Third (and final) remarks

So on a cinematic overdose high, you snatch your small hobbit from her carseat, hearing in the moan of the chill wind the keening of the Nazgul, rush her into the house ("Hey, this is fun!" shrieks the little innocent) and acheive safety just in time, your white cape swirling about you.

"What's the rush?" asks the spouse sardonically as you sweep in.  He apparently can't see the white cape.  "Didja know you left your lights on?"

Yeah, yeah.  I'm blaming the One Ring, okay?

Sunday I took my mother up on her Christmas promise of childcare while I rounded out my all-at-once megadose of Peter Jackson's interpretations with an actual cinematic experience.

To quote a kid's book recently much-read in our house: 

"'Wow,' she said.  That was all she could say.  'Wow.'"

Before I enthuse a bit, though, let me grumble more (hey, I AM a former English major and a multiple-times-reader of the trilogy; I know my rights).  I thought from the first two movies that Jackson had got the Frodo-Sam relationship perfectly, but in the "Return" he disappointed me with his treatment of Frodo-Sam-Gollum by making it a triangle.  Now, that's just wrong.  Tolkien's Frodo would never, even for a moment, have supplanted Sam with Gollum; there was never a hint of such a thing.  Sure, Tolkein had Frodo suspect Sam's undying loyalty many times because of the influence of the ring, and Frodo recognized that and so did Sam and in the end it only strengthened their love.  But Frodo never betrayed Sam to or for anyone else, and most particularly not Gollum.  Nope, I did not like that.  And in lesser vein, but along the same lines, I could have seen more of the details about how wrenching the final parting was for both of them (not just Sam) at the end. 

But other than that I was all for how Jackson did Frodo-and-Sam, and I even forgive him for casting too-beautiful Elijah.  Too-beautiful he may be, but he can act, that young lad.  And Sean Astin was pure perfection.

Beyond that, I was indeed completely entranced by the depiction of the final battles.  I'm definitely no fan of movie-makers' predilection to equate ugliness with evil (why did all those orcs and Uruk Hai and trolls and everything look like Freddie with a seriously studly makeover?), but frankly battles are, for me, where the screen wins out over the written word. "The Return of the King" was my least favorite, and least well-read of the trilogy because I just never could get my mind properly around all those kings and their followers and their multitudinous allegiances and cross-loyalties and battles here and there.  I'm not even sure (to indicate the degree of my stupidity) I was ever entirely clear who was at Gondor and who at Rohan.  I fully acknowledge stereotypical girlishness here  (yes, I have equal inability to this day to understand exactly how the game of American football is played, despite sitting through uncountable games).

So having handsome men (and woman) and weird beasts and dead people and everyone out there, neatly labeled and consecutively moved onto the game board did wonders not only for my understanding of the events, but my deep appreciation and emotional involvement (I'm sure the theatre-goers behind me, if they could wrench their own eyes from the screen, were giggling at my physical wincing every time someone took a good swing at one of Our Heroes).

So I herewith acknowledge publically:  Jackson indeed worked a wonderous thing.  I've even come beyond regretting all the losses en route from book to screen. 

And oh yeah.  When is the release date for the 3rd DVD?!

Revisiting Prepubescence

Friday night I had the unenviable privilege to relive (to the degree that a 42-year-old mother-of-two can relive, hors nightmare) my experiences in sixth grade gym class.  Then, I was a pimply prepubescent incapable of hitting a whiffle ball with any bat made, and most particularly not with the sweat-slimed black plastic item thrown disdainfully to me by the kid on my team whose jeering face said, as did his teammates out loud:  "We didn't want you on our team anyway, girl."

So Friday I attended, with my 3- and 6-year-olds, a community fundraiser at the Rollarena.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.  Certainly I wasn't thinking "You know, I've never actually roller-skated, unless you count when I was ten and Margaret and I each took one of hers and strapped a board on top and careened, seated, down her street."  Certainly I didn't say to myself:  "Maybe taking two novice skaters to a dim rink filled with music too loud to talk by, and crammed with other kids spinning by at speeds from fast to suicidal, isn't such a great idea?"

Anyway, it being a fund-raising event and all, and my other parental "teammates" being very much beyond the prepubescent stage, to a parent they offered kind assistance to our struggling trio (pausing in their lovely circumnavigations gracefully beside us without apparent effort).  "Here, hon - why don't you come around once with me while your Mom - uh - gets used to the floor?"

