relating to art, my so-called life...

last week in the av club's relating to art q&a i hastily posted things which, predictably, made a couple of people angry. i want to elaborate on what i wrote and make my point(s) a little clearer. certainly not with any hope of making those i angered any less irate though, because those idiots are a lost cause.

1... i never find art relatable. that probably came off as pseudo-nitzschean "i'm better than everyone else" boasting and i (sort of) understand why a blunt statement like that might rub someone the wrong way, so i want to add this: for me, art is generally an escape from the world as i know and experience it (don't misinterpret that as meaning my life is terrible, as i have lived a fairly comfortable existence and things are better than okay lately after a borderline disastrous six months in 2011). books and movies may deal with situations i've been in, but they don't come close to the way it felt when i was in them and i never expect them to. no paragraph in a book/shot in a movie can capture the intensity of what it feels like to have sex with someone you love for the first time or what it's like to be in a fistfight or what it's like to watch someone you care about as they're dying. a writer's approximation of what it is to be in love or afraid or lonely or sad or angry or happy can never be anything more than after-the-fact descriptions of those feelings. that can be beautiful and affecting in its own way, but it's NOT the real thing. i've always been acutely conscious of the difference/distance between art and real life and always will be, i think. attempts to replicate feelings and experiences in art are, for me, too far removed from the immediacy of actual existence to be anything more than a simulacrum, and a faulty one at that. deeply felt emotions are completely outside anything that can really be represented in words. have you ever read a passage in a book that conveyed the exact thing you felt the first time you were with a man or woman you truly loved? i honestly never have. because those words don't exist. and then there's my sense that art always limns human experience with the gift of hindsight. crazy, blundering, thoughtless, headlong rushes into disaster or ecstasy suddenly become explicable thanks to the magic of time, distance and language. again, i acknowledge that that has a value. but it most emphatically has nothing to do with life as i've lived it.

lastly, much of what i've come to love in books and movies comes from exposure to perspectives that i find completely unrelatable. i could never  enjoy movies featuring over-entitled middle class douchebags like the characters that writer-director nicole holofcener (walking and talking, lovely and amazing, friends with money, please give) favors if relatability was as much of a deal-breaker for me as it seems to be for a lot of people at the av club. that's a huge element of what's great about art, IMHO: it's a way of seeing the world through viewpoints that are alien to me. i have never read a book or seen a movie and said afterwards "that was ME on those pages/on that screen", and i don't ever expect to. relatability just isn't what i'm looking for in art.

hopefully these (clumsily expressed, i admit) ideas offer a slightly better explanation of what it is i feel on this particular subject. art definitely has an important function and value in my life, but relatability is not part of the equation for me.

2... i also did some carping about the old tv show my so-called life and i want to add this: i never felt that angela chase's big existential crisis on the show mattered or should even be taken especially seriously. big fucking deal that she felt conflicted about deserting her friends to run with a more popular crowd. a character who makes that particular decision deserves the utmost contempt imaginable no matter how much manufactured regret and/or shame the creators of that character have her experience about making that decision. attempting to legitimize weak (or destructive and bad) thinking by ascribing guilt or regret to the character who engages in it is often nothing more than a lame trick to con an audience into somehow accepting those weak (or destructive and bad) ideas as having (at least some) validity. more often than not, they don't. few people in life transcend the class or social barriers which are generally imposed from birth, but the few who manage to probably spend very little time regretting it when they do. i will admit here that whenever i find myself writing about my so-called life (not all that often, thankfully) i tend to conflate all the characters with angela and talk about wanting to beat them ALL up. honestly, i can't even remember the others now that i think of it (and am pretty sure i only caught a few episodes of the show anyway). one thing i clearly remember though: angela chase and her phony (so-called) dilemma always ticked me the fuck off.

it was probably a mistake for me to post my complaints about my so-called life on a thread started by someone who actually loved the show. if you want to have an ms-cl circle jerk on the av club boards, i promise to stay out of it. although i should add here that i plan to post somewhat less on the av club boards in the future. i'm tired of the sad fuckheads who take things like an evisceration of my so-called life to heart. i don't give a shit how much you liked this or any other tv show, you should not be personally offended if a total stranger posts a negative opinion about it on the internet. this is one of the embarrassing by-products of the "relatability" issue: otherwise intelligent adults who forge such intensely emotional connections with art that they take umbrage when others disparage it. grow up already. jeez.

