Divergent diverges not very far at all...

Guys, how long has it been since I wrote a movie review?  Since The Great Gatsby I think. Wow, that's a long time.  Probably because I hardly ever see movies in the theatre anymore.  But I did last night.  Saw Divergent with my good friend Mike.  We were both inspired to see the film after we read this article about the "rape scene" in the film (in the interest of accuracy, it's not exactly a rape scene).  Aside from that article and one other, I literally knew nothing about either the books or the movie--nothing about the plot or the themes or the characters.

So I came to the movie as an almost entirely clean slate.  And the overall reaction?  It was pretty good.  But it had a lot more potential than it actually fulfilled.

Quick summary (there be spoilers ahead), for those who want it:  Post the traditional "devastating war" society has once again withdrawn behind a great big wall that shields them from the mysterious "other side."  To maintain peace after said war society was divided into five "factions" which each are built around a specific characteristic: Amity (they're nice), Abnegation (they're selfless), Erudite (the smarties), Candor (totes honest), and Dauntless (brave).  Each faction is in charge of certain aspects of life that suits their strengths.  At 16, after taking a test which supposedly tells you in which faction you belong, you then get to decide which you will belong to for the rest of your life notakebacksforever.  Enter Beatrice "Triss" Prior, born Abnegation, but super conflicted cause she just doesn't naturally let people take advantage of her.  This is reinforced when she takes the test and, instead of neatly fitting into one faction or another, qualifies for three: abnegation, erudite, and dauntless.  This is known as being "divergent" and is apparently real bad.  At the ceremony she makes the difficult decision to abandon her family and join Dauntless (faction over blood so she's basically leaving them behind forever).  Having joined Dauntless she enters into a rigorous training program because the Dauntless are the police force.  Smaller and weaker than nearly everyone else, she struggles to keep up during the first, physical phase of testing.  But in phase two, focusing on mental training, she suddenly shoots ahead of everyone.  It is here her "divergent" qualities emerge as she is able to deal with the mental testing far too easily.  But this is also dangerous, because the better she does in the tests the more evident it becomes that she is divergent....and oh my gosh, the bad guys (Erudites...because everyone knows that heroes are strong and villains are smart) are hunting down divergents cause they're dangerous...because reasons.  Obligatory Love Interest (hereafter known as Eyebrows and Lips because his real name is equally stupid) teaches her how to beat the tests like a true dauntless, however, and she manages to pass her final test undetected and graduate from initiate to official Dauntless.  Just in time for the climactic fulfillment of the evil Erudite plan...which is to drug all the Dauntless into mindless drones who will obey the Erudite's orders to go massacre the Abnegations...because no one can stand those selfless bastards anyway.  But handy!  When you're divergent you're also magically immune to the drone drug!  So Triss and Eyebrows and Lips (who is a sort of...intentionally cultivated divergent?  it's not clear) break away, shoot some people, get captured, Eyebrows and Lips is taken away by Darkest Timeline Kate (Winslet), but Triss is saved by Action Hero Ashley (Judd), also known as her mother who turns out was born a dauntless.  There's fighting and Triss rescues Eyebrows and Lips and together they save the day and then run away with a few friends outside the wall into exile to await the sequel where they'll, no doubt, lead a rebellion/revolution. (end of spoilers)

Shailene Woodley plays the main character, Beatrice (shortened to Triss early in the film).  Ms. Woodley also played Alex King in 2011's The Descendants, which you may know as a movie that I absolutely adore.  This was the only other thing I knew about the movie and I'll admit that it was a big draw.  She had done an incredibly good job as the struggling but ultimately good daughter in The Descendants and really impressed me.  And she did an equally good job in Divergent.  Triss could very easily be ruined in the translation to the big screen, becoming one dimensional and irritating--an especially alarming possibility since the entire basis for the character is that she specifically isn't one particular thing but many).  But Shailene really managed to create a complex character who is both brave AND self-sacrificing AND intelligent.  And even more impressively, she did so in a way that made her believable.  This was augmented by giving her believable physical abilities--namely, she, a tiny little girl who has never hit anyone in her life, is pretty consistently owned in every physical fight she gets into.  Let's all take a moment to celebrate the non-existence of any "waif-fu" in this movie.  By the end she does manage to hold her own for at least a few minutes before being laid waste but that feels more like a realistic development of her abilities due to hard work over time.

Shailene is supported by a nice cast of surrounding characters.  Eyebrows and Lips seems a little too beautiful (hence his name here) but puts in a pretty solid performance for a generic character.  But my favorites were Triss's friends.  They gave great performances and their relationships felt realistic and grounded.  I particularly liked Zoe Kravitz (yes, Lenny's daughter) who looks like a cross between her daddy and Kerry Washington.  She delivered her "candor" lines believably and she and Triss worked off each other nicely.

And as the original article I linked to discusses, the movie is definitely an impressive effort at bringing a real "strong female character" to the screen.  Triss's bodily autonomy is zealously defended.  She is independent and able to enforce her own decisions.  She manages to be a fighter without being completely cold and emotionless, which seems to be a very common trend in characterizing "strong" women.  And while she retains a great deal of selflessness, a solid argument can be made that it is the product of her upbringing rather than her gender.  Overall there are some really worthy ideas that they're tucking into the film.

But guys...there's some issues.  The premise itself seems pretty deeply flawed to me, and then the specific plot was kind of arbitrary.  Apparently the Abnegations run the government because they're selfless, but the Erudites want to seize control because...they want the power I assume?  But that's never stated, instead you have Darkest Timeline Kate, apparently the architect of this plan, asserting that she believes in her cause--indeed, she is willing to die for it.  But...what is her cause?  Because being willing to die for power doesn't quite make sense.  So what is she so passionate about?  I mean, she says several times that Abnegations are going to destroy the peace...but she never explains how.  There's just a whole bunch of sort of implied accusations and nothing concrete.  It was frustrating.

Additionally, it was painfully predictable.  I don't know how many times I leaned over to Mike and called exactly what was going to happen in the next moment.  I am, however, sort of lenient with predictability in films because the opposite problem--twists simply for the sake of twists--is infinitely more grating to me.