I suppose I got a taste, there, of the treatment the good community might make to children of any impaired parent -- incompetent roller-skating being analogous, perhaps, to having taken a drop too much, or suffering temporary partial paralysis.

The best that can be said of it is that I could remark proudly to my kids the next day:  "You know, the most important thing is not that you do well.  It's that you do."

However, I'm not quite big enough to revel in being such a stellar personal example of my own maxim.

Are You Game? 

So it's drear January again, all fun-and-frolic gone, and we're back to ordinariness.  [shaking head vigorously]  But I know there's some humor in there somewhere.  Care to join me in making the common comic?  Here's the challenge: 

Write something short.  It must start with a word containing

May

it must include a word containing

Glass

And it must end with a word containing

Salt

&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

Here's a sample:

"Maybelline, her sweat-soaked nursing uniform clinging to her weary body, adjusted her glasses and stared into the demanding eyes of the complaining patient.  Leaning over his supine form to the dinner about which he was whining so vigorously, she seized the shaker from the tray and, with deliberation, into his wound poured salt."

Anyone else?

Further on Films

I am a lover of writ about all; of the unparalleled, unadulterated power of written language to explain, to persuade and to persist, in its complex, multi-variate message, from one generation to the next; from that the first century when hands first wrote and eyes first read through to the very last. 

I am also a lover of the sheer emotional strength of the silver screen, but I have yet to be convinced that any carefully written text can be adequately shown, in all its facets, thereon.

I should acknowledge at this point that I, a once-upon-a-time inveterate D&D player, a gobbler of fantasy stories whole since earliest infancy, and a former movie addict with only slightly tempered appetite for the antics of any available gorgeous screen star, am currently eating up my late, and full-course, introduction to the LOTR on-screen.  I do like the epic, make no mistake!

But I want to explore the issue of the translation of book-to-screen for a moment more.  Let's look, for example, at Boromir, the weakest member of the Fellowship even in the original.  His introduction on-screen (toying callously with precious artifacts in Elrond's home and making light of Aragorn's ancestors' failings while touting his own personal strength of character), immediately labeled him "Traitor."  Which of course is what he ends up being, although his doomed yet herculanean efforts to mend what ill he'd wrought, at his end, was justly presented, as was a moment or two along the way where he lent his strength and sympathy to good cause. 

So everyone must be properly labeled from their first word. Boromir the Traitor, Frodo the Noble, Sam the Loyal, Strider/Aragorn the Humble Royal.  This latter is interesting in a reverse sense, because Tolkein gave the character a good helping of arrogance in both his guises, and either Peter Jackson or perhaps Viggo himself (to tell from his interviews, a man possessed of truly exceedingly humble mien, as well as steely eyes capable of piercing you through to the back of your chair) went instead for the Cincinnatus approach -- that uncertain undercurrent in a born, but reluctant, leader.  Which, of course, ups the empathy factor significantly, not to mention the general sex appeal.

The initial oversimplification of character is the essence of what I find most objectionable about the translation of any book to screen.  That, and the seeking for the spectacular in lieu of the subtle, plot-wise (e.g. a top-of-the-tower lightshow between Saruman and Gandalf rather than a thoughtful presentation of their philosophical differences).

All that said:  I'm rabidly looking for my next free thirty minutes with Viggo and Elijah.

Oh yes.

Culture, Class, Chance and Choice (part 4 of 4)

(Part 1 was here, Part II here, and Part III here)

What training best befits the modern Princess? 

It was with this question in mind that I began this series:  the question of the appropriate education for my children.

My children are, of course, as much royalty in my own eyes as yours (or your close friends'-and-relations') are in yours -- but in the eyes of "the system" they're yet another little cog in a huge wheel -- the wheel of the most privileged, yet in some ways least well-trained, youth on Earth.

I have a good friend whose similarly-aged daughter, until last year, attended the same private school mine still attends.  This year, my friend has chosen to go public, for reasons more-or-less unarticulated between us.  She has stated that her reasons are not disatisfaction with the private school per se, nor lack of money (she has significantly more of that than I do).   And now she is very pleased with her daughter's entry into the public system.  "She's no longer a sweet fish in a little pond; she's just another minnow in the sea.  But that's a good thing," my friend emailed me.

I've mulled over this message many times since then.  I've tried to think from my friend's perspective.  I've looked at many different aspects of sweet fish and minnows in the sea.  I've thought about all the things I've mentioned in my earlier related essays:  my own early introduction to the realities of Life As A Minnow, my experiences with class and culture here and abroad, my thoughts on the nature of the instillation of self-confidence and leadership in our modern youth.

