Leaving Denmark (on Medium)

I just wrote an essay about my decision to leave Denmark and return to Boston on Medium. Here's the link and blurb:

Leaving Denmark

I left a country with an exceptional health care system to return home to the US, a country with a maddening one. Why? An operation, of all things. 

Read it here!
https://medium.com/p/be9a4088987f

Linear Storytelling in Gravity

As the credits rolled at the end of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, my mom and I turned to each other, wide-eyed, and simultaneously said, WHOA.

The film is a complete thrill, as I'm sure you've heard. I could go on about the dazzling extraterrestrial special effects, 60 percent of which were shot in a 10x10 foot "light box." I could happily praise Sandra Bullock's performance ad infinitum.  I could also highlight the amazing feat of Cuarón's signature long takes - this time in space.

But instead I want to draw attention to the fact that Gravity is about the most linear story you can find, and it works. When the debris first comes flying towards Ryan and Matt within the first ten minutes of the film, I thought: how are they going to keep up this level of intensity and suspense for an hour and a half? Guess what - they did it, with strategically placed moments for us to catch our breath. But this is a film where nothing is wasted in the narrative (note: spoilers ahead).

First of all, what we learn about Matt and Ryan is only what's necessarily to drive the plot. Ryan is used to a laboratory and not zero-gravity; this could be seen as the 'call to adventure' in Joseph Campbell's theory of the hero's journey plot structure which ups the ante when her survival in space is on the line. Matt is a confident chatterbox, which perhaps reassures us when that crucial moment comes and they break contact - maybe he'll be alright with his words and the radio. Finally, the only other major character detail we learn about Ryan is that she lost her daughter, thus giving her a frame through which to understand her own death and her place in outer space (which, I would argue, then helps egg on her own striving for survival, and those moments of summoning strength are both character- and plot-based; again, no time is wasted in this film).

So, armed with purely the knowledge we need to have about these characters, we concentrate solely on watching them try to get home (live out the quest, in Campbell terms). Each obstacle that presents itself is a bigger 'uh oh' than before, but as the stakes rise and Ryan overcomes each danger, the suspense rises as well and each near-death (say, in the fire or when dream-Matt opens the pod door) feels less and less like a cheat. With the stakes so high, we hope Ryan makes it but even if she doesn't, either way we want to know how.

This spell-binding suspense is what sets Gravity apart from other linear stories, because while we crave a happy, victorious ending in keeping with the hero's journey, it seems so implausible that just watching a valiant struggle to whatever end there may be is enough. This is also why the actual ending is so satisfying, because there's struggle (against her own body) even in the last frames.


For those of you who have seen the film, what do you think of the ending and why?

P.S. After I wrote this I stumbled upon film scholar Kristin Thompson's fantastic and interesting analysis of the plot - hers both aligns with and departs from mine!

Inner Beauty in a Postfeminist Television Landscape?

Whether or not you're a fan of the show, you probably have something to say about TLC's What Not To Wear. "Oh, the makeover show?" you ask. Yes, it's the one where they transform women from 'drab' to 'fab' by throwing out their clothes and helping/forcing them to shop for a new wardrobe.

The same thing probably goes for Orange Is The New Black, Netflix's outstanding new drama. "Oh, the one about the women's prison," you say. Well, I have a lot to say about both--especially because despite a divide in genre and form (reality vs. fiction, episodic vs. serial), much of the content overlaps when it comes to women's inner beauty.

What Not To Wear aired its series finale a few weeks ago, and I'll admit, I binge-watched the entire last season leading up to this finale. I guess I found it hard to resist the temptation to watch what hosts Stacy and Clinton call 'fashion disasters' clean up their look.

But I found myself getting more and more uncomfortable with the premise of WNTW as I went along. The setup--where Stacy and Clinton surprise their contestants with intentionally embarrassing hidden camera footage of them in 'bad' outfits--seemed designed to sabotage and humiliate as much as possible so that the episodes can set up for the narrative of transformation we've come to expect from reality TV. Then, they dump the contestants' entire wardrobe in a trash can, but not before ridiculing it, sometimes before a 360-degree mirror.

(Ok, I admit, some of the outfits are pretty weird...Megumi, right, thinks this is a normal outfit and not a costume)

Finally, Stacy and Clinton take the contestant out shopping and POOF! Two days later she's a changed woman. Or is she? It depends on which context we're using to define changed.

During the finale, Clinton says, "it's really not about the clothes." And to some extent, the show does concentrate on bringing out the confidence, strength, and beauty that these women already have but aren't displaying on the outside, perhaps because some personal demons are hidden under or exacerbated by the bad clothes. My problem is that their vision of beauty is so incredibly narrow. I can't count the number of times the hosts have dressed their 'fashion victims' in the same iteration of jeans, blouse and blazer or flower print dress. Yes, they teach the women to dress for their body type, but does everyone have to dress in some combination of Stacy's trademark "color, pattern, texture and shine"?

More irritating still is the proclamation of transformation and success that the clothes will bring (and they often do). It seems that by adhering to a certain standard of femininity and fashion, these 'remade' women will better navigate their careers and personal lives. Whether this change happens because of a legitimately rediscovered confidence or rather just an easier time conforming to class indicators through clothing (and hair and makeup), who knows, but I'm inclined to say the latter. Maybe I'm just bitter because I hate the pressure of looking 'just right' or having a 'personal style' - why can't my personal style be comfy sweaters and no makeup? I mean, it can be, but maybe not if I want to get ahead in the urban, media-saturated landscape where I live my life.

Rosalind Gill, feminist critic, points out how the fascination with women's bodies in our current postfeminist media culture makes the body into our singular identifier:

"In today's media, possession of a 'sexy body' is presented as women's key (if not sole) source of identity. The body is presented simultaneously as women's source of power and as always unruly, requiring constant monitoring, surveillance, discipline and remodeling (and consumer spending) in order to conform to ever-narrower judgments of female attractiveness." (1)  

Agreed! So, where does television go from here?

The remedy could be something like Orange Is The New Black (yes, I also binge-watched), which takes the same narrative of transformation/facing demons and puts it in a humanistic and complicated light. I'm not saying OITNB doesn't have its own problems of representation (especially queer, class, and racial ones), but it's a start, because the show exists in a woman's space, mostly devoid of the male gaze (with the exception, of course, of 'Pornstache'). The women come in all sizes and colors in their mono-color jumpsuits, so we get to know them through their personalities and actions, not what they're wearing. If there ever were a show about real female inner beauty, this one's it in my opinion. Talk about Sophia - what a gorgeous character, whereas Pennsatucky is portrayed as an ugly person from the inside-->out.

So, what I'm saying is this: I think this narrative of transformation happens in both shows, but in directly opposite manners. The 'way out' to a better place in WNTW is through exterior fashion, but in OITNB on other hand, it's through self-investigation while the inmates endure their sentences, biding their time on good behavior. Depending on how you look at it, both are uplifting stories, but OITNB is just more realistic, in my opinion, because accepting yourself from the inside is much more complex, difficult and ultimately rewarding than just slapping on some new clothes to feel beautiful.


