whole.
I went onto Gchat and spent a few hours in post-show analysis over several days with my best friends. I gorged myself on every review of the finale, every point of view I could find about what had happened. I just couldn't decide what I felt. What I was settling for. What I wish had happened.
It was sincerely difficult to articulate, because I felt like I was missing something that maybe I wasn't even really supposed to catch on to. My brain, which always tries to make things the most complicated they can be, couldn't figure out how to reinterpret this fairly-straight-forward and ultimately-semi-victorious hail Mary pass by Walter White, which, miraculously, it seems, all works out in his favour. Is it really ending this simply?
Walt dies on his own terms. He finally tells Skylar the truth, that he did this all for himself, because he loved it, because he was good at it, because it made him feel alive. He ends Heisenberg's career in an epic badass rain of jerry-rigged machine gun murder, he finally refuses the seduction of MORE money after he has safely used his fearsome alter ego to threaten his former colleagues/privileged khaki clowns into ensuring the money he DID save from calamity will end up in his family's care after all, and he even gets to be the guy who, when he learns of his former partner/son-turned-rat's suffering, lets him go, freeing his enslaved Ariel to the winds, where perhaps he can find true freedom and peace with his resplendently-lit woodcarved boxes.
It all felt so good, to see him do that, it was nearly perfect, 92% pure, it was fantastic. A fantasy. And, therefore, not what I was expecting from the series that had just pummeled us into the To'hajilee burial ground with the consequences of Walt's Heisenbergian ways.
I read desperately all the tweets and reviews that said the finale was perfect. I convinced myself to justify that Walt really didn't get everything right, that he still caused all this mayhem and is still dying alone, having destroyed his family and the empire he fought so hard to create. That the long-anticipated final finale surprise was, as Vince Gilligan said, the fact that there were no surprises.
That it basically went as mass-hoped, as planned. That we all were slavering to see some redemption, and Walt started to get a little but it was too late. That he broke bad, only to break good again with not enough time to make it all work. We wanted to see this show go out in a blaze of glory, and we got it, Walt's glory. Walt wins, but it's a thin victory. Surprise! We didn't surprise you this time, and that's the best surprise!
Hm. Maybe.
Then someone tweeted about Norm Macdonald's finale theory just as I was trying to go to sleep the night before last, and I spent the next three hours awake by the glow of my smartphone, reading every letter of Norm's tweets. And my too-complicated-by-half brain found what it had been looking for. Another way to read the finale.
This is worth digging through on your own, though the later you read this the more it will be obscured by football tweets, but basically, Norm puts a slightly different spin on the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum's disappointed review of the finale, which says that the finale DID feel like Walt's dying fantasy of what he WOULD do, if he could get back to Albuquerque. Maybe this Felina finale is his dying wish, that he really dies alone in that car, mid-plotting and planning, and really we'll never know what happens to Jesse, Skylar, Marie, the neo-Nazis, Todd, Lydia, or any of the horrific machinations he set in motion the day he started cooking blue meth.
Norm goes further than Emily, though, because what he suggests isn't that "it's all a dream" and that Gilligan even overtly expresses this in the finale. First off, Norm doesn't care what Vince has to say about it at all, actually. The work speaks for itself. Even though all the writers basically say they meant the finale to be taken literally, Norm isn't having it. Not the way it's written, executed, cinematographed, etc.
No, when Walt exhales as the harrowing world-ending sound of police car tires against snow pull away and the red and blue lights of capture fade, it's his dying breath. From the keys dropping from the sky onward, things work out for the broken bad Mr. White, because they are symbolic. He works out how he would end his life, had he the time, had he the ability. What we see is a largely egocentric fantasy of this truly broken man setting it as right as he can.
The evidence that Norm brings to this is heartening, too. This is a supposedly nation-wide manhunt, that necessitated Walt being shipped in an oil truck all the way to New Hampshire, yet he glides back into town in a stolen car after calling the cops to him. He creeps into the Schwartz' new house unimpeded, and does so everywhere else. Skylar's new place, where the cops are watching. His old house, staring at his reflection in broken mirrors. He watches his son through double windows, a la Christmas Carol. Carol's name, of course, is made a big deal for no otherwise apparent reason. He is gaunt, his movements are slow, shuffling, unfrantic as we've known him, finally sure, finally, it seems, at some kind of peace.