The stark truth is that I'm afraid of this whole morass.  I'm afraid of the un-thought-through side-effects of my own choices.  I'm afraid of training my daughter up into a class system that we, as a society, strive desperately to deny.  On the other hand, I'm afraid of denying her the best I can buy, thus neglecting to encourage (or even stunting) her potential.

As a sweet fish in a small pond, my daughter is currently being inculcated in a certain way:  The social class of kids whose parents are wealthy enough to send them to private school.  The philosophical class of families who believe education should be conducted in a certain way, and believe that the public school system (at least in our locale, I should add) doesn't foster that way.  The ethical class of families who, whatever concerns they may have about opting out of the system rather than trying to work from within it, are nevertheless opting out.

Is my daughter merely being taught (as I was myself taught, sub rosa) that she is "better than them?"  Or, as I devoutly hope and sometimes believe, is she being gently and carefully educated in the fashion best suited to her needs?

I expect the answers to these questions lie several decades in the future.  I can only hope I'm guessing correctly at them now.

Culture, Class, Chance and Choice (part 3)

(Part 1 was here and Part II here)

What is leadership?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately.

Somewhere in the mists of time, 'round about 5th grade or so, someone drummed into my head that leadership was all about standing up and pounding a table and saying things other people listened to.  About the same time it was made clear to me (this was the late '60's, mind you) that girls generally didn't do this thing, this leader thing.

A lot later, somewhere around the time I went to an expensive private undergraduate college, it was made clear to me that people in my position (with parents paying out the nose for an expensive private etc. etc.) were expected to become leaders, regardless of gender or any other dissuasive factor.

At neither point in my life did I think I had it in me to become a leader.  Now, in my dotage, as it were, I find I am a leader, in various ways in various places -- and it sort of crept up on me, this leader thing.  But still, I'm much more comfortable being the co-leader, or the power-behind-the-throne.  A born stand-up-and-take-charge type I am not.

Or am I?

My boss is a born leader.  He is articulate, intelligent, and decisive -- but these aren't the only reasons he's a born leader.  He is a born leader because he was born a white male in 1960 in a country then called Rhodesia.  It's now called Zimbabwe, and it's in as much of a tragic circumstance now as it was then, for very different reasons.  But when my boss -- I'll call him "Christopher" -- was born, regardless of the fact that his parents were not there to exploit, and were definitely politically liberal and harbored great sympathy for the burgeoning revolution-in-the-making, the social construct in which Christopher received his formative training was such that white boys were expected to grow up to be leaders. 

Recently Christopher mentioned to me that the group of friends with whom he spent his youth, now almost all emigrees, were also now all millionaires, and/or CEOs, and/or individuals of significant position and wealth. He expressed no small degree of surprise that they were all doing both good and well in equal measure, with equal power at their fingertips.

It was then that I started thinking about "born leaders," and what that means.

I am wondering whether there is any worth to the thought that raising someone to think that they will lead means that they not only will lead, but will, if well-trained, lead well.

Peripherally, I am wondering whether, if that is the case, there is any place in a modern democratic society for such training. 

Because surely, if we are to advocate leadership training, are we not also de facto (and perhaps sotto voce) advocating the training (or at least the existence) of "the led," as another, and separate, class altogether?

The Epic, or the Individual?

Watching the first portion of the Lord of the Rings, for the first time, on my new DVD player, would be much more wonderful if it weren't accomplished in fits and starts (a side effect of mommydom that still frustrates me).  So I haven't gotten through more than an hour and a half of Part I.  But this still doesn't stop me from offering, as my eve-of-the-new-year remarks, a definitive review and subsequent meanderings....

In my self-imposed media blackout and general entertainment deficit, I didn't realize Ian Holm was cast as Bilbo.  Of all the myriad perfect things about the opening sequences that was perhaps the best.  Who better to play Bilbo (an old hobbit less wise than he wished to believe but still much more experienced in the ways of the world than his happy-go-lucky clan), than a classically-trained, much-lauded Shakespearian actor whose numerous impressive credits included no other than the role of Pod in the BBC's rendition of "The Borrowers"?  This coincidental comparison in casting gave me a moment's pause as I realized the interesting parallels between Tolkein's little people and Norton's, and the general predicament of very small beings in a very large beings' world.

