Times Like This...

It was hella maudlin and trite, the way my FB feed and Twitter filled up in the hours after the US election results with statements like, "In times like this, art is more important than ever," and other similar sentiments exhorting people to write, make art, pour themselves into some creative expression of their shock, disbelief, anger, and hurt at the results.  And yet.  

Monday night I went to see Colson Whitehead interviewed by Desmond Cole at the Bluma Appel Salon.  The talk was fine.  I wasn't familiar with Whitehead's work.  The only thing of his that's crossed my radar was his Zone One book, which is about some kind of zombie apocalypse, so I just assumed that he wrote elevated genre fiction.  TURNS OUT: he's actually hella literary.  The interview was okay.  Desmond Cole (one of the Toronto Star's only saving graces) was being very earnest and Colson Whitehead was being quippy and snarky and ungenerous in the face of earnest questions, which I find somewhat unforgivable and classless.

I chased the talk by seeing Moonlight with Dr. Rei. I mean, if I had known what was coming, would I have reveled in the beauty and stillness of this film, more?  I doubt that's even possible.  I watched this movie with my heart in my throat the entire time.  This film is heartrendingly beautiful. It's a film of moments, moods, shades of stillness, timbre of gazes. Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and written and directed by Barry Jenkins, it's a quiet look at three stages in the life of Chiron, a boy growing up impoverished with a drug addicted mother in Miami, coming to terms with his sexuality and masculinity in an unforgiving pocket of America (exceptionally unforgiving? That I can't speak to.  Maybe just standard-issue unforgiving.)

The movie is widely lauded. Perhaps overmuch?  It's hard to say.  I think after so many pinned hopes for Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation [interlude: my sister messaging me in the summer saying, "I just can't with Nate Parker after what's come out about him" and me responding, "Is it because his wife is white?" and her being like, "Uhhh, no...about the fact that he raped a woman!?!?"] to ameliorate the 2016 #oscarssowhite debacle went up in flames, Moonlight could not have been better positioned.  It's difficult to disentangle the timing of Moonlight from it's near-universal effusive reception, but I kinda DGAF - it's not perfect, but we (read: I) try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the very, very, very good.

I watched this with my heart in my throat. It is so achingly beautiful - the bleached brittle light of Miami in the day, the humid interplay of shadows and ocean at night, black bodies lit properly. Each act of the film is a collection of tones and moods and impressions - this is not a film that bludgeons you with exposition, character development, plot.  It's a collection of moments, some so tender that I could feel my heart breaking the way glass does when you fill it with something hot...a tiny pop and then radiating hairline fissures etching fine across the surface. It's a movie about looks, the weight of what's unsaid, pauses and spaces with the mass and presence of mountains. It's about masculinity, fatherhood, parenthood, sexuality, confusion, violence, performance, class. It's about what happens to a person when external pressures cause them to fold in on themselves, when the impossibility of their material conditions renders them guarded, mistrustful, wary, fearful of betrayal.  The main character, Chiron, is so still and reserved, all his emotions in his eyes, and his small tics.  The performances are almost all uniformly great...except for Janelle Monae who is a touch stiff in her role as a surrogate mother to Chiron.  Naomie Harris is an excellent actress but her role is overdrawn and is the only one that nears-caricature.  

Considering what a giant, terrifying, saddening s**tshow the rest of the week ended up being, I'm glad that I had the opportunity to revel in something beautiful and quiet and sweet, with someone I love.

I mean, I don't know how to sum up my feelings about the election.  I have a lot of thoughts.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I feel stupid...I mean, whiteness advertises itself on a daily basis.  It tells us EXACTLY what it is...and I still thought he wouldn't win.  I thought the imperfect alternative (HRC) would prevail.  So I feel duped.  I also feel like you can't underestimate the power of economic disenfranchisement and class and the effects of smug left-leaning politics.  

