Ken’s Blog

One of the striking things about Juno is the way, right from the opening credits, it establishes the magical wise/innocent world inside the head of its main character as the epitome of coolness.

One key moment is at the end of the opening credits, when Juno walks out of her cartoon-rendered inner world, into the real world of other people. There is a second or so where the left side of the screen still shows a little bit of the cartoon world – you actually see both worlds on the screen at once. And that cues in the audience, right from the start, that Juno always carries her alternative world around with her.

Juno is the latest in a long line of magical-innocent heroes. What is striking about her, as opposed to, say, the cartoonist Hoops McCann played by John Cusack in One Crazy Summer, is that she is not marginalized. Rather, the world around her ends up recongnizing that she represents the future, the way to enlightenment.

This same cultural transition can be observed in the 1960’s, as popular culture gradually emerged from a reality centered on Eisenhauer-era post-war materialism. In 1966 the Juno-like character of Murray N. Burns played by Jason Robards in A Thousand Clowns was still perceived as being disconnected from the outer world, unable to have power within that world, even though he was a figure of grace. And yet the same year saw The King of Hearts, in which the “real” world is seen to be, ultimately, completely irrelevant – only the people who are innocent to the point of insanity have any importance.

I would argue that the cultural movement of about 40 years ago glorifying the rebellious innocent, also seen in Godspell, Harold and Maude and many other plays and films of that era – and of course going hand-in hand with escalating popular revolt against the Vietnam War – recurs about once every two generations. It is generally a statement that “The approach taken by you grownups has failed, and now it is time for the children to take over.” Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist of that era who was perhaps most self-consciously positioning innocence as a rebellion against the old order, actually subtitled his novel Slaughterhouse Five “The Children’s Crusade”.

This cultural response to “grown-up thinking run amok” is far from new. After the horrors visited upon Europe by World War I, the Dada movement deliberately embraced an aesthetic of pseudo-insane innocence in rejection of the grown up thinking that had led to the devastation of the Great War.

I think we are going through a similar transition now. The power of the rebellious countercultural innocent is on the rise, and I sense that this is fundamentally due to a rejection of the age that we’ve been living through, a neo-Eisenhauer age of rich old white men in suits, a creeping punative fascism in the culture and its public discourse, and a paranoia leading to dimunition of personal freedom and dignity.

In such times, the popular culture responds. In the midst of jingoist war-heroes, the rebelious losers start to appear like small furry mammals between the legs of the mighty thunder lizards. First they show up as antiheroes, and then they start to take over, to emerge ad full-fledged heroes, objects of desire. Just a few years ago Napolean Dynamite had only limited power; he was able to enter a place of grace only through the side door, the one reserved for nerds and outcasts. Similarly, Judd Apatow’s characters in Freaks and Geeks may have been attractive, but they were never allowed to see themselves as heirs to the kingdom.

In retrospect, Linda Carellini’s Lindsay Weir was a kind of proto-Juno. But in 1999 the culture was not prepared to accept her as a figure of power. She was a queen without a realm.

But now we’re going full circle yet again, and anyone who stands up and effectively employs the rhetoric of innocence and rebellion against the old white guys in the suits (I won’t name names) is going to have a good shot at taking over. But nothing is certain. As Bob Dylan once rather perfectly put it: “Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?”

And then Nixon got elected.

On Air Canada last night from Toronto to Edmonton, I saw Juno. Brilliantly written film, knows exactly where it wants to go, and how to get there. All I can say is that Diablo Cody (writer) is a goddess, and Jason Reitman (director) is her high priest.

By the way, there are no real spoilers in what follows, but I will be discussing this film in enough detail that if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to do so before reading on.

Of course it has the Moment – when the entire essence of the film is revealed in one masterful shot. In this case it’s a reaction shot – the look on the face of Juno, played by the incomparable Ellen Page, after Jennifer Garner’s character has become overwhelmed with surprised delight to feel the baby kicking.