But it was Holm's other credits that gave me still meatier thought.  The first time I ever saw him on screen was his Fluellen in Branagh's brilliant Henry V.  I watched that film nearly twenty times.  I marveled at every piece of it, and most of all at the raw emotional strength Branagh himself, and his extraordinary cast (including Holm and a raft of other RSC notables), wrung from the depths of themselves and threw fearlessly before the viewer. 

But what about the Ring?  The problem with the admittedly achingly beautiful and virtually flawlessly constructed rendition of the Ring is, in short, that it subsumes the soul of Tolkein to the exigencies of the mass market.  Both Shakespeare, in Henry V, and Tolkein, in the Ring triology, were writing, not about war, but about the people at war.  And that's where LOTR, on-screen, has gone so sadly down the road of market appeal at the expense of soul.  As a small example:  I can already see that the happy little characters of Merry and Pippin have been reduced to clownish extras -- engaging, certainly, but only as sidelights to the sweep of battle.  And Frodo himself has been improperly painted from the start as a person of heroic mettle and serious mein.  This isn't right at all.  In the original, it is not just a clumsy accident at the Prancing Pony that brings the Nazgul down on the hapless hobbits.  It's actually Frodo's fault that it happens: he's drunk, and clowning around for an audience of Big Folk.  One of the most important subtlties of the entire Ring saga is the way in which Frodo and Sam grow and learn and become (as Bilbo never did) truly sadder and wiser.

But the heart of the matter is this matter of war. Tolkein wrote his trilogy at a time when the known world was shattering in a catastrophic way; when the burgeoning technologies of war met the happenstance rise of political powers that drew the entire globe into a conflict none had ever seen before.  What the Ring trilogy is really about is the triumph of the small, secret, somewhat silly, home-bound little human spirit, thrust pell-mell and completely unprepared, onto a world stage, buffetted by world events of which it is only partially aware.  The Ring trilogy is about Frodo and Sam and their bond, and the impossible and wonderful thing that bond accomplished. 

But you cannot show that triumph of the human spirit if the ratio of character development to sweeping battle scene is 1-to-3.  Despite the perfection of casting and location and plot selection -- you just cannot do it.

To bring this to the modern equivalent:  it is all very well to espouse patriotic pride at the current U.S. Big-Brothering, or to pour vitriol on the same.  "Shock and Awe" light shows certainly make for good theatre, whichever stance you wish to make on the matter.  But it is not until you descend into the gritty lives of the individual soldiers, rebels, insurgents and innocent civilians, that you suddenly see the vital nature of each single tree in any particular war-swept forest.  Personally, I don't believe that any true appreciation of war can come without that vision of the individual at the forefront of one's perception. 

May the New Year bring a clearer perspective for us all, on war and all that encompasses it.

Well.  Off soapbox.  On holiday spirit:

HAPPY 2004

FROM YOUR LOCAL

SELF-STYLED

MOM-PUNDIT

LOTR images taken from here.; soldier and civilian from here.

Old Photos

So yesterday the Cleaning Bug struck.  I seldom fall prey to this particular ailment.  Only those who inhabit the same house can attest to the sad evidence of my immunity, but let me assure those of you happily distanced by cyberspace:  there's evidence a-plenty, and you're fortunate not to experience it viscerally.

In any case, I was at it with vaccuum and storage boxes and rampaging, clench-jawed determination by the time dawn cleared the horizon.  I only paused twice.  Once was when the kids' adventure play reached screeching you-did-you-did-not proportions.  I let it go on for long enough, but finally dropped the vaccuum wand and started downstairs.....only to pause, astonished, as they worked it out themselves.  Hmmm. 

The second pause came as a flood of old photos poured out in my lap from a long-forgotten box.  I sat surrounded by chaos and dust, looking at an image of myself, in a t-shirt proclaiming an African conservation zone, holding up a large bluegill with an insane grin at my fisherwoman's prowess.  I could smell the pond-weed.  I could feel the wriggles of that twisting scaly hooked fish.  I could see the answering grin of the photographer.....

Well.  I did eventually get the photos boxed again, but there was that moment when time stopped.  Probably a good thing.  The release of old memories is no doubt the only truly efficacious antidote for the Cleaning Bug.

The ChildView

"I will have babies very soon," declares the three-year-old happily in the back seat.  She has a nuturing soul, and of all the potential mother-material in the world, she's a prime candidate.

