I Have Been a Fangirl, and You, Avatar Marketing Campaign, Do Not Understand Fangirls (And Boys)

Hero Complex asks a good question about the effort to create a rabidly devoted Avatar fan nation, in part by having folks register for a community and get to adopt seedlings they can call hometrees.  Or something:

I'd be interested to hear what Hero Complex readers think of the quality of the offerings on the website but more than that what your view is on the idea of creating something akin to an "Avatar" community. "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" have each became the axis of vast tribal followings (with some factions treating it as a quasi-religion) but other "visionary" sci-fi franchises ("The Matrix" springs to mind) live on as great moments in film but don't become pop-culture movements. "Avatar" certainly stirred some obsessive behavior but, a decade from now, will there be conventions dedicated to Cameron's universe?  A lot depends on that alien-oceans sequel, I'd say...

My own personal guess would be that pushing that hard is probably not the way to develop this.  Obviously, the Star Wars  universe has continued to expand*, but part of the appeal of the fan community was DYI: you had to go to cons, you had to make your costumes, etc.  Those projects and those events brought people together--you got some place, or started talking to someone, and realized that you weren't alone in your intense feelings about this piece of art that other folks thought you were weird for liking, and that because of that, you weren't alone in at least part of your world view.  For me, that moment came when I met another kid who liked Star Wars as much as I did on the last day of a middle school summer writing camp, and we were fan fic pen pals for a while.  (If your'e out there, dude, and reading this, you mattered a lot to me.  Be in touch.)  But what mattered is the work.


Hooking people to sponsor a tree they won't even get to see grow, much less that they'll have to keep alive by working with someone else, isn't going to produce that effect.  Fandom's about the work at its most basic level.  It's about the communities you create together and what you learn about yourself along the way.  You can't generate that through a marketing campaign.  Particularly when you've got, uh, a sort of thinly-sourced universe to begin with.


*Guys, there are a couple of extended universe posts in the draft phases, among them, meditations on the detente between the Empire and the Republic, and questions about whether the Force is feminist.  In between looking for new jobs, and then starting the current one, I have been fried on longer projects for here.  For which I apologize.  

Caught at the Border

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy DerekFleener.

If you haven't read Lynn Hirschberg's savage, dead-on takedown of M.I.A. (as a person, not as an artist, she is frank about her musical talent), it's a fantastic way to spend an hour or so this weekend. I started reading it on my phone on the way back from a happy hour and quite literally couldn't stop.  It's completely excellent, possibly the definitive piece about artists who want to be political gamechangers without doing any political work.

I'll admit to having been predisposed towards it.  I like M.I.A.'s music, and I have her two previous albums.  But I've always found her fairly supremely grating, in particular when she went after Lady Gaga a while back.  Both women make popular music.  Both have issues in which they're invested: M.I.A. cares about Sri Lanka, while Lady Gaga is interested in gay and trans rights and feminism.  But their primary work is essentially the same job, even if performed very differently.  M.I.A. is undoubtedly musically more sophisticated than Gaga, but she's also in the midst of her third album, so full-on comparisons don't seem warranted yet.  For M.I.A. to see herself as wildly different than Gaga seemed sublimely un-self-aware.

What Hirschberg does brilliantly is not only reveal the contradictions in M.I.A.'s stated politics and her lifestyle, whether it's the conditions of her son's birth (she initially said she wanted a natural home birth because her pain was nothing compared to what happened to people who gave makeshift birth in concentration camps, but delivered in a private, very exclusive ward) or the way she treats actual economic struggle when she encounters it (she goes to a photoshoot with a no-name photographer who works out of his home in millions of dollars of jewelry).  Instead, she goes after M.I.A.'s political impact, and talks to experts who say her advocacy has actually been detrimental to the situation in the country she claims to love so much, and that her uninformed analysis has lead people astray.  Lady Gaga's decision not to address rumors she was a hermaphrodite may not have been helpful to trans people, but she's mostly done a lot of work to raise money for HIV and gay-oriented charities.  Hard to find a lot of fault there.  But Hirschberg found something assessable, she's taken M.I.A. at her word, and found her wanting by that standard.  It's hard to take more damning action than to hang someone by their own rope, and with their own assistance tying the blindfold.

Funny Lady

I'm not going to lie: this is what I wish The September Issue had been like--scathing, revealing, insecure, honest, embarrassing, and ultimately, compelling:



The near-Highlander-like situation of female standups, her loss of ground to Kathy Griffin, that desire to work, to be successful, instead of just retiring (I do not understand the appeal of retirement at all. I assume I will someday.), the grotesque side of beauty culture, all of it's fascinating to me.  That, plus the cost of cultural saturation. The September Issue looked gorgeous, but I wish it had all been about Grace Coddington.  That woman, I think, might have actually had something to say, unlike her boss.

The Absurdity Market

So, I've had this conversation back and forth on Twitter with the lovely lindywasp a couple of times, but I'll say it here: I really do believe Lady Gaga's at a point in her artistic project where the songs are just a vehicle to see how much ridiculous the popular culture will absorb.  I think the thing that perhaps codified that for me was the "Bad Romance" performance in this week's Glee, the whole episode of which I haven't watched yet, but which is pretty enjoyable on its own.

The video made me realize why Lady Gaga's so popular, and why she's been seized on as a symbol: she represents something absurd and nonsensical that people can embrace, love, and refuse to explain, without suffering any consequences.  I think rebellion is often about a desire not to be understandable, legible, and easily dissectible, it's about wanting to build an inner logic that no one can penetrate or refute.  It probably doesn't make sense for say, a 16-year-old who gets pregnant to keep the baby with the intent to raise it.  It also doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense to go crazy over a girl who wears lobsters made out of glasses.  But unless that going crazy gets carried to some damaging extremes, there isn't anything remotely harmful about digging on those lobster glasses.  There are consequences, to say, drinking excessively, or getting pregnant accidentally.