The cinematography certainly lends itself to almost a dreamlike state. Jesse's fantasy of wordworking, the "clue" for the finale that everyone harped about in press events, is lit in single-source, golden, holy organ music-playing light, all sensual, tactile, a Creator with his creation, all going right. The same single-source, half-face-shadowing light, happens in Skylar's apartment. At the end, in the Nazi's clubhouse. The camera moves slower, lurking, Walt is revealed in places by magic. It is shot, Norm posits, intentionally, for us to feel it is unreal.
A note, too, about the shadows. Jesse is tortured until he really seems to have half a face, and is lit, and shot, in that half-face darkness. As is Walt many times. Repetitions of images of Gus, with half his face blasted off. And the pink teddy bear from the plane crash. Manifestations of Walt's destructive power. Two-faced. Janus. We see what the lies of Heisenberg has wrought. And Walt dies by his own hand but saves his surrogate son, and has the time to go be with his equipment, his Precious, a distorted shot of his face and blood on the only thing he ever truly loved. He did it, it wasn't all for nothing.
Or, if you believe Norm's theory, he didn't do it. He didn't actually do any of those things. He died in the car, frozen, alone, still plotting, fantasizing about the final gambit he never actually gets to make. The cancer gets him and it is, indeed, all for nothing.
If you can't tell, I rewatched the last two episodes of Breaking Bad yesterday, to see this theory in action for myself. And I have come to the conclusion that it does work, but probably not for the reasons you think.
There are definitely holes. If Walt is imagining this final conversation with Skylar, then how does he know about Todd's visit to their house, threatening her not to reveal anything she knows about Lydia? There definitely is not a jump cut in Walt's scene in the car, where we think he might be dead but then he flips the visor and the keys fall out! It's one continuous cut. Walt doesn't clearly seem to die and then revive.
And in terms of everything going right, magic things have happened for Walt all the time. He is incredibly lucky, and resourceful, and admittedly brilliant, even if his arrogance and pride cause him to miscalculate, or, in the case of Jesse, completely underestimate his allegiance.
Breaking Bad has had otherworldly-seeming things happen more than I remembered. The Cousins are shot and move like Death itself, coming for Walt's life in ways that are beyond human. I mean, Walt meets Jane's dad at the bar before he goes back to Jesse's place and watches her die, and this causes a cataclysmic plane crash? WHAT are the chances of THAT?! Hank discovers Walt's true identity because he leaves a copy of Leaves of Grass on his toilet seat?? HOW would that have actually happened?!
So Walt evading all the police forces of Albuquerque isn't too terribly hard to believe. Him sneaking ricin into a Stevia packet doesn't seem to be too farfetched, when he knows she always sits in the same cafe at 10am on Tuesdays, and she always wants Stevia. He put a fake ricin pill into a cigarette and planted it, somehow, in Jesse's Roomba, so that Jesse would stop worrying about accidentally poisoning someone.
Walt takes advantage of a universe that offers him up chances all the time. This universe offered him up some big breaks at the end, and he took advantage of them like he always did. He just now has his priorities in order. Which, given months in solitude in the woods, dying of cancer, paying a stranger $10,000 just to stay for a game of poker, isn't a stretch to see him come to the conclusion that with his dying strength, he needs to nut up and provide for his family at all costs. Gretchen and Elliot appear on Charlie Rose, and suddenly he has his plan. He sees his way out.
But should he be allowed to carry through his plans? The show, or, really, MY experience watching this show, has always been so UNCERTAIN about Walt. He's bad, but we still identify with him. He does worse after worse thing, and especially after Ozymandias, we SEE just how much of a monster he truly is. But he's not all monster. So should he get a chance at redemption?
Well, I think yes and no. And I think this finale actually gives us the chance to see both, even though they are diametrically opposed. At the same time.
I think Felina/finale is actually a quantum finale.