i reject my so-called life and everything (i think) it represents. if someone wants to point out that my not being able to accept the show's perspective contradicts what i also wrote about how unimportant relatability is to me when it comes to art, then so be it (hey, we all contain multitudes). but there's something wrong if you're the kind of person who can't have this argument without getting angry and upset about it. even if we are on the internet that's no excuse for launching ad-hominem attacks on someone who disagrees with you about a stupid fucking tv show. seriously.

adults should know better...

one of the more depressing things about the internet is the free reign it gives to people's worst instincts, especially men.

there's an interesting article up on the av club site this week about overly distracting actors in movies. naturally, the nerds who congregate there were glad for an opportunity to let off steam about any number of supposedly insufferable performers. as expected, julia roberts came under heavy fire. disclaimer here: i like roberts a lot. whatever constitutes a "movie star", julia roberts has that quality in spades as far as i'm concerned. that doesn't necessarily mean i think she should be universally appealing. but the degree of invective the woman inspires in certain circles amazes me. i may not be the biggest audrey hepburn fan on the planet, yet i don't have trouble being objective and seeing what others might respond to with her. there's precious little of that on the av club site regarding anybody though and the stuff people casually write about roberts is just... weird.


*Rupert Giles

Somehow I totally missed Ocean's Eleven's release, and first caught it on TV, having heard nothing of the casting (I know, I must have been living in a freakin' cave), except Clooney & Pitt. When they waited by the grand stairs for Tess to descend, and the camera slowly panned up from her feet for the reveal, I was dumbstruck. Julia fucking Roberts?!? The ONLY WOMAN IN THE MOVIE, the glamorous prize, the object of studly men's fawning and drooling, and that's who they chose? I actually gasped out loud. Most overrated magazine-cover celebrity in history, with a bizarre giant mouth.

*Everybody here calls me Vicky

I used to find Julia Roberts charming until it became evident that the whole leaving-Keifer-at-the-altar thing wasn't just a product of youthful nerves and that she is in fact a megabitch who thinks the sun shines out of her ass.

I still think she's extraordinarily attractive, especially considering how horsey her features could be when taken separately (see Nancy Kerrigan for an example of those same features NOT working well), but the vulnerable, forehead-veiny thing she does so well can no longer fool me, and I wish people would stop inviting her to awards shows because she cannot shut the fuck up about herself.

how does one get to be an adult and write such craziness with such a disarming lack of self-consciousness? i'm not a particularly big nic cage fan, but other than casually tossing "i wish he'd go the fuck away" into a post where i was discussing him, i can't muster anything resembling the kind of personal animosity these julia roberts haters manage to tap into. cage's recent embarrassing problems with bankruptcy don't matter to me and even if i wanted to have a laugh at his expense, it'd be pretty hollow considering that the guy's comic book collection is worth more than i've earned in my entire life.

the posts above were pretty polite compared to this though:

*Unregistered Asshole #1446387

Julia Roberts was tolerable enough in "Pretty Woman," but after that her "shit don't stink" personna turned me off for good. I didn't care too much for Cameron Diaz back in the day, but the way Roberts' character sabotaged her in "My Best Friend's Wedding" made me like Diaz in that movie much more than her, because I know they wrote Roberts' role to fit her personality. Ashamed to admit, but I almost cheered to her character getting raped by her husband in "Sleeping With The Enemy." And how much more fun do you think "Conspiracy Theory" would have been if Mel Gibson had demanded a BJ from her?

note that homeboy has no problem with using mel "you should get raped by a pack of n*****s" gibson to help make his point about JR. how do adults reach a point where it makes sense to express sentiments like these in public? how do other adults tolerate such things? it's part of what makes the av club such a fascinating place. most of the people who post there are genuinely intelligent, yet many of them see the 'net as nothing more than a vehicle to express feelings otherwise unacceptable in the real world. i felt compelled to answer.

