acafen – Page 9 – Letters from Titan

April Fool’s Day is totally trash day

While it’s not quite the middle of the night for me, I have such an odd assortment of notes from the front this week and a very convoluted day tomorrow, that it seemed best to churn this out now.

First of all, Trade School was completely awesome (P.S. – confidential to attendee who donated to The Trevor Project, I passed that along from the cash you gave me tonight, transaction confirmation number: 120951424 — thank you!), even if the thing where I had to write my name in chalk on the blackboard was super weird. I think it was useful to everyone, including me, even if I just ranted and was bitter ex-journalist and told inappropriate stories for a bit. But then I was really not feeling tethered to the world. And it wasn’t a good sort of ethereal. Nothing quite like getting a vicious summer cold and having a celiac moment all at once. That said, I’m glad to get it out of the way before Patty comes home.

Patty comes home on April 8. Do you know what that means? That means one more week. We are so ready. I need to clean house. We also need to logisticize all sorts of things, including her birthday (public gathering will be later than actual birthday, because the 10th is just too soon), my father’s birthday (the following day), and our anniversary. I have a meeting at the UN and a trip to Boston thrown in there too, and we have theater tickets and the previously mentioned wedding shower. Among probably a hundred other things I’m forgetting. And that’s just for April.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist of the universe, four different writers I know to varying degrees (including two people I’ve shared a hotel room with (one of whom is a very close friend), someone who has cat sat for me, and a major collaborator of mine) are the four authors in Candlemark & Gleam’s first (re)Visions anthology, which in this case is centered around Alice in Wonderland. This is so ridiculous. One person told me they had a secret project they couldn’t tell me about, another person told me what they were working on (which is such a brilliant idea I’m sort of in agony I didn’t think of it), I sort of knew the third person was working on something, and I had no idea about the fourth person — and I really had no idea it was all for the same book. I know 100% of the book! At random! So you should all buy it. Because they are just brilliant and coincidences like this don’t happen for no reason.

In a totally different type of bizarre, the FBI needs help from amateur Internet code breakers in order to help solve a murder from 1999.

Also, because I care even if you don’t care, the Bronz Zoo cobra has been found alive and apprehended. The FREE THE COBRA chants going around Twitter in response are disturbingly hilarious.

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know I have a thing for the backstage story. And if I have a thing for anything more than I have a thing for the backstage story (wow, way to go with specific nouns there, Rach), I have a thing for backstage stories about narratives that play with the backstage story trope. Huh? What I mean is, I really dig Moulin Rouge, which is a backstage story, but what I really, really dig is stories about the making of Moulin Rouge. The same goes for anything similar. Hell, most of my best high school stories involve working on a production of Kiss Me Kate — it’s the same sort of doubling of the intradiegetic/extradigetic problem.

That very complicated explanation of something that turns my crank is why I must link you to the guys who play the Warblers on Glee jamming at a party the other night. No Katy Perry song (“Teenage Dream”) should sound so melancholy, lovely and strange. Especially sung in such a messy, unrehearsed, all-over-the-place way, in this grainy, sideways video featuring mostly relatively minor ensemble performers in a backstage-narrative TV show mucking about on their own time with a song the show actually used in a metatextual way to talk about the phenomenon surrounding their part of the narrative. I said metatextual. Now this entire rant is justified. Oh yes, oh yes.

Also speaking of Glee, because it turns out I know the person responsible for the Keep Calm and Warble On shirts (people, I know everyone; it’s a rule of the universe), I am linking to her “how to make your own” tutorial just because it will tickle her. Is there an arts and crafts accident waiting to happen in my house involving red fabric paint and excessively curious cats? I’m not telling. Here, anyway.

Finally, look at that, it’s April Fool’s. I don’t play, and I really don’t play in the middle of Mercury Retrograde. If the universe would like to present me with luscious and unlikely events, I do keep a wish list in my head. But, as a rule, I spend today being very skeptical. It annoys me that I have to do that, that I have to take a day and say, “this is a day on which I refuse to acknowledge magic in the universe because you might be screwing with me.” It’s not cool! But so it goes. Maybe I’ll make the annual “pack of wild chihuahuas” post tomorrow, although that incident was not an April Fool’s event.

Have an excellent Friday, and don’t believe anything I wouldn’t believe.