I did find the idea interesting.  Telling people what they are and then shutting them into societies built around that one trait so that they never try to develop any further aspects of themselves has some really interesting potential.  But I'm not sure that they followed through on the full possibilities of it.  They touched on it a bit with Eyebrows and Lips when he says that he wants to be more than just one thing.  But perhaps that further development will happen in the second story?

I think that in the end my biggest complaint is somewhat more meta than just this one film.  It is a complaint about the way YA books are adapted into movies, over and over again.  Let's look at some trailers.  First, here's the trailer for this movie:

How about The Hunger Games

The Host

Do you notice how all of these kind of feel the same?  Let's try one that's a little more fantasy

Those are all pretty recent, let's look at one that is sci fi and based on a pretty classic book

Huh...it somehow still looks...just the same.

Now lets look at a trailer that was just released for one of the greatest YA books ever written, The Giver

.....


....

....

wow.  Exactly the same.

Now, if any of you have read The Giver, and I sincerely hope you all have, you know that if ever there was a book that did not fit in the "heroic action adventure" category this is it.  The Giver is about reason and emotion and decision making and many fantastic things...but it is definitely not about action.  And if anyone had, for some reason, called me up and asked me if I had any ideas about how to make a movie of The Giver I could have given you plenty.  Creative and different ideas that would work with or maybe even enhance the natural strengths of the story.  I'm not being arrogant here, I'm pretty sure that any fan of the book could do the same if they tried for 10 seconds.  But what do we get here?  Perhaps the most egregious example of the same movie that they've now been making for years, with an almost insulting effort at ill-deserved legitimacy in the casting of some big names (but really Meryl...it actually hurts me that you're in this).  Say what you want about the source material being similar (I won't argue that there's a disturbing lack of innovative creativity in contemporary YA lit), if The Giver is being steamrolled flat into the same exact movie as the rest then it is clear that the source material has only the very most cosmetic influence on the actual move.  As my brother said "we based this movie on the title of a popular book."

And that was my biggest complain about Divergent.  Instead of trying to make a complex interesting movie that excels in different or unusual ways, they made the only kind of movie they think you can make--pretty people fighting in exciting action scenes.  And sure, the book may be a generic entry into the Hunger-Games-inspired dystopian YA genre (I'll let you know once I've finished reading it).  But the thing is, and this is the most frustrating part, you can still see the echoes of interesting and unique ideas; however they're like over cooked vegetables...recognizable as something that once had nutritional value, but now just a soggy mess.  

But as I said, that is more of a meta criticism leveled at Hollywood in general.  If I set aside that overarching annoyance I can say that I liked this movie more than I expected to.  I went in fully prepared to enjoy myself MST3K style, but ended up appreciating the movie for its merits rather than its mockable potential.  So maybe go see it...but I support you if you decide to wait for it to hit the dollar theatre.

Gatsby? What Gatsby?

How could I not write a review of The Great Gatsby?  It's Baz Luhrmann for heaven's sake and we all know how much I love him (I love him about five heaps...just in case you didn't know).  It is safe to say that The Great Gatsby is the movie I've been most excited about for the last six months (now that it is out Ender's Game officially takes over that job).  But how could I not be?  Look at this trailer!

Alas....I will say that the trailer is just a shade more satisfying to a certain aspect of my Baz Luhrmann love than the movie.  See, what I've always loved about Baz's movies is their passion.  They don't go in for restraint or subtlety, when Baz does passion it is explosive and vibrant to the point of nausea and I absolutely love it...probably because it is exactly the sort of experience of emotion I am unlikely ever to have in my own life.  And that trailer?  It is positively dripping with classic Baz Luhrmann passion.  The movie?  Surprising as it may seem, I think I could say that it was his most restrained film thus far.  Which is not to say that there isn't plenty of emotion there, nor even plenty of over-the-top visual gluttony.  But those emotions were restrained, veiled, veneered over and divorced from the orgy-like party scenes.  Thematically it is a brilliant move that reinforces the central idea of Luhrmann's adaptation of this specific story....but it did leave me a little bit disappointed in terms of a Baz Luhrmann movie experience.

This is the sort of heavy-handed passion I'm talking about.  This

is one of my favorite scenes of all time...

But never fear!  If I felt a little disappointed in terms of the blatant emotions of the film it was more than made up for in the casting of it.  I have long argued that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the best actors we have today and I don't think he's ever given a better performance than as Jay Gatsby.  Of course, we all knew he would.  I don't think I have talked to a single person who didn't share the same moment of "of course!" as soon as they found out he was playing the central character.  Once you think of him as Gatsby there is absolutely no one else who could have played him.  And Leo didn't disappoint.  I am one of the few people who didn't study the book in high school (I studied a grand total of one complete book in my high school, and it wasn't till I made it to AP english my senior year...hooray for The Scarlet Letter!) so the first time I read this book was the end of last summer I think (or possibly it was fall?).  I didn't really connect with Gatsby when I read it.  I didn't understand why Nick would come out of this entire experience and say that the only person he didn't loathe was Gatsby...he seemed to be just as degenerate as the rest of them to me.  No, it wasn't till I watched Leo's twitchy, nervous, and intensely anxious performance that I came to connect with the character of Jay Gatsby.  He was magnificent.  I mean, right down to the smile that I thought couldn't exist as per Nick's description of it:

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

And when DiCaprio turns smiling to the audience in his big moment of reveal...smiling right at me so it seemed...suddenly I knew exactly what Nick meant.  But that was just Gatsby.  Though Karissa and I agreed that Tobey Maguire is possibly tied with Michael Cera as the most awkward human on the earth, I think he absolutely nailed Nick Carraway.  He has this knack for hilarious expressions that say 50 times more than any amount of dialogue possibly could.  I read an interview with Maguire about how it was difficult trying to find a way to play Nick that captured his role as outside observer whilst allowing him the space to be a character who actually did things. I think that trick of expression was a major part of that balance.  As he gets drawn into an Epicurean afternoon with Tom and his entourage his face expresses that dissociated observant quality in the midst of his own participation in the whole thing.  And even though Maguire seems to have somehow become ridiculous in pop culture (I still love him and think he is terribly under-utilized) I think he carried his darker more dramatic moments wonderfully.  Carey Mulligan, too, was magnificent.  She caught that breathy, melodramatic way of speaking that you somehow just can't help but associate with flappers.  Even more amazing was how in moments she could appear bored--old and almost haggard.  Carey Mulligan.  Let me remind you what Carey Mulligan looks like

seriously...so damn adorable

She was great.  But then, every single person in the movie was great.  The greatest triumph of this film was its casting.  