And there I think lies a perfect market: Lady Gaga wants to see what all she can put out there into the market.  There is a real teenage hunger for this kind of absurdity without risk-taking.  And everyone thinks the product is the pop music.

Can Kanye Croon?

Vulture wonders what's going on with Kanye West's new album in the wake of 808s and Heartbreak:

Jones claims the album sounds like “real hip-hop,” but without Kanye’s staple soul samples. Kanye has relied on prominent samples less and less over the years — is he now ditching them altogether? Will it sound more like the stuff he did on Blueprint 3, or the new Drake song he produced? Will the whole thing maybe be just vocals, like that one Björk album? Is Rick Ross doing all the beats? Yeah, we have no idea.

I think they're ignoring the logical option: that he'll make like B.o.B. and sing some of the choruses in lieu of, at least, lyrical samples.  I will, for the record, note that I totally wouldn't mind that.  I like "Heartless" from 808s a fair bit, and particularly enjoyed the aesthetic of the video.

Breaking The News

Can I say how ridiculously glad I am to see that someone has remembered that Harrison Ford has a sense of humor? It's like watching Han Solo do broadcast news on a bad day, but older:



I cannot say often enough how much I enjoy intergenerational comedy. Serious stuff between old people and young people often gets ridiculously maudlin, and the trailer for Morning Glory definitely veers that way in the long voiceover.  But one of the most profound things I've learned in my working life is that friendships with older people are not just possible, but invaluable; when you build your chosen family away from home, it's important that you have not just friends-as-siblings but friends-as-parents-and-grand-parents-and-wacky-uncles.

Plus, Rachel McAdams asking Patrick Wilson, mid-hookup, "how reliable is your alarm clock?" is hilarious and entirely convincing. Not that she isn't in other scenes.  One thing I'll be really interested to see if Morning Glory addresses is whether the news business, specifically, is a career worth throwing away your personal life for.  I've been waiting a while for the poignant "journalism is dying" movie, and while I don't really think it'll be it, it will be interesting to see if it at least acknowledges the deep and abiding difficulties of the industry.

But all of those concerns aside, it's good to know there's going to be a wacky-local-news-team movie out there to fill the hole in my heart left by the failure to get Anchorman 2 off the ground.

From Mayhem to Murder

I can see why Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson would be attracted to a super-intense, dark Michael Winterbottom movie (for me, the attraction would be hanging out with Ned Beatty, but then, I'm weird):



But I also hope people don't forget that Affleck is funny. I'd hate to see him disappear and just play twisted dudes all the time.  His and Scott Caan's subplot organizing Mexican factory workers in Ocean's 13 could have been weird and awkward and instead was quite well-balanced.

Getting Their Wings

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy alicepopkorn.

So, once upon a time, my grandfather caught an episode of a television show, found it hilarious, and called my father to tell him he'd found this uproarious parody about a bunch of dumb girl detectives.  My father told him the show wasn't tongue in cheek.  My grandfather insisted that couldn't possibly be so.  But the next day, he called back, crestfallen, and told my father that he'd been right.  That show was the original Charlie's Angels.

Now, the show is on the verge of a comeback, produced by Drew Barrymore, who of course starred in the movie remakes.  And while the concept is as ludicrous today as it was 34 years ago, I actually think that a tweaked remake of the show is worthwhile.  Of course, there are female action heroines on television, but often on Leverage or  Burn Notice, they're someone's girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, or like on the upcoming Covert Affairs, going into action mode to escape a bad relationship.  The Angels may work for a faceless dude and a bumbling male handler, but they're in it for fun.  In the recent movie remakes, their friendship was the highest value in the movie, something I think happens all too rarely in popular culture, where women far more often undermine each other.  They're extremely competent, they're aggressive and action-oriented, but they don't need to be acting out of extreme psychosis or trauma to act that way.

The setup may be absurd, but that doesn't mean that all the principles the show is built on are worthless.  If they keep it light, and fun, it could actually end up being more worthwhile than a lot of self-serious stuff that's on the air already.

Few Things Depress Me More Than Ignorance of Dumas

Dear Perez Hilton,

The Duke of Buckingham is not the arch-nemesis to Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan. That would be the Comte de Rochefort.  That said, Orlando Bloom is a relatively decently choice to play a guy who is sufficiently blinded by love and too weak to walk away from it that he endangers entire governments.  I've never particularly bought Bloom as an action hero--he's far too sensitive, and there's a reason why it made sense for Elizabeth Swann to become the Pirate King.  But as a good, failed man, Bloom might actually find more depth, and more roles that suit his particular talents.  And as for you, Perez, stick to Lindsay Lohan. Alexandre Dumas was too big, on life and the page, to fit on your blog.

Love,
Alyssa

Helen Mirren, Hookers, and Boxing

It cannot be said often enough: Helen Mirren is the kind of woman every mother should teach her daughter to aspire to be when she grows up.  And what I adore about her as an actress is the fact that the qualities of her that are rarest, the most difficult to possesses and important to pursue come out when she takes a role that is patently ridiculous and makes it richly emotionally plausible.  Take, for example, her upcoming movie with Joe Pesci, Love Ranch:



The story's real, but it's still pretty unusual: older couple fights for the legalization of their brothel and prostitution in general while she falls for a much younger, exceedingly sexy Latin American boxer.  The contradictions Mirren has to embody are significant: she has to defend the dignity of women she is selling, and who regularly enable her husband to break his marriage vows.  She has to start out questioning her desirability and experience a plausible sexual renewal.  She has lines like this one: "Selling love will make you rich.  That's what my mother taught me." And when she goes to bed with that gorgeous, vital younger man, she needs to make the audience feel neither squeamishness or implausibility.  I don't know that I can think of another actress who could do it.  Maybe Susan Sarandon--I'd love to see her have a role as vital as Annie Savoy at her present age.  But for now, Mirren is the champ.  I cannot wait to see this.