Up until this point we have seen Juno go through an immense variety of emotions and facial expressions: cocky, sad, defiant, quizzical, enraged, vulnerable… The list goes on. But suddenly in that shot we see something new, something Reitman has been holding back from us – an expression comes over Page’s face of utter serenity, combined, for the first time, with a complete, and somewhat startling, lack of vulnerability. It’s there in the combination of her relaxed beautific smile and the kindly yet commanding look in her eyes. This is not the feisty girl-against-the-world we’ve been getting to know for the past hour. This is the Madonna, the all powerful goddess, Shakti incarnate, bringer of fertility to bereft mortal women longing to be with child.

When that moment comes, two crucial things happen at once: First, Juno finally understands, on a conscious level, the extent of her own power. We and everyone around her in the film have been aware from the start that she is by far the most powerful presence on the screen. But she hasn’t, until that moment. Second, the surprising yet perfect ending is foreshadowed – this is the moment that will guide Juno away from the false path of an illusory maturity, unto the true path of adult responsibility and, ultimately, happiness. You can think of it as the “Lester Burnham makes the girl breakfast” moment.

In a way, the husband and wife that wish to adopt her child serve as opposing demon guides along her spiritual path to coming into her own power. Both are disguised, as demons generally are. Each represents a different aspect of adulthood, and of course neither ends up being quite what they had seemed to be.

***
There is another aspect of this film that I found to be quite revelatory. I think this is an important film politically, in a way that might even have ramifications for the upcoming presidential election. Not in what it says, but in the way it says things. More on that tomorrow.

Last night I saw Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer at the Booth Theatre on Broadway. It’s one of those wondrous plays that tosses its audience back and forth between helpless laughter and starkly serious suspense, and then back again, often from one moment to the next. But beyond its enormouse entertainment value, I liked the message I got out of the play. If you see it, you might not get the same message, but that’s one of the great things about the theatre!

To sum up what I learned: In life we are always dealt a much better hand than we think. But the cards are only useful if we can see them. So the problem is not to change your luck, or make the world around you fit your notion of how it should be, but rather to learn to see clearly, since all the good fortune we need is always right there in front of us. If we can just figure out how to see it.

And the first and most important bit of that good fortune is the miracle of getting a chance to be here, to spend yet another day on this planet, and to enjoy relating to all those other people that are here with us, in all their crazy, messy, dysfunctional glory.

I know that all sounds platitudinous and a bit sentimental, but McPherson makes the case most eloquently, and without a hint of sentiment.

Emily sat patiently in the booth. Mr Pimm had said he’d be back in just a few minutes, but it seemed like she’d been waiting forever, sitting there by herself. The waitress was really nice, but by now Emily was tired of nice strangers. They had been on the road for two weeks, and Mr. Pimm still had not told her where they were going, or why.

Today she had on her yellow dress, the good one that Mom had bought her, back before – before everything had happened. This morning Emily had insisted on wearing it, on dressing up, before leaving the hotel room, even though she knew they were just going to a stupid diner to eat. Sometimes things just matter, she told herself. Even if some people don’t get it.

She went back to staring at the salt shaker. She tried to put the sounds of the diner out of her mind, all the stupid loud conversations going on at once. Why did people insist on chattering away like that, even when they didn’t have anything really to talk about? Well, that wasn’t her problem. The salt shaker was.

She kept looking at it steadily, keeping her eyes resolutely on the beveled glass edge around the bottom, trying to ignore the pepper shaker right next to it, not even letting herself think about the ketchup bottle. For a long moment she stared. It wasn’t really like concentrating, more like kind of letting her mind go blank. Finally the salt shaker moved just the tiniest bit, maybe a quarter inch, and then it stopped. But that was enough.

She leaned back in the booth, feeling a little tired, but that was ok. She knew it was going to get easier each time, if she just kept on practicing. Mr. Pimm came back a few moments later, and she noticed he was peering at her, frowning. “Is everything all right Emily?” He sounded concerned, like maybe he thought she was coming down with something.

“Everything’s just fine Mr. Pimm,” she said, and gave him her best smile. Everything really was just fine.

I really love it when an author makes effective use of “the unreliable narrator”. A story’s narrator is not, of course, its author, although the narrator believes himself to be the author. There’s lots of fun, and sometimes beauty, to be had in that distinction.