Slightly less great were my constant flashbacks to Moulin Rouge.  As Riss and I discussed on the way out, Moulin Rouge was based heavily on La Traviata and the Orpheus myth.  Now, if you were to read either of these stories your first thought would not be "Wow, this is just like The Great Gatsby!".  But the way Luhrmann decided to play the story I was constantly reminded of his earlier film.  First you have a conservative somewhat naive young man who moves into a new environment of excitement and indulgence.  He is caught up in this hedonistic world and is consumed and nearly ruined by it.  He slowly rebuilds himself afterward by growing a stubble and writing it all down.  There is an ephemeral and unattainable beauty who glitters brightest in this world of color and excitement and all men worship her.  Despite all the best efforts of her true love to win her and take her out of the artifice and corruption he fails (though in this case he is the one who dies rather than she).  The party scenes gave off the same frenetic energy as those in the dance hall. This recurring deja vu was mildly irritating, but on the other hand...this is a Baz Luhrmann film.  I can't blame him for returning to the same themes that appealed to him in a previous movie.  After all, Spielberg and Burton and any number of other big directors have been making the same movies for years.  We can't help that certain stories appeal to us.  

But similarities to Moulin Rouge aside, this was a remarkably true adaptation of one of the most famous works of American literature in existence.  One of Baz's trademarks is also the trait that makes his movies so divisive; either you love him or you hate him.  I'm talking about the willing suspension of disbelief.  This is a principle you talk about in humanities classes--it is the implicit request of the author or director or whoever that you the audience member suspend your awareness of how the real world really is and you instead step into this story and accept the rules that exist here.  Most movies cultivate this in their viewers.  They attempt to make it as easy as possible for the audience to invest in and submerge themselves in their fictional world.  Baz, on the other hand, strives actively to reject it.  This is what is so jarring to people who don't love his movies.  The fact that things seem so very insincere and theatrical and just plain contrived.  Isn't he aware of it?  The answer is yes.  Yes he is.  He did it on purpose.  See, the very idea of movies and acting is about playing pretend and building and fantasy between the actors and the audience.  At least, that is what it is to Luhrmann (I'd link you to the interviews with him where he basically explains all this but I don't want to hunt them down).  So he wants his audience to be aware of what is happening.  He is constantly reminding them that this is all a big show, a big game of pretend, in the effort to force them to get involved.  They are watching a grand play and their reactions to it are an important part of the overall production.  I am one of the people who absolutely love this aspect of Luhrmann's movie-making.  And I think that his willingness to acknowledge the falseness, the facade of it all, is what made him possibly the only director who ever possibly could have adapted this specific book--widely deemed "un-filmable"--into a successful movie.  Of all its strengths, the text and Fitzgerald's gorgeous use of the English languages is arguably the greatest the book offers.  And Luhrmann is the one director who is capable of stopping in the middle of the film to just straight up put that text on screen.  Because none of it is real why not acknowledge that the whole thing is coming out of a book?  I thought it was fantastic.

As I said, I didn't study the book in high school.  I just read it on my own last year.  I didn't have anyone forcing me to analyze the symbolism of the book so, while I could see it was there, I didn't really care about it.  Obviously the green light was symbolic and probably there were some others and they probably meant something and it was probably really deep and interesting but I'm not picking up on it right away and I just don't really care.  When I invited Ben to come see the movie with us he confessed he hadn't read the book and he asked "Is it really such a classic?  What is so great about it?" and I'm not going to lie, I told him that to me the reason it is worth reading is solidly the aforementioned elevation of English to true art.  I mean, some of the sentences in that book literally made me catch my breath.  Like, I had to stop and reread them several times just to luxuriate in their craftsmanship.  I told him that was why it was worth reading.  The themes and such were fine, but nothing amazing.  I know.  This is shameful for a literature person like me to admit.  Especially when I follow it up with the confession that watching this movie completely changed my mind.  Suddenly the symbolism and the allegory and the significance of the thematic development was engrossing.  I'll definitely need to watch it several more times to work through it all.  And sure, I feel the appropriate shame that I needed the rather heavy hand of Luhrmann to pick up on these things.  But on the other hand, I'm going to blasphemously argue that this adaptation, true though it was, actually opened up some new and different analytic options.  If nothing else, watching actors color the characters with their own takes on motivations and reactions forces a reevaluation of the characters in this new light.  My point is that watching this adaptation opened up the original text to me and I am ok with that.  

So what is my final opinion?  The Great Gatsby is pure and unadulterated Luhrmann.  If you don't like his style then you're not going to like this movie any more than you've liked any of his other films.  If you do like his style then you won't be disappointed (equally you won't be surprised...he's not really breaking any new ground).  As I've said before, Baz Luhrmann is truly the master of the post-modern pastiche and surrealism.  While Moulin Rouge remains my favorite of Baz's movie thusfar, I still can't wait to add Gatsby to my collection.  

Yesterday I fell in love...