A few quick goodies

I’m in Boston right now, and about to do some meetings, but in the meantime, I can still keep you at least marginally entertained.

First, you can catch me over on the 2MTL (that’s Two-minute Time Lord to you) podcast talking about how and why people mourn fictional characters. Chip gives great interview and makes me sound smart. Also, the the music under his opener is really worth a giggle in all the best ways, but we do try to jump into the topic as seriously and respectfully as we can. It was super fun to do, and um, you can hear my shockingly girlish giggle at one point.

Next, for those of you who still actually read my LiveJournal, I’ve committed some Glee fanfic (and thanks, by the way, for putting up with my “Oh, hey, shiny,” about all that). I might just have some meta for you here later about Blaine’s hair styling choices and race/ethnic identity and private school. Not even kidding. And I’ll certainly totally at least have some less serious business meta back on LJ about why I wrote the story I did and what is and isn’t realistic about it (and why I made those choices), and why, aside from parts of Glee being problematic, writing about some of the non-problematic parts of Glee (like the well-rendered queer relationships) actually runs the risk of creating whole new problems because of certain aspects of fandom culture and its tropes.

the ice cream trucks are back trash day

Happy Friday, all. It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but yesterday was one of those days that really felt like a full moon and wasn’t, but stuff was just weird! On the other hand, I can report that since my Glee post I’ve had a nice chat with an editor, scheduled a podcast interview re: the mourning work, and have just remembered that I totally need to email someone else about an interview.

Today, having already produced a report on coverage of wealth disparity in the US media, I need to bang out a couple of emails, an abstract regarding Torchwood, and a couple of scenes for Dogboy & Justine. I also need to go pick up a package from UPS, which is slightly hilarious.

Like many New Yorkers, I live in a building without any sort of doorman or concierge and you can’t just leave packages on the porch here (can you do that anywhere? I don’t actually know how things work with houses). So I have to go to the UPS center in the Bronx to pick up a couple of shirts I ordered on sale from Trashy Diva, purveyor of all things Jack Harkness would wear if he was doing drag. Yes, my brain is very possibly not like your brain.

The last time I had to go up to this UPS center was when I ordered the Snape coat from Kambriel. I needed it for an event the day it arrived, but when I got to the UPS center the truck it was on (it wasn’t supposed to be on the truck!) hadn’t come back yet, and the center was totally closing. So, I… um… lied and said it was something I needed for my wedding that weekend. And then hung out drinking bad hot cocoa from a machine with the UPS guys until the truck came back and I got my Snape coat. Awkward. And now you know. So that should be fun, right?

Next week, I’ll be up in Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday, hence the move of my Public Relations for Creatives 101 class at Trade School to March 31 at 8pm.

And circling back to that Glee post from last night for just a moment, the clip of the Warblers doing “Raise Your Glass” is now off-line, which leads two things: 1. Anyone have a new link? and 2. Fair use and Internet discourse – it’s really annoying to write half a dozen fairly serious paragraphs about a two-and-a-half minute clip I can’t share with you. Same as it ever was I suppose. But super frustrating.

Meanwhile, for those of you who enjoy the Patty report, we still don’t know when she’ll be home, but we’ll know soon, once she gets to Puna early next week. It’ll certainly still in that first half of April as far as we can tell. Logistics are complicated, especially in her field and current location and it is what it is. I did get to speak to the woman who’s flat she’s being staying at today though, and that was incredibly charming. I thanked her for taking such good care of Patty; she thanked me for letting Patty be there so long visiting her. On Sunday it is Holi there, and people throw colored water and powder on each other to celebrate the season change. Patty is excited about it, and I think I will maybe go to this event for it in New York, so it can be like we are doing something together.

Glee and the victory moment

Before we get started, this post contains spoilers about a very recently aired episode of a major TV show. This blog, as a rule, contains lots of spoilers. I’ll use cut tags in the community that is LiveJournal, but it doesn’t suit my purposes or technology here. So Snape killed Dumbledore; Tara got shot; and Ianto Jones was killed by a vomiting, drug-addicted, three-headed turkey alien. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to talk about Glee.

I’m not a Glee fan. I’m not really anti-Glee either, it’s just that I’ve watched parts of a few episodes here and there and it hasn’t grabbed me. It should grab me for all sorts of reasons, but I find myself profoundly resistant to how much they don’t utilize the ~~movie~~ tv musical form to its full advantage.