*teadoust

isn't it great that roberts exists though? she gives you an outlet for your rather obvious misogyny. it's amazing that people like you can post offensive tripe like this on a regular basis and not feel embarrassed about it. that's why i find posting here so funny: in the av club court of public opinion, what you wrote is actually acceptable. fucking astonishing. if you had any common sense you'd contact the av club editors and ask them to delete your post for the offensive misogynist garbage it is. if they had an ounce of decency that's what they'd do without your even asking.

nobody will pay much attention to that. the offensive comment won't be deleted. and likely as not, somebody will come along later and call me "teadouche" for posting it.

gwyneth paltrow also comes under fire a lot on the av club boards. bet you didn't know that every day millions of people are FORCED to visit paltrow's lifestyle site "goop" did you? i didn't either, but it must be so because there's no reason for anyone to get upset about anything paltrow does when she isn't making movies, right? ok, if "goop" was devoted to disseminating white supremacist propaganda, or if there was evidence floating around that paltrow spent hours each day physically torturing her children i'd completely understand rejecting her as an actress. but she runs a goofy lifestyle website and says dopey things in interviews? those are deal-breakers for you? get a fucking life already, freak.

*Maliah

Ugh, I haven't been able to stand Gwyneth Paltrow since she was a whiny, self important reporter in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Remember that one? I remember seeing her in an interview saying that she was interested in the part (which was terrible) because it was closer to being an art film than to an action movie. She drives me nuts.

Although so does Katherine Heigle, so perhaps I just hate tall blondes with classically pretty features and annoying voices.

not so bad, right? don't worry, it gets worse.

*Annoying Tall Blondes? Big Surprise...

They both confuse my penis, because it would like to penetrate them both, but somehow my brain is capable of overpowering this natural urge by reminding me of the stupid shit that comes out of their mouths in real life.

Think somebody said it best on this site a while ago: if nothing intelligent is going to come OUT of your mouth...

Great tits, though. I'll give her that.

haha! i get it, bro! stuff a COCK in that mouth! FUCK YEAH!

crap like that is why so many people have an idea that the majority of men who post things on the internet are frustrated perpetual loners with serious issues regarding women and intimacy.

oh, i have referred to nic cage as "a fucking idiot" several times on the av club boards. however, cage is a man and i'm not being entirely serious when i call him names anyway, as opposed to the rather obvious hostility some of these people are expressing towards women. i understand that some may see me as a hypocrite though.

racism and empathy

the screen shot below is from the user account page for a fellow who used to post on the av club under the name mantan moreland. if you like old movies, you probably know mantan moreland, a black actor from the 30s and 40s who worked in a style that has become extremely embarrassing to blacks nowadays. a shuffling, eye-popping, mumbling, malapropism-spouting racist cliche of the most egregious kind. why would anybody want to post under that name, you might ask? mostly to engage in the kind of snarky, pseudo-racist "look how UN-pc i can be!" bullshit that occasionally soils the av club comments boards. blacks seem to be the most frequent targets of this stuff. and though common sense would dictate that this sort of "humor" would likely offend many blacks, it persists. mantan's posts generally consisted of half-assed jokes written in a loose approximation of the original mantan moreland's speech patterns. yes, in 2010 this is what some idiot thought would be funny. and the big surprise is that most of my fellow av clubbers didn't find him offensive. certainly very few registered any open complaints on the site.

personally, i don't have a problem with someone posting stuff that is openly racist, because it can be called out for what it is. but the mantan moreland character bothers me. it strikes me as a deliberate attempt to smear racist content across public boards in a way that seems cowardly and almost passive-aggressive. i don't understand the compulsion that makes some whites engage in this kind of behavior and why so many on the av club site are so blase about it. i attempted to address this by creating a character myself, stepin fetchit. i followed mantan moreland around for a while, adding on to his posts with some fairly heavy-handed commentary and criticism, written in a deliberately grating approximation of the original stepin fetchit's speech patterns. surprisingly, i received more complaints for doing this than mantan moreland ever received for his schtick. a few posters suggested that whatever the intent, "mantan" and "stepit" were both simply boring. one rather jaded person came right out and said that explicit racism was no problem in their opinion, we just weren't funny. for lots of post-pc people, that's an important point, i guess. it's okay to be obnoxious as long as one isn't boringly sincere about anything like racism, because the av club is a pop culture site and nobody's interested in tiresome discussions of racism and morality. many take the position that those issues can't be settled, so there's no purpose in arguing them. many of these same people are more than happy to engage in long arguments about which quentin tarantino movie is the best. they rarely convince anyone else, but it'd be a waste of time trying to make them see the futility of their actions, because the only topics worth arguing are the ones they select.

