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