The Best Intentions

Well, a full trailer for Easy A is out, and it's almost as completely charming as I'd hoped:



The setup is unusual, without being implausibly quirky--Emma Stone agrees to help her gay friend who is being bullied fake losing his virginity at a party.  His social status gets improved immediately, but word gets out about her role--and other guys want her to help.  She gets branded a tart by the girls in school, but rather than being particularly ashamed, she embraces it.  In other words, a teenage heroine who is sure enough of herself to manipulate, even revel in, the misinterpretations people have about her.

The adult cast is quite fine as well.  The one fly in the ointment for me is Amanda Bynes, who is far too sweet and funny an actress (and a pretty decent singer, too) to get stuck doing a mediocre impersonation of a terrific Mandy Moore performance (speaking of which, I wish we could get more of her, Eva Amurri, and Macaulay Culkin operating at the same velocity they were in that movie).  I fear she's getting more and more generic, when she had the promise to be a real original.  Unless there's much more to her than shows up in this trailer, Easy A won't set her back on the right track.

Humanizing Outsourcing?

I'm trying to figure out how I feel about Outsourced, NBC's new sitcom about an American employee sent to run an Indian call center, that's the reason Parks & Recreation is being held until mid-season.  On the one hand, I really do worry about how the Indian characters are going to be portrayed, and jokes about how foreign food is so crazy and will poison otherwise sophisticated Americans are just exhaustingly tired:



On the other hand, it appears that the show does a fair amount of work to develop believable characters out of what could be otherwise indistinguishable brown faces.  The girl who is super-quiet isn't necessarily a submissive Indian daughter: she's just really terminally shy until she finds her voice selling fake vomit over the phone.  The Bro in Translation also seems a promising way to look at how American culture translates, and what aspirations folks pick up from it.  And the hierarchies based on American companies seems like a decent way of playing with both Indian class dynamics and the impact of the call center economy itself.  In other words, the show seems to be as much about the Indian characters as the Americans sent in to work with them, and that seems like a good--and important--thing.

I admit I may feel this way in part because of an epically terrible experience with outsourced customer service.  Back when I was foolish enough to still use Dell computers, I needed to upgrade my memory.  I got the chips, installed the first one fine, but it wasn't clear where to install the second one.  So I called a Dell help line.  After a typically interminable wait, a guy started talking me through removing part of the computer's casing to get to the slot for the second chip.  Except the directions he gave me started cracking the plastic.  I told him that.  His response? To suggest that I get my husband to do it.  I blew my stack, and gave him and his supervisor what may have been slightly obnoxious lectures about cultural sensitivities and the plight of American single women.  A week later, they sent a tech to my house, who told me he'd seen tons of these cases where the wrong instructions had broken people's computers (he was also a hilarious slightly hippieish libertarian, making this a hilarious political potpourri).  I still feel guilty for blowing up at the tech support guys on the phone.  They were wrong to assume I was married and that I couldn't handle the computer on my own, and I was wrong for being obnoxious.  I do think demystifying what I think is probably going to be a fairly permanent relationship (at least until all customer support is complete automated) is a useful project.  And if it can be funny, and humane at the same time, that'll be a good thing.

The Heart of the City

Very smart words from Alex R.:

This is the second or third time I've noticed you refer to the NYC-LA-Miami "triangle" as mainstays for television shows. The first two I get, they're easy.

What I wonder about is Miami. I'll grant you that there are a few mainstream shows set in Miami. Burn Notice, CSI:Miami, Miami Vice, Dexter. However, all of these shows use Miami a simple backdrop without depth that is useful for filming aerial cut scenes and stock reel of expensive cars and women in bikinis. Though your larger point is that we don't get to see much of cities outside this triangle, the truth is that no show has ever really shown us much about Miami. Particularly, not in the way that NYC and LA have received in depth treatments from a number of dramas both in television and film. Miami is the most superficially overexposed city in modern television, but I'm still waiting for a show that is set in something resembling Miami. 

I've never actually been to Miami, so I can't really speak to the true nature of the city.  But I think this is an interesting point.  And to extrapolate, I do wonder about the extent to which shows like the much-mourned Law & Order actually represent New York, even as it was deeply intertwined with the city's arts community and economy.  In a post-Wire world, the standards are higher, of course.  

Love and Laughs

Man, does Drew Barrymore and Justin Long's new romantic comedy look completely delightful:



I understand that not everyone likes Barrymore, but I love her.  And I love that this is a second romantic comedy where she plays someone who is uncompromisingly devoted to her career.  She and Long have tremendous chemistry, which makes sense, given their real-life coupledom.  I don't have exceptionally strong feelings about Long, but I love Charlie Day. I love Jason Sudeikis.  I love Jim Gaffigan, and it makes me happy that he's yet ANOTHER My Boys alum appearing in a good-looking project.  This just has a lot of snap and chemistry (the botched phone sex scene is wonderfully plausible) in addition to the marvelous cast, but more important, perhaps, is what it doesn't have: ludicrous situations, immediately annoying conceits or side characters, or evident and ugly sexism (something that I thought made (500)Days of Summer outright unpleasant instead of just annoying).  That alone would make it worth checking out.  Everything else gives it a chance to be excellent.

Should Smart Directors Go Commercial?