---
1. Quoted in Rosalind Gill, "Postfeminist media culture : Elements of a sensibility," European Journal of Cultural Studies 2007 10: 147.

Danish Television has me hooked!

You might know that I love me some Danish drama. I recently wrote an article on why Danish television is fantastic over at Scandinavian Standard, a new site dedicated for 'scandis and scandi-philes' run by my good friend Rebecca.

Read it here! http://www.scandinaviastandard.com/get-hooked-on-danish-television/

I will have used to live here

I'm departing today from the 'film' side and emphasizing the 'feelings' side, because I'm soon departing from Copenhagen, going back to live in Boston.

Last year, when I moved into shared housing, I wrote an application for acceptance. I titled the Powerpoint presentation "The Road Ahead," in which I detailed how the travel bug had brought me from Boston to Paris to Bretagne to Denmark and finally, I hoped, to Egmont Kollegium. In the application, through my enthusiasm for Danish canals and Carlsberg, I hinted at a sense of hope that Denmark would be my home, indefinitely. A year ago, my future did look that way.

the road ahead, one year ago. 

But I think, even then, something was nagging at me that I didn't want to acknowledge. Now, four days away from my transcontinental move, I'm finally able to embrace what two years of learning Danish, studying film, making great friends, and writing a thesis have pointed to.

I am American.

When I lived in France, I tried my hardest to rid my French of any trace of an American accent, lest strangers, upon meeting me, inquire, "Bush ou Obama? MacDonalds ou freedom fries?" I hated being associated with those stereotypes and instead tried to carve out my own sense of identity, away from cultural impositions. But the truth of the matter was, I came to France in the first place because of all the romantic cultural lore about France that I had soaked up as a teenager, so I was also guilty of generalizing. And at a certain point the lore no longer stuck, so I moved, but I didn't yet consider myself any more American than before.

I came back to Boston briefly, then went on to Copenhagen. I didn't give Boston a chance that year because I was dead set on coming back to Europe, thinking that maybe in Scandinavia I'd feel a true sense of home-away-from-home.  And I have, for these two years, mostly because I was studying something I love and made incredibly deep, lasting friendships (with Danes but mostly with other foreigners who have showed me that where you come from is just part of the equation, but a part nonetheless).

But this sense of home is fleeting, falling away, and when I projected myself into the future, I couldn't see myself marrying, having kids, or growing old here. I've dated only casually here; perhaps my wavering commitment to this country is why. I learned Danish with the prospect of finding a job after graduation and staying, but I found myself not trying very hard to look for those jobs, thinking that it was starting to get exhausting to have to get by all the time in a language and culture that makes me feel always slightly uncomfortable.

Because I am American. And finally, I know that this isn't a bad thing. It's what I make of it. Jason Farago articulates it well on the eve of his thirtieth birthday: "America isn’t like other countries; you can’t escape it, you don’t ever get to start again. Wherever you go America will find you." So why not mold it to your own standards instead of making sweeping judgments of it. It's like I've been ignoring my cultural identity not in name but in spirit--people here in Denmark have told me that I'm the least American American they know. I no longer treat that as a compliment, but rather something to puzzle over.

I've been reading a lot about sustainability (partly because climate change terrifies me, and partly because I want to get involved in the fight against it). And I've come to associate it with this conclusion: Kate in Denmark is not sustainable. If I were to stay, I would be burning up all my resources in trying to create the circumstances needed to be happy, whereas a more (emotionally) sustainable life in Boston does not impede the potential path to that happiness that may result in wasting fewer resources. Which in turn will hopefully help me focus on the stuff that matters: family, love, meaningful work. For example, if I am to invest in writing, trying to write convincingly in Danish is a frustrating impediment.

So I'm excited. To be able to watch Homeland on TV, not streamed on my laptop. To hug my parents and my puppy and not have to think about leaving them again. To exclaim over the variety of yogurt products in the grocery store. To engage with film and media in my own language and culture.

Of course readjusting to being an American in America will have some difficult moments, especially when I know I'll miss my friends immensely. I also know I'll try (to my chagrin) to transplant my European habits--biking, drinking in parks, and taking up less space--onto my life in Boston. But for once, I look forward to this challenge. Instead of bolting and running, I'm going to put my long-standing restlessness to work by living an intentional life, not a transitory one.

Because I am American, and so for Copenhagen, I can presently say, with both sorrow and joy: I will have used to live here.

After Before Midnight

Coming out of the theater on Monday, my friends Claire and Vanessa asked me what I thought about Before Midnight. I couldn't answer them. Finally, I decided, "I have to see it again."  But then I blurted out, "it makes me scared."

Why was fear my lasting emotion? Trust me, I had many during the screening: excitement, confusion, love, frustration, sadness, hopefulness, impatience, passion. This range of emotions is actually perfect because it is exactly those, and more, that Jesse and Céline feel over the course of the film.

But I was scared because this third film in the trilogy depicts the difficulties of life and relationships that may be coming in the future. I've not yet felt the compromises of parenthood. I haven't ever gone so deep with someone that they know how to fight with me, and win. I always fear that a connection like theirs, rich with thinking, will deteriorate if we can't communicate. Like them, I need to do more to embrace the power of vulnerability. As I felt when I saw Before Sunset before I was ready, Before Midnight evoked the same panic. It jolted me into a stage of life that I haven't yet experienced, so my presently healthy optimism took a momentary nosedive.

None of this is a reflection on the quality of the film, because the film itself perfectly embraces imperfections. It's exquisite in the way it explores the really intricate bullshit of two people. The late-afternoon walk to the hotel is Linklater-Delpy-Hawke dialogue extraordinaire, and the fight at the hotel surprises with so many twists and turns (and jabs and successions) that I marvel at how the three of them could craft something so real. The whole film is so specific and yet so universal. But I'll need to see it again, because I need to make sense of it beyond a surge of powerful moments.

So perhaps Before Midnight will grow with me when I encounter the tough details of a really long-term relationship. Like the time machine metaphor Jesse uses at the end, I'm experimenting with the time/space continuum. Past, present, future are all contained in these three films; Jesse and Céline have compiled memories of a life together, and yet there’s so much more left to discover, if they're willing. Explore ad infinitum...I'll have to see it again.

Before Before Midnight

Next Monday I will sit in a movie theater in Copenhagen and see Before Midnight (2013, Richard Linklater) on the big screen, but before I do that (and write a post about it), I need to document why this movie saga has sunk deep into my spirit.

It all started one particular night over Thanksgiving break in 2006. My friend David invited me over to watch Before Sunrise. I knew nothing about the film, but trusted David's taste in movies (he had previously introduced me to Wes Anderson and Manhattan). I watched Richard Linklater's 1995 film dumbstruck and swooning; this film was giving life to everything I believed about love and relationships.