Yesterday morning I watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.  Incidentally one of the last tolerable Matthew McConaughey films ever made, unless you count Magic Mike, in which he simply plays himself.  In this movie you have savvy, cute, intelligent Andie Anderson (played by the queen of the decade Kate Hudson), a writer for the fastest growing women's magazine who wishes she could stop writing silly How To articles about getting skinny and avoiding tickets and could instead write something called "How to Bring Peace to Tajikistan".  Cause, you know, she's super smart!  And you have Ben Barry, an advertising agent trying to snatch a big diamonds account from two super slutty coworkers.  Andie tells her boss that her next article will be "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" where she'll start dating a guy and then drive him away using all the usual mistakes that most women make.  Ben makes a bet that he can make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days, and if he wins he'll get the big account.  The evil slutty coworkers pick Andie, who happens to be at the same "top watering hole for the young upwardly mobile", to be the lucky girl.  The rest of the movie is Andie bouncing between being her charming and delightful self and an insane, clingy, devil-spawn and Ben trying desperately to not shoot himself in the face as he tries to deal with her and also make her fall in love with him.  Hilarity ensues.

I still enjoy this movie on a very superficial level.  It's mildly funny to see all the things Andie does to drive Ben crazy.  But the entire time I am just thinking "this is absurd!  What is wrong with these people that they're actually doing this?  What is wrong with them???!!"  Why would you screw with someone like that?    And then why would you keep screwing with them when you started to actually like them as a person?  Not only that, but here are two young adults in very promising careers who have so few problems that the only way to create enough tension for a movie is to manufacture the world's stupidest work....assignments? bets? whatever... This is not my life.  I don't know whose life they're supposed to be portraying, but it is no one I know.  The whole thing left me with a distinct disgruntledness.  Who are the people that are supposed to identify with that movie?  This movie was made before my generation had quite grown up and faced reality.  It was made in a different time, in a different social atmosphere and it is no longer relevant to the world in which I live.

So I looked for something made very recently.  I wanted something contemporary and indie and real.  I found The Giant Mechanical Man.  I'd seen a trailer for it several months ago and remembered wanting to see it.  It stars Jenna Fischer (aka Pam from The Office) and Chris Messina (Danny from The Mindy Project or the husband in Julie and Julia) as two 20-30 somethings who are trying to figure their lives out.  Jenna plays Janice, who gets fired from her temp job, not for being unreliable, but simply for allowing her apathy for temp work to show.  Without a job she gets evicted and has to move in with her well-meaning but terribly insensitive sister who is constantly trying to "fix" her life for her.  To satisfy her sister, Janice takes a job selling concessions at the zoo (a job for which she is terribly overqualified, as the manager mentions when she hires her).  Tim is a street performer who dresses up as a giant mechanical man and wanders around the city.  He loves it, but when his girlfriend leaves him because she can't stand "the artist's struggle" any more, he decides he should try getting a "real" job, so he also gets a job at the zoo working sanitation.  The two quickly become friends.

I watched this movie first at work.  Then I came home and asked Matt if he would watch it with me.  I wanted to share it with someone.  He wrote his own review of the movie here, and I really like everything he said.  I sort of want to take up where he left off.  He talks about how this movie depicts real life in all of it's awkwardness.  People rarely talk to each other in perfectly turned phrases and bon mots.  They don't say the right thing.  Often a conversation is much more silence while two people try to think of something to say to the other that isn't completely stupid. This movie captures that in a really lovely way.  He also talks about how it is a movie about our generation and our problems.

This is what I wanted to talk about.  I have long been fascinated with the way movies reflect the cultural atmospheres in which they're made.  Where How to Lose a Guy reflected the optimism and the carefree feelings of pre-recession America, The Giant Mechanical Man reflects the bewilderment of my generation.  I don't have links to them right now, but I've read dozens of articles about my "lost" generation.  Articles about how people my age are waiting to get married, how we're losing the art of human interaction due to social media, how we aren't sure we are ready/able to be parents, and of course, how we are struggling to find something beyond "college work" that we could call a career.  We are supposed to be adults now, but we don't know how to do it and we're not sure we could even if we did know.  At one point Janice says "I feel like those people you were talking about, like I was just born into this life and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing.  Like I'm supposed to have it all figured out.  But I don't have it all figured out.  I just feel lost."  I feel like those words sum me up.  They sum up so many of my friends.  This movie is about feeling like everyone else somehow has it together, somehow has a plan, somehow knows the magical secret that you don't about how to be a successful human.  It's about wondering why you don't have that secret; what's wrong with you if you can't figure it out. But it is also about how to deal with that.

Tim invites Janice to go to a party with him.  It's a birthday party for some friend of his.  When it is time to blow out the candles on her cake, the friend stands up and gives a toast.  She thanks her friends and she thanks her man.  She says "It only takes just one person--just one person--to make you feel special, and valid, and like you belong in the world."  Later that night Tim is trying to explain to Janice why he likes her so much.  He tells her that she's real, and honest; he says "when I look at you...I can see you.  I can see you."

Yes, The Giant Mechanical Man is a love story.  But it's not a love story about two perky, adorable people saying perky, adorable things to each other and being oh so witty and oh so clever.  It's a love story for my time.  It's about two people who aren't sure what their life is supposed to be finding each other and telling each other that they understand.  Every time Tim and Janice talk Janice will try to explain her thoughts or her feelings to him.  She is not eloquent, she can't express herself clearly, but his response is always "I understand.  I get it."  She doesn't have to word it quite right because he's felt what she's trying to explain.  He knows it already.

There were so many other things that I loved about this movie.  I loved the colors.  I mean...I loved the colors.  They're rich and vivid and beautiful.  I think it is beautifully shot with some very interesting visuals.  I thought the music was fitting, it didn't feel overwhelming or blatantly manipulative.  So many things about this movie were perfect.  But the overwhelming feeling that is still lingering this morning--the thing that outshines all of the other wonderful aspects--was that this was a movie made for people like me.  It wasn't cloying or absurd or perky.  It was awkward in the realest sense.  It was sincere and unsure.  And it was honest.