That Fuzzy Bastard has what I think is an extremely fair critique of my excitement over important directors who make big, B-style projects.  He writes:

In my usual capacity of curmudgeon... I'm actually sort of unhappy that so much of Hollywood's output is about "really excellent directors handling big, pulp projects." I think one of the really sad development in current Ain't-It-Cool-ized Hollywood is that once a director establishes him/herself as an important artist, the next step in advancement is... doing a pulpy action movie. It's the takeover of the B-pictures, creating a world where successful Hitchcok would have gotten stuck doing The Creature From The Black Lagoon and North By Northwest would have to be made as an indie movie. David Fincher has done some really smart, interesting films, and I'd like to see him continue to make more thoughtful, adult pieces rather than an F/X flick where a boat fights a squid.

I suppose my response is as follows: 1) I think B-movies and more unconventional narratives can coexist, and I'd be happiest in a world where they got equal billing.  I also think that ultimately they can reinforce each other: if folks get to know David Fincher, for example, through a big, fun, commercial picture, they might be more tempted to give one of his more personal projects a shot.  2) Getting good directors to do large commercial projects gives them a chance to play with their personal style without intense concerns or constraints about whether a project will make money.  And encouraging folks who have highly developed sensibilities to take on big, generic, commercial forms means that those movies will actually end up looking and feeling much more differentiated than they would if they were all directed by Michael Bay.  I totally agree that it would be bad if folks like Fincher abandoned their unique visions to make money.  But I don't think it's tragic if he takes a temporary side trip into something big and fun.

Dancing in the Dark

Oh, man, the video for Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" is just as gorgeous, and just as emotionally precise as I'd hoped it would be:



I like about this something I've liked about a lot of Robyn's videos.  She looks beautiful, of course: she's impeccably, if funkily dressed.  But she's also kind of a mess, from the opening shot of her shaking hands, to her somewhat awkward dancing.  I really appreciate that the video makes clear how alienating and nerve-wracking clubs can be, especially when that acknowledgement is coming from someone who is basically a dance artist with intense, interesting indie tendencies.  One of the reasons I almost never go out dancing is because it's hard to find a good group of people to go out with, and as a somewhat small person, in dark, crowded spaces I often can't see or navigate comfortably or well.  Dancing can be great if the DJ's good, if you're with the right crowd.  But if you're not in a great place emotionally, a club can be a pretty overwhelming physical location.  Robyn's strength is that she can make music that lives in those kinds of contradictions.

This New Video from the Scissor Sisters

Is disappointingly bland.  And the sound's just not as big as they are at their best. That said, Ana Matronic looks stunning:


Scissor Sisters - Fire With Fire

BLAIR | MySpace Video

And Also of David Fincher (By Way of Zodiac)...

As goofy as it is, I really like the idea of him directing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, theoretically his next project after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, even though I would rather see him working on original projects than sticking himself with two remakes in a row..  Guy is very good at making enclosed spaces, even something as prosaic as a basement or a trailer, kind of sublimely creepy, skills I think would serve Fincher very well in making a movie where a lot of the action is contained to a ship or a submarine.  He's also extremely good with the details of historical or semi-alternate universes, so necessary to the plausibility of science fiction.  But mostly I just like the guy, and like the idea of really excellent directors and writers tackling big, pulp projects.  No matter how much I hated the Twilight books, and even though I've refused to see the previous movies, I'll probably end up seeing Bill Condon's Breaking Dawn at some point, just to see how the hell he figures out how to tackle the material, and bring his own Bill Condon-ness to it.  It's the same reason I tuned in to Glee on Tuesday night to see what Joss Whedon did with the setup (the answer: not nearly enough of the stuff that's so ineffably him beyond what AV Club identified as some signature camerawork.).  Not all of these opportunities pan out.  But they're almost always interesting to watch.

And Speaking of The Wire...

Sonja Sohn's back!  In a sort of terrible-looking police-medical examiner drama where she apparently partners with the dude who played the Zodiac killer in Zodiac!



Who it must be said was totally awesomely creepy.  So even though I'm almost totally sure that Body of Proof is sadly, not a show where Kima Greggs finds out her partner is an actual serial killer, as opposed to just a fake one, I am pretty much certain to give it a chance.

Around the Campfire

So, I was looking into the background of  Charlie St. Cloud, and was actually pretty disappointed to find out that it's basically a ghost story where people can come back from the dead.  Not that I had a lot of hopes after watching the trailer:



But I think it'd be a lot better for Zac Efron's career if he played a dude who was genuinely crazy, rather than a sweet, deeply spiritual guy.  Dude's made bank, he's solidified a fan base that will presumably go see him even if he does things that have a bit more depth and complexity, so why not use those riches and powers for good?  There can't be that much that's interesting about always playing a sensitive jock, right?

The Wire May Have Been Good for Idris Elba's Career

But it does not appear to have given him any insight into how to make a remotely interesting-looking music video.  And I have to say, I'm a lot more interested in seeing how his British cop show, Luther, turns out than in the continuation of his rap career:

KING DRIIS - HOLD ON from Pricefilms on Vimeo.

Putting on the Tights

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of moria.

I'm glad that Matt Yglesias has reaffirmed conversations I've had with, among other people, my trainer and Katie recently about the unnecessity of yet another Robin Hood movie.  If you're going to make a historical movie about the period, there are so many fresher stories to tell.  Why not do a Richard the Lionheart feature, rather than casting the guy who a) may have been gay, b) led a Crusade, c) got kidnapped by the Duke of Austria, handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor who was ultimately excommunicated for holding him prisoner, and was ultimately ransomed by his own mother, at enormous cost to his country, as a bit player in Robin Hood movies?  Speaking of said mother, why not do an Eleanor of Aquitaine, who would be a ferociously entertaining character for some marquee actress to rip into and carry off, and whose intelligence, humor, taste, manipulations and weaknesses are far too badass to be contained into a frame narrative about one of her husbands or one of her sons.  Let the Earl of Huntington, or whoever Robin Hood really was, have a rest for a bit. And give some other, perhaps more deserving, folks their cinematic turn.

