Month: September 2011

Politics As Dealbreaker

by Zoë Pollock

Chloe Angyal won't let herself date someone pro-life:

In theory, a guy like Jack would never go for a girl like me. "You think I’m a baby killer, I think you’re a misogynist" isn’t exactly a strong foundation for a relationship. But hot anti-choice guys exist, and they have hit on me. And somehow, while discovering that a man is against abortion rights totally kills any mental attraction I might have to him, the physical attraction doesn’t always die. That means that whenever I meet a new candidate, I’ve got to sneak in some pregnancy talk when I still have the willpower to wave the guy off to the friend zone.

Earlier dealbreakers in GOOD's series here.

The Root Of Guilty Pleasures, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

In his 2004 take on guilty pleasures, Chuck Klostermann invoked one of my favorite movies from when I was ten (don't tell my mother):

What the authors of The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures (and everyone else who uses this term) fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of universal taste—a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad—are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it.

Take, for example, Road House.

This is a movie I love. But I don't love it because it's bad; I love it because it's interesting. Outside the genre of sci-fi, I can't think of any film less plausible than Road House. Every element of the story is wholly preposterous: the idea of Swayze being a nationally famous bouncer (with a degree in philosophy), the concept of such a superviolent bar having such an attractive clientele, the likelihood of a tiny Kansas town having such a sophisticated hospital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Every single scene includes at least one detail that could never happen in real life. So does that make Road House bad? No. It makes Road House perfect. Because Road House exists in a parallel reality that is more fanciful (and more watchable) than The Lord of the Rings. The characters in Road House live within the mythology of rural legend while grappling with exaggerated moral dilemmas and neoclassical archetypes. I don't feel guilty for liking any of that.

Road House also includes a monster truck. I don't feel guilty for liking that, either.

Also: boobs.

BFF Breakups

by Zoë Pollock

We often talk of relationships ending, less so when they're between friends; Emily Bernard testifies:

In our culture, it seems, friendships are generally considered to be incidental—garnishes on the plate of important relationships, like those between family members and spouses. There are no institutions, no common rituals to support either the initiation or termination of bonds between friends. … I grew up around adult women who believed that men had ruined their lives. Therefore, in romance, I have always proceeded with suspicion. In friendships, I have taken risks, been vulnerable, asked to know and be known. As a result, it has been in friendship that I have learned the pleasures and dangers of intimacy: the pleasures of loving openly and recklessly; the dangers of having it end before you are ready.

Women Writing For Men

by Zoë Pollock

This part of Katie Roiphe's interview with Janet Malcolm intrigues me the most. Malcolm explains her early writing style, borne from the "brutal frankness" of a harsh fiction professor:

I came to feminism late. Women who came of age at the time that I did developed aggressive ways to attract the notice of the superior males. The habit of attention getting stays with you. … Showing off to straight men remained a delight and necessity to women of my generation. Those of us who wrote, wrote for men and showed off to them. Our writing had a certain note. I’m not sure I can describe it, but I can hear it.

Malcolm settles on "aggression coupled with flirtation" and then quickly shuts down the discussion. I wonder how younger female journalists would characterize their own work – do we still write for men, and/or have we dropped the aggression? I'm reminded of Edith Zimmerman's profile of Chris Evans for GQ, contrasted with something like Maud Newton's critique of David Foster Wallace. Do we use flirtation and aggression in equal measure, depending on the subject and audience?

Writing Redemption

by Zoë Pollock

Weston Cutter interviews crime fiction writer George Pelecanos about whether his work is "dark":

I’m saying, I believe that it’s a long life, and we have the capacity to change. … I’ve been in trouble myself. Among the many knucklehead moves I’ve made, I shot someone when I was a teenager, and if people had given up on me, I wouldn’t have come through to the other side. So the redemption thing in my books is more than a plot device. It’s me.

Michael Bourne reviews Pelecanos' newest, The Cut:

For as long as I’ve been reading him, Pelecanos has been principally concerned with two issues, race as it is lived in Washington DC, and manhood as it is lived by working-class guys in DC and the world over. The first of these themes is overt, and in his earlier books Pelecanos tended to run at the mouth a bit, letting his plots and his characters get preachy on the myriad ways black and white people find to be evil to one another. The second of these themes strikes me as entirely unwilled, Pelecanos’ obsession with what it means to be a good man spilling out of him as naturally, and nearly as copiously, as his music and pulp fiction references and his encyclopedic knowledge of DC’s neighborhoods.

Angst Makes For Better Art

by Zoë Pollock

Jonah Lehrer explains why with the help of a recent paper, “The Dark Side of Creativity.” Students were asked to describe their dream job:

The students were randomly assigned to either a positive or negative feedback condition, in which their speech was greeted with smiles and vertical nods (positive) or frowns and horizontal shakes (negative). After the speech was over, the subjects were given glue, paper and colored felt and told to make a collage using the materials. Professional artists then evaluated each collage according to various metrics of creativity. Not surprisingly, the feedback impacted the mood of the subjects: Those who received smiles during their speeches reported feeling better than before, while frowns had the opposite effect. What’s interesting is what happened next: Subjects in the negative feedback condition created much prettier collages. … I’m afraid the novelist J.M. Coetzee was at least partially right: “Always move towards pain when making art.”

(Video: a dark take on creativity, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.)

Aborted Historical Reenactments

by Zoë Pollock

All this talk of Civil War reenactments reminds me of one of the greatest documentaries of all time: Sherman's March. In 1986 the oddly charming North Carolinian Ross McElwee set out to trace Sherman's path of destruction. Instead McElwee ended up documenting his many infatuations with eccentric Southern women, a nice tie-in with our discussions of why Southern women are so unique. Above is a clip featuring a classic McElwee monologue on relationships and Sherman's insecurities, delivered in a Confederate uniform.