Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Elizabeth

What did you read when you were eleven? I was most definitely NOT into eleven-year-old-girls doing eleven-year-old-girl things (unless they were training to be witches).

This summer, my best friend asked me if I wanted to go the see the movie Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (based on the classic young adult book of the same name). I had never read the book, but because we are both big into banned books, I said sure. It struck me as the sort of book she would have read as a kid, and it made me feel good that she wanted to share it with me.

We sat in the dimmed theatre as the previews ended and the title screen and date - 1970 - came up.

I leaned over and whispered, "I've never read the book." There was a pause and she whispered back, "neither have I." Turns out we both assumed, because of our banned books crusades, that the other had read the book at some point.

Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.

It is one of the long-running repeat offenders on the banned books list. It is 53 years old. FIFTY-THREE. This is one of those books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Julie of the Wolves that every time I see it on a list of challenged titles, I roll my eyes and say, "seriously? This one again?"

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Ooh, check out this piece of history (original 1970 cover).

One of the more recent covers. I like that it lends itself to the idea of waiting for answers.

Watching the film (and, later, reading the book as my annual personal banned book challenge) it seemed pretty innocuous.

An 11-year-old girl moves from New York City to suburban New Jersey and begins her journey to fit in with other girls her age. She is self-concious that she is still flat chested. She and her new clique discuss bras, when they'll get their periods, what boys they like... y'know, eleven-year-old girl stuff.

The girls sneak a medical reference book and a playboy magazine from various parents to examine the anatomy, wondering what they'll look like when they're older; wondering what their male classmates look like under their clothes.

In addition to being flat-chested, Margaret has also yet to get her period, which causes her much angst when members of her friend group start getting theirs. She and the other girl in her group who have yet to start "men-stroo-ating" buy pads at a drug store, mortified by being rung up by a teenage boy and, in a panic, add a couple other items to their purchase because heaven forbid they should be seen ONLY buying feminine products.

Margaret has a lot of questions. Their joke of a sex ed class consists of a presentation by a representative of a feminine products company. Rumors fly about the busty girl in class and what she may or may not be doing with older boys... Margaret's questions increase when the source of these rumors turns out to have been lying about other things.

Margaret also has questions about religion. Her mother was raised Christian; her father, Jewish. Margarets maternal grandparents disowned her mother when she married outside the faith, but her Jewish paternal grandmother is a constant in her life, and usually a source of support.

The book opens with a "prayer." Despite being non-religious, Margaret often "talks" to god, treating him as a "Dear Abby" sort of figure. At first, her quandry about religion is as simple as whether she should join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center.

Margaret's teacher, himself new and unsure, assigns the class to each choose a topic for a year-round study. Margaret, having decided that almost-twelve is old enough to choose her own religion, decides that she will spend the year studying different religions to pick one that suits her.

(Though what Margaret considers "different religions" boils down to Jewish and three Christian denominations.)

Sounds pretty innocent, right?

Well, let's keep in mind this book was released in 1970. This was a time when discussing many of these subjects in mixed company would have been taboo, or at least recently-so. Heaven forbid we discuss bras, "busts," periods, and the like. Heaven forbid girls should talk about boys they like, what it might be like to kiss them.

Margaret's parents raising her essentially agnostic and allowing her to choose her own religion as she got older would have been seen as extremely groundbreaking.

This was also a time when there was very little discussion, both in school and the home, about what a young woman could expect when her period started. The presenter at the girls' special assembly gets flustered at the mere mention of tampons. One of the girls in Margaret's circle of friends becomes hysterical when she starts her period in a restaraunt bathroom.

Margaret narrates examining herself in the mirror, looking for signs of puberty. She stuffs three cottonballs into each side of her trainer bra and is pleased with the results. (And if there's anyone reading this who didn't do something similar as a teen or pre-teen I'd be much more shocked than I was reading either scene.) Margaret worries that she's taking too long to develop.

"I just want to be normal. Please, God," she begs.

That, for me, is really the crux of why we should let our kids read these books. "Hey, this girl is worried about x - she's just like me." "This boy is struggling with Y - he's just like me."

In 1970's, kids who couldn't get these answers turned to Playboy and medical textbooks. Now they can turn to YouTube, Tik-tok, and a rabbit's warren of porn and disinformation on the internet.

When my daughter is ten, eleven, twelve, I hope she'll turn to me when she has questions. But if she doesn't I'd rather she turn to Margaret, a book about a girl her age, than pretty much anything else.

A Comedically-Malfunctioning Vacuum Cleaner

What constitutes "age appropriate?" It's different for each kid, isn't it?

Take Elianna, for example. She's almost 2 1/2. She loves dinosaurs. She watched the last season of Camp Cretaceous with us and was never bothered by snarling dinosaurs ("Whatchu DOIN', dinosaur?!") or by antagonistic robots ("robot dinosaur!"). She occasionally sees snatches of Jason's video games; once, recently, having the bad timing to walk into the room as one character hit another and knocked him out. ("Guy fall down?" "Yes, a mean man hit him and he fell down. That's why we don't hit." "We don't hit. Guy fall down, take a nap.") But we were watching a different show with a comedically-malfunctioning vacuum cleaner and she started screaming.

Or, take, for example, the fact that when I was eight or so, the Giant Mouse of Minsk from An American Tale gave me nightmares. When I was ten, I had three months of rabies-based nightmares and paranoia (I would NOT sit with my back to an open door for fear a rabid rodent would creep in and bite me) after reading Old Yeller... but only one year later I was watching Jaws (and Shark Week) and reading Jurassic park without issue.

Every kid is different and, moreover, what bothers every kid is going to be different. A young child may be scared by something innocuous, but not bothered by what you would expect. A middle schooler may completely miss a reference to sex or violence, but be traumatized when the dog dies.

When I worked in the children's department at a local library, one of my favorite patrons was an 11-year-old who reminded me a lot of myself, both in the volume of books read and in genre choices. She'd come in every other week and make a beeline for me, asking, "What's new? What's good?" She had burned through most of the juvenile-level books and was mostly out in the Young Adult section. She could have asked our adult reference librarians, who were technically over YA.

I don't know if it was just because we had developed a rapport, or because I was the youngest full-timer there (I was 30, and looked younger, and I'm also quite short), or if it was simply because we had the same interests - fantasy and adventure, with an occasional dash of history or sci-fi. She was very mature as far as reading level and vocabulary, and she, like I, loved doorstopper tomes. She hauled a huge black vinyl bag with her to stuff all her books into (she often checked out close to a dozen and, yes, did read most of them in two weeks). It became harder and harder to find things that would interest and/or challenge her that would also be "age appropriate." After we had been doing this for a while, I started to ask her, "are you OK with this, are you OK with that?" As young as she was, I still tried to avoid things I knew to have more sexual content. I recall one time I weighed the pros and cons of giving her a book I'd just finished that I had really enjoyed.

"It's kind of dark," I cautioned. "The main character gets put on trial for witchcraft." I paused, sizing up this even-shorter-than-me bookworm. "Would torture bother you?"

"I think I would be OK," she answered confidently.