Regular Girls For The Win

I freely admit that Love Bites, one of the shows NBC is premiering this fall, could be completely terrible:



But guys, look at that cast.  Becki Newton was consistently one of the best things about Ugly Betty.  Jason Lewis was never exactly given a ton to do in the Sex and the City franchise, but I'd like to see him play funny.  And we already know Craig Robinson can pull that off.  But most of all, I'm just thrilled to see Kyle Howard and especially Jordana Spiro, who were so sweet, funny, and relatable on My Boys move onto a network show.  My Boys has always been treated like an afterthought, but when it premiered the summer I entered the working world, it was one of the truest guides I found to what it's like to be a young woman managing a nascent career and a group of friends.  It social interactions were based in believable character patterns and plausible mixups and established humor.  P.J., the main character, wasn't impossibly overdone, but the show didn't try to pretend that she was a troll either, just someone who underdeveloped certain parts of her personality and social skills.  I'm glad she'll get to play spicy here, but I do hope they make her multidimensional.  I think she and Newton could play beautifully off each other.

Sad Sacks and, Uh, Elephants

I really like Allison Janney when she's playing slightly or more-than-slightly cracked, which means  I think there's a substantial chance I'm going to like Mr. Sunshine, about a guy who helps run a stadium and isn't exceptionally happy about it.  Especially if the dialogue is up to this standard all the time:



There's an element of the racial-cluelessness-makes-you-deeply-pathetic vibe that I think Community has mastered in this exchange: "I don't think you should open with 'Yay, black kids!'" "Well, when should I say it?"  And it's got that same confronting-disappointed-ambitious-but-humorously-not-condescendingly edge, too.  Sign me up.  Sign me up for anything like Community really.  But then, you know that.

Post-Political Love Stories

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy yotambientengosuperpoderes.

So, I want to feel good about the fact that gay love stories suddenly seem to be hot in Hollywood.  Ellen Page is going to play a mechanic fighting for eligibility for her police detective partner's benefits in a movie based on a true story already told on film in a documentary.  The Wachowskis have reportedly finished a script about a love story between an American soldier and an Iraqi man that spans the war there.  I do think that movies about gay heroes of history are just as important as movies about folks like Malcolm X (and I would really love an amazing Harriet Tubman movie) or Crystal Lee Sutton.  And I do think movies can play a useful role in dramatizing and humanizing the political struggles gay people are in the midst of.  But I also hope that just as those political struggles, long though they continue to be, will ultimately just be a protracted transitional period, that the time when political narratives are the framework in which gay love stories can be presented is also ultimately just a phase.  It's inevitable that gay families are going to involve particularistic challenges, like the roles of surrogate parents or sperm donors.  But those narratives can also be primarily about families and politics, and I think once we get to a point where a political patina isn't necessary, it'll be a good thing, both because of what it means for where we've gotten to as a society, and for the range of gay love stories Hollywood lets itself tell.

So You Want to Be A Rock'n'Roll Star

Just listen now to what I say. Or, you know, read my piece in The Atlantic on Janelle Monae, in which I have fun with one of my pet ideas: the eroding boundary between hip-hop, pop, and rock.  Among other things:

Brentin hears Toni Morrisson, Mad Max, Prince, and Parliament in The ArchAndroid, but for me, part of the album's beauty is that I heard an entirely different set of triggers in it. "Sir Greendown," a dreamy track from the album's first half could stand in for the arrangement of "Sigh No More, Ladies" in Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. "Come Alive" has both "Thriller's" catchy hooks and the goofiness of "Monster Mash." And "57821" is a tender love song, as lovely and fragile as anything by Simon & Garfunkle, but shot through with the promises of terrible violence and miraculous transformation. 

...

Rap and other popular music forms have always been in conversation. Run-DMC helped introduce hip-hop to rock-oriented audiences through a collaborative remake of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Earlier this year, before he reported to prison, Lil Wayne released a critically panned rock album in an attempt to conquer a second genre. It's become standard for pop songs to include a hip-hop guest verse, and singers like Keri Hilson have even staged conversations between pop, hip-hop and R&B, as she did in "Knock You Down," where she pitted Kanye West and Ne-Yo romantically and stylistically against each other in the quest for her affections.

I really can't say enough about how good the album is.  I'm a Singles Lady.  This is the first contemporary album in quite some time that I think is going to mean a lot to me as a whole.

Everyday Magic

So, it may have been the Cape Cod air, or the fact that I was watching Dancing With the Stars with my grandmother (Is it me, folks, or do both Evan Lysacek and Nicole Scherzinger seem much more appealing on that show than they do in their day jobs?  I'm solidly team Nicole, she's fantastic.) when I heard the song for the first time (I am late to everything), but Michael Bublé's "Haven't Met You Yet" is surprisingly charming.  Plus the video is sort of a perfect example of that English tendency I singled out to make local, ordinary things shine (Bublé's Canadian, so I feel like he's in the ballpark):





I particularly like the dancing pensioners and butcher.  I also feel like even though it's pop and commercial, it's also a totally perfect example of what people love about musicals.  You're somewhere, feeling something out of proportion to the setting, and you just wish folks would sing, or dance, or do something to kick things up a notch.