By making sure the presence of the songs is relatively naturalistic — which isn’t to say they aren’t bizarre and unlikely, but do people announce they are going to sing and have relatively legitimate plot reasons for singing — the show is never quite a heightened reality as far as I can tell. Songs do not substitute for months of relationship development; they illustrate, rather than embody, change. So to me, the bits I’ve watched always seem to hover endlessly on the cusp of the moments I’m actually looking for. It’s a bit like when you can’t sneeze, and we all know what that’s like.

But I did just watch “Original Song,” because I was so profoundly taken with a particular moment in it I caught on YouTube. The surprise may be that, that moment wasn’t the Blaine and Kurt kiss (which was admittedly pretty remarkable and nuanced). The moment was the Warblers’ performance of “Raise Your Glass.”

I love Pink’s “Raise Your Glass.” For me it’s brilliant and real and relevant, and the video (which contains a lot of confrontational stuff and so engenders lots of interpretations and reactions, not all of them positive) makes me cry pretty much every time I see it. But it’s about, at its heart, being different, and never ever being able to hide it.

So when the Warblers get up at that competition in their grey trousers and smart blazers with the red piping and Blaine — perfect, pretty Blaine — bursts into that song, it’s astounding to me, especially after that duet with Kurt, especially when he’s walking backwards across the stage and, grinning, beckons the rest of the Warblers towards him. There are so many implications there at once — is it a gesture of asking people to follow him towards something awesome? or of calling someone into a fight? or of seduction? It’s hugely powerful to me in its ambiguity.

It’s also hugely powerful to me because it’s a reminder that looking for signifiers in people — are they my tribe? are they safe? will they understand? — is a useful mechanism, but it’s not remotely the whole truth. It’s not always accurate. And for people who aren’t necessarily assumed to be what they are, to see all those uniformed boys saying we’re all freaks, obvious categories or signifiers aside, is huge. It implies a world of which I don’t have to be afraid.

One of the videos going around the Internet today is of a group of Glee fans of indeterminate age reacting to the Blaine and Kurt kiss. It’s a dark, grainy video and hard to see, but it seems like a mix of genders and, I’ll go out on a limb and assume, orientations. It’s pretty fantastic to watch them cheer so madly, because I never got that.

There were no gay kisses on network TV when I was a teenager. Or when I was in college. It was a long time after when there finally were. And that was after a great deal of ridiculous debate and really pathetic news articles about the whole thing first. I know that Tara and Willow were huge for a lot of people, but watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as late as I did, it was actually just sort of weird and sad for me the way they couldn’t have them kiss for ages and how that was somehow supposed to be enough.

I consume a lot of media. And these days it has a lot of queer content in it. Some of it speaks to me, some of it doesn’t. But the stuff that speaks to me, no matter how much I talk about it because that’s what I do, speaks to me in a pretty personal way. I’ll watch an episode of something and walk around with a little secret smile about it for days (I just rewatched the first two seasons of Torchwood and had forgotten some of the interpersonal loveliness in it). I don’t, as a rule, want to stand up and cheer no matter how much I’m enjoying myself. For me, it mostly feels too late to have the moment those fans in the Glee-viewing video are having.

But when Blaine starts knocking “Raise Your Glass” out of the park, I had that moment. And the reason was because he was absolutely up there performing for both the intradiegetic and extradiegetic audiences as a gay teen who is happy and smitten and confident and sexy and none of that is why he’s up there singing about being a freak. He’s singing about being a freak, because everyone is a freak, and because life is awesome.

Glee, I’ve heard, gets a lot of stuff wrong, especially when it comes to people with disabilities (remember, other than this one episode, I’ve seen about 20% of a handful of different episodes, so I am, in fact, relaying other people’s insights to you that I am absolutely not qualified to comment on). But the show really does seem to get something remarkably right with its gay teens. Just the fact that the show has multiple queer characters whose queernesses read so differently is fantastic; we are not a monolith.