"Would it bother your parents?"

She shrugged. "I don't think so. If I got upset, they'd be upset, but I think I'll be OK." Still not entirely sure, I gave it to her anyway. Two weeks later she came back for the sequel.

I bring up these stories because recently there have been more and more school boards and school districts being pressured, or even making rules, to allow parents - one single parent, in some cases - to remove books they don't like from the library. While I do agree that certain books don't belong in school libraries - 50 Shades of Grey springs to mind - I also think that a parent's dislike, mistrust, or even misguided rumor-fueled opinion of a book should not outweigh the expertise of teachers and librarians whose area of study is choosing developmentally appropriate books for a certain age group.

Should I go to Elianna's preschool and demand that they remove any books with vacuum cleaners in them? Of course not. Should my mom have gone to our local library or Blockbuster and demand that no one be allowed to watch An American Tale or Old Yeller? Of course not. One parent, one individual, even a vocal minority of annoyed or misinformed people should not be able to make snap decisions on what books hundreds or thousands of students have access to.

By all means, be involved in your child's education. But be aware that just because YOU don't like the book doesn't mean that no one should read it. The book you hated may be the book that finally gets a reluctant reader interested in reading, or may be the book that helps a struggling teen realize they aren't alone, or that helps a child understand an important lesson about the world. Let them read. Or, to quote Finding Nemo:

"I promised I'd never let anything happen to him."

"Well, that's a funny thing to promise - then nothing'll ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo."

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High-Stakes Secrets

Psst... Can you keep a secret?

Recently I've been consuming media about secrets - what a character will do to keep a secret, what happens when a secret gets out...

Jason and I recently watched There's Someone Inside Your House. It's a horror movie about a killer making his way through high school students with secrets. At one point, one of the characters throws what he calls a "secret" party. The attendees are encouraged to share their secrets, the idea being that if your secret is out, the killer no longer has a hold over you. These being high schoolers, the secrets range from crushes to miscarriages. Though as you might expect, not everyone confesses the Real Secret, the Big Secret, the High-Stakes Secret, and people keep dying.

I also recently finished reading Speak, a book about a high schooler keeping a secret that takes such a toll on her that she pretty much stops speaking all-together. Read more about that here.

It made me start thinking about my stories. What secrets do my characters have? What secrets do they consider to be high-stakes? When I was in high school my Big Secret was who I had a crush on, which seems so stupid now. But it's a matter of perspective. Sometimes it's a matter of culture or your place in society, too. A secret that is a big deal for a character in one story, in one world, may be laughable to worry about in another story and world.

I have neglected my characters' secrets. I don't even know what secrets some of my characters have. I need to go through my stories (and especially Brinyor, now that I've decided to workshop it some) and figure out what people's secrets are.

Delved too Deeply

"The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame." Saruman, The Fellowship of the Ring

Recently, I've been thinking about this line. It comes from fantasy, but your more often find this theme - digging too deep, climbing too high, exploring places man wasn't meant to be and finding things man wasn't meant to know - in horror, and sometimes Sci-Fi. (There can be a healthy crossover between horror and sci-fi, but that's a topic for another blog...)

Jason was watching a movie the other night about a Russian crew that discovered a fungal parasite in the Kola Superdeep Borehole. (I've seen at least two X-files episodes with similar themes to this film.) There's The Thing, where the "digging too deep" or "climbing too high" is more metaphorical - the the high southern latitudes of Antarctica, a scientific expedition discovers an inexplicable creature.

Digging too deep/flying too high can apply to outer space - how many films are there about encountering malevolent entities out in the far reaches of space, a place where man was not meant to go? There are stories and films about being too deep in caves, too deep under the ocean... the list goes on and on.

I think there are so many types of this story, so many takes on this mini-genre because there is a very thin line between fear and fascination. We are curious creatures. We want to know what's out there in the dark, beyond the safety of the campfire. We want to know what goes bump in the night... but we're also afraid of the dark. We're afraid of the things that go bump in the night.

Giftshop Apocalypse

Hey, wouldn't that be a great band name?

All kidding aside, Jason and I were watching Sweet Tooth the other night. For those not familiar with the show, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic America - so far mostly in the wilderness. In the episode we were watching, two characters come upon a family living in a gift shop/visitor's center at Yellowstone.

That took me back to when I worked in the college book and convenience store at Sewanee (middle of nowhere Tennessee, for those who don't know). I first worked there during the summer when the tiny college town was pretty quiet. Even with my cleaning and stocking duties I had lots of time to just let my mind wander. I kept a notebook under the counter where I would jot down story ideas. One of the ones I had was about a handful of people in a, ahem, small college town in the middle of nowhere, stranded when The End As We Know It comes, and how they survive and make do. One of the first places the characters went was, of course, the book/convenience store for supplies and clothes.

I've actually always been a big fan of the post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian genre. I've had ideas for stories in these kinds of settings since high school, maybe middle school. Of course, the problem I always have is that wherever my characters are holed up is a little too convenient, a little too easy for this kind of setting. They live in the Tennessee Valley and all the hydroelectric plants are still working and cranking out electricity. Or the book store had so much stock that years later they still have what they need. Or the kids who ran away from home just happened to find a pristine (as in, safe to drink) creek that also had fish they could catch. When I was younger I didn't realize these were narrative problems (or at least could be if the story wasn't crafted right).

Seeing the gift shop used in this way in another work made me feel better about it, though. While this does make it seem "easy," looking around at the gift shop, there is still a lot of stock and it doesn't seem very "lived in." The family has an 11-year-old son, but it doesn't seem like they've been there his whole life. While they didn't go into how long they'd been there in the show, it did give me the impression that they hadn't been there long, maybe stumbled across an isolated building no one else had taken advantage of yet.

Of course, it also makes sense that the characters - the parents, at least - would seek out this type of setting. They would look for somewhere with shelter and supplies, somewhere out of the way to make their permanent home. But if they were looking for somewhere like this, how were they the ones that go so lucky? Were they the only survivors in the area? Were they "on the inside" (say, maybe one of them had worked there)?

Because that's the thing - there's got to be more than just, "we conveniently just happen to have food, water, electricity, or a lifetime supply of sweatshirts." I want to know how the circumstances came together for you to ride out the apocalypse in your cozy gift shop.

Book Review: The Terror by Dan Simmons

A couple years ago, AMC produced a TV series based on this book. Jason and I really enjoyed it, and I decided I wanted to read it. I had kind of forgotten about it until reading Fatal Passage by Ken McGoogan, about John Rae, the explorer who discovered what happened to the Terror and Erebus.

It was a long read (over 700 pages), but very enjoyable. Even knowing what happens, I found myself wanting to keep reading each night, wanting to keep pushing past when I should have lain down and gone to bed.

Brief overview:

In 1845, an expedition lead by Sir John Franklin sets out from England to discover the long-searched-for Northwest Passage - a water route between the Northern Atlantic and Northern Pacific oceans. The Franklin expedition - 129 men and two ships, the Erebus and the Terror - never returns and there are no confirmed survivors. This is an imagining of the horrors the crew encountered while marooned in the Arctic, including extreme winter weather, scurvy, tainted food stores, impossibly difficult physical labor, the hubris of their captain, rats, fire, and, last but not least, a monster resembling a huge polar bear that stalks the mission.