The Mustache

Following up on her totally awesome blogging here about the nature of fandom, Katie has a piece up at The Atlantic about how a new show, The Good Guys, debuting tonight may hinge on Bradley Whitford's following:

The mustache was immediately dubbed "the pornstache," and West Wing fan forums came alive with declarations that the mustache meant Whitford was no longer the least bit attractive. Did it cover his famous dimples? (No, as it turns out.) Was someone forcing him into this? (No, it was apparently his idea.) And the biggest question of all—could Whitford's fans bring themselves to watch this new show in which he was so definitively not Josh Lyman? I polled a group of self-described Bradley Whitford fans, and almost all of them told me that they would give the show a try. There are holdouts—a fan on Twitter baldly stated "My love for Bradley Whitford is gone until that mustache is." Some plan to watch, but only grudgingly; one tweeted "Not too stoked about The Good Guys, Bradley Whitford's upcoming cop dramedy w/ Colin Hanks. I love this man's talent so I'll give it a try." Even those who are looking forward to the show have some misgivings. I mentioned to one fan that Whitford kisses someone in promo videos for The Good Guys, and she said, "It is clearly not Janel [Moloney, who played Whitford's West Wing romantic interest], so . . . wow, I am going to have to get over that. It may be harder than I think."

I watched a couple of seasons of West Wing in high school, but never quite fell into the ranks of the show's deeply dedicated.  Maybe it was because in college I started doing local political work and the extent to which the show was unashamedly an escapist fantasy grated on me a bit.  I do remember liking the way the show portrayed the characters' social lives and lives out in DC, though, and I think back fondly on the relationship between Whitford and Mary-Louise Parker's characters.


All of that said, I'm definitely excited for The Good Guys, which hits a number of my television sweet spots: set outside the LA-New York-Miami triangle, an unusual twist on the procedural (the Times says the show is part of the genre's mannerist phase, and I basically agree), and Colin Hanks, who I'm intrigued by.  Dude got acted out of the water by Anna Faris in The House Bunny, but I think if he works with some good actors, he could be something.  There's a market for restraint.  We shall see.

Run With the Dogs Tonight, In Suburbia

As funny as this Onion article is, how long do you think someone decides to do another premium cable show about the horrors of the suburbs, with an anthropological and reportorial twist:

"As a writer, my mission is to tell a story that makes viewers think about how conditions in American cities are created," Simon told reporters. "We can't just turn our back on the staggering levels of happiness occurring in a place like Wilmette and say, 'Well, that's not my life.' We have to confront this tranquility head-on and shine a light on the institutions that are responsible for it."

Added Simon, "I want this show to be an unflinching dissection of how the system has in no way failed the people of this town."

...

The Township will feature an ensemble cast, including actors Wendell Pierce and Dominic West from The Wire as a pair of successful, well-adjusted real estate agents who occasionally grab one quick drink after work before returning home to the families they love.

In a way, The Sopranos was really just a suburban grotesque, from Tony's barbeque-induced fainting attack to Carmela's anxieties about Meadow's college prospects.  Kind of ditto with Weeds, which is at least in part thematically about the inability of the suburbs to be separate and protected from issues like drug violence typically associated with cities.  Neither of those is anthropological and reportorial in the way The Wire is, but it's hard to imagine that someone, at some point, won't think it's a good idea.

The ArchAndroid

Have y'all bought the album yet?  It's just absurdly good.  I'm running another one of Ye Olde Atlantic.com roundtables on the subject, and I'm totally in trouble because Brentin Mock, reporter extraordinaire and Friend of This Blog wrote pretty much everything I wanted to say in the first installment, and got us some totally awesome pictures from her performance at Voodoo Fest.  He writes:

Monáe has given pop music its first Toni Morrison moment, where fantasy, funk, and the ancestors come together for an experience that evolves one's soul. It's been attempted before: Janet Jackson'sRhythm Nation, I think, but that failed because it lacked the courage to carry its struggle to the finish, too often interrupted by gooey songs ("Escapade") that reminded us she's still a mere mortal who believes girls just wanna have fun, just like you. Listening to Monáe, I felt a chromatic charge, likeAunty Entity laughing while pointing a crossbow at my heart in the middle of Thunderdome. Yet I still recognized it as blues and funk—a smothered funk, though perhaps at times too thick, too inaccessible, but not so much I didn't want to shake my ass. It was like the first time I read Beloved, or better Song of Solomon—I didn't quite know what to make of it, but I knew I felt 100 feet taller after reading it. 

And so it is with The ArchAndroid, which is something of a jitterbug between Prince's 1986 movieUnder the Cherry Moon and the 1977 Watts movie Killer of Sheep, and Daughters of the Dust, an exploration of Gullah society in the Southern sea islands. You really don't know whether you want to diagram it, dance to it, or just be dumbstruck. It owes as much to Parliament-Funkadelic as it does to Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler. She is finally doing what a number of artists—particularly black artists—have not been able to do in years, and that's move pop music forward. Kid Cudi couldn't do it. Kanye thought he was doing it, but I'm confident that 20 years from now people will recognize 808s and Heartbreak as an unpleasant side effect. Gaga can't possibly think she's doing it by packaging mediocre dance music in krewe costumes. 

The album is amazing, and so is Brentin's piece.  Seriously.  Read it.

Community v. 30 Rock

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy mrhooks.

I'm excited about some of the shifts to NBC's fall schedule (though holding back Parks and Recreation is a crime), particularly the move that puts 30 Rock right after Community.  I've long thought that Community kind of stole 30 Rock's thunder with a setting that was equally quirky but more relateable, an intergenerational and interracial conversation that was less reliant on stereotypes, and better broad use of its cast.  I have no idea what goes through the minds of the good folks who populate network television comedy writers' rooms.  But I know for damn sure that if I were Tina Fey, I'd feel Community breathing down my heels.  It's the hot new property on the network, and not for nothing.  The show has all the mojo, strangeness, and joy 30 Rock had in its brilliant first two seasons.  I'd want to push my own show harder to top its lead-in, to make sure folks stick around intentionally for 30 Rock and not just because it's the thing that's there for a half-hour before The Office.  If this pairing creates a mid-run flourishing for 30 Rock I'll be very pleased.  And even if it doesn't, it means I don't have to sit through The Office to get to 30 Rock.