But what I really love? Is that Blaine is a leader. And readily followed. And deeply insecure. And struggling with the consequences of talent and attention. And maybe it’s the blazer and my sense that I can understand the world of his part of the show more than I can understand the world of the other parts of the show (entertaining side note: Dalton is also the name of a notorious New York City private school at which I attended summer camp as a kid). But he knows he’s lucky. And he just grabs for things. It’s all there in “Raise Your Glass,” which is his victory moment after doing something he adores (singing) with someone he adores (Kurt, who is complex and remarkable in his own right). It’s glorious.

Most of us don’t get victory moments like Blaine’s on that stage. Not in front of a cheering crowd, not spurring every one of your friends on to more joy and awesomeness. But somehow we get let into that moment in “Original Song,” and it’s startling. It’s why musicals matter. Hell, it’s why music matters.

I don’t often wish I were younger than I am. But wow, jump to my feet cheering during all that in my parents’ living room? Someone was somewhere. A lot of someones. What a thing!

But here’s another thing I want, that I believe we can, and must, have. I want queer female characters on TV that are also get to your feet and cheer moments like Blaine’s “Raise Your Glass.” For me, Blaine is kinda sorta enough, but then I look at Blaine and think I need to try my hair like that; he’s seriously a look that could work for me. But he’s absolutely not enough for a lot queer female teens out there; and he’s not enough for all the people who have a lot more lessons to learn about queer folks than “Oh hey, they’re actual individual humans.”

I know better than to hold my breath. But I also know, that like this instant on Glee, that moment just might sneak up on me, on all of us, at any time. I hope there’s some crowd of kids in a living room somewhere cheering when it happens.

And I also hope, to quote the song, they are never anything but loud. I am struck, always, that the most central message and lesson of my own queer experience has always been, simply, speak.

I don’t imagine any of this is going to make me start watching Glee, unless I succumb for scholarly reasons. The show still gives me that feeling like when you need to sneeze but can’t. To me, the “Raise Your Glass” moment is just proof that, that feeling is real and makes sense. Because when Glee delivers? Apparently it really delivers.

(ETA, 5/12/2011: And that was then and this is now. I’m completely hooked on this ridiculous show.)

life in these times

It’s sort of hard to blog about anything right now in the face of Japan.

Anything I have to say seems somewhere between inadequate and absurd (and that’s the best case scenario). Even critiquing the media right now doesn’t seem worth the trouble, if I even had the perspective to do it effectively. Which I don’t. I’m deeply cognisant of how really irresponsible much of the nuclear coverage has been (some of it’s been excellent, but it’s largely been the exception), but I’m also the age I am; I’m ashamed of how much will-power it takes not to feel like I’m 8-years-old and my best friend has to go to therapy every other day because of the panic attacks she has because of all the nuclear war books they make us read in school.

Meanwhile, the rest of life continues. Whedonistas launched today, sold out on Amazon, and is back in stock now. Last night there was the reading at the Way Station, and despite thinking my head wasn’t in it (too many deadlines, too much news horror), it was tremendously fun and warm and good, and the thing I read seemed to amuse people and seemed to be meaningful and personal for one person in a way that was deeply gratifying and sort of intense. In a different week, I’d know how to write about that. This week, all I can say it was nice to see people.

Today I got that Sherlock thing done and out the door. Erica & I have been working on Dogboy & Justine; Kali and I are back on track with the novel; and I have another abstract I need to write and pitch and a friend I want to interview here about her film project. Oh yeah, and a couple of things to schedule – a podcast interview for one thing and a video interview for something else.

I’ve also spoken with Patty the last couple of days. She’s tremendous, and sometime in the next week or so, we should know when she’ll be home. So that, and the fact that she’s doing lots of neat stuff, is pretty exciting too. So is the approach of Passover, which means a sudden masses of gluten-free products I can’t get the rest of the year.

In a day or two I hope my head is screwed on enough to write neat stuff about neat stuff. Today the world seems a bit short on neat stuff, and I’m definitely a bit short on words.

Here are some ways to help Japan:

– American Red Cross.
– ShelterBox.
– Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.
– Donation efforts and recommendations by members of the pagan community in the US.

We all have limited resources of time, money, and attention. Remember that Japan, and, in fact, all places affected by disasters at any time, tend to need help over the long term. Putting an alarm in your calendar to donate or boost the signal a few months from now is a valuable form of assistance.

sometimes trash day is a day late

I’ve been speaking to Patty every other or every third day. Yesterday she had to run to the grocery while we were on the phone so I got to hear India. There sure are a lot of car horns. I continue to be her own personal news service. She continues to be awesome. I’m looking forward to when I get to think about her coming home (when we have a firm date, you too can join the countdown).