Céline and Jesse's chance meeting on a train towards Vienna, and their subsequent connection through rich conversation, is never overdone in the Hollywood way. I'd always valued words as the building blocks to connection, and now I was seeing a true, authentic exploration of two people using their words to weave themselves together.  I appreciate subtlety in film, and Before Sunrise does this expertly when depicting new love. A story doesn't have to be filled with plot twists to be compelling, because what's more compelling than two people discovering each other? Céline says it herself in the film: "if there's any magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt."

But their story in Before Sunrise ends with a cliffhanger of uncertainty. Luckily there was a sequel -- Before Sunset -- which I didn't have to wait nine years to see like those who had waited between 1995 and 2004. The second film is an emotionally deeper, wiser film, where Jesse and Céline have lost their youthful romanticism partly because of what happened to them and between them during those nine years. Because I watched it immediately after the first, Before Sunset sent me wheeling from intense idealism to pragmatic distress. I worried that it was very possible for me to lose my romantic optimism if things didn't work out the way I expected them to.

Nevertheless, I took Before Sunrise and Before Sunset with me in my heart to Paris. On trains I'd hope that some cute guy would sit next to me. I often went (and still do, every time I'm in Paris) to Shakespeare & Co just to remember that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy were once there. I'd picture meeting someone (hopefully French or otherwise foreign) and that our conversations, and with them attraction, would flow and deepen. In fact I did meet someone and spent a perfect spring day walking around the city with him, but neither of us was from Paris and we had to fly home shortly afterwards. A year and a half later I flew to the foreign city where he lives to meet him, thinking there might still be something, but scheduling didn't work out and I haven't seen him since.

Like Jesse and Céline's missed connection, after that trip it's quite possible that "I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love, I might have put it to bed, that day, when you weren't there." But now I'm renewed, 3 years later, with a healthy optimism. I still harbor the idea that conversation is the key to connection, since I've had great relationships and even better conversations in both the platonic and romantic categories. But I've realized too it's about timing, because things don't always work out. In any case, it warms me to know that in Before Midnight, Jesse and Céline have ended up together and are now dealing with the everyday stuff of marriage (more on that next week after I've seen it). It may not have worked out the way they expected, but their story does have a direction, as does my life.

What fascinates me about these three films is their treatment of time. The titles imply it: the continuing narrative places a big emphasis on real time. How does time work in instants, and how does it change us? How do connections with people withstand the test of time, or how do they not? It's 7 years since I first discovered this story, but my love for it has not depleted. If anything, it's grown. I've grown with these characters and will continue to do so. Every time I watch each film something new resonates emotionally, as I bring my own experiences into play.

But most of all, this trilogy has shown me that the people you meet in the places you experience give your life its direction. I will be leaving Copenhagen in a few months to start anew in Boston, and Before helps me remember that my connections to people, wherever I've been, have colored my identity. And that it's never too late to be with someone, should it be right.

Contagion and Viral Propagation

What is Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) about if not fear?

The plot runs like any pandemic/virus/zombie movie: the first case, the spread, the quarantine, the panic, the destruction, the desperation of trying to survive. But somewhere in the middle of the film Soderbergh subjugates the suspense of trying to develop antibodies and vaccines underneath a more troubling examination of the contagion of fear in crises. Which is making me meditate on how contagion, as a figurative term, works with regards to information spread.

In comparison, Outbreak (1995) is emotionally arresting because it tells the story of a small core of characters who risk their lives against an airborne e-bola type virus. 28 Days Later (2002) investigates military corruption by making zombie-ism germ-like. I Am Legend (2007) takes the post-apocalyptic approach and features one man against the monsters. Blindness (2008) looks at human evil in the face of a pandemic of blindness. All of these films concentrate on coloring in the shades of good and evil when human infrastructure falls apart in the face of mass sickness and death. They all have a sense of inherent pathos to them in that they hint that the good of the few perhaps cannot outweigh the evil of the panicking masses.

Contagion does this too, and also goes further. After a while, the virus's deadliness doesn't even seem to be what's perpetuating the panic anymore - it's our mass communication outlets, individualism within globalization, and sense of entitlement towards resources and treatment. For example, Jude Law's Alan Krumwiede is an insurgent blogger hell-bent on exposing favoritism in the CDC, but his exclamations are more evidence of the questions of valid information distribution than any governmental or organizational conspiracy. Likewise, Laurence Fishburne's Dr. Ellis Cheever tells his fiancée to leave Chicago before the quarantine announcement goes public, which is evidence that in the end, we'll might choose our few individual loved ones over helping strangers.

Contagion makes me think about the spread of information. In the last short story in A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan, a music promoter in a future-set New York uses paid "parrots" to hype a live concert. The marketers behind these promotions used to have to study epidemiology in order to learn about things "going viral," but that information model has become outdated: "'No one says "viral" anymore,' Lulu said. 'I mean, maybe thoughtlessly, the way we still say "connect" or "transmit" - those old mechanical metaphors that have nothing to do with how information spreads. See, reach isn't describable in terms of cause and effect anymore; it's simultaneous.'"

If Egan's prediction comes true, and I am inclined to think that she's on track, we are headed for a system of spreading information that mirrors contagion, even going beyond viral spreading. Blogs link to blogs, Facebook and Twitter share everything, newspapers go under, social media values the instantaneous and the individual over the informative, and we end up spreading information in a frenzy that seems panicked. I think it's already happening now, and I worry that our individualism is egging it on. No, it's not about life and death here, but there's definitely a paradigm of survival going on--we all want relevance, significance, and influence.

It's not a phase, it's a process.

This morning, as I clicked "save as PDF" on my masters thesis, I brought an end to my formal education. The funny thing is, I don't feel like anything is ending. I wrote my thesis on emerging adulthood in HBO's Girls, and now, thesis done, at twenty-six and officially beyond the official age restriction by which developmental psychologists categorize emerging adults (18-25), I no longer feel allowed to use that label for myself. But I'm still emerging.

Emerging adults live their twenties in a state of exploration-of careers, relationships, friendships, worldviews, travels-without settling on one life pattern. It's a documented period of upheaval, intense setbacks and overhauling questions of identity, but it also is a time of great freedom and ambition. Emerging adults constantly ask, who am I and what will I become? None of this is comforting, nor should it be. The only saving grace is that we hope, one day, it will all resolve itself.

But my thesis has perhaps showed me otherwise. The crux of my argument revolves around the fact that Girls may be proof that emerging adulthood is not a phase of life to get through, but rather a process. As Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna try on different identities for size, their narratives of self-exploration lead not necessarily to a clear and confident sense of self, but rather to a transformation of that self and, paradoxically, a lack of closure. The way the narrative works doubles this impulse, by accumulating moments based on emotions rather than plot. Things that come seemingly out of nowhere shift the story in directions no one saw coming, but these moments make everything feel more human--and messy. It is as if the entire series, in character and story pattern, is working away from enlightenment and towards confusion. Or at least change. Instead of funneling constantly towards conclusion, Girls investigates the middle of a cycle without hinting at the end of it. The narrative of emerging adulthood, in Girls and my own life, is ultimately not a phase but a process.