Heisenberg, remember, is the name of the scientist attributed mostly for coming up with the uncertainty principle, which, in quantum physics, is all about the fact that we can't know everything about a particle all at once, and whenever we "check" to see, for example, a particle's location, we can't determine the direction of its spin exactly. You follow this to the Schroedinger's cat conclusion, and if you put the cat in the box with poison, until you check, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Truly. Actually. You can't know for sure until you check.
Breaking Bad has always been hyper aware of its audiences' expectations. Its job is solely to tell a good story, and it has definitely done so with the Felina finale. But what it's also done artistically, which the literal finale sort of walks back, is create a truly Shakespearean, Euripidean character of negative empathy.
Paula Vogel talks about this in this video, which I can't figure out how to embed but will try to more later.
Her gist, though, is that great dramas used to be made where we are meant to struggle, as an audience, to decide what is right and wrong with these characters' actions. They are compelling, human, faulty, destructive monsters and we identify with them, we see the human inside them, we see the monster inside us. We don't like these characters, but we also really do. What should happen to them? Should Hamlet kill Claudius? Should Richard III gain control over everything? Should Lear get Cordelia's love back?
In most cases, the characters both win and lose, and tend to get more glory than actual peace or happiness.
I think, now that I've seen the finale, I definitely wanted Walt to fail. I wanted to see him denied the glory he sought. I wanted him punished for his sins, somehow, even if he gets everything he wants, because I don't want to live in a world where there aren't consequences to doing wrong, to doing evil. Breaking Bad, for me, is about how possible it is to delude yourself into thinking you're doing good, even as you set in motion actions that cancer everything around you, that destroy all you claim to be fighting for.
Is the world that just, that fair? Does karma exist? Can a man, even as loathsome as Walt, be judged so harshly, if he attempts to make good at the end?
I don't know. And I don't think Breaking Bad does either. But as artists, I think Norm's theory IS there, really, like any great work of literature does, to offer the alternative to the sexy, ratings-and-audience pleasing version. The literal interpretation.
I think both exist simultaneously. I think Walt's both dead and alive in that car, and until we check, until each one of us goes through that thought process for ourselves and determines what we truly believe or value about the universe, about America, about the actions of this flawed anti-hero, he has to both accomplish what he does, and also fail to accomplish it.
THAT ending, that sophisticated, do you really trust your senses, what do you think of this story, you be the scientist, you decide, or, if you'd prefer to be an artist like me and keep both options in mind at the same time, and/both instead of either/or, you get to decide what world you live in.
Breaking Bad is, therefore, to me a quantum reflection of what you think bad is. And what the world does with the bad and the good. You check, you decide.
Friday, October 4, 2013
An Open Letter to Open Letters
An Open Letter to Open Letters,
I would like to write an open letter to open letters, but I have found I do not have anything to say, except that I appreciate the opportunity it provides to showcase openly how open and transparent I am about my process, as a human being and an artist, which of course can hide all the shadowy other reasons I am seeking attention by posting an open letter in the first place.
Writing an open letter is, in fact, much like shutting down the government, one does it for its own sake. One declares openly that one is a writer of open letters by writing an open letter, and ipso facto, mission accomplished. You don't even need to read this letter to know that I am a writer of open letters, and must be incredibly confident, smart, sexy, and artistic, to write my letters so openly.
This is something we all desire, sure. I write so you will read. I need you to understand me. I need you to love me. I need validation from the eyes and pageviews and downloads and listens and retweets and reblogs and Likes and hashtags and blog posts that show me to the world for who I want to be seen as.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be conscious of when I am in another person's dream. Like, if I killed someone in another person's dream, then in my real life I'd carry around that knowledge, that guilt. I am a murderer in your eyes. How awful, to not be able to tell that person, en medias dream, "No, you don't understand! That's not me! That's not who I am!"
If there is anything I can say to end this open letter to you, Open Letters, it's that this day and age, we are all our own Public Relations Managers, and we keep nothing "private." Except, of course, for all the things I am not saying in this letter. I mention others' dreams and my appearance in them. I will not mention my own.