The Soul of a Story: Lessons learned from Sunshine

I just finished reading Robin McKinley's Sunshine for the fifth or sixth time.  Every time I reread it it pulls me right back in, even though by now I know exactly what's coming--there are no more surprises left.  Nevertheless, from about the point where Constantine reappears for a second time, I am sucked into the sort of trance that leads to extremely late nights and ditched commitments.  Part of it is the joy of experiencing (at least somewhat vicariously) a new and different world.  It is that sort of book I find myself constantly coming back to, and, I think, a major part of my love of fantasy and science fiction - genres whose entire heart and soul rest upon world-building.  But even the more mundane worlds will do--the vivid charming, and scatterbrained world of Anne Shirley, or the beautiful, treacherous, moralistic world of Elnora Comstock; Victor Hugo's Paris, or Charles Dickens' London; all my favorite books share an ability to engross me in their worlds and call me back if I've stayed away too long.  In books I am able to enter the minds and experiences of the characters.  I can see through multiple perspectives and feel with multiple selves -- a feat I have yet to achieve in reality, though certainly not through lack of trying.  Literature grants me one of my dearest wishes - to get inside the heads of those I care about and to understand what they're thinking.  Sure, the people I'm caring about in these instances are fictional characters, but try telling me that in the moment.  Anyone who's fallen in love with Colonel Brandon, or Elnora Comstock, or Jean Valjean knows that their persistent lack of corporeal form certainly makes them no less real to us.  It simply makes loving them more painful.  A relative or a friend who passes away at least did exist once and you have your memories and your physical connections to them.  A character in a story might be said to live forever, but not in the way that matters to the grieving reader who just finished the book.  That character became a real, complete person in your head who, upon closing that back cover, you're forced to give up; to deny; to remember he or she is merely a figment of your (and the author's) imagination.  And as the prolific existence of sequels and fan fiction tell us, it is a hard and painful loss.  Anyone who has gotten lost in a story knows, just a little I think, the disorientation and pain a schizophrenic might feel upon being told that his delusions were the product of his mind alone.

It is that sort of immersive experience that keeps me coming back to Sunshine.  Even knowing how it all works out and exactly what's going to happen, I still get invested in it.  I care about Sunshine and Constantine.  Not just care about--I feel like I know them.  Even a character so carefully framed to be alien as Con.  The story may be written from Sunshine's point of view and Con may be an impenetrable enigma to her, but to me he makes perfect sense.  This is what I mean when I say that a character is created out of both the author's and the reader's imaginations.  And this is the inverse blessing of fiction; if a character never truly existed then the way he or she exists in your head truly is who they are.  No matter how much detail and how many specifics the author give you in the story (and no matter how completely formed that character is in the author's mind) the fact is that there can never be enough detail in a book or poem or song or movie to tell you who that person is.  Not completely.  You, the audience, are given the outlines, like the empty lines in a coloring book, and then you fill in the rest.  You supply the details, emotions, and motivations that make that character so very real to you.  Thus, he or she becomes at least partly yours.  My Colonel Brandon, my Frodo, or my Constantine are unique from those of my roommates, my mother, my best friend, and the author.  These characters are made up of me, of what I put in them.  And, as my own personal ethereal literary friends, they are just as...accurate as my roommates', mother's, friend's, and the author's versions -- because none of them were ever real to begin with.  There is a particular empathy that avid readers possess - the ability to invest life and reality into fictional people - and I wonder if it is a lack of that ability, that empathy, that divides the non-readers from our ranks?

It was not, however, this investment of personal reality into fiction that most occupied me during this most recent reading of Sunshine.  Rather it was a heightened awareness, a running analysis even, of the actual mechanics of McKinley's writing.  How was she telling this story?  In stereotypically girly fashion, one of my favorite aspects of this story is the tantalizing hints of romance between Sunshine and Constantine.  (We're not talking Edward and Bella here - one of McKinley's greatest strengths as a storyteller is her sense of subtlety and implication)  But I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that McKinley manages something truly amazing in her story; she makes me either forget or simply not care about the implications of that relationship in terms of the consequences to Sunshine's relationship with Mel, a relationship that I am certainly invested in, even if it is not quite to the extent of my investment in her and Constantine.  Those of you who know me or have read this blog know my opinions on infidelity and that "strong" hardly begins to do them justice.  So my lack of concern over this implied potential infidelity all these years fascinated me.  How had McKinley managed to completely subvert my attention  from a theme I am usually so very attentive to?  So I read with heightened attention to the structure of the story itself.  I discovered that I, as the reader, didn't consider the issue because it is never alluded to as such in the book, either by the narrator herself or simply by the structure of her world.  There is, at one point, a narrowly averted sexual encounter between the two (Sunshine and Constantine), and while Sunshine does spend exhaustive amounts of time analyzing the morality of that event and her entire relationship with Con, the conflict comes from the fact that she, as a human, is choosing to consort with him, a vampire.  Never once does she consider her relationship with Con in any sort of connection to her and Mel.  Even in the very brief moment that another person sees her with Constantine and it is alluded to that he, as a male, might pose some sort of threat to Mel it is treated as a joke and instantly forgotten.

I was very intrigued by this...essentially this choice to ignore what would generally be considered a fairly major issue.  As I read I came across others-- rather than deal with the consequences of the climactic battle (or smaller issues, like her avoidance of the fetch put on her) the book simply ends.  Conflicts with Sunshine's mother are referenced, but never actually explained or even shown.  As I was reading, these omissions felt like...cheating?  I felt like McKinley simply didn't talk about things that were "too hard."  But as a finished the book, high on my vicarious-experience buzz, I suddenly wondered "is that necessarily bad?"

That is to say, the more I thought about this book, others of McKinley's books I've previously read, stories in general, and the idea of "cheating" in telling them, I had to acknowledge that it just wasn't that simple.  In a story told in first person like this one, you are bound by certain constraints - namely, you can only share what your narrator would, his or her self, think, know, and say.  You can, of course, get around this to some extent with external stimulus; (the most obvious example being another character who simply asks necessary questions) nevertheless, it is certainly a valid limitation.  In this case, the fact that Sunshine never considered the issue of her potential infidelity to Mel can tell us several different possible things about her --most of which lend themselves to a quite feminist-y reading of her character.