So, using my age and finished education to mark an abrupt end to my emerging adulthood is silly, because I can't declare myself "done" and "adult" when the phase itself is actually just a process that potentially never ends. Maybe the real rite of passage out of emerging adulthood and into full adulthood is not the formative threshold one crosses--a degree, owning a home, a marriage, kids--but the moment when you realize that you, as a person, are constantly in production.

Perhaps recognizing that this is a process is actually the first real step in leaning towards, or actually acknowledging, my adulthood. I actually really enjoyed the process of writing the thesis, whatever the outcome. So I'm trying to listen to that feeling of staying in the present in my writing, to dive into the uncertainty with a disregard for any concluding significance the process might generate. As I emerge as an adult and a writer, maybe this uncertainty of process is actually the key to everything.

I'm almost getting it kind of together.

L'auberge espagnole over the years

Some people have comfort food. I have comfort movies.

Last night was such a comfort night; a long, work-filled weekend called for indulgence with slik (Danish for candy) and the movie that made me fall in love with Europe: Cédric Klapisch's L'auberge espagnole (2002). I estimate this was probably around the 50th time I've seen this French film, and it never disappoints, because it evolves with me over the years.

the multilingual, multinational cast of L'auberge espagnole 

Let me give you a history of my decade-long relationship with this film, in the hope that if you have felt your identity expanding thanks to travel, you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Age 15: Mme Follett shows us the film in French class to teach us about cultural exchange and Erasmus. I fall instantly in love with the idea of living in Europe, sharing an apartment with young people and speaking a hodgepodge of European languages.

Age 16: I buy the DVD and work on saying the lines error free. My sister, best friend and I are proud of the fact that we recognize the subjunctive tense when Martine says "je suis triste que tu partes" and that we now know colloquial expressions like "elle a un mec" and "c'est un vrai bordel."

Age 18: I show the film to dozens of my college friends. I expect their unabashed enthusiasm for it, but it's met with lukewarm enjoyment instead. My friends seem not to have the crazy obsession with Europe which I do. Although I'd always known I would, I finally declare a major in French at the end of my sophomore year.

Age 20: I watch the film on the eve of my departure for Paris. I've turned the goal of living in Europe into a temporary reality by going on junior-year exchange. My heart patters and my stomach drops when the opening line of the film strikes a new meaning: "Tout a commencé là, quand l'avion a décollé." (That's when it all started, when the plane took off.")

Age 21: I come back from France after my year abroad dead-set on returning. Like Romain Duris's Xavier, I have trouble explaining my experiences, how I've changed, and what I learned, to my family and friends back home. My life in America now seems like the entr'acte to a fabulous play in Europe.

Age 22: After my senior year of college I barter my way back to France with a position as an English teaching assistant in Bretagne. As I traverse the streets of Brest looking for a place to live, I remember how Xavier says that when you first arrive in a city, everything is unknown and virgin territory for you. After having walked these streets 10, 20, 1000 times, you see yourself as you once were, newly arrived but now forever changed. I see an ad for a shared apartment which turns out to be the exact incarnation of l'auberge espagnole. Like Xavier, "j'aurais donné n'importe quoi pour qu'ils m'acceptent." Luckily, they accept me and I have the most incredible year of my life.

Age 23: Back in Boston after a year of teaching and an expired visa, I itch to get back to the camaraderie and international life I had in France. I therefore apply for graduate school in a bunch of European cities, hoping to combine the two things I love: film and Europe.

Age 25: On my birthday, after nine months in Copenhagen, things come perfectly full circle. While my sister and same best friend visit, we go to a street festival and spot Christian Pagh, the Danish actor in L'auberge espagnole. I tell him that the film is the reason I'm here, and everything feels right.

Yesterday: I'm about to hand in my master's thesis in film studies, and I can feel the whole world opening up in front of me. I'm no longer the idealistic teen I once was, but I also feel like "I'm French, Spanish, English, and Danish. I'm not one, but many. I'm like Europe. I'm all of that."

My personal B(r)est version of L'auberge espagnole

Flesh and Blood

This post may be a bit raw, but there's reason for it. Just warning you if you're squeamish, you may not want to read on.

Only hours after going under the knife this past Tuesday, I found myself holed up in bed, watching two particularly fleshy dramas: Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies and NBC's Hannibal. 

Don't ask me why those were the two media outlets I latched onto after having a growth removed from my ear. You would think that while popping painkillers I would want to escape from what I had just experienced under local anesthesia, or that movies and shows about flesh and blood would not be the right comfort. But nope! I'm silly.

Two different depictions of flesh became clear while I watched--one in Warm Bodies, and the opposite in Hannibal. Warm Bodies is told from the point of view of a romantic zombie who falls for a human. I know, it sounds gimmicky, but it works, mostly thanks to Nicholas Hoult's convincing zombie/human balancing act. As his character 'R' eats human brains or receives a knife in his chest, his dead flesh and that of the humans he eats seems trivial and unimportant, just a corporeal encasing. All that matters is the heart and soul that makes up these creatures, not whether their flesh is decaying or alive.

R in Warm Bodies does not have a warm body. 

On the other hand, Hannibal is all about flesh and blood as signifier. Killers, cannibals, and even cops are defined in this show by their fascination with, ability to identify, and temptation to destroy, flesh. It's a very gruesome show, with lots of splattering and high-production-value gunfire. It's too bad the narrative tends not to explain itself well, dropping plot leads and secondary characters who could be intriguing too quickly in order to concentrate on its monotonous central pair, Dr. Lector (played by Danish heartthrob Mads Mikkelsen) and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). With more investigation into the killers and less role-play between deranged psychiatrist and afflicted subject, the show could the enthralling psychological thriller it strives to be. But that's not my point.

My point is that I feel so immune to flesh and blood on screen, but in real life it's still very raw. I was awake during the procedure on Tuesday, which meant that from my reclining position I got to see my own blood get sucked into a tube and a piece of my ear get clipped off, trimmed, and reattached. As it was happening, I had the strange distance of a curious moviegoer, wondering what they were doing next and why my blood was so pink. But since I've been out of there and the pain has surfaced, I get queasy whenever I picture that sliver of my own skin lying on the surgical table.

Which is reassuring, in a way. I'm glad to realize that our cinema culture of ultraviolence has not completely penetrated my everyday relationship towards flesh and blood. I'm still sensitive, like my throbbing ear.

Melodrama and Performance in The Real L Word

You may remember my admission to a guilty pleasure a while back. Well, today's the day to indulge my newest fascination with trash television: The Real L Word.