Yesterday I used Living Social to buy some language lessons at half price. If you’re in New York City, you can do the same thing today. And yes, that referral link helps me out, because if three of you sign up, I get my classes for free. You can use the classes any time this year (but you need to register by October) and the choices are French, Spanish, Italian, German, or Arabic (you don’t have to choose now). If I didn’t need German, I’d be all over the Arabic.

Also in the real, of classes, I’ve signed up to take something at Trade School where people barter their expertise. I’ve also signed up to teach a class, so I’ll let you know as soon as it’s on the schedule.

Don’t forget I’ll be reading from Whedonistas, along with Teresa Jusino, NancyKay Shapiro, and Priscilla Spencer on Monday night. We will have books to sell, one day before the official release, but numbers are limited, so get their early.

As I mentioned the other day, I have a lot of things I want to write about, including the marriage equality mess in Maryland and the discussion of victim-blaming regarding a New York Times article. Most of the discussion I’ve seen has been about the Times specifically or rape-culture generally, and I think there’s a useful component missing: which is about journalism systemically. But as ever, my life is deadlines, Japan is getting a lot of focus, both Wisconsin and Libya need to be getting a lot of focus, I’ve got some interview questions to send to a film maker who I’m going to talk to here, and I really need to clean the flat, so it may take a bit.

Right now, I’m out the door, as I want to visit the farmers market (mainly so I can report to Patty on it, it’s her favorite), before I come home and focus on getting stuff done.

news, agenda setting, and you

Since the beginning of this year, the news cycle has gone from what we call a 24-hour one (i.e., around the clock) to what I call an instantaneous one. Critical events happen, and there is no time to cover them with the weight and detail they deserve, before other critical events, often in unrelated areas, occur (in the 24-hour news cycle there isn’t necessarily new news, it’s just that we never stop talking — what’s been happening is something else). We went from the Arizona shooting, to MENA uprisings (which continue), to the union situation in the US (which is continuing), to today’s earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.

And that’s leaving out other critical stories: WikiLeaks, the treatment of Bradley Manning, anti-bullying initiatives from the White House, equal marriage rights debates in multiple states, the appalling hearings on Islamic radicalization in the US, the war on Planned Parenthood, and the retirement from political life of the Dalai Lama. And I’m sure I’ve left out other critical stories. And that’s not even counting the stuff that’s really dropped off the radar. Like Haiti.

So what’s a person to do, when trying to do a Friday link roundup other than throw their hands up in despair?

The easy answer, the terrible answer and is my instinct to say, is I don’t know. Despite being a generalist, someone who works well on deadline, who’s very quick on the uptake, with a background in journalism and a career in media analysis, it all feels like too much, even to me, as someone whose job it is to never feel like it’s too much. But the first thing I do every morning when I wake up, is check the news on my Blackberry before I even get out of bed (something that drives Patty up the wall). I get up faster on days terrible things have happened. Today’s been one of those days.

The harder answer is, that as much as I talk about news selection and agenda setting as regards what the news puts out there, news selection and agenda setting also happens at home. It happens in what media any of us choose to consume. And, when stories get big, bad, and difficult, the impulse is often to consume less to preserve our own sense of well-being; or to consume more as if data helps us have control, as if more is always better.

But what we really need to do is be editors for ourselves. Am I annoyed ABC isn’t really covering the union crisis in the US? Yes. But I’m also annoyed when it’s all MSNBC covers, because I also need information about the MENA region (for which I’ve been relying on CNN out of the domestic options, and Al-Jezeera online for the international option). Meanwhile, I get my queer news headlines from The Advocate, but they never go into enough depth, and rely on my Twitter feed to point me to the news I need about WikiLeaks and Manning’s detention.

Of course, you aren’t me. You don’t need or want to watch two, five, or ten hours of news a day. So I’m not going to tell you to consume more news (unless you aren’t consuming any). And I’m not going to tell you what delivery technology to use. But I want to emphasize how news selection affects the information you get, especially on a day where a lot of us probably flipped on a 24-hour news channel and have left that channel on all day.

