First, the good news: The issue of Persuasions On-Line in which I'm published has gone live. It's an entire issue about the 2005 big screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Can you handle it?
The bad news: I've been suffering from writer's block. Sigh.
Running page count: 10
Best sentence of the day: "The prostitutes become perverse midwives of a monstrous affair."
Today I
a) made stew
b) replaced one 60W incandescent light bulb with a brighter but more energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulb
c) wrote 2.5 pages
Running page count: 8
Phrase written that I never thought I'd use anywhere, much less in a dissertation: "initiation orgy"
Dear Knitting Gods and Goddesses,
Please do not let my next knitting project end up here.
Many thanks,
Me.
Between the "Optimash Prime" Mr. Potato Head and the CBC Radio-Canada Messenger bag, Natalie (of DarNat) had a pretty geeky birthday. And I did nothing to help the matter:
Natalie is sporting a Jayne Hat that I knit for her (when she first asked me about it, I thought she meant the mob cap that Jane Austen is usually depicted as wearing. I'm really glad she didn't want one of those).
The pattern was a combination of what I found here and here, modified for lighter weight yarn and corresponding needles (5.5 mm or size 9). I knit two: one for Nat's sister (the original impetus for the project) and one for Nat, when I realized that I had enough yarn to knit two hats and that Nat's birthday was coming up.
The next knitting project is (sadly?) Star Wars related and will likely involve designing for the first time. The learning curve? It is exponential, my friends.
This is the review I should have written, instead of my overlong, jetlagged rant of a snap judgement.
Incidentally, I stand by my initial assessment of the ending. It's not bittersweet; rather, it's inaccurate and illogical.
Went to the Michaels website tonight to check on their store hours (I have coupons!) and saw this:
"Imaginate"? Seriously? Did someone actually get paid for coming up that? And did someone actually trademark it?
There is nothing that "Imaginate" accomplishes that "Imagine" does not. "Wait," you say, "maybe it's a mash-up of the words imagine and create?" If it is, "-ate" is not an unusual enough set of letters to immediately make someone think of "create".
And to add insult to injury, I couldn't find the hours of operation. Nice website, Michaels. (p.s. shouldn't there be an apostrophe in there somewhere?)
I feel like I'm currently writing around my topic rather than about my topic. Will try to fix that tomorrow when I'm way less tired.
Running page count: 4
Words added to spellcheck dictionary: Harlowe
Mosquitoes smited: 2 (one small, one gigantic!)
Books attempted to put on hold only to be informed that I already took it out: 1
That one page of the dissertation I started last week? Junked. Gone. A false start.
Tonight I started my dissertation for good. How do I know this? I was writing in complete paragraphs. I had a sense of what should go next. I used a footnote.
Running page count: 1.5 (it's a start, okay?)
Words added to spellcheck: narratively, palimpsestic
A new Vietnamese restaurant is opening up near my place, and I usually see it on my way home from campus or Sugarbowl (usually Sugarbowl. It's summer, okay?). According to the sign, it's called "Pho-bulous".
Now, now. I know it's not a great name. To be honest, I'm not a fan either, but only because they missed out on the better pun: Wonder-pho.
I would totally eat there, just for the pleaure of saying that I had dinner at "Wonder-pho". How was it? Oh, you know... great.
I started writing my dissertation tonight.
In Courier.
The thing is, when I opened the new Word document and started typing the words "Chapter One", I suddenly couldn't stand the sight of Times New Roman. Currently, it makes me a little sick. Then I remembered a Slate article I read in which a surprising number of writers revealed that they use either Courier or Courier New when they compose.
So I tried it. And I really, really like the look of my Macintosh's Courier (Courier New seems too flimsly to stand up to a dissertation). So I'm keeping it, at least until I get sick of it and go back to good old Times New Roman, which is starting to resemble the fall-back, if-we're-not-married-by-the-time-we're-35-let's-get-married kind of guy. Reliable, but not the first choice. And I know that this will mess up the all-important running page count, since Courier takes up more space than Times New Roman. However, I have figured out the conversion: Courier 10 = Times New Roman 12.
When I was at the Gauntlet, we used to dread the appearance of Courier in an ad on production nights, because that meant that it used a font that our computers didn't have (Courier was the default backup). I remember the fix being relatively easy (convert the ad to EPS?) but it was never something you wanted to see at 3 a.m. Also, I remember James, as Opinions Ed, running the mandated weekly Students' Union-written piece in Courier on purpose because it was such an ugly font. The printers once called to check that that wasn't a mistake. It wasn't.
Warning: This post reveals the ending of the movie Stranger Than Fiction in a really big way. And by that, I mean that it reveals and then discusses, in some depth, the ramifications of the ending. If you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to, stop reading now. Okay, now. Now?
Good.