To escape some temporary melodrama of my own (involving a suspicious mole on my ear), I started watching Showtime's very melodramatic reality series about a group of lesbian women in Los Angeles. As the title betrays, the show is the 'real-life' version of the fictional precursor The L Word. The girls are both more butch and more glam, if that's possible, than in the fiction, and the drama feels concocted and underwhelming like another namesake, MTV's notoriously bad The Real World. 

Reality drama. For some reason those two words sound oxymoronic when placed next to one another. This got me thinking about how The Real L Word creates its melodrama, because it pulls its stories from people's everyday lives. Just because the show is about lesbians doesn't necessarily mean their lives are inherently more interesting or dramatic, and of course there are those who will argue that a show like this normalizes and banalizes the queer community by focusing on a particularly femme  subset.  But in general, doesn't real life tend not to have nicely composed story arcs and narrative progression? Judging by that deduction, I'd say that reality television must capitalize on and then mold the events of these people's lives into a narrative.

Film theorist Jane Feuer writes that the key to melodrama in television, which we see most heavily in soap operas, is excess: "The concept of melodrama [is that of] creating an excess, whether that excess be defined as a split between the level of narrative and that of mise-en-scene or as a form of 'hysteria.'" In other words, melodramas exaggerate emotions, enhance climaxes, and are generally a bit excessive. 

So how does The Real L Word create melodrama out of a steady yet narratively weak stream of events?

First of all, I think the show's producers did a very good job casting people who know how to perform for the camera. Romi may indeed be a very emotional person, but she also knows how to play it up. Whitney, the most enigmatic and fascinating to watch, always has a rotation of girls in and out of her bed and head, but I wonder how much of the draw is well-oiled star behavior. These girls know how to ham it up for reality tv.

Secondly, the editing of the show is actually quite crafty for a seemingly trashy reality show (props to Showtime), because it pulls topics into episodes while still maintaining a serialized pull across episodes and seasons. For example, the first season starts each episode with a Q&A of the characters on certain 'lesbian' topics: coming out, femme vs. butch, Dinah Shore, etc. These topics then dictate the loose narrative structure of what we see for that hour, while still incorporating the larger story lines about relationships that form the center of the drama. We wait for the topic to pop up, i.e., who will be coming out on this episode? as a sort of MacGuffin that gives way to bigger themes like trust, betrayal, loyalty, cheating, and so on.  This overarching structure gives the editors the ability to play up the emotional climaxes so needed in a melodrama.

Lastly, music is everywhere. Mostly contemporary, sometimes queer, artists provide the soundtrack, which is tweaked and matched to every little emotion in there. Again, performance and editing go hand in hand when it comes to the music, so that even if we didn't feel own own, direct emotion coming mirroring a scene, the music underscores this emotion and makes us feel it.

I'm not necessarily recommending that you watch this show, but perhaps you can appreciate the way it is crafted to a particular end...

Boston, or Melancholia

I'd been avoiding it for a while. I knew Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) would get under my skin. When it popped up on tv as my mom and I were sifting through on the search for something to watch, she insisted we see it (for her, for the third time), and I obeyed. I was right - it shook me. This was April 13th, 2013. 

Two days later, on April 15th, two homemade bombs ravaged the finish line of the Boston Marathon, tearing limbs and lives away from innocent supporters of my hometown's most heroic race. I had left a spot two miles away from the explosion an hour earlier. Needless to say, this got under my skin and shook me harder.


Melancholia is about the world ending; the Boston tragedy is about a piece of it ending, and recovering. Melancholia ends without any hope of renewal, as a blue planet hurtles towards Earth and obliterates its inhabitants (as a dramatic metaphor for depression). Yet in the obliteration that those two bombs caused on Monday lies an inspiring amount of hope as runners, Bostonians, and supporters take back their city. This aftermath is what Melancholia doesn't show when it fatalistically explores segments of humanity in their final moments. Though the colliding planet is no fault of their own, the main characters of the film display varying grades of human complexity (in that we're both decent and inhumane) in crises. In picking up the pieces in the aftermath of violence that was also no fault of their own, Boston's residents are decent and resilient, which totally overshadows the hurt that a lone, inhuman monster unleashed on the city.

As I vacillate between logical detective work, trying, along with the news, to figure out how and why a person would commit such a terrible act, and sadness for the casualties and amputees and their families, I can't help but remember hearing how some marathoners ran 28.2 miles instead of 26.2 as they kept running down the road to the nearest hospital to donate blood. And I then think of Justine, Melancholia's late hero, who builds a fort to give her nephew some solace before impact.

We don't know why this happened or if we can make it better, but we try.

The Unruly Man?

Masculine aggression in film and tv has been puzzling me lately.

As part of my thesis, I've been working through Kathleen Rowe's theory of "The Unruly Woman," a transgressive character type in the genre of comedy who disrupts gender conventions by exhibiting an unbecoming physicality. The unruly woman is slobbish, loud, and funny. Think Roseanne Arnold and Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids and you've got the idea. Thanks to her comedy, the unruly woman is able to pose her female physicality as problematic and laughable in order to subvert expectations of women on screen, thus occupying a feminist position.

Is there such thing as the unruly man, though? If we try floating the idea of gender conformity to men in film and television, we get figures like James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Edward Cullen, who rather become their physicality and use it to assert their masculinity. In other words, their bodies are never at odds with their characters, and these bodies actually trigger or reinforce their character's causality.

I'd like to examine cases, though, where physicality goes to the extreme and ends up possibly subverting these characters' own power. We watch them move from protagonists to antagonists when this happens. Perhaps this is where we find the unruly man.

One actor portrays this principle beautifully (or brutally). Matthias Schoenaerts, star of Rust and Bone (2012) and Bullhead (2011) is a burly 6'2" and gained a massive 70 pounds of muscle for Bullhead, in which he plays a cattle farmer who gets mixed up with illegal testosterone.  Similarly, in Rust and Bone, he is an underground boxer who smashes competitors' teeth out for a living. I won't give away any plot details of these films, because they are excellent and you should watch them, but I will say that in both instances, the third-act story arcs involve Schoenaerts's physical strength in tricky, dangerous situations.

Schoenaerts in Rust and Bone

Another classic example of this physical brutality indicating a mental spiraling is Fight Club's Tyler Durden. He starts off as a sexy, violent ideal, but his (imaginary) presence has damaging physical effects on his alter-ego's body. And more recently, there's Adam in Girls, who is often shirtless, takes out his aggression issues on his woodworking projects, and escalates to unhealthy, borderline sexual assault in the end of the second season. He is the only one of my examples to be somewhat redeemed, when he runs (again, shirtless) across Brooklyn to save Hannah from her crippling OCD. By the way, Hannah is another unruly woman - she and Adam make a great unruly match.

