On the West Side

This week, I was lucky enough to see West Side Story presented in HD, with the entire score played by the NY Phil. It was incredible. To hear the vibrant score played by one of the world's finest orchestras, augmented to mimic the grandiose size of the typical film orchestra... truly sublime. Every emotion of the movie was exponentially more tangible when reinforced by the energetic and thoughtful accompaniment of 100+ musicians...

One aspect of the narrative that is often cited as problematic in both West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet is the improbability of their relationship - people are incredulous at how knowing someone for two minutes could result in such a fatal attraction (pun intended... sorry).

As I watched the movie (for the 3rd... 4th... maybe 5th time), I realized that perhaps the essentially impossible nature of this central relationship is irrelevant. Even without realism, this story taps into a universal human desire. I can't imagine that there is anyone in the world who doesn't want to meet someone and know, instantly, that they were destined to be together forever (dead or alive). That suddenly, for better or for worse, that person matters more than anything else and most importantly, that that feeling is reciprocated. Tony and Maria are embodying a fantasy - but that doesn't make their story any less sympathetic. Because we all want that, we all want that for them - and when they can't fulfill this promise (on earth, which carries a certain Wagnerian/Tristan element - same source material, I realize), it's all the more tragic because of the destruction of that fantasy. We live in a world too imperfect for perfect love.

Yes, I'm really cheesy. But when it comes to West Side Story, is there anyone who isn't?

Separating "Reality" From Realism: Why You Should Watch "Friday Night Lights"

I must begin with a disclaimer - I love the show Friday Night Lights. More than any other show ever. I'm emotionally invested in it to the point that it's basically unhealthy - I mean, I cry when I hear the theme song.

That being said, the end of the series has stimulated a lot of discussion about the show - what made it so unique and special. Not only has this discussion taken place within the media, but also just between me and my friends; those who love it, and those who I harangue into watching it, including my roommate.

When she told me that she didn't find the show compelling because of its purported subject matter (small town life and football), I have to admit it was a blow. However, in my experience, what the show is about transcends any superficial attachment to religion or sports. And that's a good thing.

Similar criticism of the show emerged in response to a piece in the Times by Heather Havrilesky about why Friday Night Lights is better than Glee. This editorial, although in essence correct, describes Friday Night Lights in almost negative terms - "mumbling, downbeat, old-fashioned" - which are then echoed in the comments. Most of the responses can be summed up as 1. don't care about football, high school, or small towns, 2. the show is depressing, the world is depressing enough and I want TV to be an escape, or 3. the shows are both good, but incomparable.

While I sort of agree with point three, I heavily dispute points one and two. The reason the show is compelling (more so to me than, for example, Glee) is because of its realism. The show reflects the reality of very few of its viewers: we might all have things that are depressing about our lives, but it's unlikely that they are at all related to a Texas high school football championship. In this sense, it is an escape. The viewer enters into a carefully constructed world of tangled relationships and events that are so close to reality you can't see past them. The thoughtful plot (ok, ok perhaps less so in season two) and carefully developed characters that form the world of Friday Night Lights are irrelevant to the success of Glee, a show whose theatrics take precedence over its narrative. The fact that FNL is so realistic means that the viewer is that much more involved in the show. Take, for example, the final critique from Ginia Bellafante, a NYT TV critic - she actually expressed her wishes for the futures of all the characters... as if they were real people. How much more escapist could the show be? And it's not the ability to transport people that I'm saying is laudable here; I'm attempting to say that the quality of the show is such that it is a more effective diversion, piece of entertainment, or whatever than a less carefully crafted show. In other words, truth is stranger than fiction.

To respond to the idea that it is depressing - it's true that there is a lot of misfortune on the show, a lot of losing. In this sense, the chant "clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" takes on a cruel irony as time after time, the clear eyed, full hearted people of Dillon just keep losing. But seeing people overcome adversity has its own thrill - and also, the moments of happiness on the show seem that much more resplendent in contrast to the grimness and smallness that so often characterizes rural life on the show. Also, the show is, at its core, beautiful. Filmed with beautiful people, in a hauntingly beautiful place, with cinematography that forces the viewer to get intimate with the story - it's not forced, but at the same time there's no escaping it. The duality, the agony and the ecstasy as it were, is why it's so entertaining. The show is complicated, but that's what makes it exciting to watch. 