The first part of the book is told in flashbacks. It opens with now-Captain Crozier on deck, in the bone-shattering cold, giving kind of a "how we got here" overview in his head. The chapters then go back and forth for a while between a few characters - Captain Sir John Franklin, Dr. Goodsir, and others - give background on events leading up to Crozier's current situation.

Goodsir serves as kind of an everyman - an audience avatar - when he volunteers to go on an exploratory mission and fails miserably at keeping up with the hard work the other sailors endure, as well as expressing shock at Captain Franklin's callous disregard for the life of the native man his men shot by accident.

Franklin immediately establishes himself as the one who carries the blame for various failures. At a dinner party, a seasoned explorer expresses concerns that Sir John doesn't have enough supplies - of food or coal. Franklin has no clue how much he's actually bringing with him; he feels like this is someone else's job to figure out. He just smiles and nods while the other explorer grows obviously more concerned about this voyage. Franklin comes off as a hubristic idiot. Actually, calling him an idiot isn't fair - he seems to be doing it on purpose. He repeatedly ignores sound advice from Crozier - his second in command - other explorers, and various officers on his mission. There are so many things that just would not have gone wrong if he had just listened to other people... but, no, determined to rid himself of his reputation as "the man who ate his shoes" on his previous Arctic mission, he plows ahead, so certain of his own infallibility.

As mentioned above, Sir John often expresses the thought that the natives are somehow less - not worthy of saving from death, not worthy of a proper burial... In the book, many other characters also express this period-accurate disdain for the Arctic peoples they encounter. (In the show, this is toned down, with some of the characters seeming to be pro-native, and even speaking some of the Inuit language.) As was also par for the period, there's a decent amount of disdain for women, Irish characters, characters of non-noble birth, and homosexuals (exclusively referred to as "sodomites").

While the setting is bleak, and often gory, and even the most likeable characters flawed, you do find yourself rooting for most of them, hoping that at least SOME of them make it.

I've read some other reviews and opinions that the last few chapters and the fates of a couple of characters comes out of nowhere, but I didn't think so. I thought it was the sort of thing where everything these two had experienced, everything they had endured together came together to form only one possible, inevitable scenario. Want to know more?

Here be spoilers...

In the show, Captain Crozier and Lady Silence - the native woman who's father was accidentally shot by the crew - end up being the only survivors. He's taken in by her people, but their connection ends there (or at least is no more special than them both being part of a very small, close-knit community). In the book, she rescues him when he's shot multiple times by mutineers, and nurses him back to health over a period of several months. She teaches him to live like a native. They share dreams - as they began to do when Crozier suffered from severe alcohol withdrawal earlier in the book. Eventually, she takes him to be her husband. I do mean that - Lady Silence/Silna is the one who initiates a physical relationship with Crozier, though by that point he understands that they also have an intertwined fate. Their interractions in the last couple chapters seem less to me "out of nowhere" and more what happens when two people have been through so much trauma together that they come to realize that each of them is the only person who could understand the other. It's not romantic, per se, but it's fitting.

And, yes, people have complained about the age difference. Crozier is in his early 50's by the end of the book, whereas when the expedition encountered Lady Silence two years earlier, the doctor determined she was between 15 and 20 (much younger than in the TV adaptation). Yes, this is a shocking age difference by today's standards... but in the 1840's it was not. Indeed, Crozier had proposed about five years earlier to a woman in her early 20's who turned him down not for his age, but for his station (she claimed she couldn't be a mere captain's wife). Girls in their teens were married to men old enough to be their grandfathers all the time back then. For me, what sells it is that Silna knows exactly what she is doing and it is Crozier who seems surprised at first, as well as their ironclad devotion to each other through the remainder of the book. Each is willing to give up their world and follow their spouse; Crozier is the one who gives up his old life to be with Silna.

Really the only thing I found to be problematic in the book is the outdoor New Year's carnivale. For so much of the book, the author has been hammering into us what the extreme cold is like for the crew. The (heated) intterior of the boat is only just barely above freezing on the warmest decks. The crew are wearing layers upon layers. They are constantly losing toes. The men on watch on the deck have to constantly move, constantly stomp to keep from freezing. More than once someone accidentally touches metal and loses skin for their carelessness. And yet at the Carnivale, where we are told it is a whopping -100 degrees, men stay out wandering around, eating outside, hanging out in a tent labyrinth, wearing costumes either over or under their cold weather gear... for hours! It just seemed glaringly out of place to me.

I did think it was interesting that at one point a crew member references the wreck of the Essex, an American whaling ship sunk during an encounter with an enraged whale, marooning its crew in life boats in the tropical Pacific. It reminded me that I had also read a book about that incident a few years ago. I'll have to do a compare/contrast of the two.

It occurred to me recently that I should include Readers' Advisory at the end of reviews. This is a book for both fans of history, and fans of horror. In particular, if you like setting-based suspense and horror - something like Sphere, where you're trapped by the elements with a dangerous and unknowable presence. For the history fans, if you like The Terror, you might also enjoy In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, and Fatal Passage by Ken McGoogan.

Throwback Thursday - In the Heart of the Sea

So, I'm doing something a little different for Throwback Thursday this week.

The blog post I want to revisit is from my former website. I had planned to eventually set up an archive page here, but as you can guess, I have not yet gotten around to it. That post will be under the second markdown, below. The first markdown is a little snippet I posted on my Facebook page five years ago (five years ago, Oh my god...) about watching the film that was based on the book I review below. Now I'll have all of this in one spot!

Mid-July 2016, Jason and I watched the film In the Heart of the Sea, and really enjoyed it. My response to it is here:

From Facebook post, July 17, 2016

As a librarian and a writer, there are some classics out there that I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven't read. One of these is Moby Dick. I recently watched In the Heart of the Sea. It's a movie based on a book of the same name about Herman Melville speaking to one of the few survivors of a whaling ship that was attacked by a huge whale (and served as his inspriation for Moby Dick). It's a very good movie, which makes me sad that it didn't do better. Plus, as an actor, I also now have a TON of respect for the actors portraying the stranded whalers who lost tons of weight to look like they had been lost at sea for months; Chris Hemsworth lost 35 pounds, and Cillian Murphy looks like he was mummified.

After we finished the movie, I turned to my boyfriend and said, "Huh, that was really good - I'd like to read it." He responded, "yeah, I never read it either." I then clarfied that I was NOT talking about Moby Dick, but rather the book the film was based on.

For some reason, Melville is one of those authors people kind of cringe away from. No one picks up Melville for fun, just like no one picks up Dickens for fun. It's sad to say, but I'm just as guilty of this as the general population. As much as I love a rich vocabulary, some of those Victorian authors intimidate me.

But I guess that's ok, because Melville himself (at least according to the movie) is intimidated by Hawthorne. Which makes one of the closing screens, a quote by Hawthorne about how Moby Dick is the Great American Epic, all the more touching.

