in defense of Terry Gilliam's Tideland

As I often do after I watch a movie, I read a selection of online reviews after watching Tideland earlier this evening.

And it seems to me that a whole lot of professional critics are quite adept at point-missing. (There will be a minor bit of spoilerage in this entry, so if you haven't seen the movie, stop reading, if that matters to you.)

First: critics generally responded in an entirely wrongheaded way to what they were pleased to call hints of "pedophilia" in the movie. Although I wish it weren't necessary (and I don't know if it was in the theatrical release), the movie does begin with a Terry Gilliam talking head telling us audience members to please remember that this movie is to be viewed through the eyes of its main character, ten-year-old Jeliza-Rose, and that our adult view of things is not her view. So it is: when the brain-damaged adult character Dickens and Jeliza-Rose indulge in their "romance," it is almost exactly as innocent as Jeliza-Rose thinks it is, in her fairy-tale ideal of romance. Almost: because Dickens is still a man, and a man who, despite his diminished mental capacity, still has a man's urges...but also, inklings of a man's conscience. If he's smitten by the sweetness Jeliza-Rose shows him (and she, in turn, seems to regard him as an overgrown boy), it's fairly clear that at some level he knows he should back away from any affection stronger than the "silly kisses" the characters indulge in. Gilliam does not relent in the face of the squeamish, but he is smart enough to know his characters, and know that even if both Dickens and Jeliza-Rose, in their own, very different states of innocence, went any further, we as audience could not follow.

Not that Gilliam doesn't challenge us: most reviews seemed willing to close their eyes rather than confront Jeliza-Rose's damaged world head on. As the film begins, her parents (Jeff Bridges - playing the dark side of "The Dude" - and Jennifer Tilly - channeling one's worst nightmares of Courtney Love) are hopelessly washed-out junkies...and yet, calling them "abusive" (as several critics did) misses the point: Tilly alternates between contempt and spasmodic love, but Bridges seems genuinely fond of Jeliza-Rose...even if he has no idea what to do with her. That he has taught her (it seems) to assist him in his heroin fixes surely is abusive in a technical sense...but Jeliza-Rose seems to accept that this is simply Daddy's way of taking "vacations" (as he calls them). Despite his pathetic and desperate incompetence at life, he seems to love her and be affectionate toward her. He's simply incapable of being any kind of father to her.

And while the grotesqueries the film heaps upon us seem to bear little resemblance to anything we'd call "realistic," such a complaint misses the point: Gilliam is a fabulist, and his story here (and many elsewhere) update the classic world of what we, rather obliviously, simplify and infantilize as "fairy stories"...stories whose content, robbed of the buffering of cliché and history, are often shockingly grotesque and cruel in content. Place those characters in a contemporary setting, and "realism" is beside the point...but resonance is not.

The clearest aspect of Tideland is the utter incomprehensibility of the adult world to the child...and the dangers to a child of that world, which we see in this film with queasy-making clarity, but which a child might be all but oblivious to (to her peril). As a counter to that, we also see the ways in which "innocence" can be extraordinarily harmful...when it essentially equates to a decoupling of cause from effect, of emotional understanding, here played out in the character of Dickens, whose fantasies culminate in dreadful, real-world form...yet it's unlikely that any of that real-world terror ever entered his mind, except (again) as a sort of storybook fantasy: the brave submarine captain killing the monster shark.

It's that counterpoint (and the extraordinary performance of Jodelle Ferland as Jeliza-Rose...and her four talking doll heads) that gives the movie its emotional force...and which makes the critical accusations that Gilliam's worldview is capriciously sadistic so absurd - because I think what finally emerges from this movie is how fragile even the most resilient child might be, ultimately, and how much we as adults need to make sure children can negotiate the desperate and immense gap between their world and our own. We see Jeliza-Rose as extraordinarily resourceful, capable of transmuting (or ignoring) the most horrific situations imaginable...yet the most villainous character in the movie (the "witch" Dell) is clearly presented as an adult warped and undone by her own childhood trauma...and Dickens, too, suffered abuse at the hands of an adult, abuse which scarred him beyond the physical and mental scars of his apparent lobotomy. The fact that nearly all the adults in the film are tremendously damaged suggests something about Jeliza-Rose - and that something isn't pretty: that the trauma she's now able to transmute into storybook fantasies may eventually well up and overwhelm her psychic defenses. (The movie might be said to literalize the way the past brutally insists upon its physical presence beyond its supposed passing...)

The other striking aspect of this movie is the sheer isolation of its world. Bridges and Tilly begin the film in what appears to be some sort of derelict hotel (Bridges is apparently a rock musician...though whether the scenes of him playing to an enthusiastic crowd are current, past, or sheer fantasy remains unclear), in which their noisy playing-out of their pathetic yet perversely domestic routines goes on without the slightest interest from anyone else. The southern gothic set of decayed houses in which most the movie is set, too, exists in utter, desolate isolation from the rest of the world. Only two scenes in the movie are set in any sort of social world: one, in the bus on which Bridges and Jeliza-Rose flee the scene of their girlfriend and mother's death (during which the passengers' annoyance at Bridges' drunkenly oblivious carryings-on is kept, for the most part, to an uncomfortable distance); two, the aftermath of the movie's closing scene (which critics were all too cheerfully apt to label self-referential: it's a train wreck). This isolation only emphasizes the idiosyncratic view of its ten-year-old protagonist: only one character in the entire film acts at all like a responsible adult, and even her regard is tainted a bit by the desperation of the scene.