Of course, men's self-destruction through fights, drugs, alcohol, or other means happens a lot in movies and television (Hank Moody, anyone?) but I think what's different here is that in the characters I describe, their physical nature does not coincide with acceptable forms of masculinity. Instead of being commended for their strength, and their ability to use violence to overcome the bad guys, they have traits of the bad guys brewing in them. They are too strong, too agressive, too threatening. Most of all, they can't keep this agression in check, and it costs them the viewer's sympathy as favorable representations of men. When I watch these men, I am constantly negotiating my own distance from them, trying to forgive them for their corporal mistakes, and trying to dig into their interiority which their bodies so problematically eschew.

I have no idea if others have this reaction when they watch strong, conflicted men who take their emotions out using violence. But I am definitely glad that these characters exist, however threatening they feel, because underneath their exaggerated hypermasculinity lies stirrings of the current crisis of masculine identity that deserves more attention in the media. The question remains, though: can the unruly man take up a feminist position that advocates for a more nuanced portrayal of men in the cinema?

I am a Media Voyeur

I spent this past weekend away from media, in a summer house in Birkerød, Denmark with some of my hallmates. Good food, beautiful views and more than enough cultural immersion (some of it exhausting, namely the 48-hour imperative to speak Danish) left me liberated from my media-saturated lifestyle in Copenhagen. But like any addiction, I found myself craving film as soon as I got back yesterday. So I watched Soderbergh's first feature sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which left me as conflicted about film as ever.

There's us, waiting for the bus. 

In the film, Ann is a prudish newlywed, John is her cheating husband, Cynthia is her sister who is sleeping with John, and Graham is John's friend from college who invades and disrupts their lives with his voyeuristic sexual fetish. He calls himself impotent ever since he admitted he is a pathological liar, and his only sexual activity is to record women talking about their sexual activity. When Ann finds out that her husband is cheating with her sister, she decides to make a tape for Graham, which is the fastest way to splitting up their marriage as she can think of. The film is eerie, introspective, and sensitive, and while it's a film whose style normally would affect me positively, I found it made me uncomfortable. 

Not because of the sexual content, but because it made me think seriously about how much media I consume. This is an undercurrent that has been bothering me for a while now, and it, strangely or not strangely enough, came to a head when the film exposed its characters for being voyeurs. Now, the concept of voyeurism in film is not new, nor is it new to me--Hitchcock and Mulvey come to mind--but what's new for me is the realization that perhaps all media is a type of voyeurism, albeit a non-sexual type. Well, maybe I'm not a voyeur but a gleaner of experiences through media that I ought to be having on my own. 

I've written about this vicarious adventuring and loneliness before here, but now I'm starting to worry that I rely on film and television to teach me lessons instead of living them. This comes particularly into my worldview with regards to interpersonal relationships; like the episodic structure of television, I expect resolution at the turn of every new emotion, experience, interaction. This impulse to rely on stories to give structure to my experiences is even more intense when it comes to romance (damn you, romantic comedies!). I remember seeing Garden State in high school and subsequently expecting my romantic connections to be as instantaneous and deep as they were in that film. My friend Kristian who limits his television consumption to "only things that are funny" tells me that I think in very "macro" terms about how men and women are instead of just learning about individuals, and I worry that media representations and generalizations of gender have a lot to do with this.  Media even helps me imagine a future I may or may not have decided for myself yet, but I can't see it any other way than what's portrayed in the stories I consume. 

I think observing Kenneth Burke's idea that "stories are equipment for living" is a totally useful and necessary practice, but the problem for me happens when I use stories as a crutch, or when my self-worth and identity are too formed by external stimuli. This became clear this weekend, when in the midst of a full-blown experience (read: party) I found myself lagging back and not fully engaging, because I felt uncomfortable not being able to be myself in a foreign language and place. So instead of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and trying to embrace the moment, I observed the behavior of others (which was of course amusing). I kept coming back to a certain question, though. When you don't feel like yourself, what's better: leaning into this discomfort to try to make the most of it and eliminate your 'voyeurism,' or listen to your feelings and come to terms with them? This is a question I usually don't have to ask, because media provides the escape. 

So, maybe in order investigate what I really enjoy doing apart from consuming media, I have to stop consuming media! 

What it means for Hollywood if Argo wins

UPDATE (2/25): And it did win! Hollywood is really in love with itself.

In a moment of pre-Oscar jitters, I thought it apt to discuss what I think Hollywood means if it chooses Argo as Best Picture tonight. Yes, there are eight other films in the running, four of which I've seen, so I can't be a decisive predictor of the outcome. Lincoln will probably sweep, and Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook will probably be overlooked somehow, but if Argo wins, it sends a particularly strong signal to Hollywood and the movie-making corners of the world. Here's why:

Remember in 2010 when the conventional, Academy-schmoozing The King's Speech beat out the more progressive, innovative films like The Social Network, Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right for the top prize? It was because the Academy responsible for doling out the award, with an average voter age of 62, loves that kind of sappy underdog story about the bravery and selflessness of the world's elite. Especially when it's got those grand cinematic contents like the threat of war and a man overcoming obstacles for the good of others.

If Argo wins, it means that Hollywood has similarly patted itself on the back.

The true hero of Ben Affleck's hostage thriller is Hollywood itself. Affleck's character Tony Mendez, despite working for the CIA, owes more to the movie-making business for his mission's success than his own moves. He uses the finely tuned motion picture system that will support and promote even a "bullshit fake movie" modeled after Star Wars to get his hostages out of Iran, so we can argue that this vision of Hollywood is quite self-congratulatory. Especially since this "based on a true" story is now a movie.

You could argue that Argo is not self-congratulatory with regards to its production system, but rather aware of its self-indulgence, because the entire operation relies on Hollywood's ability to produce bad films, and on its disregard for politics--why the hell would anyone in their right mind enter a pre-revolutionary territory to make a silly scifi movie? This can be a meta-commentary on Hollywood's selfish moneymaking interests at the expense of political sensitivity and awareness.

I think, however, that the thriller form of Argo sends the message that Hollywood advocates for its own importance over politics. The opening sets the tone as a political thriller with a prelude that gives a quick history of the Shah and the coup situation in Tehran in 1979--so we start off feeling as though we will get a film steeped in negotiations and political tension. But this is not the case; instead, the story focuses on using a movie cover to relieve six foreign service workers from the Canadian Embassy instead of the 60 more that were held hostage, under real danger, in the embassy itself. It only cuts back periodically to the embassy and its hostages, while it uses a lot of screen time following Mendez as he sets up the operation in L.A., and then follows him to Tehran. The film is surely a thrilling nail biter as we watch him carry it out, and we even get a car/airplane chase at the end--a typical action wowzer that reminds us again that this is a Hollywood thriller. Of course we worry for those six Americans, but I can't help but feel as though the whole thing is indicative of the fact that Hollywood champions the paradoxically apolitical and yet nationalist stories that make itself look good. In other words, Hollywood's version of history tends to honor Hollywood over history itself. It uses its own version of events, with a layer of aesthetics and storytelling, which actually presents a version of itself more than any true, active involvement in what really happened. The same thing goes for Zero Dark Thirty, a highly contested runner for Best Picture this year, which presents the events in a compelling way but refuses to take political sides.