I liked it so much that I turned around and checked out the book from the library. I apparently finished it quite fast (oh, those pre-baby days!) as I posted the below review two weeks later:

Adapting from Page to Screen

Sometimes when having watched a movie and then read a book, I can say to myself, "Ok, I see why they changed that."

Sometimes it's a case of condensing a timeline or characters so as to make something easier to follow. Sometimes it's making characters older, younger, or changing something about their looks or personality to make them either more believable or more accessible to a broader audience. Sometimes it's adding "drama" (a problem that wasn't there in the original version to up the tension) or changing or leaving out something that the characters did to make them more relatable or sympathetic.

You may remember from my Ivey Ink Facebook post of July 17 that I recently watched In the Heart of the Sea. This is a movie based off a book that was written about a historical whaling ship disaster. The book was based on the accounts of several survivors of the Essex (a whaling ship); their stories also were a big influence on Herman Melville writing Moby Dick.

I enjoyed the film, and I found the book fascinating as well. However, upon reading the book, there were several very obvious, "wow, I see why they changed this for the movie" details. First of all, without some changes just for sake of narrative and the flow of plot structure, it would simply be a documentary that no one would watch unless they were interested in 19th century whaling and shipwrecks.

One of the major changes was the dynamic between First Mate Chase and Captain Pollard. In the film, Chase and Pollard do not get along, as Chase feels he was passed over for the position of captain simply because Pollard's father is a captain and one of the owners of the whaling company. In real life, Chase was several years younger than Pollard and they had been working their way up the ranks together for the last four years; Pollard had been First Mate previously and prior to that had been Second Mate, while Chase had previously been Second Mate and prior to that Harpooner. But which movie would you rather see:

"An orphaned farm boy* (played by the studly Chris Hemsworth) has worked hard to prove himself to The Man as capable sailor and has been promised a captaincy. However, at the last minute, he is passed over for promotion in favor of the boss's son (played by the brooding Benjamin Walker). Now they must struggle to scratch out a living from the violent sea with the forces of nature stacked against them." or "A tall 22-year-old and his pudgy@@ 28-year-old coworker of four years receive promotions and head out to hunt whales."

*And by the way Chase's father was still alive, and living in an expensive house in town, at the time of the voyage. @@Yes, Pollard is almost consistanly referred to as "portly" in the book. (Maybe this is repeatedly pointed out to help explain why he was one of the few who survived. He had more excess weight that could be lost without major inconvenience.)

However, like I said, injecting some drama for sake of narrative is understandable. Another major change (or, rather, omission) is even more understandable.

I don't know what you know about whaling. I didn't know a lot before I read this book. The movie shows a whale being hunted and killed (and only one hunt is shown to completion in the film, when there would have been HUNDREDS during the actual voyage of the Essex). It shows a couple brief scenes to get the point accross - a whale being harpooned, a spray of blood landing on the faces of the whalers as the whale dies (we do NOT see the blood actually spraying out of the whale itself), and a few short shots of the whale being butchered. We are also treated to a scene of the cabin boy being lowered into a hole in the whale's head to scoop out the last of the oil. He serves as something of a bridge between the characters and the audience, as his obvious horror and disgust at this task is more along the lines of what people who grew up learning about environmentalism and animal rights would feel.

These scenes in the movie really gloss over the realities of whaling that are gone into in more depth in the book.

As I mentioned above, a whaling voyage that lasted two years (as most of them did) and returned to port with 1,500-3,000 casks of whale oil would have had to kill hundreds of whales to fill their quota. I had been under the impression that, like the plucky homesteader of a slightly later period, the whalers used all of the animal - sell the bones and teeth for furniture and jewelry, eat and/or salt down the meat to sell, do...I dunno, something with the skin. No. The oil and blubber are the only parts of the whale used and the rest is DUMPED INTO THE OCEAN. The book describes the Pacific as being just a slick of oil, blood, and decomposing whale during a large part of the 19th century.

From a contemporary perspective, it's disturbing. What makes it even more jarring is that in the book the scene of the full hunt and butchery of the whale comes either immediately before or immediately after a scene in which the sailors complain to the captain about their small portions of rationed salt beef and salt pork. You people are throwing away dozens of tons of meat every few days and you don't think to keep any of this to augment your rations?

What makes it even worse than that, though, is that on their way to the whaling grounds of the Pacific the ship stops at the Galapagos islands so that they can hunt tortoises to bring on the voyage as food. The tortoises were preferred to any other live source of meat because their metabolisms were so slow that the crew didn't have to feed them. The ship takes on dozens, possibly hundreds, of tortoises, fully intending to just leave them in the hold and not give them food or water. Ever. Until it's time to kill and eat them. The cabin boy's memoir reflects his misgivings about the assumption that just just because the tortoises didn't NEED to eat didn't mean that they SHOULDN'T, as he claims that every time he went down into the hold he saw them licking things.

If these weren't bad enough crimes against nature, one of the crew members set one of the Galapagos islands on fire. As a prank.

It's scenes like these that make it extremely difficult to think anything other than "I'm glad most of you died miserable deaths of starvation adrfit at sea - you're horrible people!" As I said, sometimes you have to change things in a story to make the characters relatable on screen. Even without these scenes shown in the movie, it's hard not to root for the whale when he attacks the Essex after the whalers harpoon another whale in his pod.

But, as my sister is fond of saying, "why ruin a perfectly good story with something like facts?"

For Kids

"Ugh, but that's a kids' show..." "Ugh, but that's a kids' book..." Have you ever found yourself saying that? Have you ever found yourself saying, "wow, this is really good even though it's 'just for kids.'?"

How did we get that way, thinking that children's media has to be "bad" or "boring" or in some other way not on par with adult media? "You don't have to play dumb to them, just play them," Robin Williams's character says in Mrs. Doubtfire. "If it's something you'd enjoy, it's something they'd enjoy."

I do think this is true - very true, even. Many of my favorite books are Middle Grade or Young Adult books. Many of my favorite TV shows and movies are "kids'" shows. In fact, many of my favorite shows and movies are animated. But, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy well-written entertainment... because honestly, some of them are really damn well-written and plotted. Gargoyles (at least the first 2 seasons) - references Shakespeare and Celtic mythology all over the place, as well as quietly slipping in gun control and race relations. (That show was SO ahead of its time it's not even funny.) The Dragon Prince. Avatar: the Last Airbender, and The Legend of Korra. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. So many of them are not only well-written, but also address important issues of inclusion, destiny vs. free will, (fantasy) racism, philosophy...

Jason and I are currently watching Camp Cretaceous, an animated show in the Jurassic Park universe. We had initially added it to our streaming list just as a filler, a time killer, a show to watch while we waited for other shows to come back from summer break. Y'all, it's fantastic.

The first season takes place concurrently with the events of the first Jurassic World film. Six teens are given an exclusive premier visit to the new Camp Cretaceous, a summer camp on Isla Nublar. Of course, as it goes in a Jurassic Park story, things very soon break down. But in addition to Teenage Hijinks With Dinosaurs (TM) the show actually visits some rather dark material and ideas (death of a parent, abandonment, being forced to go against your ethics to help your family), and handles them well. I now find myself eager to watch the next episode of our "filler" show and see what new twist is going to be thrown at our teens.