Tideland is unquestionably a difficult movie to watch (this despite cinematography that is frequently achingly beautiful). I'm just glad someone's bullheaded enough to refuse the imperative to make movies "watchable" - while also resisting the equally stupid urge to glory in unpleasantness for its own sake under cover of its "reality."

a meme before memes

A few years back, amused or annoyed by all the dumb "which X are you?" internet quizzes (not yet called, annoyingly, "memes"), which were inevitably constructed such that after only a couple of questions, it was obvious which results would arise from which answers, I made up one of my own.

It's maybe a little bit less linear than most. (After you take it, click on the "view all results" button to see the rest of the possibilities...)

grammar among thieves

One of the CDs I pulled out earlier this evening featured a tiny little small-print notice about copyright law. After thanking the listener for having bought the CD, it moves to an increasingly preposterous list of illicit acts: "using internet services to distribute copyrighted music, giving away illegal copies of discs or lending discs to others for them to copy is illegal and does not support those involved in making this piece of music - especially the artist." Well, okay...maybe I can see that with the first point, but the second one? Which copies of discs are "illegal"? And the third...how do I know what my friend is going to do with my CD if I lend it? The philosophy utterly overlooks the fact that fandom is spread by sharing and enthusiasm...you've got to hear this! this is really cool! etc. In record company world, once you buy a CD, you can only let anyone else hear it under carefully controlled situations (hmmm...I'm not entirely sure record companies would even approve of that: shouldn't those other folks buy their own copy?), and certainly CDs cannot be lent freely, nor can copies of tracks be made. Back in the day, of course, people would make cassette tapes for their friends of their favorite songs. How much of my collection of legally-purchased music was bought because I came to know and love the artist's music because a friend made me a tape or CD? I'd guess one-quarter to one-half, at least.

But never mind all that foolish and dubious babble about what's legal and what supports the musician (musicians hate it when people who haven't paid for their music hear it and like it - they just haven't earned it yet, baby). The really offensive part of this little bit of pleading is the next sentence, which reads:

By carrying out any of these actions it has the same effect as stealing music.

With all those attorneys on the RIAA payroll, there's simply no funding left for proofreaders, it seems...

And you know what? To paraphrase Emma Goldman (sort of): If you won't proofread, I won't be part of your counterrevolution.

Mr. Jones takes Monday and Wednesday off

I was amusing myself by creating Winamp playlists featuring songs or artists featuring days of the week, and I noticed that David Bowie's name kept popping up. How many days of the week have been included in Bowie song titles, I wondered...

And so, here's David Bowie's week: as it turns out, he has so far taken off Monday and Wednesday.

"Sunday" (Heathen, 2002)
"Love You Till Tuesday" [single version] (1966 - reissued on The Deram Anthology)
"Thursday's Child" (Hours, 1999)
"Friday on My Mind" (Easybeats cover - Pin-Ups, 1973)
"Drive-In Saturday" (Aladdin Sane, 1973)

bonus:
"After Today" (use on Sunday or Tuesday as the following day's missing track - Sound + Vision exclusive, 1975)
"I Know It's Gonna Happen One Day" (Morrissey cover - Black Tie, White Noise 1993)

if this billboard were e-mail, it'd end up in my spam folder

the advantage of a cold start heart

The new millennium version of Wire has been intense and inspiring, but one puzzlement and disappointment has been the relative absence of Graham Lewis's singing. I've always liked bands with more than one lead singer, particularly if the singers' approaches were sufficiently different that (as with Wire's "Ambitious") if each singer did the same song in different versions, the song itself takes on a wholly different air.

In Wire's newest material, Lewis's voice has been rare, and when it has appeared, it's either been electronically distorted or sounded rather shot, and I feared it was just gone. But here's the Daytrotter Session version of "Mekon Headman" (which I'd like to think is about Jon Langford, but probably not...), whose original version is on Wire's most recent Object 47, and Lewis's voice is strong, supple, and powerful: not quite as complete an instrument as it was at its peak, but stronger than I've heard it for years. The performance is nice, too - but the version from these sessions of "Boiling Boy" is even better, with Lewis's bass brought to the forefront. You need to listen to this loud, with either a good set of headphones or a nice pair of speakers; tinny little computer speakers cannot hold that bass.

(The other two songs from the session, "Mr Marx's Table" and "Silk Skin Paws," are well worth hearing and downloadable from the Daytrotter site.)

Wire "Mekon Headman" (Daytrotter Session, 2008)
Wire "Boiling Boy" (Daytrotter Session, 2008)

auto-portraiture

Via How We Drive, Vladimir Nikolic's "car-face" portraits... Brilliant, hilarious stuff.

this is your brain on my blog...