I would like to write an open letter to open letters, but I have found I do not have anything to say, except that I appreciate the opportunity it provides to showcase openly how open and transparent I am about my process, as a human being and an artist, which of course can hide all the shadowy other reasons I am seeking attention by posting an open letter in the first place.
Writing an open letter is, in fact, much like shutting down the government, one does it for its own sake. One declares openly that one is a writer of open letters by writing an open letter, and ipso facto, mission accomplished. You don't even need to read this letter to know that I am a writer of open letters, and must be incredibly confident, smart, sexy, and artistic, to write my letters so openly.
This is something we all desire, sure. I write so you will read. I need you to understand me. I need you to love me. I need validation from the eyes and pageviews and downloads and listens and retweets and reblogs and Likes and hashtags and blog posts that show me to the world for who I want to be seen as.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be conscious of when I am in another person's dream. Like, if I killed someone in another person's dream, then in my real life I'd carry around that knowledge, that guilt. I am a murderer in your eyes. How awful, to not be able to tell that person, en medias dream, "No, you don't understand! That's not me! That's not who I am!"
If there is anything I can say to end this open letter to you, Open Letters, it's that this day and age, we are all our own Public Relations Managers, and we keep nothing "private." Except, of course, for all the things I am not saying in this letter. I mention others' dreams and my appearance in them. I will not mention my own.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Five Paragraphs At A Time
This isn't going to be anything. I mean, it's going to be pretty much whatever comes to my head first, because what I've noticed with myself is that I tend to stop most, if not all, of what I think from coming out into the world for fear of it being rejected.
This is what happens when you perpetually doubt yourself. You play crystal ball strategist, you think you know the cards that are coming before the flip. You rely on your intuition, solely, to decide whether you should take any particular risk, stick your neck out at any particular angle.
Malcolm Gladwell says in order to overcome writer's block you need to break the expectation of writing perfect prose, and simply write a few paragraphs a day. He said four, but I like to be ambitious and like odd numbers better. I will likely arbitrarily edit these sentences so they appear as five paragraphs. If I haven't done this when you're reading, I apologize for wasting your eyesight.
Fear, I think we've all heard and hardly internalized, is the only thing to be feared itself, but I have to admit it's Shame that really gets me crumbling. Shame is a kind of fear, I suppose, but it's not private, like anxiety can be. It's not secret. It's wrapped up entirely in others, in your perception of their perceptions.
Right now I'm a little ashamed to admit (though hardly too ashamed to post on a blog), but I'm pretty lost. I don't know what to do next, for my career, for my art, for my life. I have no specific reason to be ashamed, of course, I am with someone I truly love, I live in a great place, I work hard at a hard job that pays me well for my hard work. But I want to make something. I want to be an artist. And I am blocked, right now, and five paragraphs at a time, in spite of all fears, I'll attempt to change that.
This is what happens when you perpetually doubt yourself. You play crystal ball strategist, you think you know the cards that are coming before the flip. You rely on your intuition, solely, to decide whether you should take any particular risk, stick your neck out at any particular angle.
Malcolm Gladwell says in order to overcome writer's block you need to break the expectation of writing perfect prose, and simply write a few paragraphs a day. He said four, but I like to be ambitious and like odd numbers better. I will likely arbitrarily edit these sentences so they appear as five paragraphs. If I haven't done this when you're reading, I apologize for wasting your eyesight.
Fear, I think we've all heard and hardly internalized, is the only thing to be feared itself, but I have to admit it's Shame that really gets me crumbling. Shame is a kind of fear, I suppose, but it's not private, like anxiety can be. It's not secret. It's wrapped up entirely in others, in your perception of their perceptions.
Right now I'm a little ashamed to admit (though hardly too ashamed to post on a blog), but I'm pretty lost. I don't know what to do next, for my career, for my art, for my life. I have no specific reason to be ashamed, of course, I am with someone I truly love, I live in a great place, I work hard at a hard job that pays me well for my hard work. But I want to make something. I want to be an artist. And I am blocked, right now, and five paragraphs at a time, in spite of all fears, I'll attempt to change that.
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