And honestly, I can't wait until Elianna is just a little bit older so that we can introduce her to some of those favorites I listed off above.

Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?

"Confess. Unburden your soul."

Alright, I confess. I'm a theatre major and I've never seen Wicked. Go ahead, lock me up.

Up until recently, I hadn't read Wicked, either. A friend of mine, fascinated by the world-building in my writing, loaned it to me and I just finished.

First, I would like to say that, while I appreciate that she finds my writing to be good, my world-building is not on par with Gregory Maguire. (Though, admittedly, I am not very familiar with the original L. Frank Baum Oz books, so I don't know how much Maguire is inventing, and how much he's expanding upon.)

Interestingly, the day before I finished reading Wicked, Jason and I watched a film called The Reckoning, which was about a woman in 1665 who is accused of being a witch and the torture she endures as the authorities try to get her to confess.

How things change! In 1939, in a film based on a book published in 1900, Glinda famously (even cutely) asks Dorothy, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" Dorothy, aghast, responds, "I'm not a witch at all," more in line with what we'd expect from someone accused of witchcraft in the 17th century. "I am innocent to a witch - I know not what a witch is," proclaims a character in The Crucible, based on events from the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93.

This was supposed to be a review of Wicked. It seems to be turning into a review of accusations of witchcraft.

It doesn't spoil anything to say that Elphaba in Wicked chooses to become a witch. Or rather, she chooses to pose as one and things kind of fall together for that persona. She and her sister don't balk when people start - jokingly, at first - to refer to them as the Wicked Witch of the East and the Wicked Witch of the West (based on where each of them lives).

In the film I referred to, Grace obviously does not chose to pose as a witch, and the amount of torture she endures is in hopes to save her infant daughter.

Interestingly enough, we watch both women slide along the slippery edge of insanity. The scale is different, to be sure: Elphaba's story spans approximately 40 years, Grace's merely a few days.

Elphaba slowly endures parental neglect, hardships, friendlessness, sudden personal loss, and denial of the forgiveness she desperately seeks. When her sister, Nessarose, is unexpectedly killed by the falling house, and her old school friend Glinda gives away Nessa's shoes - shoes that her father made for the favored sister, shoes that Nessa had promised would be Elphaba's some day - Elphaba finally allows the cloak of "Wicked Witch" to slip around her and goes off the rails trying to get the shoes back from her sister's unwitting killer. (And I mean, really, if my old college roommate gave a prized family heirloom to the person who killed my sister, I'd be pissed, too.)

Grace, on the other hand, has physical hardships and, arguably, more psychological hardships thrust upon her within a very short period (we aren't given a timeline of events prior to her arrest, but from arrest to the end of the film is four days). She maintains her innocence, refuses to give in even as she sees visions of both her dead husband and Lucifer himself.

In drastically different endings, Grace is saved by water, while Elphaba, famously, is destroyed by it. Though, reading Wicked while having seen The Wizard of Oz, Maguire handles Dorothy's (and Elphaba's) motive differently than the source material. Both Grace and Elphaba have a moment of peace as their trials finally end.

Volume Revolution

Jason and I recently finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian, which I imagine many of you have watched as well (don't worry if you haven't - no spoilers here!). Around the time we finished, a friend of ours recommended we watch the documentaries about the behind the scenes stuff.

As a theatre major, I always enjoy watching things about how the sets or costumes were made, how effects were created, etc. - and Jason enjoys that, too. Plus, rather than one long making-of documentary, it is conveniently broken up into little 30-minute mini documentaries. (Jason and I often have difficulties finding a long stretch of time to watch longer things together.)

So far, we've only watched one of the four behind the scenes specials; we watched The Volume. The episode was not, as I would have guessed by the title, about the sound mixing or music, but rather about a revolutionary new space that they used for the filming. The space itself is called The Volume. It's a studio, a soundstage - in a way you've never seen one before. If you've ever been to the cyclorama in Atlanta, you may have an inkling of what this space is like.

The Volume is surrounded by screens - screens on the ceiling, and 360 degrees around. Rather than using green screen - actors standing in front of obnoxiously-colored empty space, pointing at an approaching monster that has yet to be built - the film crew uses a video game engine* to project the fully-designed, fully-realized scenery all around the actors. The actors are immersed in the world as fully as though they were on location - with the obvious advantage that, even though this technology is new and was expensive to build, you only have to set it up once, rather than flying actors, crew, and equipment to various distant locales.

*Ask someone who knows abut video games what a "video game engine" is, if you want more info on that - I only have a vague notion of how it works.

Hearing the actors speak in awe of this new way of filming, how it completely changes everything and makes their immersion more complete and their performances better, it made me wonder what this might do for the cinema audience. Watching the documentary, I was immediately struck at how the Volume reminded me of rides as Disney and Universal; a fully-immersive world that the rider travels through. I thought of how you might create a ride, an experience with this technology - and have millions of tourists flock to experience it and charge large sums of money for the privilege. Then I recalled an article I had recently read about a TV show Disney+ was looking to reboot.

In the article, the writer came right out and said that cinema was dead, that the film industry will not recover from the pandemic (citing shorter length streaming content as the new entertainment medium of choice). But seeing this documentary, I don't think that's true.

Oh, yes, it will take a while to come back from this. But what if we change the cinematic experience? What if we take the Volume, what if we take the movie theatres that are closing - and remake them. What if we start making film in the round? What if we take the big blockbuster-type movies - the sort of stuff you're already used to paying a little more to go see in 3D or Imax - and make it a fully immersive experience? The superhero soars over your head as the explosion goes off behind you. This is better than Imax, better than surround sound. You're there. You're in the film.

Can we make it happen? Is this a revolution for cinema?

Banned Books Week Day 3: Separating the Art from the Artist

Have you ever read a book, seen a movie, heard a song you really enjoyed, that really resonated with you... and then found out something less-than-savory about the creator?

Jason and I have been watching Lovecraft Country recently.  In the first episode the main character, who is black, is walking along with an older black lady after they were stranded when their bus broke down and only the white passengers were provided with alternate transportation.  The other passenger mentions that she saw him reading while they were on the bus and asks him what his book was about.  He tells her he was reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and goes on to describe the beginning of the book - a former Confederate officer is lost in the desert and stumbles upon a portal to Mars.

"Wait... a Confederate officer?" She asks.

"Ex-Confederate," he clarifies. 

She scoffs "once a Confederate, always a Confederate."

He shrugs, and admits that he can separate the character from his origin and enjoy the story.

Lovecraft Country takes place in the 1950's, and so far all the episodes are dripping with period accurate racism and misogyny.  (It's a very good, show, don't get me wrong, but it's not Hairspray.)  Some of the characters in the show are fans of H.P. Lovecraft; others remind them that he was racist.

