This morning, I was reading a fun story over at the AV Club:
Life-Changing Art Some of the blog writers talk about works of literature, film, and art that changed their tastes fundamentally—that made them say, “if a movie can do
this, how can I be satisfied with a movie that does less?†and so on. And I have a few of those:
The Philadelphia Story
,
Flannery O'Connor,
Arrested Development
. But somehow, my immediate reaction to this question was to remember my experience with Ang Lee’s
Sense and Sensibility
.
It came out in 1995, when I was a freshman in high school. Even though I was already mostly an oddball, not interested in skating along with what was popular or cool, at fourteen I was still feeling a selective kind of peer pressure. I had my small group of friends, and I believed that my tastes needed to be in line with theirs. If I took a step in a direction they didn’t agree with—well, they would drop me like a hot potato, wouldn’t they? When you’re fourteen and everyone around you allies themselves based on shared tastes, liking the wrong thing is fatal. The logic is unimpeachable, so long as you haven’t lived to know better. So anyway, one day I was watching TV with Jamie, my best friend at the time. A commercial came on for
Sense and Sensibility, and it was all British, and full of straw hats and gowns and fancy dancing. Please be aware that this was
Pulp Fiction times. Absolute baseline requirement for coolness at the time was subversion—drugs and violence and swearing, the harsh, the crude, the angry. (I’m talking of course about popular culture, because in our own lives we were totally suburban honor students.) And Jamie scoffed at the commercial, because Jane Austen was clearly a tool of The Man. Any movie you could see with your mom was officially lame. As it happened, I had seen
Sense and Sensibility with my mom, and I had dug it immensely. And at that moment, all my teenage frustration and righteous anger—and outright exhaustion with the effort of trying to keep up with who and what I was supposed to be—overcame me, and do you know what I said? “I loved it. And I bought the book, and I’m going to read it.†I didn’t hedge, I didn’t hesitate, I may have said it in the timid mouse-voice I was mostly using at the time, but damn if it didn’t feel monumental. And Jamie? She considered for a moment, then shrugged and said, “That’s cool.†And thus it started. Half my lifetime ago I came to a realization: if I
like something, that’s justification enough to like it! In fact, it’s
cool of me to be
sincere about what I
feel! It shows strength, and people respect it! And never again have I apologized for liking anything. My tastes—broad and diverse—are all a part of the strange and sometimes contradictory sum of me. I have sometimes gone almost too far in the opposite direction, sharing my opinions much too freely. I remember discussing movies with someone once, a person I didn’t know that well, and getting a little bit too excited, and responding to one of their recommendations with, “No way—that SUCKS,†and then having that person look at me very confused and insulted. I sometimes have to remind myself that not everyone communicates this way. But we all should! I’d like to inspire everyone to express a controversial or embarrassing opinion about art today, and to not care what anyone else thinks about it.
It came out in 1995, when I was a freshman in high school. Even though I was already mostly an oddball, not interested in skating along with what was popular or cool, at fourteen I was still feeling a selective kind of peer pressure. I had my small group of friends, and I believed that my tastes needed to be in line with theirs. If I took a step in a direction they didn’t agree with—well, they would drop me like a hot potato, wouldn’t they? When you’re fourteen and everyone around you allies themselves based on shared tastes, liking the wrong thing is fatal. The logic is unimpeachable, so long as you haven’t lived to know better. So anyway, one day I was watching TV with Jamie, my best friend at the time. A commercial came on for
Sense and Sensibility, and it was all British, and full of straw hats and gowns and fancy dancing. Please be aware that this was
Pulp Fiction times. Absolute baseline requirement for coolness at the time was subversion—drugs and violence and swearing, the harsh, the crude, the angry. (I’m talking of course about popular culture, because in our own lives we were totally suburban honor students.) And Jamie scoffed at the commercial, because Jane Austen was clearly a tool of The Man. Any movie you could see with your mom was officially lame. As it happened, I had seen
Sense and Sensibility with my mom, and I had dug it immensely. And at that moment, all my teenage frustration and righteous anger—and outright exhaustion with the effort of trying to keep up with who and what I was supposed to be—overcame me, and do you know what I said? “I loved it. And I bought the book, and I’m going to read it.†I didn’t hedge, I didn’t hesitate, I may have said it in the timid mouse-voice I was mostly using at the time, but damn if it didn’t feel monumental. And Jamie? She considered for a moment, then shrugged and said, “That’s cool.†And thus it started. Half my lifetime ago I came to a realization: if I
like something, that’s justification enough to like it! In fact, it’s
cool of me to be
sincere about what I
feel! It shows strength, and people respect it! And never again have I apologized for liking anything. My tastes—broad and diverse—are all a part of the strange and sometimes contradictory sum of me. I have sometimes gone almost too far in the opposite direction, sharing my opinions much too freely. I remember discussing movies with someone once, a person I didn’t know that well, and getting a little bit too excited, and responding to one of their recommendations with, “No way—that SUCKS,†and then having that person look at me very confused and insulted. I sometimes have to remind myself that not everyone communicates this way. But we all should! I’d like to inspire everyone to express a controversial or embarrassing opinion about art today, and to not care what anyone else thinks about it.
Basically, what happens is this. Lew Ayers meets Greer Garson on vacation, gets quickly engaged to her and brings her home to meet his best buddy Robert Taylor. Of course, Taylor and Garson fall in love instead. Ayers has apparently not seen his own movie,
Just a few days ago, the oddly fashionable actress
Ginger Rogers is
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(Also notice Lucille Ball, then a little-known brunette.) Rogers plays the seasoned veteran of the wannabe-actresses; she knows all the tricks, and she has no patience for idealists like Hepburn's character. She smirks, she snipes, she has an affair with a stage producer and then tells him off when he tries to trade her in for a new girl. Hepburn's character does something morally questionable, and Rogers gives her the coldest cut-you-down-to-size speech ever. Also, at one point, she has this exchange:
Or Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard
Would it surprise you to discover that both of those women went up for Best Actress in the same year, 1951? And that both of them lost? Who swiped the award from these two women in the prime of life, tackling two of the meatiest roles in Hollywood history? Judy Holliday (age 29) in
Born Yesterday
Nothing against Judy--that's a great movie, and her performance is more nuanced than 'dim bulb with a heart of gold.' Although that's a lot of it.
Certainly my favorite film critic writing right now is Roger Ebert, who in less than 1000 words can cut a bad movie down to size, or build a pedestal on which a great movie will sit. His health problems of the last few years have had severe effects on his body (robbing him of his voice, notably), but that has only caused him to multiply his writing output. In addition to his reviews, he's
She's now in the running for
So, last week
This will be shorter and less detailed than my usual next-day awards show extravaganza. I had family visiting this weekend, and both my mom and aunt joined me for the Globes viewing, so we were able to crack jokes and comment on the clothes in real time, which sort of took away some of the excitement of doing it here. What can I say? SO SORRY INTERNET.
I turned on the TV on Saturday night to see that
Just over one month late! Tee hee. Back in May,
Well, do you know anyone
else who started off their Saturday evening with a repeat viewing of
Can I talk for a minute myself about