Finally, it's interesting to note that America doesn't take credit for their CIA involvement in the operation, giving the spotlight over to Canada. But yet the light shines on Hollywood, both within the diegesis of Argo's America of 1980 and the production system that created the 2012 film.  So, while political imperialism may have been quieted in this instance, cultural imperialism still stands. Simply put, the movies rule.

So if Argo wins, the Academy is applauding its own production system once again (which it essentially does every year), but this time with particular self-importance.

Girls Against Boys?

Uh oh.

So I've been reading a lot lately about how millenials are in a "post-dating" world. There's Hanna Rosin's polemic book The End of Men. There are the women at The Gaggle who encourage opening up your eyes to the men you never considered. There are the depressingly spot-on Atlantic and New York Times articles condemning hookup culture, texting, and online dating. There are the Acculturated symposium articles that ask "Can Men Be Men Again?" The (horrible horror) film above, Girls Against Boys, seems to be an extreme prediction of a result of this current battle of the sexes. So, in a departure from my usual film-focused posts (which nevertheless owes a lot to Girls) I'd like to weigh in with my take on "post dating."

Of particular importance here is the fact that I don't date a lot. This is both a conscious and subconscious decision. The simplest explanation is that living in Denmark as a non-Dane, I may be scaring off potential interests because they worry that I'll leave the country (which I did, once, after a French boyfriend broke it off for precisely this reason), so neither of us tries from the start.  But the second-simplest explanation is that it's too hard.

Sometimes I'm full of rage, like these murderous women, that post-feminism has rendered men lazy, unambitious and averse to commitment. Unfulfilling past experiences with "the casual thing" tell me I don't want that anymore, but how do we get out of the cycle when casual sex is everywhere and endorsed? So my anger brews until I (wrongly) peg all men in sight as commitment-phobes without getting to know them.

Sometimes I think it's us girls' fault for putting up with casual sex. Some argue that casual sex empowers women; I think that in a society with more highly educated women than men, we're really just scared that if we stick up for our right to monogamy, we'll scare the boys away because they can chase easier tail. Plus, casual sex is awful and awkward. The insidiousness of hookup options leaves the mature women partnerless.

Sometimes I'm complacent, more interested in my comfy bed with its comforter that hugs me just right, and that doesn't snore. Reading a book on a Saturday night often feels much more fulfilling than braving the sticky floors of bars, only to have unwelcome men barge their way into my (great) conversations with my friends.

Sometimes I simply have no idea where to meet men. In my daily life I'm surrounded by students (I can feel my mom repeating, "they're too young, Kate!") and, worse, startup entrepreneurs. And with a job, a master's program, intensive Danish courses, and an active social life, all my time for new activities is taken up.

Sometimes I pity the men who've missed out on the encouragement and support that my fellow female generation has reaped. Masculinity is confusing these days; how are boys supposed to learn how to be men if Bruce Willis's guns and hipster jeans are the only guiding symbols?

But most of all, I don't date because I am an emerging adult. I have a lot of things to work on, for myself. I genuinely feel as though I do not really know who I am yet. I would argue that most of my peers agree. We're in the midst of deciding careers, lifestyles, worldviews, and finances for ourselves, and this is more than a full-time job. Therefore, none of us can possibly know what we want in a relationship, and what we have to offer the other person.

So I guess I wish that the media would quit ringing the alarm bells about millenial dating, because it's making a pressure-filled situation even more stressful. Could we instead focus on the fact that emerging adults need help and guidance too, much like teenagers and new parents? At this age, I'd much rather be asked the question "how would you describe yourself" than, for example, "what do you do for a living?" The latter implies a fixed identity, while the former hints at the truth - that we have the capacity to decide who we are and who we become. And that we are ever-changing.

This is why I love Girls.

Note: I am currently writing my masters thesis at the University of Copenhagen on the realism in HBO's Girls. What follows is the first of probably many musings on the series as I attempt to work my way around its complexity. Bear with me. 

This is why I love Girls. 

Hannah tells Adam: "I don't even want a boyfriend. I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, and thinks I'm the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me." 

The fluidity, weirdness, and unsteadiness of the romantic relationships in the series epitomize the confusion we girls/women have in our mid-twenties. No one wants to commit but they want intimacy anyways, the sex is disappointing, and self-doubt and insecurity may prevent us from realizing who is truly good for us at this age. 

Gone are the late teen years, when everything felt like an angst-y yet somehow carefree, monumental game. Now, pressure to "figure out who you are" comes internally, as if we're bursting from the seams, because we're sick of being unsure. So we try on personalities to see if they stick. Hannah, an aspiring writer who talks about writing much more than she writes, does everything for The Story, accumulating experiences and tough skin. Jessa is "unsmoteable" when it comes to sex but can't get the rest of her life in order, and Marnie thinks she knows who she is until she dumps Charlie and loses her job, at which point she's not so sure. 

I don't just love Girls because of self-identification; it's not just because I see parts of myself in the female characters. Because doesn't every narrative strive for some type of sympathy or empathy? What I love about Girls is its ability to show the commonplace, un-showable awkwardness of life for people in their twenties. 

Especially the awkwardness of sex. No one seems to know how to have great sex at this age - and Girls shows just how true this is. From the first episode, awkward sexuality rears its head: Adam, Hannah's casual fling, commands her to lie on her stomach, hold her legs up behind her, and stay there while he grabs lube - and he'll "consider" getting a condom. Then he proceeds to have sex with her in that clearly uncomfortable position on the couch, while she talks her way through her discomfort, and Adam tells her to play the quiet game. Clearly, sex and communication are both murky waters here. 

Then there's Charlie's coddling love for Marnie, who finds it suffocating. She wants a real man instead, maybe like Booth Jonathan, who gets her so hot that she goes and masturbates in the office of the art gallery where she works. This, by itself, has made a lot of people uncomfortable, because we're apparently not supposed to see female sexuality displayed in this manner on tv. But in Season 2, episode 3, it gets more uncomfortable in a different way: Booth's dominating masculinity is laughable as he straddles her on his hipster bed. She can't help but burst out laughing when it's over - all that bravado came to this terrible sex?  For Shoshanna, it's her virginity that takes center stage, and stamps her like a pariah (she wants to be so much more than her inexperience, but she exudes it). For Jessa, sex with multiple partners is linked to her wandering - she's good at superficial encounters, but she needs guidance in the rest of her life. 

This terrible sex (which also features Lena Dunham's bravery of showing her very normal, not supermodel naked body), has so much honesty that it feels true and also absurd. And that's why it's funny. It's not quite the Cringe Comedy epitomized by Ricky Gervais and The Office, because we're not laughing at the characters' own social ineptitude, flaws, or lack of self-awareness. The girls of Girls have all of those things, but the comedy doesn't target them. It's an "I've been there" comedy that is deeply sympathetic and honest about how hard it is to make sense of it all, inside and outside the bedroom.