And, while I'm not trying to excuse racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, or anything else that Lovecraft is commonly accused of, I am saying that he is a product of his time.  Casual racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, misogyny, and a whole host of other bothersome things were commonplace and unremarkable in the early 20th century.  Many authors of classics would fall into those same categories if we examined them closely.  How many older books have you read with "tricky" Jews, "lazy" or overly-servile blacks, "untrustworthy" immigrants (Irish, Italian, Mexican, whatever), "barbaric" middle-easterners, and delicate wilting violet heroines who need a big strong man to save them?

Dickens had Fagan; Shakespeare had Shylock and Othello (or specifically, the “malignant and a turbaned Turk” that Othello called a “circumcisèd dog,” and killed).

I'm not saying we should ignore the prejudices of the past... but I'm also saying that we should not completely disregard an author (or, more specifically, their works) if there is merit once we look past the author's shortcomings.  This is 2020, and I'd like to think we're more inclusive as a society now than in 1920, and 1820, and 1620.

And what are we writing today?  Who are today's paragons who will be seen as problematic in 20, 50, 100 years?

An example of how viewpoints can change, even within a lifetime, would be J. K Rowling. 

In the late 1990's when the Harry Potter books first came out, her books were frequently challenged for sorcery and witchcraft.  (Which, really, is like challenging Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi for use of geometry.)  A few years later, when filming one of the later films (I want to say Half-Blood Prince) there was a big to do about J. K. Rowling announcing that Dumbledore was gay.  Some people were in an uproar, announcing that she was promoting "the gay agenda" in addition to witchcraft.  Others hailed her as progressive - the wise mentor character is gay!  How fabulous!  And now... it's almost as though things have come full circle. 

Earlier this year, Rowling got into, well, a row (to use the British) online with none other than Daniel Radcliffe about whether or not transgender women were "really" women.  A large number of her fans and followers, who had seen the books as so accepting, so inclusive, such a fantastic allegory for transformation, becoming who you truly are, found that their hero, their paragon, had fallen and her pedestal was crumbling.

Many people started saying "J. K. Rowling didn't write this world, this universe that I so identify with - Daniel Radcliffe did!  Hermione did!  Someone else, anyone else!"  And, while I am not defending her comments, I think it's a shame to try and excise the author from the work.

J.K. Rowling is 55 years old.  Many of her fans who are upset are in their 30's, 20's, maybe even teens.  I'm not saying "older generations don't get it,"... but when I first started reading Harry Potter in 2000, I didn't know a lot of gay people (or, rather maybe didn't know a lot of people who had come out).  Not only did I not know anyone who was transgender, I didn't know such a thing existed.  (Yes, I was sheltered.)  That was 20 years ago. 

Now I know enough about the LGBTQ+ world, spectrum, color wheel to know that I really don't know a lot about it.  And that's OK - I'm open to knowing more, I'm open to learning and letting people be who they want to be.  And, I also know that as a 38-year-old white woman writing in 2020 that there may be things that I write that my daughter's generation, or her children's generation read and think, "Oh, god, why would she say this?  What a horrible person!"  I hope not, but I know that society moves on, and grows, and changes, so who am I to say what will be acceptable in the year 2120?

But, back to Lovecraft.  I guess the point of what I am trying to say is this: if you find the world of Lovecraft intriguing, read it, and don't worry about the author.  If you find John Carter's post-Civil War adventures on Mars thrilling, read them, and don't worry about his background.  If you love Harry Potter, for goodness's sakes, put on your house scarf and wave your wand and don't worry about J.K's tweets.  Just read what you want, and enjoy yourself.  Don't let an author take their world away from you.

#BannedBooksWeek2020

Library Displays I Have Loved, Part 4

Some of you may have seen on my personal Facebook page that I shared a memory of a library display this week. I've also been thinking about this one a lot recently.

When I worked for Kennesaw State University Library a few years ago, one of my tasks was making displays for the library on the Marietta campus. Sometimes these were just selections of books based around a theme, and sometimes they were more informative displays with facts, information, or trivia.

Each year, the university did a "year of" where they selected a country whose culture they would focus on for activities, lectures, etc. One of the years I was there was the Year of Russia. Needless to say, as a Russian minor in college, I was brimming with ideas for this particular display case. In fact, my last display that I put together for the Year of Russia display case was a Black History Month tie in.

Many people are not aware, but Aleksandr Pushkin, one of Russia's most famous and most beloved authors, was of African descent. I've been thinking about Pushkin a lot lately, partly because of the interestingly ethnic casting in The Great (a show in Hulu about Catherine the Great). (More on that to follow in another post.) So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you my Pushkin display:

No Joke

Jason and I watched Joker last night; he was interested to see a villain origin story where the villain and the hero (in this universe, Batman) don't interact.

When Joker was first released, there was a big to-do about how it was glorifying violence, glorifying shooters. Having seen it myself now, I have to say that anyone who thinks this movie is glorifying anything obviously hasn't watched it. It is the disturbingly tragic tale of an absolute dumpster fire of a man who no one cares about and who is repeatedly kicked (literally and figuratively) until, after enduring more misery than anyone should have to, he breaks.

When some people break, they quietly crumble into themselves. Not here. Here, when he breaks, he shatters and produces shrapnel that breaks other lives. It is not glorious. It is not fun. At no point would anyone watching this movie say, "man, this obviously disturbed and frighteningly skinny man has it going on! I want to be him!"

There are no "good guys" in this movie. Thomas Wayne (who usually is remembered posthumously as a saintly philanthropist who could have fixed Gotham had he not been snatched away so soon) is an out of touch, wealthy, would-be politician who alienates the very people he's trying to help. Joker's therapist is an overworked public counselor who doesn't listen to him and who, when accused of not caring about him, retorts that the system doesn't care about her either. His mother is a piece of work that I don't have time to go into. The talk show host who seems like he's going to give Joker his big break into the stand-up comedy scene is really looking to milk an awkward video clip for views. He has a well-meaning but very irresponsible coworker who causes more harm than good. The list goes on.

It is a good film. It's not fun. It's not pretty. It's not a glossy comic book with a dapper villain. But it's worth watching. It is a cautionary tale of why you shouldn't be horrible to people, why you shouldn't cut the funding that helps the helpless, and what happens when the already broken are pushed past the final breaking point.

Revenge of the Inability to Type!

If you've been following my blog for at least the last six months or so, you may remember a post I made last summer about a couple characters in a show Jason and I were watching who were thwarted by their lack of typing skills. https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/7/7/technology-and-time-period This show takes place in the 80's.

Recently, Jason and I have been watching Schooled, which takes place in "Nineteen Ninety-something." In the most recent episode, a young teacher enlists the mother of a friend of hers to be a cyber Cyrano for their pushover of a principal. The idea is that while the principal meets with a difficult parent that Mom will listen in and provide witty and scathing comebacks for him via AOL chat.

The problem is that Mom can't type. It takes her a full 30 second to deliver the message "I'm."

It kind of made me realize that even though these shows don't take place all that long ago, they're period pieces. It seems weird to think of a show set in a time period that I lived through as a period piece.