anyway. i don't know exactly what effect i expected my stepin fetchit posts to have but after about a day and a half, i ran out of things to say in that guise and my nemesis was still going strong. i decided to switch tactics, based on two things: a letter i'd received from an av club staffer to whom i'd made a complaint about mantan moreland and a short article that appeared on the site which linked to a profile in esquire magazine about film critic roger ebert and the disfigurement he has suffered as a result of his ongoing battle with cancer. the letter i received from staff in regards to mantan moreland was pretty straightforward. they said that they would not be deleting mantan moreland's account, because he was offensive but seemed harmless. i thought about this for a bit and then came up with an idea. the ebert article made it fairly clear that most of the av club staff revere the man. i decided that the best point i could possibly make would be to show the staff something they would find offensive and perhaps they might come to understand that "offensive but harmless" is something of a contradiction in terms. drop dead jawless, a play on the phrase "drop dead gorgeous" and featuring a picture of roger ebert's cancer ravaged face for an id, is what i came up with...

and the account was deleted within a day of its activation. less than 30 comments were posted under this name before some offended staffer pulled the plug. meanwhile, mantan moreland was busily plugging along, having posted well over 100 comments after less than a week and half's activity. what's even funnier is that for the most part, other av clubbers either refused to acknowledge drop dead jawless or they informed me in no uncertain terms that "the joke" was in poor taste. especially dispiriting for me was the non-response of one of my favorite commenters on the site, the intelligent and extremely prolific lone audience of the apocalypse. he ignored drop dead jawless even when i directly addressed him, yet on multiple occasions in the past he'd played along with the mantan moreland gag. i guess he's another of those who thinks that if he isn't offended by something, it simply isn't offensive. in other words: he's a douchebag.

i hadn't yet run out of things to say as drop dead jawless, so i opened another account, this time as drop dead jawless again and immediately posted a direct question to staffer scott tobias as to why my account had been deleted while mantan moreland was still going strong like some damned racist energizer bunny. i got "no idea, wasn't my call" in response. but within an hour of this exchange, drop dead jawless again was deleted by staff. then mantan moreland's account was finally removed as well.

i don't feel as though i've won anything here. i like the av club site articles and a lot of the people who comment on them are smart and funny. but many of them seem to be wholly lacking in empathy for anyone or anything outside their own circle of recognition. maybe they have that peculiar human problem whereby generalized tragedy doesn't affect them, whereas when things are personalized, they respond. but the idea of some unknown number of blacks (and it doesn't seem as though many of them visit the site) being offended just didn't register as being comparable with how personally offended many of them felt when they saw me "making fun" of poor roger ebert's travails. the fallout in the thread above was about what i expected in the long run; one poster who agreed with me but had severe reservations about the way i made my point and a lot of posts that said i was wrong and/or stupid, plus a staffer (not mr. tobias) who suggested that calling attention to an ass by being a bigger ass seemed counter-productive. the older i get, the less i understand people. i made a point in an extremely ugly way after other methods failed. nobody seemed to get the idea that the anger they felt at my seeming contempt towards roger ebert might be exactly what a black person would feel if they saw a mantan moreland post on the site.

many whites who post on the av club site come off as almost enraged by the idea of "political correctness". they see it as an intrusion on their right to free speech and a coddling of minorities which serves no purpose. but if so much "free speech" is spent attacking powerless groups, what's the value? av clubbers spend an inordinate amount of time making jokes at the expense of women and gays and blacks. what's the real agenda there? this isn't about free speech on the internet, it's about an angry majority that doesn't like the constraints imposed by civil society. maybe "political correctness" does go too far, but returning to the "good old days" when whites could (and did) say whatever they wanted about already marginalized groups doesn't strike me as the solution and the never-ending urge of some whites to go back to that time needs to be examined. things are inarguably better (if not perfect) for minorities now. is that what's troubling many whites? i have no answers, really. i wish i did, because these questions scare the fuck out of me sometimes.