The night of the election, one of the scariest things I read, was a tweet where someone said, "a lot of white people kept their heads down, their mouths shut, smiled at their neighbours, and marched into those booths and marked Trump" and the truth of that gave me goosebumps.  The insidious banality of self-interest.  How left-leaning media have engendered a situation where people know enough to hide their reptilian, base selves.  

More thoughts on this to come.

For now, there is beauty. In spite of, despite, in the face of...everything else.

Fin.

On Capitalischm...and Race

I recently watched the Dardenne brothers' Two Days, One Night, which is as straight-up a critique of capitalism as I've ever seen in a film (note: I haven't seen that many films in my life, so maybe that's not saying all that much?).  It was the first film I've ever seen by those two and if it is any indication of their work as a whole, I'm hungry for more.  There are few things that get to me more than old French Marxists, with their shocks of white hair and their solid, insouciant belief in the primacy of class.

The movie is about a woman, Sandra, played by Marion Cotillard, who is on leave from her factory job (I know, I know...as I said to my friend, "What kind of factory is this? A babe factory?!") (it turns out to be a factory making solar panels), because of her depression.  In her absence, the company finds that they can get the work done with one less body, as business is decreasing due to cheaper solar panels from...wait for it...you guessed it...China.  They take a vote, and her colleagues choose to eliminate her position so that they can split her wage in the form of a bonus instead.  Discovering this information on Friday, Sandra scrambles and the foreman agrees to re-take the vote on Monday.  The malaise of her depression threatens to make Sandra submit to her proscribed fate, but at her husband's urging, she spends the weekend methodically contacting each of her colleagues to convince them to change their vote.

This kind of story, where, as Junot Diaz says the "meta" or the "machinery" is hidden, is totally up my alley.  Sandra's depression standing in for the malaise of the prototypical factory worker under capitalism is an incredibly apt device. The "choice" her fellow workers are given, to prioritize their own material circumstances over hers, is one that capitalism asks of us, on a near-constant basis.  In fact, that choice might be intrinsic to the very construction of right-leaning capitalism.  The conflation of capitalism with democracy (the individual "vote" as the foundation for our subjectivity) is also bang-on.  As the film progresses, we meet her colleagues and understand why some of them made the choice that they did.  Some succumbed to group-think; some are seemingly amoral; some were able to make the choice in her absence, when she was an abstract construct versus when she stands before them in her subjectivity; many are in dire financial straits and the bonus is necessary - they too face difficult day-to-day choices - the Dardenne brothers understand and deftly illustrate the difficult decisions we face under this system.

Many agree to change their votes and when the final vote comes, we see Sandra emerge from her depression, smiling, proud of the "good work" she put in with her husband.  I'm not going to spoil the outcome of the vote, but the film is so smart - by actively taking a hand in her direct material reality, by taking up her agency, she is emboldened and alive.  In those two days and one night, her labour was her own.

Guys, I'm getting goosebumps just  thinking about that.  I love the power and clarity of that metaphor.  I like how tight the story is.  I love how effective the film is.

Shortly after that, the Dotytron and I went to see Zizek speak at the TIFF theatre, as part of this conference that York U (of course!) put on, called Coming to Terms With Film-Philosophy.  Not for nothing guys, but York U conferences are THE S**T.  This is who I've seen courtesy of York University: Jean Baudrillard, Gayatri Spivak, Susan Sontag, and now Zizek.  U of T has given me Bruno Latour, which was cool...but C'MON.  Zizek is a Lacanian Marxist...and well, you know how I am about such things.  I AM HERE FOR IT.  He gave this long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness, very Zizek-ian talk on film that talked about "capitalischm" (as he pronounces it) directly and indirectly.  He talked about Children of Men, a favorite of his and mine, and how he loves it because it is not about sexual productivity, there is no romance, and he lampooned the Michael Caine character for being the ideal of an aging, bourgeois, white, hippie liberal...and well, you should ALSO know how I save my most special disdain for white bourgeois liberals.  He talked about how his nightmare would be a world in which freedom is found through collectivist, democratic action.  How he would hate nothing more than to be forced to vote on everything all the time, like in a co-op, and how his dream scenario would be a world in which an invisible state apparatus took care of those mundane decisions and allowed him the time to do what he does best: write, talk, think, explore things at his leisure.