"It’s rare for a TV show to acknowledge that happiness is a fragile, transient thing. Although the tenure of “Friday Night Lights” may have proved just as fleeting, its exquisite snapshots of ordinary life won’t fade from our memories so quickly."

These are probably the most important ideas from this article. I suppose my fundamental problem with the negative assumptions about the show are that people believe what is thought-provoking cannot also be entertaining. 

Here's the article.

And for anyone looking for further reading material about the show, this link has everything you could ever want (except this article, of course) (also, spoiler alerts in advance).

A Little Light Reading: "Native Son"

So I just finished Native Son, and I wanted to write down a few quick thoughts before I read any of the analysis included in the edition I have....

Overall, I liked it - aside from an overall heavy-handedness (which seems like a natural by-product of trying to create social commentary within fiction), the novel was compelling and thoughtful. The similarities to Crime and Punishment were stifling at times, although in order to take the book seriously I have to believe that this was intentional. There's no way that he hadn't read it - just the fact that the central characters are allegorical Christ figures in both books shows allusion rather than coincidence.

I wasn't sure what the conclusion was though - the last interaction with Max is ambiguous and seems to suggest that the communists don't actually hold all the cards, in spite of Max's impassioned and persuasive speech. Perhaps there's a difference between action and words being drawn here (although it seems counterintuitive to downplay the power of words as an author. The story of Crime and Punishment is one of redemption... and Native Son suggests that we, as a society, are so far from redemption that only a condemned man can accept this truth.

The quote that just completely stunned me was this:

"The wooden cross hung next to the skin of Bigger's chest. He was feeling the words of the preacher, feeling that life was flesh nailed to the world, a longing spirit imprisoned in the days of earth."

-p. 286

So succinct and beautiful in its assessment of Christianity (although for the purposes of the book, Christianity is all religion).

"And still when the delicate and unconscious machinery of race relations slips, there will be murder again."

"'Mr. Max, how can I die!' Bigger asked; knowing as the words escaped his lips that a knowledge of how to live was a knowledge of how to die."

"He could not talk about this thing, so elusive it was; and yet he acted upon it every living second."

This last quote suggests that the framework for Wright's understanding of the African-American experience is a Freudian one... which I'm not sure what to think about.

Anyway, brief thoughts - I'm no literary analyst, just pretending for a second that I am...

"Instead of a brain a cash register, instead of a heart a bottom line": Gender, Progress, and Capitalism in "Desk Set" and "You've Got Mail"

"The American Will inhabits the sky-scraper; the American Intellect inhabits the colonial mansion. The one is the sphere of the American man; the other, at least predominantly, of the American woman. The one is all aggressive enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition." 

- George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911)

After watching the film Desk Set (1957), starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, I expected to emerge a little more clever, a little classier, and even a little nostalgic. The film is "a bright and witty vehicle for its stars," as described by Dave Kehr - lighthearted entertainment, with the eloquent twist that Hepburn and Tracy so skillfully contribute. 

But instead I found myself distressed by the gender stereotypes reinforced within the film  - clearly, as it is a product of the 50s, this is not altogether a surprise. But if any actress from that era might stand as a feminist icon, it seems that Ms. Hepburn would be a choice candidate. The characters she portrays are typically career women - not just secretaries, but women whose intellect and work ethic has brought them to positions of some authority (Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib) or more frequently, women whose "headstrong" natures bring them into conflict with the contemporary status quo (Jo March; Mary Queen of Scots; a bevy of rebellious heiresses...). Although her intellect and independence is generally presented as atypical, she still acts as a more generous gauge of female potential - one that allows (and advocates) for women to be audacious, well-read, and self-reliant.


Few would fault Desk Set for the gender norms it perpetuates - it is very much a film of its era, the 1950s being a time when gender roles were more divided and codified than ever before. Yet, forty years after its debut, the same tropes were being marketed to women the world over through the seemingly infallible Nora Ephron (apparently romanticizing intelligence is a family affair - Nora's father Henry wrote the screenplay for Desk Set). Her films, which I will presume to crudely lump together, are thematically based on the idea that even in the world of neurotic, over-educated, liberal elites, there is still a place for romance. In other words, smart women, sassy women, which we all would like to believe we are, can and will find love - not even in spite of, but because of those traits. Of course, there's a catch.