Haiti didn’t stop needing help because the media stopped covering it. The protesters in Egypt didn’t go home because the war reporters went to Libya. The right to collective bargaining isn’t safe in the US because state-level politics stories don’t often make national news. And queer people aren’t suddenly not in a civil rights battle for their very lives because you didn’t hear about a transwoman’s murder or a gay teen’s suicide or yet another damn couple who can’t get married.

The only way to get around the reality of agenda setting (which is sometimes about political agenda; sometimes about racism, sexism or homophobia; sometimes about dollars; and sometimes about an evening news program only having thirty minutes or a newspaper only having so many pages) is to do your own agenda setting which means varying your news sources as much as possible. You won’t catch everything, but you’ll catch a much broader view.

Meanwhile, I? Have dozens of issues I want to write to you about here, but I’m struggling a little at finding the interval to do so today.

London dreaming

For about four hours last night there was a 50% chance I was going to have to fly to Bucharest for three days next week. Morning brings the news that I am not, in fact, flying to Bucharest, and I’m a little sad. Not because of Bucharest though, but because of the possibility of 3 hours in Heathrow, or, if I were really creative, a night in London.

London, and the UK in general, but mostly London, have this hold on me that’s, well, complicated. I feel a bit tortured about it, because it’s so boring and typical for someone to the US to be all, Oooo, shiny, British things even if I don’t think I’m doing that.

It’s more that London is what New York City used to be like, in the 80s, when my parents would take twelve-year-old me out to the Odeon at 2am and Madonna would be at the next time. It seethes and teems and pulsates; there is a reason why all the aliens on Doctor Who talk about how humans clamber over this world like insects. London’s a hundred neighborhoods layered on each other and grown in upon themselves like hives.

It’s also that Brick Lane feels like home.

And that huge chunks of my really weird education are only normal, or even useful, in the UK.

And that I really, really like the supermarkets.

It’s that there are women with hair as short as mine in ads for lingerie shops, that men know more than one knot for their ties, and that people aren’t revolted because my teeth don’t glow.

It’s St. Katharine’s Dock. And that I can look up and navigate by that awful bullet building, like I used to with the World Trade Center, before it came down. It’s that “the City” means something there, just like it does here, only different. And that I am somehow more acutely aware of everyone’s striving there, than I am here, which doesn’t really make any sense at all, but then, I suppose, these things rarely do.

For years, Sydney has been my long lost city, even as my time there was filled, not inappropriately, with journal entries about how far from everything it was, how exiled. But London’s, arguably, from where it was exiled.

So London’s all mythology for me, and nothing like anything I was told when I was ten and had to go on school trips each May 14 to lay daffodils at a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, before the teachers told us about the British girls we boarded during the War and then served us pineapple cake because it was Miss Hew’s favorite.

I know I seem, very easily, pretentious and lost. A lot of the time I’m playing and people don’t get that. But a lot of the time I’m not, and people don’t get that either. I grew up in this other world that doesn’t really exist, which may be why so much of my work is about defictionalization. My mother chose the school she did for me because, “All the little girls wore white gloves, like in the 1940s movies.”

I was five. I didn’t ask for that. It’s just what happened. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. It is also one that I am supposed to regret or feel shame about or guilt, but I just can’t.

But London, at least, recognizes the lies of my childhood. And better, doesn’t care.

I bet Bucharest is just lovely this time of year too.

Whedonistas reading in Brooklyn

WHEDONISTAS AT THE WAYSTATION
Readings from Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them
Featuring Elizabeth Bear, Teresa Jusino, Racheline Maltese, NancyKay Shapiro, and Priscilla Spencer.

Brooklyn Waystation
683 Washington Ave
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
MONDAY, MARCH 14TH
7:00PM
Reading to be followed by signing

Why you want to come other than the pure awesome that is Whedonistas and the fact that we should have books on hand for you to buy before you can get it anywhere else (unless you were at Gally)? The bar’s bathroom is through the TARDIS. I mean, just think about it. Jack has totally shagged someone in the TARDIS bathroom, right? Live vicariously, people, live vicariously!

The brutality of being chosen

One of my creative associates (who may have words with me at that particular phrasing in the name of identity plausible deniability) has a discussion piece up on Friends of the Text today about the premise of being chosen within texts and the idea of being chosen by texts. Thematically relevant to the stuff that interests me? You bet.