For the benefit of those who have not seen the movie:
In Stranger Than Fiction, the hero, Harold Crick, randomly starts hearing the voice of a narrator one day, a voice that no one can hear but him. Disturbingly, the voice announces that "Little did he know" that he is going to die. The rest of the movie follows Harold's adventures as he tries to figure out where the voice is coming from and grapples with his impending demise (no specific date given). At the same time, the narrator, played with gusto by Emma Thompson, turns out to be a novelist suffering from an extreme case of writer's block who cannot figure out how to kill Harold off. Harold manages to find Karen Eiffel (the novelist), but not before she's had a breakthrough and outlined his death on looseleaf. All that remains is for her to type it out. Want a better synopsis? Watch the trailer.
Karen is shocked to discover that Harold is a real person and is torn between finishing the book or saving Harold's life. Harold asks a literature professor, Prof. Hilbert, to read over her draft (with the hand-written death scene), hoping that maybe he could figure out a way to end the book without Harold's dying. Unfortunately, Prof. Hilbert pronounces the finished work to be a masterpiece, Karen Eiffel's best work. The death, the professor argues, is necessary to the novel; without it, the novel would have no meaning. Karen Eiffel herself notes that Harold's death (specifically, the way that he dies) is perfect: ironic and "even a little heartbreaking." Harold reads the manuscript in one sitting and agrees with the professor. He decides that he must die, and tells Karen to finish the novel.
The movie's moral quandry comes down to whether or not Karen should kill Harold, should type out his death scene so she can finish her 10-years-in-the-making masterpiece. Emma Thompson's performance here is great—in a handful of short scenes she manages to convey her character's dismay and agitation. As she begins to type out Harold's death, she anxiously chain smokes, getting as far as "Harold Crick was de "
And then nothing. Karen decides that she cannot kill Harold after all, telling Prof. Hilbert that a man who was willing to die for the sake of her work deserves to live. The changed ending, though, does not fit with the rest of the work and reduces the novel's overall quality to just "okay." Karen decides that with rewrites, she can salvage the work. Too bad the same can't be said of the movie.
Stranger Than Fiction is a doubly-layered narrative, in that the protagonist of the movie, Harold, is also the protagonist of the novel. What happens to Harold in the novel thus affects what happens to him in the movie. It is not a leap to say that how we feel about the movie's ending reflects how we feel about the novel's ending; the two are definitely inextricably tied.
The moral quandry that the movie poses is whether the life of a real, breathing person should be sacrificed for a great work of art. Not only does the movie choose life over art, but it does so by softening the character of the most pessimistic and callous character, the novelist, who has a change of heart and plays deus ex machina.
All this would be fine and good if this all wasn't also happening in a piece of fiction. Killing Harold would have indeed been ironic, a little heartbreaking, but also perfect. I would argue that Harold Crick has to die in the movie even if he doesn't die in the book. The book and the movie are both motivated by Harold's impending death; Harold's character development in the movie is based entirely on his knowledge that he's going to die eventually. As viewers, we are invested in the story and do not want the likeable protagonist to die, and yet I was hugely disappointed when he lived. The novel was imperfect because Harold lives; the same can be said for the movie.
Within the moral quandry the movie has set up, I am, in this case, going for art over human life. Does this mean I somehow have no soul if I want Harold to die? Is it because I'm an English lit. grad student that makes me privilege the work of fiction? (No, because my friend Bonnie, who is not in English, also thinks Harold should have died.)
Ultimately, Stranger than Fiction's fatal flaw is that it forgets that it's a work of fiction. If I were a novelist in real life and this were to happen to me, then yes I would change the ending. But, from the premise to the aesthetic, Stranger Than Fiction is not realistic. Instead of choosing the ending that would have been appropriate for a work of art (and that would have structually been the perfect exclamation point on the building tension), the filmmakers instead opted for schmaltz and a cop-out. The working title of the movie, according to IMDb, was Killing Harold Crick. The filmmakers should have had the guts to follow through.
Lately I've been following the story of how Canadian 'journalist' Rebecca Eckler is suing the makers of the movie Knocked Up for plagiarizing her own book, titled Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be. "Following" isn't exactly the most accurate word, though; it would suggest that I was paying attention to the story of my own free will. Instead, it seems like the Canadian media has decided that the story is worth mentioning. While everything started with Eckler's own piece in Maclean's magazine (which I'll get to in a minute), the story has since been picked up by CBC.ca (Nicole also posted the story in Facebook), ran on the front of the Globe and Mail's Entertainment section yesterday (read the comments—they're great), and appeared on CBC radio this afternoon. I first read about the story this weekend on Man vs. Clown!, who cited Wikipedia as his source. (So yes, all things go back to Wikipedia after all.) Finally, I know the story has made the American big-time because it's been picked up by the mother of all gossip sites, Defamer (again, read the hilarious comments. It makes me feel like I don't need to make this post any longer. But I will).