Okay, actually it purports to be my brain on my blog, as interpreted by the fine folks machines at Type-alizer, who also claim I'm a "mechanic" (which is pretty damned funny, because I can barely operate a screwdriver. Of course that may be because I drink them first...)

via Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk

where ecos meets eros

So, let's say you're all green and energy-efficient and the like, and you push your fat-ass Hummer off a cliff (or better yet, someone else's fat-ass Hummer) and get yourself a nice, small, high-mileage car.

Feeling virtuous?

Could be...but what happens when you and your lovely partner are driving along one lovely spring day (perhaps to pick up some locally-grown organic veggies at a nearby farmers' market) and, you know, your fancies turn to the things fancies turn to in spring? And I mean now...

About the only advantage of a Hummer (the vehicle) is that if you were so inclined, a full-fledged orgy involving the entire Swedish beach volleyball team could be held inside - but how, pray tell, are you going to find room even for the lower-cased, non-vehicular hummer in a SmartCar?

Fortunately, the folks over at Treehugger have it all figured out for you horny crotch-monkeys. (With photos...kinda NSFW, but mostly only if you work for Mattel and you have lawyers with itchy motion-filing fingers. And at least one of those positions brings back some high-school memories...mighta been a Honda Accord, or a VW Rabbit...)

he is the Japanese sandman?

I'm a bit of a collector of phrases - sometimes for their content, often for their sound. An excellent example of the latter (which I could easily imagine Zippy the Pinhead repeating three times...) came up in class today.

One of my students was showing off the various ringtones on her phone, one of which was an obscure (particularly to my students) '80s song. I couldn't ID that song, but I mentioned the bit of trivia that the guy who did the contemporaneous "Science!" song (only a few heads nodded as I imitated Magnus Pyke...) was also a pioneer in ringtones: Thomas Dolby, according to his Wikipedia entry, "found[ed] Retro Ringtones LLC ... which produces the RetroFolio ringtone asset management software suite for companies involved in the mobile phone ringtone business."

In other words, I said, he was a ringtone tycoon.

Ringtone tycoon! Ringtone tycoon! Ringtone tycoon!

oh hell now all the bottle-rocket freaks will come here...

It's November...and so the insane folk who dedicate themselves to posting an entry every day (just don't look at how many entries I had last November...) desperately dig into the bloggers' bag of tricks. And who am I to question?

Without further ado, a list of amusing phrases Googled to get readers here (however briefly):

beastliness in government
beaufort scale joke drunk
"dance based on child abuse"
deleting every other letter
donkey puns
grammar self centered (hey!)
how delete every site you have looked at or done
how to draw an umbrella
message bird
9 years old not this not this mountain quiz very
porky pig--"th-th-th-that's all folks!" --followed by the loony tunes theme music
pornstar ben harper
"rino christ" (the horn player on several releases from Les Disques du Crepuscule)
song never whistle urinal
spelling of word architecual
13 hours war house font
tinnitus photon machine
tootle the train communism
unfunny jokes (hey!)
vampire milk
warning narcs can dance too
woman shoots bottle rockets out her vagina
words only containing the letters m,i,s,p

ADS financial corner

Direct from Phil Proctor (Firesign Theatre):

If you had purchased $1,000 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago, you would
have $49 left. With Fannie Mae, you would have $2.50 left of the original $1,000. With
AIG, you would have less than $15 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer
one year ago, drunk all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling
refund, you would have $214 cash.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily.

can't believe it's been a week!

it is teh awesome...

Found this floating around the Facebook, where all those young whippersnappers hang their virtual...

from the ADS "Last Year's Films" files

I was amused to discover that Atonement won an Oscar for Best Original Score...because in viewing the film the other night, I thought the score was the main element that kept the film from being truly outstanding. (A few scenes somehow came across as more familiar on film than they had in the novel, and I really could have done without the enormous MESSAGE COMING IN! of Cecilia's posture in her watery death.) First of all, while scores are meant to underline a scene's emotions, this one often did so by a forceful triple set of slashes that no doubt broke the pencil's lead. A couple scenes in particular had me wishing there was a selective mute button (dialogue and diegetic sound only). And the composer's device of using the sound of a typewriter as percussion was only cute at first (if marred by being way too high in the mix) but quite clickly became cloying. We get it: writers and writing are a key part of the movie!

I guess Oscar voters must have thought that last bit very clever, and apparently approve of emotional hammering over the head. Too bad: the rest of the movie nicely compressed a novel to the smaller scope of a movie without losing its essence.

here's wishing...

Amazon's got a new feature, a "universal wish list," whereby you can attach a doohickey to your web browser that allows you to click on it and add any item from any web page to your Amazon wish list.

Any item?

Okay...I can do that (click it bigger):

keeper of the crypt behind the gates of delirium?

Some people age better than others. Rock musicians...are probably "others."

Here's one:



That's Steve Howe, guitarist with Yes.

And here he is without makeup, working the nightshift:

YES!!

This song always makes me feel good.

And I feel good.

Talking Heads "Pulled Up" (Talking Heads: 77, 1977)

I wish I'd known about this when I was a kid...

A couple of days late...

The site doesn't address this situation, however. I believe that this would be the appropriate symbol (apologies to Kurt Vonnegut):