02.09.10
Twit to be tied!
Here’s what I’ve been linking to on Twitter lately!
We Love Soaps counted down the 50 Greatest Soap Opera Actresses of all time, with input from many experts. And also from me. LOL. They’re finally done. Check out the whole list and their wonderful tributes to each actress!
Classically trained actor Brian Cox teaches a toddler Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. So. Freaking. Cute.
A Star Wars spoof about organic farming, worth it for the “search your peelings” joke alone!
My moral qualms, let me show you them
This is kind of ironic, given that I posted a few months ago about Candace Sams and the nature of criticism, but I’m starting to feel pangs of guilt for writing about books.
For my day job, I get paid to offer my thoughts on daytime television, and there’s a certain amount of distance in doing so. Sure, I interact with many of the people whose work I’m critical of, but it’s not personal. It’s not like I socialize with General Hospital head writer Robert Guza, Jr. or Trevor St. John, who plays Todd Manning, a One Life to Live character I’m never shy about lambasting. But nowadays, I am getting drawn into a circle of romance writers. And anyone who’s hung out with a group of creative people, either on the Web or in real-life, can probably empathize with me on this: Tact becomes a key issue. There’s very much a Cult of Nice, where honesty is not the best policy.
And the more involved I get in the writing community, the more I’m going to have to bite my tongue, smile and nod…and fight off the guilt of “trashing” someone’s books. Of course, rationally I know that writing reviews isn’t really “trashing” anyone. It’s just an interpretation of a text, and not a moral judgment on that text’s creator. Hating The Notebook doesn’t mean I think Nicholas Sparks (or Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams) is a terrible person who should die in a fire. Loathing OLTL’s Todd doesn’t mean I think his portrayer should be shoved off a cliff. It’s just an opinion about fiction, and, at its worst, an opinion about someone’s writing style.
However, the fact remains that what I do for WEEKLY is my job; this blog is my choice. So should I make another choice to sit on harsher thoughts in the hopes that I don’t make waves? Should I muzzle myself or be myself? Personally, I think that I have a responsibility to be as honest as I would be if I were writing for the magazine. If I’m a fair-weather critic, who’s going to be nice just because I made friends with the author or may meet them in the future, then I can’t really stand behind anything I write, can I? Everything I say becomes suspect, because I might be operating under a sort of emotional payola situation.
So what do you do in a situation like this? Has anyone faced a similar internal debate?
02.08.10
Airbenders, Persians and Racefail, oh my!
Seeing the trailers for the big budget action flicks The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time during the Super Bowl last night added a touch of racefail to the primarily misogynistic slant of this year’s commercials.
Both films — one based on a cartoon and the other on a video game — feature white actors in roles that were originally minority ones. But hey, wait, they’re not totally whitewashed movies, dude: the villains are brown. Doesn’t that just warm the cockles of your heart?
The Avatar: The Last Airbender controversy has been well-documented over the last year or two. It’s a cartoon set in a fictional universe but with distinctly East Asian themes. The team behind the film dropped Jesse McCartney (ex-JR, All My Children) nd cast Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel in an effort to quell all the outrage over the film’s whitewashing. And, oh, The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi is a villain, too. Let me make it more clear: All the kids who are the root-for heroes are still white instead of vaguely East Asian and the bad guys are brown. Newsflash: That doesn’t give you cool points, that’s not “better.” M. Night Shyamalan, who is, himself, Indian and had such a celebrated career just a few years ago, really has lost the plot; it saddens me that he’s at the helm of this project. But I guess that only helps excuse the fail in the film. Defenders can say, “Shyamalan’s involved and he’s a minority, so it must be okay!”
02.03.10
Vanity UnFair: Going Beyond the Pale
I don’t know why people are so surprised that Vanity Fair’s “New Hollywood” cover and feature story is composed solely of thin, fair-skinned women who are dressed and made-up to look as waifish and generic as possible. Forget the publication’s name referencing Thackeray’s novel, I think “Vanity” and “Fair” kinda says it all.
Yes, these women are talented and beautiful. I’m not dismissing their right to be lauded. But for Vanity Fair to line them all up like a collection of paper dolls, clad in pale colors and looking dewy and virginal, and then dub them Hollywood’s future is seriously creepy and out-of-touch. Annie Leibovitz managed to strip these women of any kind of personality or individuality. It’s like they wanted an idealized picture, a pastoral scene without vibrancy or passion…and without accuracy.