While I am not a lawyer specializing in copyright infringement or anything, I do teach undergraduate university courses in English and in Film Studies, meaning that I've become very good at spotting plagiarism. And frankly, the case is pretty thin for the following reasons:
1. Eckler notes that the cover of the screenplay and the cover of her book featured identical images of a martini class with a soother on the stem. If indeed the filmmakers were stealing the idea, why would they call attention to the book by using the exact same image cover image? Don't people usually try to hide the sources from which they steal?
2. I quote from the Maclean's article: "what got me was the fact that 'Alison' was an up-and-coming television reporter; in my book I was an up-and-coming newspaper reporter." I'll let Peter field this one: "Entertainment journalist? Since when does Hollywood make movies about people in the entertainment industry? Clearly a rip-off." (From his Facebook comment)
3. In both works, the man with the successful sperm is Jewish and Canadian. Eckler's fiancé is Jewish and Canadian. Seth Rogen, the actor who plays the impregnator in the movie, happens to be Jewish and Canadian. Apatow tends to put real life details into his movies, such as using actors' first names as their characters' names. Also, being Jewish and being Canadian are not rare states of being. And the chances of someone being both? Pretty good, actually.
4. Eckler cites common experiences of pregnancy such as taking the pregnancy test multiple times (which the titular character in Murphy Brown did when she was pregnant, too! Maybe Eckler could retroactively sue Diane English!) and having a female best friend/sounding board with screaming children. Really, it just makes the book sound rather generic and makes me wonder how the movie deals with such banal subject matter.
5. Penis jokes. The screenplay contains one and Eckler's book contains a similar one. Because penis jokes are so uncommon.
The case is specious and I suspect the Canadian media might be publicizing the case to inspire ridicule for a relatively successful writer (a columnist, two books published) who few seem to respect. A case in point:
This afternoon I heard Eckler interviewed by Jian Gomeshi on his CBC radio show Q (after she had directed all questions to her lawyer in yesterday's Globe piece. That was a quick turnaround). At first I was pissed that airtime was being wasted on the story, but as the interview progressed, it became clear that as neutral as the questions were in their phrasing, Gomeshi was having none of it. After letting Eckler rehash her complaints from the Maclean's piece and (tastelessly) invoke a pseudo-patriotic "I'm a little Canadian against the big Hollywood industrial-judicial complex" stance, he asked what any logical person would ask, which was whether the examples Eckler provided were common incidents in many pregnant women's experiences. He also noted that Eckler had tried to sell the movie rights to her own book and asked if she was upset that the movie's release now meant that she couldn't release her own movie titled Knocked Up, implying (though never stating) that the law suit was in part motivated by sour grapes. Finally, Gomeshi did what no other journalist to this point has done, which was consult a second source (a second source? how revolutionary!). He interviewed an entertainment lawyer who had read the Maclean's piece. The lawyer basically stated that Eckler's case was thin and that there was little chance that she would win. I savoured every moment.
The podcast for the show should be on the CBC website tomorrow. It's worth checking out.
And what do I think? I partly hate myself for getting dragged into what is clearly a publicity ploy (she just happens to have a new book out, don't you know) but I cannot stand by and watch someone besmirch the reputation of Canadians, women, and journalists all in one go.
I also cannot believe the amount of attention one lawsuit has garnered. While the very critical part of my brain wonders if there is some latent misogyny at work in how much everyone is dumping on Eckler, I also feel that it might be partly justified. Eckler's big break came when she was hired to be the National Post's answer to the Globe and Mail's Leah McLaren, who is essentially a copy of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, a fictional sex/relationship columnist in New York City. Eckler and McLaren play, to different extents, at being the coquette, a woman who flaunts or manipulates her sexuality to get what she wants without realizing that she is reinforcing rather than subverting gender expectations. By positioning herself as the voice of a generation, Eckler (and likewise McLaren) becomes representative of young women, becomes Every-young-woman, and frankly, if young women were as deluded and self-centered as Eckler seems to be in her Maclean's piece, I'd hate them, too.
God, this is a long post. I think I have a fraught relationship with the media's fraught relationship with women.
Karine and I got a little silly on MSN tonight thinking about reasons that one would remove a friend on Facebook (not to be confused with not accepting someone as a friend in the first place). What if Facebook required a reason before allowing you to unfriend someone? What could they be?
1. "She got drunk and made out with my boyfriend." [You could also use the "event" option to specify at which party this occurred!]
2. "Never returned a movie I rented."
3. "Regifted the CD I got him for Christmas."
4. "Borrowed a book from me and wrote in it. In pen."
5. "When we go out for dinner, she never pays her fair share of the bill."
6. "Refused to set me up with a friend because 'I don't want to be held responsible for the consequences.'"
7. "Latently racist."
8. "Made a pass at my mom."
9. "Watches The Colbert Report unironically."
10. "Lied about living in Iceland."
11. "Prefers MySpace."
12. "I can't remember why I accepted his/her friend request in the first place."
13. "Not interested in 'anything I can get' after all."
14. "EMOTIONAL FUCKWIT."
15. "Got her pregnant."