Additionally, inclusion and exclusion are incredibly effective means to highlight certain information and to direct your reader's attention.  I've always maintained that J.R.R. Tolkien's complete silence on the plight of Frodo and Sam during the entire first half of The Two Towers was an absolutely brilliant movie.  He manages to inspire the same fear, anxiety, and burning curiosity to know what's going on in his readers that Gandalf and the rest of the fellowship are all feeling.  What you don't say can actually say quite a lot.  On the other hand, if you don't want your readers to be distracted by extraneous information the best way is simply not to bring it up.  I wrote a post about The Dark Knight Rises and my opinion that one of its greatest strengths was the way it took up a lot the consequences that were ignored or sidestepped in The Dark Knight.  The fact is, if Christopher Nolan had paused now and then to, say, show an angry car owner shaking his fist at Batman as his Prius was demolished it would have distracted from the primary focus of the movie -- even if it had added to the realism.  Those questions and issues were better saved for a different movie.  And so it is with Sunshine.

In the story McKinley created those questions of mine were peripheral and unimportant.  The primary conflict was Sunshine's understanding of her own identity and the then the conflict between Bo and her and Constantine.  These other issues, such as her relationship with Con, with Mel, with her mother, and even with  the SOF, while important, are things better saved for a second novel.  Which, I suppose, brings us all the way back to the beginning of this blog post.  I began by describing the experience of becoming immersed in a story and characters and the mourning that comes when you must leave them behind.  Perhaps, in the end, my "issues" with McKinley's writing, as I reread this familiar story, were actually my long-felt annoyance that she has yet to revisit this world and give me an update on how my old friends are doing....

A New TV Obsession...

Matt has been telling me I ought to watch Once Upon A Time for a while now.  This weekend was pretty intense for me, so by Sunday afternoon I just wanted something to distract me and keep my mind occupied so I figured I'd finally give it a try.  Tonight I finished the first episode of the second season, which started on Sunday.  That means that in about two and a half days I watched 23 episodes.  This is why I'm always cautious about letting myself get sucked into new TV shows.

because my brain doing the obsessive equivalent of this is also pretty dangerous...

If you don't know, Once Upon A Time was one of two shows that came out last year that are based on the idea of fairytales in the real world.  The other is Grimm, which apparently was darker and a little bit more subtle.  Haven't watched Grimm and I probably wont.  Once tells the story of Storybrook, a town populated by all the characters of your favorite fairy tales and children's stories (they do branch out from traditional fairy tales with characters like Mulan and the Mad Hatter).  They have been brought into our world, their memories of their former lives erased, by a curse from an evil queen.  Emma Swan, daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, was the only one spared from the curse and is the only one who can break it and restore the townspeople to their happily ever afters.  The first season centers on Emma, her arrival in Storybrook, and the breaking of the curse.

is it just me or does blond hair just not look right on her?

have a picture of the Mat Hatter too.  Because he's beautiful with perfect hair,
magnificent three piece suits, and delicious guylined puppydog eyes.

While Once, pretty predictably, suffers from some problems with logic and logistics, I think that overall it is a really really well done show.  Matt was quick to point out that it is written by two of the Lost writers (Lost is a show he's been lobbying for me to watch for over a year now) and I think I can see the family resemblance.  There are plenty of twists and big reveals and mysteries.  But what has really impressed me is the quality of the basic storytelling.  I feel like so many TV shows are more concerned with those twists and surprises and keeping people hooked on overinflated drama than they are on actually telling really good stories.  Once, on the other hand, kept up a decent level of storytelling, sometimes caving to cliched plot devices or purely "gotcha!" twists, but overall utilizing some very good thematic development.  Part of this, I think, is a result of the principle of constraint. Which is a principle I just made up, but it's still valid.  Basically, if you tell someone to write a story about anything they'll think a while and then they'll come up with some random story that probably won't be much good and probably will be kind of generic.  If instead, however, you tell them to write you a story using the phrase "Oh, I don't need the dishes", contains a pair of tweezers, and takes place in one single late night then you'll get something rather more interesting (if any of you would like to write me that story, please do and email it to me).  In this case, the constraint was to tell a story fundamentally based on magic in a world that has none.  This really led to some very fun story telling moments and interesting thematic ideas.

because why wouldn't you translate "queen's huntsman"
into "mayor's sheriff and sex-slave on the side"

I will acknowledge my inner feminist for a moment here and say that I also really really appreciate how kick ass the women are in this show.  Snow White, when accosted at her wedding, draws her husband's sword and stands between him and the evil queen Regina.  Little Red Riding Hood? ...well, I don't want to spoil anything, but I kind of have a woman crush on her.  Even more so do I have on one Belle (but we'll talk more about her a little later).  Cinderella begins as a bit of a ditz, but she really grows and finds her strength.  Even Katherine, a proverbial "other woman" who simply exists to come between the two star-crossed lovers, is a really strong good woman who does her best.  And she may be evil, but you can't get much more hardcore than Regina herself.  And last of all is Emma, who is so unrelentingly tough and sure of herself that I'm able to ignore the fact that she is Cameron from House--a feat not to be sneezed at.  These are not your traditional damsels in distress waiting for their men to come save them.  They can and often do save themselves.  I love that so much.

not only is she maximum hardcore, she is also mind-bogglingly beautiful...sorry
Snow White, but you ain't actually the fairest of them all.  Your besty Red is.

But most of all--above all the other characters and all the good story telling and all the fun plot twists--above all that stands my love for one character.  And that character is Rumpelstiltskin, aka Mr. Gold.

so true.

Oh my gosh Rumpelstiltskin.  Matt and I have given many of the characters in the show nicknames, mostly because Rumpelstiltskin is really hard and long to type and then it was fun to give them to the rest.  I call him Skinner.  Which is a perfect name for him because you really never know if he's going to help you or skin the flesh right off your back.

Skinner...why are you wearing gloves and an apron and carrying a
shovel out here in the middle of the woods??