Of All the Genres of Movies To Be Made In Slightly Egregious 3D...

Dance movies are among the more logical, and I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me before:



If you do a good job of shooting full dance routines, without cutting off dancers' bodies, and capturing the full effect of the routined, and then show it in 3D, it could be a genuinely different and more fulfilling experience than just seeing the actors flat on screen.

I probably see more cheesy action movies than corny dance flicks, even though I tend to think that, given equal badness, dance movies are probably more redeeming.  At least there, the special effects that break up the plot, that give the attractive leads an excuse to put their faces (and after the inevitable first kiss, the rest of themselves) in extremely close proximity, and that give us a chance to exhale forcefully, perhaps even with syllables included, are created by people, often the actual people we're supposed to be invested in, rather than stuntmen standing in for them.  And while I think fights and explosions can, situationally, be art, I don't think the presumption is that they are.  Dance comes from the opposite assumption: it always starts out as art and can travel in the direction of silliness.

I Wish You All Could Be Brian Wilson

I heard Katy Perry's "California Gurls" for the first time on a drive down to Cape Cod last week on a somewhat bleak day, which may account for my somewhat tepid reaction to it.  But over the weekend, the fab Aylin Zafar told me she'd had it on repeat, and I knew I had to give it another go:



I still can't decide if I love it, although it seems blessedly free of the weirdly anti-gay or anti-woman sentiments that jarred some songs on her debut album (I still can't get over "you PMS like a bitch / I should know" in "Hot 'N' Cold" which is otherwise a solid piece of pop.).  And I can't decide what causes me more cognitive dissonance: Perry declaring "West Coast Represent," or Snoop Dogg channeling his inner Beach Boy to intone: "I wish they all could be California girls.  I really wish you all could be California girls," the latter sentence of which is, even if he doesn't realize it, an homage to the Live in London album.  We live in the grand implosion of pop and hip-hop, though, and in these particularly pleasant end-times, I'm happy to let Snoop channel Brian Wilson--especially since "California Girls" was the result of an LSD trip.

I Don't Even Know Anymore

So. There's a vampire. Who fought with Hamlet over Ophelia. In real life. And now he wants to resurrect Hamlet so they can end the feud.  And Det. Cyrus Lupo, from the now-defunct Law & Order appears to be investigating these events. Which are mostly taking place in a theater company.  This may be the greatest postmodern black hole of the Culture of Our Time:

Like A Lonely Bird I Fly

I'm not convinced by the necessity of a biopic about the young John Lennon, but if such a thing has to be made, Nowhere Boy looks like a relatively decent way to do it:



Aaron Johnson, acting out in ways that are somewhat less dramatic than the methods his character chose in Kick-Ass seems much more convincingly angry and awkward here--there was something about his gait and gawkiness in Kick-Ass that seemed obviously put-on.  There's a difference between blankness that's a means of withdrawal from the worst pains of the world, and blankness because there's really nothing there, and this movie seems more about the former than the latter.  I think Johnson has promise, and I'll see this, if only because I'm interested in seeing whether he emerges as a significant talent.  I'm also sort of charmed by the idea that Thomas Sangster, even if his love-lorn kiddo in Love, Actually has given birth to sickly-sweet imitators, has grown up enough to play a quite young Paul McCartney.

But who am I kidding?  Even if I don't see the real necessity of this, I own the Beatles Anthology albums on cassette, I'm still the little girl who had my grandmother tape the documentary for me because it aired past my bedtime, who went out for her first night clubbing in England in a Yellow Submarine t-shirt (I was hopeless).  Homages like this, reconstructed relics like "Free As A Bird," may be corny, they may even be travesties, but they keep John Lennon's memory alive, and it's hard to begrudge that particular goal, less self-evident than I think it seems:

 

A Small Defense of The Ugly Truth

I do think it's fair to ask why Katherine Heigel makes dreadful movies, and why the movies she's making have become increasingly dreadful (not even my appreciation of James Marsden extends to making excuses for 27 Dresses).  But I do want to make a small defense of the roundly-lambasted The Ugly Truth:



It's absolutely true that it's a movie driven in part by vibrating-panties humor, that it involves a professional woman who is forced to work with a guy with a penchant for staging jello fights with twins (and who uses heartbreak as an excuse to act like an ass), and that it ends with a confession of affection in a hot air balloon.  But it's also the rare movie that has, as a central plot device, the fact that if you fake yourself to get into a relationship, you will end up with a relationship that bears no resemblance to what you actually want.  Of course I'd like better movies that flip the conventional makeover narrative on its ass, and that are really tart about female artificiality.  But I don't think The Ugly Truth is indefensible, even if only on those grounds.

In Celebration of Janelle Monae's Album Dropping Tomorrow

How bizarre is it that Gap put her and Jon Heder in a commercial together:



Also, how weird is it to see her not in that gorgeous tux?

Days Go By and Still I Think Of You

Kylie Minogue's latest is just gorgeous:



Sort of a dance version of "In My Life."  I've been thinking a fair bit about dance music lately.  It's always seemed to me that it's an amorphous genre, encompassing everything from Paul Oakenfold's trance work (I haven't listened to Tranceport in ages, but it really is an amazing album):



To Madonna's articulate explications of the importance of self-expression through dance.  "All the Lovers" is a lot softer than the defiance, the almost political tone, of "Vogue."  Dance isn't dependent on lyrics, of course, in the same ways pop or hip-hop is, which I think makes it extra-gratifying when really good dance artists nail the connection between music and lyrics, when they make clear that there's narrative in all of that movement.  I want to give all of this some more thought.  My knowledge of dance music really is patchier than I wish it was, and for some reason, deeply associated with the UK, whether it's the conversation about Dirty Vegas in State of Play, or memories of dancing to Modjo in Manchester clubs.  If all the songs on Kylie's new album sound this fantastic, it should be a pretty pleasant exploration.  Recommendations would be highly appreciated.