ooh, i hate it when people like things that I don't like!

tomorrow the second of the 'twilight' films will be released. it's called 'new moon' and i get the feeling that for every person looking forward to it, there are probably just as many people engaging in some form of pre-emptive vomiting over the film. i didn't see 'twilight', as it got mostly bad reviews. and i likely won't see 'new moon' either, even if it gets good reviews. mostly because i don't give much of a shit about 'twilight'.

i visit the onion av club site a lot. and this week as part of their jokingly titled "i watched this on purpose" series, the subject was the first 'twilight' film. the result was about as snarky as you would imagine, though the writer, an adult male, deserves some credit for realizing that 'twilight' wasn't exactly conceived for his demographic. unfortunately, the legion of numbskulls who posted on the comment boards to pillory anybody stupid enough to actually enjoy 'twilight' were unable to assume even that small amount of empathy. when "this sucks and aren't we all so clever for not liking it" circle-jerks break out, i get depressed. why do intelligent people need that sort of thing? yup, 'twilight', a bizarre modern gothic/vampire romance series cooked up by a mormon writer named stephanie meyer, sounds ridiculous. so what? why does any ostensibly secure adult care what other people enjoy?

because looking down on others is one of the best ways to feel better about yourself. what's more ego-boosting than pinpointing an entire subset of the population and defining them as being clearly and fundamentally stupider than you? and if you can find a group of like-minded smarties whose points of view are congruent with yours, so much the better! it'd be saddening to encounter this stuff if these people weren't so unbearably smug about themselves. as it is, i have considerably more contempt for people who hate (supposedly) stupid crap than i do for the (supposedly) contemptible masses who lap it up.

more often than not, crazes like 'twilight' are ephemeral in society. of course, the books may have a lasting entertainment value for teenagers reading them today but 'twilight' isn't likely to affect how someone chooses to live their life in any significant way. most teenage girls will outgrow it. and the small number who don't leave it behind as they move into adulthood are likely the sort of needy types who, one way or another, would have found something else to lose themselves in anyhow. the specifics of what these people like are, by and large, unimportant.

what's comical about film nerds laughing at the stupidity of 'twilight' fans is obvious: they're no better. the only difference (which is ultimately negligible) is this: many film nerds believe the things they obsess over are genuinely worth obsessing over. it simply boils down to a matter of whether or not one has good taste! the nerve of other people, getting wrapped up in something that film nerds don't approve of! it's a false dichotomy but you can't point that out to hyper-critical film nerds, because they either believe that it's ok to be obsessive about certain things (as long as those things are, in their opinion, worth obsessing over), or they simply won't acknowledge on any level that they are just as obsessive themselves.

the comment boards of sites that attract film nerds are hilarious and pathetic. these people are not paid film critics, yet they consider themselves obligated to see nearly every film that gets released. and in taking on film critic-like duties, they have somehow assumed a stunning sense of outrage regarding which films fail or succeed. it's truly bizarre to read comments from people who honestly think that michael bay's continuing success is a gross injustice, as opposed to, let's say homelessness, which they don't seem to give a shit about. of course, it's a lot easier to fulminate about something trivial than it is about something important. because yowling over the undeserving fame of some douchebag director doesn't leave one in the awkward position of having to back up the complaint with real action. though doing so would mean that you couldn't gripe about how bad it is, you could simply avoid the guy's next movie! complain about the problem of homelessness and you've got a problem yourself: there are things you could do to help, so why the fuck aren't you doing them?