This character is so delectably ambiguous.  Usually, when a character behaves badly in a show it is one of two options: it is a bad character behaving exactly how we expect him or her to act and is therefore boring or it is a good character acting out of character and really stupidly which is immensely irritating.  But Skinner is neither of these.  Skinner is a deeply self-interested character acting incredibly deviously, powerfully, and intelligently to further his own ends.  And sometimes he is just straight up screwing with your head because he's Rumpelstiltskin and what the heck else do you expect?  I love the fact that at any moment he might betray someone and that I don't have to hate him for it because it's just who he is and what the heck, it may end up that that betrayal is actually going to somehow make everything better (sheriff's election anyone?).  One of the things I love most about him is that he's always completely honest.  He'll straight up tell you that he's screwing with you or that the magic you want from him will ruin your life completely.  But somehow, without ever lying, he manages to constantly play with the people around him and keep them all in the dark.

dude, you found a girl who laughs at your horrible jokes...you keep her!

And, unlike Regina with whom I was initially fascinated but have since come to regard as a lost cause, I can't help feeling like Skinner deserves to ultimately be happy.  Which is why I am dying with anxiety over the upcoming season.  Skinner has an opportunity to be with Belle (a truly genius twist on the Beauty and the Beast tale) and let himself be happy.  I want him to take it so very very badly and I am so terrified that he's going to ruin everything as he has so consistently done for himself.  I am more invested in his relationship with Belle then I am in any other relationship in the entire show.

no matter how much  love him I cannot deny that he is a
super awkward kisser...possibly because he has a frog face?

Rumpelstiltskin, aka Skinner, makes  up at least half of my love for this show.  Despite everything I've said, I really can't fully explain how much I love him and why.  I think it's just how very complex and interesting he is.  I'm always a sucker for an interesting guy--a guy who will never ever bore me no matter how well I  know him.  As evidenced by Skinner, this often leads me to take an interest in really hard guys.  That is something I should probably watch out for in my life, but for now it means that I will keep watching this show as long as it keeps giving me plenty of Skinner.  And I'm pretty sure it will...

how can you not love a man who laughs like this?

Cheaters never prosper, but sometimes procrastinators do

Thanks to Obamacare I have been granted a few extra years of "free" insurance from my parents.  As of Monday, when I turn 26 years old, that insurance shall be no more.  Suddenly struck with the imminence of this catastrophe, and the realization that the hole that appeared in my tooth a couple of weeks ago certainly wasn't going to fix itself, I made haste to call a dentist.

get it?  Bennetttttt!  D'you get it?

I actually had realized that I needed to to make this appointment a month or two ago but had spent the intervening weeks somewhere between ostrich-like denial and paralyzing indecision as to which dentist I should trust with my mouth.  

yes...very much like this man...

It was at about 1:30 am last Saturday night (or Sunday morning?) when I was struck with the revelatory answer to my problem: my friend Jarom's dad is a dentist!  If I was the sort of person who did things like sit bolt up in bed when I get an idea then I would have sat bolt up in bed.  Instead, I was just consumed with anxiety and obsession; I must call Jarom in the morning!  What if he doesn't answer his phone?  Don't think about that...just think about calling him.  I have to call him!  I cannot forget to call Jarom in the morning!  At 1:45 am it seemed like a legitimate fear that either I would forget to make this call or that Jarom would somehow refuse to answer his phone when I called him and my mouth would be doomed forever.  As luck would have it, I happened to see Jarom walking right in front of me out of the Marriott Center after Regional Conference the next day rendering all my anxiety the night before unnecessary.  

pretty sure this is what my face looked like laying there in my bed 

What were the chances that I was going to be able to get in to see the dentist to fix my shattered tooth in a week?  I didn't kid myself that they were very good.  I called with little hope of success.  A woman named Nan answered the phone and I explained to her my situation.  

"Well, we have an emergency appointment opening today at noon.  Would that be alright?"  Um, yes.  Yes, Nan, that would be the most amazing thing ever.  

From that moment everything went as smoothly as was possible for it to go.  I came in for my appointment that day and met Dr. Youngquist, whose knowledge of Target employees and possession of a miniature AT-AT put me completely at ease.  

behold the irresistibly adorable artwork of James Hance.
Buy some of his stuff!  Go on, do it!

Dr. Youngquist took a look at my x-rays (and totally gave me a printout of them! score!) and referred me to Dr. Jenson at Cascade Endodontics to get a root canal.  Nan called them up for me, explained my time constraint, and came back and asked me if the next day would work.  Then she explained that Dr. Youngquist would be coming in Thursday morning (I found out later that this is a special trip as he usually only works Mondays and Tuesdays) to put in my permanent filling and crown.  They explain that, though the crown will take a mold which won't be ready for a couple of weeks, they'll be sure to bill it out on Thursday.  

So yesterday I went to my appointment with Dr. Jenson and experienced the fastest, most efficient root canal ever.  I was, no joke, in and out of the entire building in an hour, give or take 5 minutes.  Like, paperwork, waiting for the dentist, waiting on the numbface, paying, every single thing.  And the dental assistant gave me Dr. Jenson's personal cell number so that, should I have any sort of problem after business hours, I could call him for help.   And...when I asked the receptionist if they could hold off cashing my check till next week when I'd have my next paycheck she was 100% cool with it.  I came home and discovered a message from Dr. Vogel's office about setting up an appointment for today (Wednesday) to get my teeth cleaned.  

Thank you Allie Brosh for giving this to the internet for all it's cleaning needs...

Teeth cleaning happened with Greg, a softspoken (seriously--I could barely hear anything he said) birdlike man, and as I was leaving Jarom's dad made a point of coming out and introducing himself, bless him.  And this evening I got a call from Dr. Jenson just to check on me and make sure that I was doing well.  Tomorrow I will go in and see Dr. Youngquist again to finish everything up and get my crown.  

probably not a crown like this...just a guess

I have to say, out of a lifetime of surprisingly good dental experiences, this has definitely been one of the best.    I've got dentists calling me after hours to make sure I'm ok.  I've got other dentists coming in to work specially to get me all fixed up.  I am on a first name basis with Nan at the front desk.  Three days ago I was stressing out that my mouth was falling apart and would never be ok again ever!  Tonight I'm going to sleep with no other worry than the fact that it's 1 am and I have to be at their office by 8.  Which means I should wrap this up.  