Other people have already rattled off these names, but they bear repeating: Gabourey Sidibe, Freida Pinto, Zoe Saldana. And what about the guys? Where are Dev Patel and Anthony Mackie? Sure, this issue was put to bed before Sidibe scored her Oscar nomination, but she’s been an integral part of this entire awards season. How do you not acknowledge her as a part of 2010’s influential crop of young Hollywood stars? Were they so desperate to keep to the Stepford Wife motif, the bland color palette, that they had to dub Evan Rachel Wood a new phenomenon? She’s been pretty high profile in the industry for seven years and was a pretty busy child actress on TV before that. And Emma Stone and Rebecca Hall are…who, exactly? Again, not to diminish their body of work and the films they are making, but it really just smacks of, “We need some more white actresses to round out this spread. Quick, hit IMDB!” And speaking of IMDB, popping over there reveals that many of these actresses don’t have much of anything coming out this year! Contrast that with Saldana, who is still riding high on the success of Avatar and has Takers, The Losers, and Death at a Funeral all coming out soon.
Yes, I’ve heard that old chestnut about people of color not selling well on a magazine cover, but a movie about bright blue cat-like aliens just became the biggest grossing movie of all time. It’s time to retire the bullshit rhetoric. And white people don’t necessarily sell a cover either, okay? Especially if half of them are people readers have never heard of. I challenge you to take five people at the news stand and ask them to identify Abbie Cornish and Mia Wasikowska without help. They probably couldn’t pick them out of a line-up! And picking them out of the generic, unimaginative Vanity Fair photo spread is even more of a challenge.
02.02.10
Perne notice: The Last Vampire and racial representation
I raved last year about Christopher Pike and the Last Vampire series, and how one benefit of the Twilight phenomenon is that stories I read as a teen are being re-released. Now, as I make my way towards the end of Pike’s second compilation, Thirst: No. 2, I have mixed emotions.
First, reading as an adult, I’m beginning to remember why I dropped out before the series ended. These last three novels, Phantom, Evil Thirst and Creatures of Forever — go off the rails. Kalika, ancient Egypt, reptilian aliens…it’s all very “Who with the what now?” The straightforward tale of a five-thousand-year-old Indian vampire gets muddied with irrelevant off-the-wall plots. And therein lies the second problem I have with the books.
As much as I love Alisa Perne, a.k.a Sita, and think her internal voice is beautifully authentic — she feels Indian and Hindu — I can’t help but wonder if her being white is a cop-out. And she’s not just white, she’s the idealized epitome of white female beauty: the svelte, blue-eyed blonde. Sure, there’s the built-in Aryan explanation — though I’m sure it’s debatable as to how fair-skinned Aryans really were, given the geography and climate — and one could also point out that the entire series hinges upon Alisa being able to wander around the United States without sticking out like a sore thumb. But she sticks out anyway by being incredibly beautiful. What’s a tan and black hair going to take away from that? So why? Why does such a gorgeous story about faith and identity have to be pegged not just around her passing as human but also passing as a white Westerner?
02.01.10
Nina Paley Offers Some Blues Clues
Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues made waves last year, and continues to ripple throughout the South Asian community, the film community, and across the Internet. When I spoke to the writer/director/animator for a feature at ABCDlady magazine, I had so much of our discussion left over that I knew I had to share some of it here.
For those just joining the Sita Sings the Blues party, it’s an animated, musical version of Valmiki’s Ramayana, the classic ancient Indian epic — and, make no mistake, it ain’t your mashi’s Ramayana. Paley’s oft-mournful, oft-funny tale is a simplified story of a marriage hitting the rocks, paralleling the dissolution of her own union.
Much of the Ramayana can be interpreted as representing the divide between God (Rama) and his ultimate devotee, Sita. Doesn’t turning it into a story about someone getting dumped sort of diminish that?