But also, of course, thematically relevant to my life. It’s easy to say, I think, and Balaka says as much in the piece, that everyone wants to be chosen. It is, she notes, like winning in the passive voice. But I wonder. Do boys want to be chosen as much as girls? Is the chosen part of the narrative what makes Harry Potter and Star Wars exciting to the male segments of their audiences? Do men have a Pygmalion narrative in their fantasies, one in which they are the transformed and not the transformer? Are women more socialized to this idea of being chosen? Is that why Twilight flies off the shelves? What’s it like, I wonder, to grow up, wanting to choose. Who is that person? And how are they formed? Were they once waiting to get chosen and finally got sick of not having magic powers or not becoming a star just for sitting at the table in the window of some diner?

It’s a sticky, nasty, uncomfortable question. At least for me. Because it touches, potentially, not just on ideas of gender, but also on ideas of dominance and submission and of leadership. It speaks to the troubling idea that chosen just means, “you’re good enough to be transmuted into gold.” It’s not just that you’re nothing without being chosen, it’s the suggestion that you’re nothing without acquiescing to the consequences of being chosen, and they are legion.

For me, this whole chosen business also speaks to ideas I have about the directorial imagination and my fears about whether I have enough of one. And it speaks to the doubt I have about the idea that the best thing anyone can do for themselves is get over that fantasy of being chosen, even though I know that waiting isn’t how to do life, poetic, rigorous, and narratively enticing though it may sometimes be.

Of course, I work in industries that largely are about “winning in the passive voice.” I write something, and then someone snatches it out of a pile of slush and publishes it. Sure, sometimes I get asked for things up front, and sure, I have to write things (which is an active endeavor) before waiting for them to get chosen, but “winning in the passive voice” is definitely the right description of the experience of it. At least for me.

Acting can be even more bizarre in that regard. You get a call; someone likes how you look; can you come in now and show us what you can do? It’s “winning in the passive voice” before there’s even a chance of winning in the active voice, and trust me, when they say you’ve got it, and it’s a contract, it doesn’t, in that moment, feel like you did anything, other than get plucked out of a crowd. A week later, you might recall how damn hard you worked for that opportunity, but the first flush of reaction is, at least for me, and I suspect for many other performers is “They picked me! Me!” Chosen.

“Winning in the passive voice.” It implies all of the benefits and none of the hard work of this success thing, doesn’t it? Seems snazzy. But there’s a real brutality that underlies it, one of clay in the kiln, and the insidious possibility that it might have actually been a certain peculiar and shifting inadequacy that brought you to attention. To be fair, I grew up as a dancer, and being chosen meant being told how you were wrong and being pressed harder and further into shapes to which you did not yet conform. But I suspect, regardless of background, that for a lot of people, it is this idea of brutality that appeals.

To return us to matters of the text and this idea of being chosen by the text, it makes me think about the work I’ve done regarding death and mourning. Or, at least, the tangential experience I’ve had in having done that work of seeing a lot of anger and distress from audiences in which beloved characters do die. Does this speak, I wonder, to this idea of being chosen by the text, and then finding out — for those who have had negative reactions to these fictional deaths — that this was really not what you signed up in that moment where you felt the text chose you. Conversely, for those of us who have felt vastly satisfied in those losses, is it because of the relief of encountering the expected brutality in our selection by the text?

And it’s not just on death that texts can brutalize us. Look at Bella in Twilight and look at our reactions. Is not the inspired longing for that type of impossibility a brutality of the text? Is not what Bella experiences in the face of the love she endures another brutality of the text, this one intradiegetic, instead of extradiegetic?

What, ultimately, do these narratives of being chosen suggest to us about the ethics of favor and brutality in our relationships with texts and in texts’ relationships with us? And how much choice do we have about those relationships, when the narratives themselves are, at base, about not having choice, and the supposedly great good fortune of that condition? Nobody ever asked Harry Potter if he wanted to save the world.

Thinky thoughts are a double thumbs up. Please make sure to give Balaka’s post some love too, especially if your reactions are more about her work than my little digression/extrapolation here. I would also particularly love to hear here from men on the subject of Pygmalion narratives and anyone who feels they are instinctively wired towards being the one who chooses.