film critics have a tough job, as i see it. they have to watch a lot of crappy movies and then, unlike the rest of us, feign at least some degree of objectivity and review what they've endured. but like most of us, they aren't really objective. as we progress through life, our experiences (and the things we learn from them) create a personalized sort of prism through which we view everything. the problem is that few of us realize that our own responses are rarely, if ever, objective in any true sense. that's why film reviews should generally be taken with a grain of salt. ideally, one could take the opinions of film nerds who get so much pleasure out of hating things the same way. but there is something about the braying, strident obnoxiousness of these people that i find repellently fascinating. the surety with which they hand down their pronunciations on everyone else's unworthiness is astonishing.

yup, people who line up to see the new 'twilight' movie are dopes, but most of them are teenagers, a group predisposed to engage in dopey activities. that's more than can be said for adults who actually waste hours of their lives obsessing over what other people like and getting angry about it.

by the way, werner herzog's remake of 'bad lieutenant' (starring that atrocious ham, nicholas cage) also opens tomorrow. it looks like a deliberately campy, steaming pile of shit. anybody who goes to see it is an idiot. but i'm not being judgmental when i say that, merely making an objective observation. haha.

TGIF (thank god it failed!) on monday

the hipsters who hate 'juno'-scribe diablo cody can exhale today, as it's official: her new movie is a flop. 'jennifer's body', the horror-comedy-whatever starring inexplicably famous mannequin megan fox, has done poorly in the weekend box-office sweepstakes. JB grossed about one-fifth as much as this weekend's number one film, the CGI-animated 'cloudy with a chance of meatballs'.

as an older person who has outgrown such nonsense, i really don't get the "ooh, i hope she fails/wish she'd drop dead already" boner that a lot of people seem to have for diablo cody. i saw 'juno' and thought it was pleasant. the film won cody an oscar for best screenplay, which really seems to trouble people who should know better. when did the academy award go from being a big fucking joke to most of us (meaning most of us who aren't members of the academy) to something that actually matters in the real world? nicholas cage won for best actor a few years ago. clearly the oscar is a wholly meaningless award if it can be given to nic cage unironically.

diablo cody stands accused of being a bad writer and truly annoying person. after gaining fame for 'juno', cody started blogging, giving interviews, writing the 'jennifer's body' screenplay and generally refusing to die from that combination of late-stage cancer and wounds sustained in a fire that those who hate her think would be fair punishment for their having to sit through all 105 minutes of 'juno'. it's strange the way lifeless nerds react to things that they don't like becoming successful. you'd think there was a branch of the government out there devoted to making sure that people are forced to keep up with everything diablo cody does. there are fools out there who cite chapter and verse of cody's every supposedly offensive utterance when they make their case that she deserves to die a bloody and painful death. yeesh. get a life already.

i'm sure there'll be plenty of schadenfraud over various comments boards tomorrow and it'll be even more ugly and pathetic than usual. for some reason the mostly male nerds who congregate at certain sites seem to hate a lot famous women with true vehemence. real hatred for celebrities: another concept whose value eludes me. i understand where it comes from though and especially why it tends to be disproportionately directed at women by certain types of guys. celebrities are, no matter what incensed diablo cody haters would have you believe, fundamentally harmless. there's nothing the average cowardly douchebag likes more than a target who can't fight back.

the av club comments boards (for one example) are positively swimming with males who can't mention a woman without rhapsodizing about how much they'd like to fuck her. if you really want a laugh, post a comment in the middle of one of these "i want to bone this actress" threads suggesting that there's something juvenile and obnoxious about that kind of behavior when it's conducted in public. i've done it a few times and the responses have been hilarious in their relentless stupidity. apparently, i must be either gay or neutered to say such civilized things. keep in mind that most av club posters are educated types who consider themselves to be much higher on the food chain than joe six-pack, yet they employ similar logic to old joe when it comes to male imperatives like boorishly reducing all women to potential fucks. a lot of the virulent disrespect for women that's expressed on the site is an ugly combination of fear and the casual misogyny that lurks beneath the surface with many men. it's hard not to conclude that lots of av club posters just don't like women once you've visited the site a few times.

hey nerd! guess what? once your unseemly joy over the failure of 'jennifer's body' wears off after a couple of days, you'll find yourself red-faced and fulminating about some other undeserving celebrity who in your far-from-humble opinion seems to epitomize everything that's wrong with the world. wanna know why? because you're a big fucking loser, that's why.