History and Science Fiction

A few months ago, Jason and I watched The Terror on AMC.  It's a show based on a novel that speculates what might have happened to a British voyage to the Arctic in the 1840's.  The two ships, The Terror and The Erebus, become trapped in the ice while trying to find a navigable passage through the Arctic ocean.  At first, no one is really concerned.  They have planned for this possibility.  They have enough supplies for a journey of several years, and many of the officers have been on other arctic expeditions.  The time between episodes of the show can be months, in universe.

In one episode, the captain's wife and niece are concerned because no one has heard from the ships in a year.  The powers that be brush it off.  This is a journey that was likely to last 2-3 years, best case scenario.  Remember, we're talking about a journey of thousands of miles (traveling from England to Asia over the Arctic and then back by way of more southerly routes) during a time when a fast ship traveled at about 11 mph.

This was also a time when communication traveled no faster than a ship or a train could travel; the telegraph was a relatively new invention and, just like cell reception today, you can bet that the remote arctic islands the ship was passing would not have had telegraphs or telegraph operators.  News of the expedition would have been along the lines of a ship returning to port and reporting that they had encountered the other ship months before.

We have gotten to where we are so used to instant communication - phone calls, emails, texts - that it's baffling and mind-blowing to think about having to wait so long for news.

But, this setting of being so isolated, so lost, of taking years to get to your destination, and of news and updates taking months or years to get back home, got me thinking about science fiction.  And when I say science fiction, I mean a certain type of science fiction.  I don't mean that in the far distant future, or the far distant pass sci-fi where we have faster than light travel and instant communication.  I mean the "near" future science fiction, the science "fiction" that we are almost (or even already) capable of.  

I'm talking about The Martian, where if you get stuck on a planet, it is months or years until help can get to you.  I'm talking about Contact, where it takes 27 years for a message to travel from one planet to another.  That idea of being out by yourself on the frontier, with only what you have with you to get by if there's an emergency, fascinates me.  

I write historical fiction.  But I also itch to write frontier sci-fi.  I need to read more sci-fi, and more science, before I do.  But I do think it's interesting how certain historical periods can lend themselves so well to a genre that a lot of people would think are on the opposite end of the scale.

Technology and Time Period

Sometimes you can very quickly date a story by the technology used (or not used) in it.  Sometimes you watch a movie or TV show that is set in a certain time period specifically to lose a piece of technology that would solve a problem.  (How many slasher stories would be solved by someone having a working cell phone?  Notice how so many now are set in a rural setting to use the bad reception as a crutch?)

Sometimes you have a story, set not all that long ago, and it makes you realize how much has changed in the brief time between the story's setting and the present.  Jason and I have been watching season 2 of GLOW, which takes place in the mid-80's.  In the last episode that we watched, two characters, Ruth and Debbie, are tasked with writing the script for a scene they will be shooting.  The director begrudgingly lets them use his type writer.

Ruth and Debbie brainstorm their scene and get more and more excited, culminating in the moment when they say, "yes!  That's it!  Let's get this on paper!"  Debbie triumphantly sits down at the typewriter, lays her hands on the keys...then turns to Ruth and says, "I don't know how to type.  Do you?"  Ruth can't type either.  They have to go find another cast member who can type so that they can write their script.

It was an odd moment.  I was alive (though a small child) when this show takes place.  I don't recall exactly when I began typing (probably middle school, when I realized that having my dad type my papers for me meant I was getting his AP style rather than my teacher's expected MLA style), but it's probably safe to say I've been able to type for 2/3 of my life.  Not well.  Despite taking a typing class in high school, I type with just a couple fingers on each hand.  But I can type fast and with conviction; people often tell me that when I really get into it, my typing sounds angry.  But I type every day.  I spend a large portion of my day at work typing.  I type to communicate, be it here, in an email, or in a Facebook post.  

It was kind of an eye opener to see a skill that I quite literally cannot do without be a rare commodity not all that long ago.

The Battle of the War Movies

Or, rather, the battle to stay awake during the war movies.

You kind of expect that when you go to watch a movie about a pivotal battle that it's going to be exciting.  When you go into a movie that you know is about a moment where the course of history hinged on the outcome, you expect it to be engaging, thrilling, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, even though you already know who won.  You don't expect confusion, characters you can't relate to, or to keep checking the time.

Last weekend, Jason and I watched Darkest Hour.

If you know me at all, you know I'm a big history enthusiast.  When I heard that Gary Oldman was playing Winston Churchill, I said, "dude, I have to see this movie!"  I didn't realize Churchill was a mumbler.  I didn't realize a lot of his peers were also mumblers.  I knew that King George VI had a speech impediment... but I didn't realize the actor playing him in The King's Speech spoke more clearly in a movie about a man overcoming a speech impediment than the actor playing him in Darkest Hour.  But maybe they were going for an accurate portrayal of a bunch of rich mumblers.  (Churchill's secretary, on the other hand, speaks more clearly than any of the men in the film.)

I also hadn't realized that Darkest Hour was going to pretty much just be about the bureaucracy of getting the Dunkirk evacuation off the ground.  The majority of the movie consists of Churchill arguing with other politicians in locked rooms of various sizes.  

I wanted to like Darkest Hour more than I did.  Then this weekend we watched Dunkirk.  And now I like Darkest Hour more by comparison.

The evacuation of Dunkirk: I knew, and had refreshed for me in Darkest Hour, that the Nazis swiftly invaded Belgium and France, giving the United Kingdom the nasty wake-up call that the enemy could very soon be knocking on their door.  This would be a bad situation even without the added predicament that the majority of the British army was now stuck in France with Germany rapidly closing in and no viable means of escape.  

*Cue rousing music and Every-man boaters taking to the seas with cries of "we're going to rescue our boys!"*

Or not.  The above was what I expected.  It was not what was delivered.  What was delivered was almost 2 hours of confusing story line that didn't focus on anyone long enough to connect or relate to them (and even if you did, most of them you didn't know their names anyway), grating music, and long, long shots of nearly-black and white scenery that seem more fitting for an art gallery than a war film.  Plus, starved and desperate soldiers standing neatly in lines with less urgency and motion than The March of the Penguins.

As Jason put it, we spent much of the movie waiting for it to "start."  Yes, you had action from the get go, but the actual understanding of what was going on, who these people were, was slow in coming (if at all).  It reminded me (unfavorably) of 2001 a Space Odyssey.  It actually had a very Kubrickian feel (and, again, not in a good way) to both the cinematography and the soundtrack.  After watching the film, I wondered if the intention was to confuse the audience and put them on edge, so that we would better relate to to confused, on-edge soldiers in the film.

I hate to deliver such scathing reviews of films of such an important event... but that's just it.  It was a MAJOR, pivotal moment in the course of modern history and I feel that it was most definitely NOT given its due.

On a side note, the best war movie I've seen in the past year?  Rogue One.

Speaking With Signs

Jason and I recently watched The Shape of Water.  For those of you who haven't seen it, it is a film about a mute woman who communicates with sign language.  She works as a cleaning lady in a government lab.  There she meets an aquatic creature who she begins to teach sign language to.  (It's an over-simplification, but for terms of this post that's what you need to know.)