This awkwardness of sexual encounters is the most acute example of what makes this series progressive. In the evolution of sex on screen, we've moved from censorship and ellipses to gratuitous sexuality and the fantasy of the sex symbol. But even in the quality drama currently on cable, sex is rarely honest. Too often it's a plot device or a time for gazing. Rarely does it show a less-than-perfect body. But in Girls it fills the characters with honesty, because it capitalizes on insecurities, miscommunications, and messy expectations--therefore showing just how human they are. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, sex presents these women as an extension of their personalities, desires, and big questions. This works quite well for the show's realism, because what other place is more honest than the bedroom? Yet in a setting that film and television usually marks as matters of "private life," in Girls the striving for intimacy (and often not achieving it) is an exposure technique that takes young women's private lives into the public sphere. This is because sex is sex, but it also becomes a metaphor for the uncertainty of the young female mind, with all the pressures, hangups, misgivings, signals, and overwhelming everythingness of being a 24-year-old woman. So thanks, Lena Dunham, for showing the world what it's like to be us, inside-out. 

LOTR and Torben Grodal

Somewhere buried in the hours of extended features in the Lord of the Rings box set, director Peter Jackson says that he hopes his films will inspire 9-year-old boys to become filmmakers, just as he was inspired at that age by the original King Kong (no wonder he went on to remake it).

Well, I may not be 9 or a boy, but The Lord of the Rings was the one film that made me think seriously about working in film. My sister and best friend and I have watched LOTR hundreds of times. We crack up at Pippin’s “second breakfast? Elevensies?” inquiry, and love turning to each other and saying “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” And ever since my 14-year-old self marveled at the “how” of the scale models of Helm’s Deep and Andy Serkis’s motion-capture suit, I have wanted to know the “why” of films. Now, at least for this trilogy, I have an answer.

Last week, the University of Copenhagen celebrated Professor Torben Grodal’s 70^th birthday with a hyggelig symposium (in typical academic fashion). David Bordwell gave a pitch perfect presentation on mystery in 1940s Hollywood in his honor, and fellow Danish colleagues critiqued some of Grodal’s most influential articles. As a major player in cognitive and evolutionary film theory, Torben has published 3 or 4 articles consistently, each year, since 1968. Talk about prolific.

One of these recent articles, called “Tapping into Our Tribal Heritage: The Lord of the Rings and Brain Evolution” (available here) is especially resonant for me, because it proclaims that The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is basically the best thing ever (at least for evolutionary film theorists). He argues that the trilogy activates and uses the seven major emotional systems as its narrative and emotional core: the anger-aggression system, the fear system, the sexual lust system, the care-and-bonding system, the panic system, the play system, and the seeking system.

At its most powerful center is fear – in the form of a huge eye, Sauron. In the face of that evil eye comes an epic narrative about male bonding, adventure, heroism, fear, reward, and fantasy. Grodal writes, “a central motor of the fascination of the trilogy is that it evokes basic mammalian emotional systems which produce strong interest in salient scenes.” I think he’s right; it’s a combination of fascination and emotion that raises our experience to something innate and instinctual. We care deeply about the characters, while we simultaneously admire them for being braver than we could ever be.

So, again, cinema leaves its mark on me. It’s great to know that there’s a reason why I don’t get sick of LOTR after the 356^th viewing!

Loneliness and Life of Pi

It's no joke that my favorite pastime is movie watching. It's my go-to for any stretch of free time, and on weekend mornings you can often find me relaxed (or slumped) in front of the screen.

Movies are my adventures. I connect with fictional strangers every day, engulfed in their stories which are so vivid to me that characters feel almost like friends in my heart. Through films I adventure to the tips of the world, where my senses and feelings are heightened.

I am somewhat of an adventurer myself. I live in Denmark, where I am a foreigner. Being a foreigner means living outside of your comfort zone. And while it's usually fantastic and exciting, sometimes it gets lonely. So movies are also what I turn to when I'm feeling alone, because they are an escape from feeling lonesome.  It's rare that in a bout of melancholy I'll choose to take a walk in Fælledparken, despite my mom's well-guided suggestions. Instead of seeking comfort in nature or the city of Copenhagen, in these instances I tend to reach into another, filmic, world. It seems easier to displace my emotions onto a story than to tackle them head on during a walk where my own thoughts, not a character's, are front and center.

But today was different, because the filmic world became my own. My grumbling stomach pulled me into the kitchen of the kollegium where I live. I thought, I'll just make some quick lunch and then, I will work on my thesis. I had already watched part of a tennis match and Blå Mænd instead of working (being a film student makes you feel like any film you watch is justified as part of your "studies," even when it's a goofy Danish comedy about a recycling plant starring my Danish crush Thure Lindhardt). But my hallmates were starting Ang Lee's Life of Pi on the projector, and ooouuff I really wanted to see it. Plus, it was one of those listless snowy Sundays where a dour mood was winning against productivity. So I watched the whole thing, and it is dazzling. I don't need to tell you that much about this story of survival, beauty, and God; just see it.

I had a different reaction than most will have to this story. I think many will walk away from the film both struck by the gorgeous CGI, and thinking about religion, fragility of life, and whether or not the whole thing is an allegory. For me, however, it was Pi's loneliness that collided with my own. His need to survive after a shipwreck is of course something my comfortable life has never had (nor do I wish it!), but in some ways I felt his lifeboat was my own.

I think we all drift, alone, in our lives at some points--feeling isolated, warding off danger, and searching for companionship in our surroundings. Allegory aside, Pi had to tame and befriend a tiger to keep him sane and alive; perhaps in moments of deep loneliness we too feel fragilely human, and that the people who surround us are another species who do not understand us.

This is sometimes how I feel in Denmark when loneliness hits (thankfully it's not often). With my family far away, I think about the life I have here and wonder if choosing to live in a foreign country was in fact an act of isolation. My goals here--to learn the language, to make earnest friendships, to have new experiences, to create and sustain a life worth living--sometimes get lost in the loneliness of having to exist forever in translation. Because it's hard to connect, really connect, with another human being (or tiger), in a foreign language and culture.  But this is not just the case for ex-pats like me in the midst of mid-twenties self-investigation who have chosen to investigate far from home. I think it's true for everyone--beyond survival, we want to be understood.

Whoa David Bordwell

Yesterday I got lucky.

I got to sit and listen to David Bordwell speak for a whole hour and a half about film.

And you know what was great? Even though he was part of a symposium on metaphor in the art film at the University of Copenhagen, he didn't sound like an academic. Instead of using convoluted, rambling sentences that wind their way to a point, he distills his thoughts into pure film theory gold. It was so refreshing to hear him talk so simply, and make so much sense, which is all too rare in a theorist. And because it's useless to rhapsodize about him in my own words, I'll give you a few of his:

"Narrational modes become a conceptual frame that prompt us to make figurative meaning, so read the signs according to what the film itself sets up."