It was as you would expect a Zizek talk to be.  A little difficult to find the thread, but full of bon mots that speak to me and my praxis.

Finally, you might have noticed that I've been sour on white people lately.  I mean, I've been sour on white people (not individual white people, but white people, The Franchise...does that even have to be said?  If it does...I mean, I probably can't help you and you should likely be reading something else?) probably my whole life, but I've become more vocal about it of late.  It feels good.  There is nothing I love more than the groundswell that is destabilizing and decentering white, heteronormative hegemony.  It feels GOOD.  Let me tell you why it feels good.

Because, now, yt pipo are finally getting a taste of what it feels like to be EVERYONE ELSE, for a hot minute.  To know, however fleetingly, what it feels like to grow up as the child of immigrants, to have people stumble over your "weird" name, to feel a little uncertain that everyone doesn't celebrate Christmas, or camp, or get birthday parties, or know how to skate, or give a flying F**K about the Tragically Hip or whatever.  To know what it feels like to have your existence questioned.  Back to Junot Diaz (and have you listened to that talk yet?  If not, you should!  You really, really should), I'm glad that white people are getting a taste of their own medicine.  "I am white and therefore I am human.  You are not white and therefore I'm not sure that you are human."  To have your existence questioned.  To know the burden of POC who have to know about stupid Franchise s**t AND their own cultural idiosyncrasies at the same time.  

I spent the bulk of my life feeling like not the norm.  In retrospect, that was a gift and has made me who I am, but when I didn't think I could be attractive, when I didn't think I was seen...it was hard, man.  Ultimately, those experiences allowed me to cultivate the perspicacity that allows me to revel in the weird and the stuff that's a little outside the norm.  That makes my friends the very best people in the world.  That allows me to find my kindred spirits and love them for their ability to know what it's like to not be that.  

It's just good for the Franchise to get a taste of its own medicine, ya know?  

Basically what I'm saying is: I never need to see a white kid dabbing.  It's gross.  Please stop.

P.S. Lots of catch-up writing happening this week at the cottage!  Keep scrolling because I'm hoping to have a lot of new content up.

Fin.

being normal in toronto

for the benefit of dr. rei who gets confused when i post things out of order - this is friday's post that i'm just getting around to making live today (saturday)

first - the dotytron has gone plum crazy making 80s mixes. on the road trip down to geneseo he unveiled version 1 of his series. in case you think he goes the "cool" route of 80s new wave - you'd be wrong! instead, he compiled the ultimate 80s cougar mix. it doesn't start off that way - initially you're lulled by toto (who, incidentally, we like a super band of studio heads - did you know that?), bowie, and queen. then it totally goes into cougar town with glass tiger, don henley, pat benatar, and heart. it's the best! the best singing along ever! i love singing along with the dotytron in the car because a) he's a guy who likes singing aloud, which is rare enough; and b) he'll automatically start doing the harmonies, which is fun cuz then you feel like you're REALLY singing. last night on our way to dodgeball we both tried hitting the high note in aha's "take on me" - just take a moment, sit back, close your eyes, and imagine that. lol!

knit night as per usual featured me being the only one knitting. but it was really fun! the conversation was great - at one point, two of the participants started reflecting back on the G7 protests in quebec city in april, 2001. they were talking about how weird it was to go out and get gas masks and how a friend of one of the girls was carrying twins but lost one of the twins because of the tear gas. call me a right d**k, but when i start hearing stories like that, my bulls**t, snopes detector starts beeping. when pressed by another of the dinner guests, who was suitably horrified (unlike i. apparently i'm JUST enough of a skeptical, critical jerk to question such things), the recounter of the event admitted, "well, she was really early along and she didn't get tests or know for sure, but she was pretty sure that the tear gas made her lose the baby." don't get me wrong: it is a horrible thing to have a miscarriage and i'm empathetic of anyone who has to experience that. but couldn't one argue that it is to a lesser extent also horrible to use a miscarriage as a form of counter-cultural capital? getting gassed in quebec is the equivalent (i'm not saying that i put the two on the same plane, but they occupy the same level of symbolic cachet for bleeding heart, liberal, middle-class university students) of participating in the paris riots, or like, not staying at a resort in cuba. if you didn't get gassed in quebec, how would you know you were a liberal arts student?