One of my favorite examples of this is in the song By the Time I Get to Phoenix by the great Jimmy Webb. On the surface the song seems to tell a very simple story: A man is finally leaving his girlfriend – after many times before of saying he would – and he’s thinking that it will take her some time to accept that he’s really gone. Here are the lyrics:

   By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising
   She'll find the note I left hanging on her door
   She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'
   'Cause I've left that girl so many times before

   By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working
   She'll probably stop at lunch and give a call
   But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin'
   Off the wall, that's all

   By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleeping
   She'll turn softly and call my name out loud
   And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
   Though time and time I've tried to tell her so
   She didn't know that I would really go

It all seems pretty clear, right? The narrator is giving us a very unambiguous message. But Webb himself slyly gives us the opposite message. The key is in the opening line:

   By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising

Here we find one of the most potent and compelling of all mythic images: The Phoenix – a great bird that always rises, perpetually reborn, from the ashes of the fire that consumes it.

An author doesn’t just accidentally drop the words “Phoenix” and “rising” into the same sentence. No, the symbol of the Phoenix is only invoked when talking about a cycle of endless rebirth. The narrator himself is unaware of this. He actually believes he’s never returning. But we know better.

And that’s what makes this song so powerfully romantic. A man tells us he’s leaving his woman, and yet something’s not right. He is talking about her in the way we talk about someone we’re in love with – imagining what she is doing each moment of her day, and speaking about her with great tenderness: She’ll cry softly and call my name out loud. The very tone of the language conveys that this man is still very much in love with this woman.

And the kicker is the information that this relationship is a Phoenix: The man who thinks of himself as a loner, a heart-breaking wandering cowboy of American myth, is actually destined to always return to the woman he loves.

Well, the readers have spoken. Two separate comments pointing out that my list of things to do was incomplete. I will take Sally’s sage advice, and update this list in the spirit she suggests:

 

So the right one is out there, and she’s also looking?
In order to find her it’s time to get booking!

There’s no point in searching all over the nation
I likely can walk there from Grand Central Station

She might be on a bus, she might be in a car
Or boarding a train by the old Oyster Bar

Or in Brooklyn, the Bronx, maybe here, maybe there,
In the W Bar – the one off Union Square

The girl that will likely most tickle my fancy
Might now, as I write this, be crossing Delancey

Or maybe she’s taking the last Hampton Jitney
In time for an opening up at the Whitney

She may be at the Vineyard to see some theatrics
Or coming down off of the steps of Saint Patrick’s

Or dancing away at a Russian themed club
After checking out Woody’s gig at Michael’s Pub

She may sing at the Met, she may write for The Times
About style, or film, or state government crimes

I can go for a stroll across town just to seek her
I can start out on A and then walk along Bleecker

To the Blue Note some evening when Gal Costa croons
And then get felafel to go, at Mamoun’s

We might meet before noon, we might meet after dark,
We might meet at a picnic somewhere in the Park

Or we’ll meet on the night of the first snow of winter
At a puppet show version of something by Pinter

No reason to fret, no need to be blue
Somehow, I think she is making lists too

Yesterday being a Friday, my blog entry was a poem. It was a reflection of something going on in my life, as poems generally are. When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking about the relationship between poetry and the events in life that inspire it. Coincidentally, several friends, after reading the poem, called me up today to say that they loved it, and also to ask, with some concern, whether I’m ok. Which I guess is also a kind of compliment on my poetry. 🙂

The relationship between poetry and reality is funny though, isn’t it? A poem takes some aspect of reality, and then sharpens and polishes it until the underlying emotion is honed to a fine blade, reflecting light while cutting like a knife, clean and bright and able to draw blood.

Prose is quite different: It is best at describing the messiness and complexity of things, and there is a different, rougher kind of beauty in that. All the clash and bother, the sturm und drang of our imperfect selves in constant collision, that’s the stuff of real life.

In truth the woman I was thinking of yesterday is now in a relationship that is clearly right for her. The man she is with has a lovely graciousness, a calmly accepting and open soul, which perfectly complements her madcap headstrong wildness. Watching them together is quite beautiful. You can see how these two people fit together, and how one day their children will have the opportunity to draw from the best of both: Her wild soul and his calm one.

