This is not about Wes Anderson

EDIT: well, i guess in blogs you have to write disclaimers? though i thought that it was common knowledge that my opinion ISN’T fact, nor do i assume everyone will be delighted by it or agree with it. wes anderson is always a damned touchy subject but it’s still my hope that anyone who might chance upon this can recognize the fact that my word isn’t even close to gospel – it’s just an opinion and i know it’s only mine! thanks!

it’s actually pretty easy for me to convey why i hate wes anderson. i hate him because i love film.

anderson sacrifices actual grit, human emotion, substance and even reality for the sake of appearing more precious than thou. he has a fascination for quirk but he doesn’t back this quirk up with anything of substance – most notably without a telling personality or a fatal flaw.

it is a parade of cloying obscurity masked by lush set designs that offer no explanation for themselves other than acting as eye candy.

anderson hides his lack of plot, cohesive theme or unifying problem behind a trendy soundtrack and people who look fairly decent walking in slow motion. it happens in every one of his films.

the protagonist is almost always insufferable and precocious, even though no person in the real world exhibits such an incomprehensible level of being scripted.

and he employs his friends in significant roles. hello, luke wilson? you are the biggest embarrassment to cinema that modern society has ever known. i feel confident saying this even with the likes of ben affleck in existence.

i think jacques tati must be rolling in his grave with anderson as his more popular film peer. tati was able to comment on the trappings of the modern world with quiet grace, humor, symbolism and meaning. but hey, he didn’t have nico in his soundtracks, right?!!

filmmaking isn’t about being hip or employing jason schwartzman or having the most obscure collection of trinkets upon the set dresser.

it’s about Renoir making the finest anti-war film with the deftest political commentary by employing a legitimate assembly of actors who keenly felt their roles and worked together in unbelievable harmony to create something that would stand the test of time.

it’s about Truffaut adapting a memoir written by an octogenarian and making the decades-long ill-fated menage a trois romance come alive with narration, song and a blistering clip.

it’s about Herzog and Kinski nearly killing each other in a south american jungle when a ship gets stuck and the financiers pull out.

it’s about Godard masking the iconic blonde beauty of Bardot in Contempt and proving she was stronger for it. it’s about a symbolic apology to his wife under the hues of technicolor, the aid of fritz lang and the retelling of the odyssey.

it’s about Welles co-writing, directing, producing and acting in one of the most intricate and epic films ever.. at the age of 26.

it’s about Lang making a film in the 30s with the sparest of dialogue and you’re glued to your seat during the climax. a hundred vigilante germans bring a panicked pedophile to justice as you can barely breathe from the tension.

it’s about the archers telling their multi-layered stories in technicolor and making english cinema meaningful.

it’s about Fellini conveying the humble loneliness of a town along the adriatic rife with catholic tradition and hidden lust.

it’s about all of the films that make you feel stupidly utterly amazingly lucky to maybe get eight decades of existence and the chance to really feel. it’s about how they make you forget about yourself and your own universe and briefly trade in for a very different other. it’s about humanity conveyed passionately and bravely through art. and so much more.

The misunderstood “Madame Veto”

 

It really riles me up when someone writes an entire tome about a historical figure and focuses it solely on her fashion sense.  While researching my favorite misunderstood tragedienne this afternoon, a fashion book is precisely what I landed upon.  It is absolutely true that Antoinette’s 18th century dress sense was enviable, yet it is just a nominal part of this woman’s charmed, opulent and later most unfortunate life.  I am sure that I am not as vigorous a feminist as I should be.  The extent of my pro-girl vocalizations are probably limited to telling the second graders I teach how awesome it is that they like math, science, sports and art rather than cookie cutter blasphemous stuff like one miley cyrus.  Yet there is so much of me utterly aggrieved and dismayed not only by the way that people of her century viewed Antoinette but also with the way that we the people of the modern century do.

 

Do you really think that she is responsible for the “let them eat cake” line?  Nono.  The “let them eat cake” line was physically recorded by Rousseau in 1766 – when Marie was ten years old and still 4 years away from becoming a princess, let alone a queen.  During her reign, as the people in France grew (rightfully) disenchanted with their treatment, hostility was hurled in her direction.  Tracts were published featuring Antoinette as a lesbian.  (Which would be FINE, were it TRUE.)  Rather than having lesbian relationships with women, Marie cultivated close friendships with females due to the culture of her Austrian court upbringing.  She had a slew of sisters close in age who slowly got pawned off to various dukes and counts across Europe.  Marie, at 14, was the last to be married and sent to France.  While in France, withstanding the loneliness of foreign court life and the bizarre behavior of her most unfortunate husband Louis XVI, Marie slowly gained friendships of loyal princesses and ladies of the court.  These women were the sisters she’d lost to smallpox and the unfortunate tradition of archduchesses marrying a new country. 