meanwhile, i vividly remember standing in the living room of my shared house in peterborough, as my two roommates stared transfixed at the coverage of the G7 protests on the television, convinced we were on the cusp of a new, communist world order. i was trying doggedly to pierce their idealistic bubble by expounding at length on how in this day and age of short attention spans the ritualized act of mass demonstration is a politically impotent form of civic engagement, etc etc (insert critique of situationism, adbusters, flash-mobbing, shout-out to performativity, blah blah blah). isn't that so me? at least i stay consistent. it's not like i WANT mass protest to be ineffectual - it would be great if, when people stormed the streets, the powers that be woke up and changed the error of their ways. BUT, there have to be a few crucial steps that preclude this: critical thinking, intelligence, nuance, the usual stuff i'm always bemoaning the lack of.

later we got into a conversation about film. OF COURSE people who were at the quebec riots would also LOVE wes anderson and lars von trier and michel gondry. OF COURSE! never mind that lars von trier is a misogynist who makes torture porn for the bourgeois or that wes anderson's films (save for "bottle rocket" and "rushmore") are celluloid exemplars of SMUG and TWEE. art direction does not a film make! never mind that michel gondry mistakes community and imagination for a patronizing naiveté bordering on brain damaged. no no, if you fancy yourself a cultural arbiter and you're of a certain age in an urban locale, you simply MUST worship blindly at the altar of crappy film, acritically.

anyway, i was obviously in fine form - there are few things i love more than the opportunity to express a dissenting opinion. haha! just kidding. it was just fun to talk film and debate and discuss.


last night i made us an EXTRA delicious dinner. salmon cakes! i took about a pound of wild salmon, skinned it, cut it into small cubes and tossed it with torn, crustless bread, an egg, a chopped shallot, some mayonnaise, tabasco and salt and pepper. then i took scoops of the mix and pan-fried them on either side in a little bit of oil. kind of like your classic chesapeake crab cake. as i told the dotytron, "fish cakes maryland style" to which he replied, "oh i know her, we used to jam together back in the day" lol! i served them with some prepared mayonnaise that i mixed with chopped dill and lemon juice. they were super tasty. i also made a salad that i cribbed from someone on facebook - butternut squash cubes roasted with sage, on top of mixed greens, with crumbled mild goat's cheese and a maple mustard vinaigrette. delish! but not quite enough food - when i came back from dodgeball i was famished and ate almost an entire box of samoas with a glass of milk.

today i had a lovely lunch with dr. rei where we talked about how stupid it is when living in toronto makes you crazy and all keeping up with the joneses. how our generation is so entitled and so conspicuous consumption-driven that we fail to remember to take our time, to wait, to do things slowly, to not expect everything to look ripped out of the pages of dwell or apartment therapy in a day. i'm totally guilty of it, probably moreso than dr. rei because i'm such a balls-out, hyper-workaholic perfectionist. it's nice to have grounded people like dr. rei bring you back down to earth. to remind you that people's houses (par example) are the product of 20 years worth of work - that you can do things incrementally, over time, and that that's okay and moreover, that that's NORMAL. we live our lives so much in the eyes of others (says the confessional blogger) that we forget what it's like to be NORMAL people with regular, lowkey values. that a 1000 square foot home is totally fine to raise kids in and that kids are raised the world over with greater injustices than having to share a room. toronto living can make you crazy that way. thank goodness i have dr. rei's hamilton-hardened clear-eyed vision to save me from myself.

tonight we're going to eat a quick chino loco's takeout meal and then meeting up with the gang for some "twilight: new moon" action aka STARE EYES.

fin.