I am self-aware enough to know that she and I together would probably end up as a disaster – two ornery individualists each trying to charge up a different hill at the same time. We’d tear everything apart in no time, like a locomotive with two engine cars, each pulling in the opposite direction.

And yet I think that yesterday’s poem was completely true to the feeling that inspired it. Perhaps the truth is something like this: We dream in poetry, yet we live in prose.

Forget the time it all made sense
Say nothing in your own defense

Move along, just agree
Do not talk of what might be

Please do not show your confusion
Pretend that it was all illusion

That simple touch, oh do not treasure
Its terrifying pain and pleasure

Try to think each gesture through
Make a list of things to do

Don’t indulge in deep despair
Do not touch her perfect hair

The knife cut inward hurts the most
Remember you should make a toast

Speak in measured tones, and slow
Say of course you’d love to go

Try your best to hide your fear
Rome is warm this time of year

Do not think of that embrace
Was I clawing at my face?

Don’t scream your pain unto the sky
It’s possible you will not die

Today a friend asked me the following question:

“Blogs are a very public way of revealing thoughts. Did/does it make you uncomfortable at times?”

A very good question. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the answer is non-trivial. The best analogy I can think of is with driving a car – a wonderfully efficient way to cause death, dismemberment and general public mayhem. When you drive, you have complete freedom at all times to kill yourself and others. All it takes is a simple turn of the wheel and you are toast.

And yet millions of people drive cars every day, for the most part without mishap. The only thing protecting them from certain death is their own highly developed sense of self-preservation.

Putting your thoughts and emotions out there in a blog is something like that. Theoretically at any moment you could say something that would inappropriately confuse public and private knowledge, betray a friend’s trust, or in some other way be the equivalent of pulling your pants down in public (with or without that second pair of pants underneath). And then of course there is always the danger of being found guilty of BWI (blogging while intoxicated).

So many perils.

And yet the moment you put your hands on that wheel, step on the accelarator and pull out into traffic, a wonderful thing happens. You realize that you really do value your life, a certain circle of privacy, the trust of your friends, the line between sane and insane. It is perfectly ok to discuss thoughts and emotions in public, to look at the ways that powerful encounters with other people, both positive and negative, have pulled upon your heart, transformed you, made you see the world in a new way. People talking about those things together can be an exhilarating, therapeutic, community building experience.

But it is not ok to use any of that as an excuse to go on a destructive tear.

And so I find that I am never tempted to just spin the steering wheel randomly, cause a ten car pile-up, find out what a head-on collision feels like, or what would happen if I just drove this sucker off that bridge.

After all, I’ve got places to go, and these thoughts and emotions are just the vehicle to get me there. So I’m going to put the top down, gun that accelarator, and go for a ride with whatever friends care to go along with me.

It had now been a full three weeks since they’d ridden into the low country. Cloud capped mountains ranged over the horizon on all sides, and the sun hung high in the morning air. Blossom was off nibbling on some sage down by the stream, which was fine with him. She’d been going since sunrise, and flecks of dewy sweat still glistened on her flanks. He figured the old girl could use a little rest after the hard riding of the last three hours. Besides, this was as good a spot as any to take the valley’s measure.

He turned the metal cylinder over in his hand. Squinting his eyes against the sun’s glare, he tried once again to read the marks engraved on its side. He couldn’t make head nor tails of it. Some sort of writing, but sure as heck like nothing he’d ever seen. Oh well, it didn’t hardly matter anyways. Carefully he pointed the cylinder toward the cloud above the mountain ridge up ahead. Just like before, the cool metal surface heated up slightly in his hand, and he could hear the faintest click. The cloud over the ridge winked out and was gone, leaving nothing but pure blue sky.

He counted off six, seven seconds before the boom came. He nodded to himself and adjusted the brim of his hat. A little over a mile left to go. He gave a low whistle and Blossom trotted over. With the grace of long practice he swung up and eased his lanky frame into the worn leather saddle. It was time to settle some scores.