The timing made it especially poignant for me: about 6 weeks ago, Jason and I adopted a deaf dog, and we use sign language as a method of communicating with her.  We've watched and enjoyed other films that are sign language-heavy, the new Planet of the Apes films being key among those.  But it was touching for me to watch it in this new context, of being the way I communicate with my fur baby.

Now, we don't "know" sign language - these are signs that she had already been taught by her previous family and while most of them are easy to remember and straightforward, I have no idea if any of them are accurate American Sign Language.

I also had a great aunt who was deaf.  She knew sign language, but we never really used it with her.  She could speak and read lips and, while she used sign language with friends who were deaf, she generally didn't with hearing people.  The only sign I remember learning from her is the one for "I love you" (which is easily confused with "rock on" symbol, so that's fun : )  

Left: "I love you in ASL."  Right: The "rock on!"/metal symbol frequently seen at concerts and parties.

I know that at some point I knew more.  I was in choir at church for most of my childhood, and I know at one point we learned the signs for "Jesus Loves Me" and "Hosanna in the Highest."  I don't remember most of those signs now.  I don't remember why we learned them (they were not at the same time).  Was someone at the church deaf?  Were were doing it in case we had a deaf visitor?  I don't think either is the case, as I think we would have done it more regularly and I only recall those 2 separate instances.

I remember at one of the many high school theatre competitions I went to that there was a signing interpreter for one of the plays.  I found myself more interested in watching her than watching the play.  I have always enjoyed watching sign interpreters - it's the only way of "speaking" (aside from acting) in which facial expression and body language play such a big role in context and meaning.  Watching someone "sing" in sign language is just half a step away from watching them dance.

I've been thinking about this subject to use as a post for most of this week so the timing is interesting, too, as a friend from work posted this video of Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" signed by various women.  It's worth a watch:
https://www.facebook.com/aimediaAUS/videos/10155926494549220/UzpfSTEwMDAwMzc5MjE4MjIxMDoxMjMxOTMzMDczNjA5NzU0/?comment_id=1232157433587318&notif_id=1523107934785344&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

Stranger Things Than Fiction

When I was in high school, Winona Ryder was my favorite actress.  I loved her in Little Women, The Crucible, and other movies.  She played the kind of roles I wanted to play (or in the case of The Crucible, the kind of roles I wished I was brave enough to play).  And then she went and got crazy for a while.

I kind of unintentionally have been watching a lot of her lately, though.  I binged-watched Stranger Things a couple weeks ago, and, because I'm reading a book on the Salem Witch Trials, I re-watched The Crucible this week.  And what I kind of latched onto with both of those pieces is that she plays a character who, admittedly, is kind of crazy.  But each of them is a crazy that makes sense.

In Stranger Things, she plays a mother who loves her child so truly and unhesitatingly that she (twice!) turns her home into a House of Crazy on the off chance it MIGHT help her son.  

In The Crucible, it's a case where either the clingy ex-girlfriend/woman scorned thing has become so strong as to push her over the edge, or that she has gotten so caught up in her own lies that she starts believing them.  

We believe Joyce when she is CONVINCED that Will is talking to her through Christmas lights, because what we have seen makes sense; we follow her logic and agree with her.  When Abbigail shrieks at an invisible yellow shapeshifter in the rafters and then climbs over the pews to get away from it, it makes sense because we have been following her journey and know exactly what she's up to.  Her actions may not be rational in that we, the audience, know that she's faking - but we understand that she is faking because she has too much invested in the lie to let it go.  And that makes sense to us.

It's strange looking at these two performances by a very gifted actress, and then watching her make bizarre faces at an award show that just confuse us.  And that's the difference between fiction and reality.  The fiction has to make sense.  If a character in a novel, play, TV show, etc. acts bizarrely, we have to understand why, and a good author will show us.  Reality doesn't have that constraint; that's why we have the term "stranger than fiction."

Keeping it Real

How do you take something most people have never had to deal with - war, devastating natural disaster, genocide - and make it resonate?

You narrow the focus.  You pick something small, something someone can relate to, and you show the details that grip the emotions.  You make it familiar, you make it local, you make it relatable.

Last year, I applied for a job at KSU's Museum of Holocaust History and Education.  As part of the 2nd round of the process, I was asked to make a presentation suitable for 10th graders discussing the book Night by Eli Wiesel.  One of the things I included in the notes with the presentation were interactive exercises to be done with the students to help them digest the unfathomable idea of the sheer number of people killed.  One of these activities included randomly selecting 3 students from the class (assuming a class of 25) and informing them that of their class, they were the only ones to survive the forced-march evacuation of a concentration camp.  I did not get the job.  I wasn't given a reason, though I wonder if maybe the presentation was too intense.

Yesterday, I saw a graphic online of Hurricane Harvey's area of destruction as overlaid over other coastal areas.  It didn't hit home for me how massive the area of destruction was until they showed the area overlaid over the Georgia/Carolina coast - the entirety of South Carolina was covered, as was a chunk of Georgia as far inland as Macon.

Last night, Jason and I watched The Zookeeper's Wife.  This movie really "brought home" some things about Poland in WWII for me - and as someone who spent a large portion of middle school reading everything about the Holocaust that I could get my hands on, that's saying something.  I don't know why, but for some reason it never occurred to me that Warsaw was bombed when Germany invaded in September of 1939.  I don't know why I thought that Germany just rolled up in trucks and said, "hey, you're part of Germany now" and that was that.  And even then, maybe I had known at some point about the bombardment, but forgot, because it was the bombing of nameless, unfamiliar buildings.  When a mother walks out onto her back balcony to investigate the sound of airplanes, only for a bomb to land just dozens of feet away in her yard, while her son and pet play in the room behind her, that hits home.  Watching the animals that this woman has just greeted, petted, fed, and healed in the previous scenes  run in terror, or fall to the violence, becomes very real.  Watching the man who we have watched struggle with the dangerous choice of hiding people in his home take up arms and shoot at Nazis from between the bombed-out walls of the city that we have watched be slowly destroyed over the course of the movie makes the utter devastation and nightmare that the people of Warsaw had to deal with approachable.  You see pictures of a bombed out city and you think, "well, that sucks."  You watch characters you have come to "know" deal with the destruction and the loss, and it becomes real.

There is a phrase "a million is a statistic."  I think Eddie Izzard says it better, even though it was said in a joking context - "over 20, we can't deal with it."  I think it's true, though.  You tell someone that 20 people have died in a fire or a storm, and they think, "Oh, wow, 20 people.  That's how many people were at the last party I went to.  That's how many people are in my kid's class.  That's awful."  You say thousands or millions of people have died or been displaced, and we just can't wrap our heads around it.

In an odd way, it's another thing I learned from theatre.  One of my theatre professors was always impressing on us to make our acting choices - our choice of an expression, a way of walking, a tone of voice - more specific.  "The more specific you are, the more universal it becomes," he would say.  You have to do something, find something that is relatable.  When you do, you can make the audience or reader understand.