Thank You

I can't say how grateful I am to blackink, BabylonSista, Dara, Jamelle and Katie for taking the reins here for the last week while I got my head screwed on right.  If you want to keep following their excellent work, and why wouldn't you, a full list of their home bases is here.  More news to come shortly.  But it's great to be back.

In anticipation of "Compass"

(Yeah, I wanted to sneak a final entry in here, too. Thanks to Alyssa and her readers for being such wonderful hosts.)

Compass, the new album by musical alchemist Jamie Lidell, is being released on Tuesday, May 18th. It's been interesting to watch Lidell's progression from fuzzy tech rhythm maker to R&B and rock; he started out as half of techno duo Super_Collider. His first solo album, Multiply, was nearly straight soul and R&B, with a few nods to his tech side. The follow-up, Jim, explored rock and inched into funky synth grooves, reminiscent of early 90's British soul like Loose Ends and Soul II Soul.

With the ease with which he shifts genres, it's almost easy to forget that Lidell's voice is amazing. Whether he's trying to channel Otis Redding or beatboxing into a vocoder, this man's got soul. And his voice never sounds out of place with each new sound he explores. He's a crazy talented musician, but there's the bonus of being able to hear how much fun he's having, how much work he's putting into each track. That's rare.

Previews of Compass, available on Lidell's You Tube channel, promise a move toward the voice-sculpting he demonstrates during his live shows. He's working with a big cast of characters on this album, including Beck, Feist, singer Nikka Costa and legend session drummer James Gadson.

The album's being released on Monday in the UK, so we Americans have to wait til Tuesday. I'll be up early to download it from iTunes.

Public Figures Are Not Characters, Either

(Technically yesterday was our last day of guestblogging, but I wheedled Alyssa into letting me keep the blog open for one more post. Thanks so much for having me, y'all, and to my awesome fellow guestbloggers. Alyssa'll be back on Monday.)

Over at the Atlantic's culture channel, Sady Doyle has a fascinating column on "The Secret Inner Life of Laura Bush" -- something which she notes liberal women have often speculated about as a way to justify their "otherwise unaccountable sympathy" for a rather regressively boring First Lady. But when she compares Laura to her fictional counterpart Alice Blackwell from Curtis Sittenfeld's novel American Wife, she writes something that really gives me pause:

American Wife is a great book for several reasons, but most crucially, it allows liberal readers to like Laura Bush without guilt.

Admittedly, I'm not a fan of Sittenfeld -- I didn't read American Wife because I found her first novel, Prep, to be uninsightful and overrated. (I'm still a little alarmed that coastal-elite reviewers praised its insights about their social milieu, since it didn't say anything I hadn't already figured out as a Midwestern high schooler -- before going coastal.) But my feelings toward the work aside, I don't like the notion that a novel written to satisfy liberal fantasies about the "subversive" inner life of a conservative political figure justifies real sympathy for the political figure herself. You'd have to assume that Laura Bush's own behavior is less representative of her than a work of fiction written by someone who shares your political convictions and sympathies, not hers. In fiction, this is a form of hermeneutics; in politics it's called false consciousness. In either case it's dangerous if taken too far.

I had a discussion the other day with American Scene co-blogger Peter Suderman about Aaron Sorkin. Peter compared Sorkin to Bertolt Brecht, because both treat drama as a vehicle for the clash of ideas. But the way Sorkin forces his audience to think about the ideas under discussion is by making sure that (most of the time) both sides are being presented by sympathetic characters. He writes characters worth listening to, so we listen to them, even if most of us aren't ultimately persuaded by the other side. Brecht did the opposite: he tried to create characters who were so completely unsympathetic that audiences wouldn't get invested in the human drama of his plays at all. They'd be forced to think about the ideas because they'd be alienated from the characters. (It didn't work for Brecht, but it's an interesting theory.)

But both of these techniques are at least impartial. They understand that an audience's sympathy is a powerful thing, and resist manipulating it to advance the author's agenda. Of course, there's a long and illustrious tradition in fiction of playing with sympathies for politics' sake, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Upton Sinclair to Ayn Rand. But even in those cases, the fictional characters are designed to represent ideological ideas, not ideological figures.

To use an author's power of sympathy to give the audience a different read on a human being they actually see on television fairly regularly is a different thing entirely. While Sorkin and Brecht both tried to get audiences to take ideas seriously, Sittenfeld (at least as Doyle reads her) used Laura Bush's silence to assume she disagreed with what her husband said, despite the lack of any evidence as such. Under the guise of giving her the credit she deserves (i.e. inner sympathy to "enlightened" ideas), it belittled her. And just because she turned out to be somewhat right, in this case, doesn't make it a good idea.

Of course, novelists aren't the only ones who can create sympathetic "inner lives" for political figures. Just look at the political journalists who are shocked and wounded by John McCain's recent turn to the right in his primary campaign: they'd bought so completely into the idea that McCain was a "maverick" that they forgave everything he'd done from 2006-2008 to pander to the base, assuming he'd changed costumes but the character was the same. But with journalism as with fiction, trusting speculation over reality doesn't actually lead you to a richer understanding of a public figure. It substitutes the political protagonist you see for the novelistic protagonist you'd rather imagine.