 

Absolutely her spending was excessive.  At Versailles, she updated this amazing structure and dubbed it the Petit Trianon.  It was modeled after the summer home she had as a child in Austria.  Her fashions WERE fabulous, there I said it.  I do believe that she was unable to reign her dollars in during a time when people were starving in the streets.  But I also believe that she felt honest pity for this situation.  Was she sort’ve clueless, probably, yes.  But haughty and uncaring?  No way.

 

She came under house arrest in Paris after a mob of people stormed Versailles and forced the royal family back to the city.  They lived this way in the aging Tuileries for quite some time.  After waiting way too long to attempt an escape, the family finally managed one, only to be captured and returned to the city after about 24 hours.  Then, the Jacobins were really able to work their misogyny and hatred of the crown against Marie and her family.  Louis was jailed separately and finally given his day in court.  He was represented and given time to prepare his case.  Obviously he was found guilty, yet the court was nearly split over whether to give him death or exile to somewhere like America.  He met the guillotine with relative calm and respect from the crowd.

 
Marie fared much worse.  At 38, separated from her children and likely suffering from TB and uterine cancer, she was imprisoned in a dingy cell, forced into rags, and given about a day’s notice about her trial.  It was a sham trial, as her death sentence had already been proclaimed by an outside council.  Marie was publicly humiliated and it was insinuated that she had molested her youngest son, Louis Charles.  When she passionately argued this point, even the famed Market Women who loathed her came to her defense.  At the end of the day, her hair was shorn, she was placed in the back of a tumbrel and paraded through the streets of Paris to her death.

 

Jacques Louis David watched the scene from a window above the street she was wheeled upon.  Having disdain for her, he drew this crude (and amazing) sketch to show that Marie was “haughty” until the end:

 

 

That’s not haughty to me, it’s not.  That is astounding poise and dignity for yourself in the face of utter terror and hostility.  That is choosing to transcend the fate you’re facing.  It is simply amazing to me.

 

I’m a sometime-fan of revisionist history, specifically when it applies to a figure who is tragically misunderstood and always has been.  The delightful Antonia Fraser has written an amazing book on Antoinette that attempts to reclaim her honor.  I don’t think it’s too late.  I think this woman deserves to be remembered as a better person than the malicious harpy that society has always made her out to be.  If you enjoy historical nonfiction, you should absolutely read it.

 

Stevie Grabin, my great uncle

 

I used to write short fiction.  Two summers ago, my mother discovered some letters that my great uncle Stevie had written from Australia and New Guinea during WWII.  I’d never met Stevie but had always been fascinated by him and the stories that my dad, the sort of adopted cohort, had about him.  It’s weird because I’ve never really felt that anyone in my family (extended or otherwise) shared my penchant for writing/language.  And reading these letters from Stevie was just this glorious sock to the stomach.  He never went to school and died in his 50s from alcoholism.  I’d always felt bad about that on some sort of removed level, but reading these letters just haunted me.  I think maybe he would’ve been my best relative if he could’ve stood to be alive a little longer.  I think we would’ve been great friends.  Excerpts:  (The “Dan” he writes of is his brother, my grandfather)

 

May 22, 1942

 

“I see you’re worried about ‘me getting brave sometime and getting myself killed’.  That’s up to time to decide.  I’ll say this much, I’ll not be a coward, even if it means saving the life of my worst enemy.  Don’t you worry about raids.  We tear for the first fox hole and do a swan-dive into it.  And we have plenty of fox holes around.”

 

July 8, 1942

 

“Pitika almost had his graduation ring lost.  I’m glad I didn’t bring mine.  The Aussies think it’s sissified to wear rings anyway.  I know you’ll take care of mine.  Tell me when you have it.  Don’t mind anything or everything of what Josephine has to say about it.”

 

August 16, 1942

 

“Back to school pretty soon, John.  How’d you like a little kangaroo for a pet?  You know you could train him to be a good boxer.”

 

January 4, 1943

 

“Dan said the newspapers had them scared to think that they were coming to New Guinea.  The other night he said it’s a picnic compared to what he went through getting started.  And that I’m here, he said, he’s satisfied.  He said this should make the news – brothers meeting and serving in New Guinea.”