"You can't," contradicts the six-year-old beside her, with that irritated definitiveness that I (myself also a big sister) remember oh-so-embarassingly-well.  "First, you're not married.  You have to wait until you're married to have children.  So you'll be married when you're twenty-nine or so and have children later, maybe when you're thirty-five or forty.  You MIGHT get married earlier, maybe twenty-one.  But that's the earliest it can be."

As far as I know I've never promulgated this particular formula to my kids. It comes from our own specifics, of course -- a mid-twenties marriage, years of careering, and a lengthy fight with infertility left us those kinds of parents who will be indistinguishable from others' grandparents, come high school granduation.  Many of my kids' friends are happy in other family formulas:  young parents, single parents, same-sex parents.  But she's not analyzing at this point.  She's just reciting what's most familiar (plus, of course, putting on the know-all show for the little sister).

I almost launch into a little treatise on puberty, and a re-hash of the actual construction of a baby.  None of that information would be new to them.  They're very much into my monthly cycle (they fight over who gets to unwrap the feminine hygeine products for me).  We've got several non-specific "where babies come from books," and I did go briefly into the actual mechanics once (the eldest gasped in horror).  But this time I decide to leave it at that.  Like the Santa myth and other happy beliefs of childhood, perhaps its best, for now, for them to think that babies come only when you're good and ready and settled.

Every year my mother presents me and my siblings with an incredible gift:  a computerized transcription of a sequence of years' worth of her lengthy (!) weekly (!) letters to her own mother during our childhood, complete with a CD of photos taken during that time.  It's an amazing labor of love, an incredible glimpse into the adult perspective on my own childhood, and a fascinating documentation of cultural history.  I can't believe, in reading about the environment in which I grew up, that my current strongly-held beliefs emerged from that particular place in the social construct. 

For example, my mother cites a reading of the then-new feminist literature discussing a book entitled "I'm Glad I'm A Boy * I'm Glad I'm A Girl."  A quote from this happy tome is:  "Boys fix things.  Girls need things fixed."

I have little to say about that.  Except that the only certainty about my own girls' current beliefs is that they will change.

What About Bob

There's a guy I work with, a nice guy.  A solid citizen.  A good man.  I knew him when I was a kid and he was a young fellow working for my Dad.  He had a nice smile and a beautiful wife and little children.  Now he has grown children and I have little children.  Now he's middle-aged and so am I, and once in a while we laugh about when we weren't. 

We don't know each other very well, Bob and I, even though we've rubbed shoulders for decades.  We know bits and pieces of each other's secrets: you know how you do when someone says:  "You know about Bob?" sotto voce, and you get the concerned look that you know is required and you say, "No, what?" and then you learn that he's battling cancer. 

Bob's battle with cancer is a very public one, even though Bob seldom speaks of it himself.  When Bob has a doctors' appointment we all glance sideways at each other, and when he comes back looking normal and just like he always did, we all breathe quiet sighs of relief -- so it's not back, we think.  Not this time. 

Today there was another "You know about Bob?" going around the office.  And I felt that concerned look, that mask that covers fear and confusion and hesitancy, shield my face and I said "No, what?" but this time it wasn't the cancer, it was his daughter, his lovely twenty-year-old daughter whose gymnastics exploits as a teen and work in a vet's clinic as a young adult ocassion many of Bob's proud-papa stories.  She's pregnant with her first child, and on Sunday her live-in partner shot himself in the head.

"Ohmigod," you say, as the mask suffocates you.  "Ohmigod.  How is the girl?  How is Bob?  Did....??"  and you don't want to ask details, for fear of appearing callous, but the speaker imparts them all the same because that's part of the caring -- or so you say to yourself, behind the mask -- part of understanding where Bob is; what thoughts are passing behind his own mask when you hesitantly (at the collation table, when there aren't onlookers and maybe this is as good a moment as any) offer condolences and try to ask the right questions, but not too many, not too intrusive, not enough to indicate anything but just the right, just the appropriate, degree of sympathy.  When you would want to offer a huge long warm silent hug, but between that thought and that action are his mask, and your mask, and the background clatter of a busy office and a thousand unshared emotions, well-checked.

This is not the thing I expected to write on the eve of a time of joy.  But perhaps in the end it's the most important thing. 

This season, those of us temporarily more fortunate might consider Bob, and all his counterparts all over the world: people who are facing intense sorrow in this time of the expectation of joy.  People whose deep tragedies are held, well-checked, behind the solid mask of respectibility and courage.

I'm thinking of you, Bob.