So to finish, I want to put a recommendation for Vogel Dental and Cascade Endodontics out there. If you're in the Provo/Salt Lake area and you're looking for someone trustworthy to work on your mouth they are your people.  They're not paying me to write this, by the way (though if you guys want to send a little money my way for this totally blatant endorsement I'm down with that... *winkwink*).  I just wanted to document my superlatively good experience because good people deserve to be complimented.  

A slice of life may or may not be as good as a slice of fresh peach pie...

This summer was meant to be the Summer of Sewing.  However, since I didn't actually have a sewing machine (a sad fact which has only just been remedied by my awesome mother) that didn't end up happening.  Instead it became the Summer of Adventure and Travel...and let's face it, that's totally as awesome, if not more so, than sewing.

so excited to use this sucker!  Thanks mom!

Things got started with my absolutely awesome trip to Europe in March (a trip which I have been really terrible about documenting...I think I only made it through the first two days of the German leg... :-/ ).  This trip, unfortunately, took rather a toll on the rest of my summer, though this wasn't instantly evident.  Alas, when you spend that much money at the beginning of your summer, the end of your summer can wind up quite poverty stricken--but we'll get to that.  Especially since I regret nothing.  Well, I regret one pair of shoes, but not very much.

you can see why I don't regret them very much....

After Europe I took a month or two break from Travelling (you know, out of the state) but I continued to go on adventures.  I went to...well, nearly to Spiral Jetty.  I went to the Hogle Zoo where I discovered that my childhood enjoyment of zoos has been somewhat tempered in my old age and that now I find them both fascinating and quite depressing (particularly the monkeys...shoot!).  I also learned that carousels will always be awesome, especially ones where you get to ride exotic animals.  

there is no part of riding a bald eagle that is not awesome

It was at this point in my life that I started being aware of those repercussions of that super expensive Europe trip.  Adventures that included lots of gas and/or entrance fees were abandoned.  On the other hand, I promised Anneke that I would attend her wedding reception in Montana.  I couldn't bail on that!  So instead I brought two of her roommates to help pay for gas (and cause they're great girls and stuff) and nearly killed my car and got me to Montana.  I can't find any pictures of that trip (seriously?) so instead I'll post these three pictures I have of Anneke being adorable and awesome

How cute is this girl?

...the answer is:

Pretty darn cute

This was, however, the last nail in the coffin of my finances.  For the rest of the summer I've been bouncing between utterly broke (I mean, utterly) and pretty broke (slightly less broke than utterly).  You might think that this put an end to my adventure times...but you would be wrong!

I was lucky enough to join my friend Collin at the Stadium of Fire to see one of my favorite bands since I was about 3--The Beach Boys.  In case any of you were wondering, they may be getting older, but they still put on a truly awesome show.  The fireworks weren't bad either :)

aww...look at us there gettin' ready to rock this show!

At some point my brother decided that he wanted to go home for a visit and he invited me to come with him.  Spontaneous trips are some of my favorite.  And it was great to have the manly bonding the good sibling bonding time with my brother.  Siblings.  They're kind of the best things ever.  And then it was great seeing my family.  I haven't seen my nieces in about a billion years.  They're getting so OLD!  I also drove down to Price to visit Seth and Rachel and Seth's family.  Such great people!  I will always love that place.  And somewhere in there Tori and I drove up to Salt Lake to attend the Obon festival.  We witnessed some really stellar traditional Japanese dancing, and some less stellar traditional Japanese dancing.  I also wandered over to the City Creek Center for the first time and was treated to an awesome fountain show.  

seriously obsessed with this fountain..

Then there was just the ambient awesomeness of my routine life.  I spent my free time watching various movies, several amazing MST3K episodes, and most importantly all three seasons of Avatar with Matt.  

Matt's farewell party paying homage to Avatar, MST3K, and
his orange juice obsession

this is basically the essence of my summer right here.  Beautiful!

I got to (and continue to be so blessed) drive down to Payson every day for work.  I decided to go on an adventure one day on my way home and discovered a backroads-ish route that I take now when I'm feeling scenic.  I am rewarded with sights like this

Turns out 7 o'clock at the end of August = magic time

How lucky am I?  Pretty dang lucky!

Which brings us to August and my last two trips of the summer (this post has turned out much longer than I meant it to).  Way back at the beginning of summer my mom and I made a brilliant plan.  The plan was put in to action in the middle of August and I drove home one more time with my good friend Mike

brilliant conversationalist is Mike...

Callie also hitched a ride for one more visit home as well.  There was dancing and shooting and movie watching and familial bonding and taking of many pictures.  Good times were had by all.  

The final hurrah was last weekend.  The beautiful Laura McNeil and her equally lovely mother were so kind as to invite me to Fort Collins for Labor Day weekend to see none other than the legendary B.B. King in concert.  Which we did.  Among many many other things.  This post was originally destined to document this trip, but I ended up summing up my whole summer, so I think the details will wait for another post (there were some major life plannings that happened) and instead I'll just leave you with a few more pictures

yeah, those are vintage TMNT comics I used to read as a kid.
Plus the most delicious cream soda on the face of the earth.

my "fairy" costume for the Tour de Fat.  Kinda lame, I know...

everyone else's costumes...

one of my favorite costumes!

me and the awesome sunburn I got after the Tour de Fat.
Notice the really awesome raccoon lines where my makeup was...

100% legitimate Vaudville act which ended with a man juggling a real
chainsaw, a 14 pound bowling ball, and one fake egg

Princess Lollipo!  Another of my favorite costumes.
She gave me a butterscotch candy!

I...I wish I'd bought these...

The dessert of champions at the Chocolate Cafe.  Mmmmmmmm!

the journal I bought in Dublin and the journal I bought in Fort Collins.
I'm really digging the shorter journals--you fill them up faster and get to buy new ones sooner!

the list I made at the beginning of the summer.  Still plenty of things left on there!

And that is that.  My Summer of Adventure and Travel!  Indeed, this is the good life!