So cute, so sassy, so... utterly powerless.

You've Got Mail is the Ephron movie that seems to most closely align with the problems that exist within Desk Set. Both films star a woman who is seemingly autonomous at the start - an expert in her chosen area (which of course involves books... already archaic in the 1950s), dissatisfied in romance but fulfilled by her job. These women, while seemingly ahead of their time in terms of both their workplace authority and independence, actually represent some very archaic values. Kathleen (of You've Got Mail) owns a children's bookstore, which she inherited from her mother - the gendered nature of these facts is difficult to ignore. She literally stands for family values - for nurturing and for carrying on a legacy. It is even suggested throughout the film that it is more important that she save the store because of its connection to her mother than because it is her livelihood.


Bunny (a name seemingly discordant with Hepburn's character) presides over a library (a typically female role) staffed entirely by women. The central conflict of the movie is when this idyllic area of isolation from the big bad business world (populated entirely by men) is suddenly upended by questions of efficiency and profitability (what would women possibly know about that?). This library stands as a bastion of good old fashioned American values - they answer questions about baseball and Santa's reindeer, recite The Song of Hiawatha and A Visit From Saint Nicholas and generally promote "the maintenance of the values implicit" in the American tradition through their preservation of the "American collective memory" (Gaul 1). 


The common thread is one of tradition, of feminine values, of sentimentality that overrides rationality. What these women value is the qualitative over the quantitative - that side of the American dream that is seemingly contradictory to the material success that is its most emblematic trait. And yet, these are our feminine role models. They are adorable, smart and yet hopelessly archaic. Their attractiveness is partially a result of the fact that they are separate from the ruthlessness of capitalism. In the face of its influence, their witty retorts seem feeble - but in a way that is attractive. "Meg Ryan is never so cute as when she's sassing the capitalist who loves her," just as Hepburn's intellect makes her attractive to Tracy - yet he ends up being right (Alleva). The realm for these women to be intelligent and autonomous is limited to that which makes them more attractive to men, or serves to protect American tradition.


The women who try to succeed in the male, progressive, capitalist realm are presented as devoid of all attractive feminine qualities. Rather, they are just presented as hysterical - essentially irrational in an unattractive, rather than attractive light. Parker Posey in Mail and Neva Patterson in Desk are both portrayed as utterly unappealing and completely desexualized. In these films, "'token women' in male dominated professions are viewed with suspicion not only by other women but also by the men with whom they compete for jobs" (Wyer). Their ambition is portrayed as craziness, which is how women who exist outside of what is socially accepted are generally depicted. Stupidity and superficiality are much less criminal in these films (see the other staff of the reference library) than desire to succeed in masculine and thus capitalist terms.


Capitalism is male, and thus success is male. That is the moral of these films, so perfectly described in the above quote from always prescient George Santayana. Kathleen loses her small business to the corporate machinations of the man she loves, and eventually realizes that "she is stronger bonded to him than she ever was as an independent proprietor" (Christensen 200).  Bunny is forced to coexist with the machine that will eventually replace her - and what is worse is both characters acquiesce to the desires of the men in their lives. Their sense of tradition and sentimentality (inherently female qualities, as they preserve the home, the family - all arational concepts) must be contained in little boxes, and assimilated into the larger plan for progress, created by men. Men are executives, scientists, and most of all, bastions of progress - a result of a Hegelian rationality that women can never understand.


In both films, the fast-paced dialogue and intellectual references between the leading couples disguise the inevitable reinforcement of gender hierarchy at the conclusion - the man was right all along, the woman loves him for it, and as a result will be assimilated into his progressive and efficiency-minded worldview. 

On homework

So right now, I'm reading Blues People by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) for a class. It's making me absolutely furious. Totally. And. Completely. Now you might say, and with reason, 1) you are a complete asshole and 2) do you hate the academic repatriation of African-American heritage?

To which I might answer, 1) blame Columbia, and 2) no. However, the same academic standards and theories need to be applied to all critical analyses. Granted, the book is 50 years old. But when hearing someone cite exceptionalism on the basis of a cultural/contextual connection between a group of people and the resulting music/art, all i can say is music has never existed, except as a result of people. Basically, this isn't a unique course of events. At all. Sigh.

Rant over.