Paley: “I hold [to] that interpretation, of the separation of God and God’s devotee, because that’s actually how I felt. I felt abandoned by God when [my marriage ended]. So that doesn’t remove that interpretation at all. In fact, I thought about it in that way: There’s no real problem if someone who is a jerk dumps you. But if someone amazing— if you’re separated from someone incredible — that’s a whole different thing. And Sita’s whole thing was that she was God’s wife. And I certainly went through a crisis of faith [myself]. For me, I think the power of the story comes through no matter how you tell it. If I had made Rama just some shmuck [it wouldn't be the same]; he was very clearly an avatar of the divine, and what a great metaphor for life. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Well, what’s the moral of this story?’ It’s like, ‘The moral is that life is difficult.’”
01.30.10
Butterfly Tattoo, by Deidre Knight
Praise for Butterfly Tattoo, by Deidre Knight, swept the romance novel blogosphere last year, and since I didn’t want to get an eBook from Samhain (I’m old-fashioned, I like to hold a book in my hands), it took me a while to find a print copy. I started reading it last night and finished it this afternoon.
Hype is a tricky thing to have to reconcile when you’re a reader or a viewer — it’s hard to put aside everyone’s raves and form one’s own unencumbered opinion. So, I don’t know if this is a criticism or a positive thing to say, but Knight’s novel moved me more as a study of recovery from loss than as a romance.
01.29.10
Khan pasina: the rise and reign of SRK
As Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan get set to debut their latest blockbuster, My Name is Khan (no, not a biopic but, rather, an exploration of life post-9/11 for a Muslim man with Asperger’s), it’s hard not to marvel at the trajectory of Khan’s career.
Khan was a theater and TV actor who first made waves in 1992’s Deewana. One only has to look back at that film to see the writing on the wall. His angry young hero, Raja, revved onto the scene at the film’s halfway mark, powerful and undeniable. He relentlessly, passionately shocked the heroine (the late Divya Bharati) out of a haze of grief for her presumed dead husband and rekindled her desires. By the film’s end, Kajal’s very much alive spouse, played by veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, passed the torch to his younger replacement. I remember seeing the film three times at a Kolkata movie theater, so entranced was I by this new actor and his energy.
In the 18 years since, Khan has become the undisputed ruler of popular Hindi cinema, King Khan of Bollywood. He may have to tell much of the Western world — and Newark airport security — “my name is Khan,” but billions of people already know it and chant it as though he is a god.
At my twit’s end
Here’s this week’s Twitter link round-up (and a few extras I haven’t tweeted):
McG wants to reboot the La Femme Nikita TV series. To which I say, “Oh, HELL no.”
Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles do not have Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Heroes‘ Adrian Pasdar got arrested under suspicion of DUI. Aw, Nathan Petrelli, why you gotta be like that?
Pernell Roberts, my favorite Cartwright, died at the age of 81. Adam wore all black and played the guitar, what was not to love?
Jean Simmons, of Spartacus and The Thornbirds fame, also passed away.
Jimmy Kimmel, continuing his awesomeness, has a great bit reimaging the Conan vs. Leno war as a PBS documentary like the ones about the Civil War.
Some asshat is trying to create a whites-only basketball league, and claims it’s not racist. I really don’t know what to say, but there are definitely four-letter words involved.
Anderson Cooper is a Big Damn Hero. (That’s a Firefly reference, for those playing at home, and the clip is from Haiti and a bit powerful and triggering.)
01.27.10
Coming Detractions: 2010 at the movies
Sitting in the theater for Legion — which was, itself, a waste of the increasingly exorbitant NYC ticket prices — I was struck by two things. 1)Zoe Saldana is in everything coming out this year (sort of like how her Avatar co-star, Sam Worthington, was in everything last year) and 2)2010’s cinematic landscape is a barren wasteland. The latter has nothing to do with Saldana and everything to do with the distinct scent of desperation permeating the previews. Eau de “I Gotta Pay The Rent.”
How else do you explain something like the remake of Death at a Funeral, the original for which only came out three years ago. Can I just remind people how British-to-American remakes rarely work? Coupling and Life on Mars, anyone? And by featuring Danny Glover on the john with Tracy Morgan’s hand stuck beneath him, it’s like the preview didn’t even bother disguising the film for what it is: crappy toilet humor. With a cast that also boasts Chris Rock, the aforementioned ubiquitous Saldana, Peter Dinklage (who was in the original), James Marsden, Loretta Devine, and Luke Wilson, I’m just like…”Wow, the economic crisis definitely hit Hollywood, too.”