 

September 23, 1943

 

“During supper time, it was funny watching a scrap between a goat, a dog, and a rooster.  You see, our cooks own the goat and rooster.  Well, this dog tried to bite up the small goat, and, darn it if the old rooster didn’t stick up, and keep the dog away.  They’ve been at it for a couple of weeks now, and the old man rooster sure keeps the dog away.”

 

October 8, 1943

 

“Boy, was I surprised when you asked if I remembered what you look like, Mom.  It seems you all think that a couple of years made me forget a helluva lot.  Well, I can still remember, and clearly, what you, Dad, Joe and Johnnie look like.  There may be a change in weight, and, in Johnnie, also height.  I’m eating like a horse, working like a horse, and, at times, looking like one, ha.”

 

November 5, 1943

 

“I know what money I’ve been sending you isn’t much, these days, but take whatever you like and get yourself some Xmas presents.  You say that those boys back there still say, when they come home on furlough, that little old Eynon is like a ghost town.  Well, I feel sorry for them.  Wait’ll they ship overseas and not see Eynon for a couple of years.  They’ll change their tune, yes, and how!”

 

 

December 12, 1943

 

“We get a stripe for every six months overseas.  Dan is starting on his fifth, I’m going on my sixth, we’ll have stripes like a zebra when we get home, ha.  Well I guess this is so long.  And I’m living darn good.”

 

 

February 23, 1943

 

“Well, until next week, take it easy, keep calm, and all that and all this.”

 

1973 was a common year starting on a Monday.  The New York Yankees were sold to Steinbrenner, thus commencing the most unholy union that this world has ever seen.  Vietnam ended and the World Trade Center opened in New York, complete with some forgotten beauty queen gingerly slicing the ceremonial ribbon away.  Billie Jean defeated that pig, Bobby Riggs, in straight tennis sets.  And Stevie Grabin, aged a perfect fifty, died ten miles away from Eynon, Pennsylvania.

 

Henry Kissinger was award the Peace Prize that year.  What a laugh.

 

it sounds like the set up to an awful joke, but bear with me, it’s valid:  how many people does it take to sign off on one man’s death?  maybe it was a habit of the 1970s but I still count six.  i found them in a chestnut folder.  they took up an inconsequential amount of space next to some chickenscratch insurance claims and a copy of an honorable discharge.  the commonwealth of pennsylvania decreed it, on those friendly-looking slips of pistachio paper.  cause of death:  metastatic carcinoma of liver, written six times, six sheets in various states of cursive.

 

 

Stevie:  the man, the myth.  the myth that good Christians will not grant their children access to.  They’ve put up a pretty gutsy campaign to sell me on the idea that you were just an Unfortunate One.  they must’ve read about battle tactics through you, or listened quite intently once you returned home.  was it missing somebody that caused you to patronize a handful of those bars in the town containing the most ungodly statistic of them?  was it something in the air you carried half a world back with you?  i think it was the desire to talk too much history, Stevie.  the only place one can get his fill of remembrance is in a bar or at a funeral.  believe it or not, good funerals are hard to come by.

 

you hid it pretty well, or else people didn’t think to reckon with you.  you died two months after diagnosis.  i know you were marooned at the veterans hospital but i like to think Dan was able to charm the nurses in that way, maybe take you off the grounds for a while.  at the hospital, school groups with a flash of patriotism would volunteer time away from algebra.  somebody would hand out fake red poppies to the vets and it was nice, but one could easily get them on the cheap from a fabric store.

 

the liver is supposed to be the most resilient organ in the body:  it’s supposed to be able to take a beating so merciless that, were the same action taken against the heart or lungs or pancreas, those organs would throw up their hands and resign in disgust.  it’s got regenerative properties, i’ve always been told.  it’s a full-time job to wreck your liver.  neurosurgeons have got easier work days.

 

i guess i picture it as a slow erosion of you, a degradation, and i think that’s contestably unfair, because i think you always drank to remember.  that’s an oddity, despite what any terrible baby boomer songs say otherwise.  most people drink to achieve that very erosion, but not you.

 

(and the odes go on and on.  and someday i’d like to name someone after him.  or tell someone all about him.)

 

 

(stevie and dan, fourth and third from right, respectively)

 

 

 

 

 

(also:  sorry, being in pennsylvania makes me pine for my heritage.  but i’m already formulating a blog about stuffed ferretts.  it’s as good as it sounds)

Shakespeare and starlings