peep peep.

so i watched rear window this past weekend, and while i have an irrepressible love for jimmy stewart and his cute voice, i was preoccupied for most of the movie with something that jimmy’s character’s nurse said at the beginning of the movie:

“we become a race of peeping toms. what people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.”

which made me think celebrity gossip magazines and e!news and such things, and how easily they can turn people into peeping toms, to a certain degree. it’s so alluring to let yourself be absorbed by someone else’s life and problems, and in that sense, it’s a sort of escapism; we love to see famous people screw up their lives because it makes us forget for a moment how much we’ve screwed up our own lives. i’ve read a lot of magazine articles where actors or musicians were interviewed, and voiced their extreme contempt for the invasiveness of the paparazzi. i’m always incredulous when i read something like that, because paparazzi seems like the smallest part of the larger problem; photographers are just trying to make a living by giving the public something that’s in high demand. it seems to me that the real problem is the everyman’s obsession with famous people’s lives, which are really not that different from their own (aside from their heightened public visibility and economic standing). and then i thought about the irony of that nurse’s statement in a film, which also kind of turns people into peeping toms on a fictional world and which also functions as escapist entertainment. and then i laughed.

the end.

cutest ever.

a few things about this band i saw last night.

i think they are called grizzly bear? (or something like that).

1. the moore theatre is a very fitting venue. even though i was way back in the first balcony, it was still a great seat and the acoustics were perfection.
2. all four band members are so incredibly talented. usually you can pick out a band’s weakest link, the one who’s not quite as talented and that doesn’t pull the same weight as the others and is potentially expendable (can anyone say ringo starr?). there is no weakest link in grizzly bear… they are all essential.
3. i saw them a couple summers ago when they opened for feist, and one of the things that made them so unforgettable was the light show. their light technician is a master of his craft, and i would pay lots of money to see them again simply to experience the fantastic lighting.
4. i love how really good bands attract other really good musicians to their shows that i happen to attend. robin pecknold of fleet foxes walked right past me in the lobby. robin pecknold! i could have reached out and touched him.
5. the harmonies! they sounded like heaven.

music video monday #3.

one of my all-time favorites.

platonic + romantic =no?

so the other day in my shakespeare class, we were talking about platonic love versus romantic love, and how in the days of shakespeare, it was vital to keep them separate. and my brilliant professor, who loves his social statistics, mentioned that the majority of women would rather go to their female friend with their problems than their husbands/significant other. which is interesting, considering that in this day and age, one typically looks for someone they feel both platonic and romantic love for when they’re looking for a husband/wife. in response to this, my professor posited that perhaps that’s why more than half of marriages end in divorce, because we’re with someone that we expect to be everything to us, both friend and lover, and it’s just unrealistic and too great of a weight for a single person to carry.

i find the balance between platonic and romantic love to be very delicate; you want to be besties with your significant other, but the passion/sexual attraction has to be there in order to qualify as something beyond just friends; but if you’re all about the romantic passion, you have a relationship with no substance. i’m sure it’s strange for some people to imagine spouses in other cultures who aren’t confidants, and who are together simply for economic or reproductive purposes, but i have to wonder if those people are the ones who have it right, and we’re the ones who are so arrogant to think that we can blend the lines between friendship and sex and be sure that’s the best and right way to do it.

i’ve been asking my friends who have significant others what their relationship consists more of, platonic or romantic love, and most of them say that it’s primarily platonic. for the most part, they just hang out with their significant other and talk to them like they would with a friend. it seems like platonic love in same-sex friendships is generally really strong (“bros before hos,” etc), and sometimes strong in male-female friendships, depending on the people, i guess. but i wonder if a male-female relationship that is really platonically strong is enhanced or hindered by adding sex into the mix. on the one hand, sex can be a really intense physical bond between two people, a plus; but on the other hand, sex is fairly accessible outside the relationship if the relationship were to go sour, a negative. i don’t know if the former argument holds up against the latter in terms of incentive to stay in a relationship, so maybe it is best to keep platonic and romantic love separate and it’s “bros before hos,” indeed.

a proclamation of love.

i love bette davis.

i love her because she was gorgeous and sassy in her youth, and because she was scary and creepy in her older years. i watched whatever happened to baby jane? last night and was torn between feeling utterly awed and utterly frightened by bette davis’ psychotic character, baby jane.

sometimes the scariest types of people are the ones who don’t know how to transition from childhood to adulthood. which creates a strategic segue-way for this thought:

capstone was incredibly intense tonight because this professor, who has always seemed to me very serious and stoic, completely poured out his heart to us. apparently he had a really awful relationship with his father, and that affected his faith because, as he said, people tend to superimpose the image of their biological father over what they imagine (or expect) their heavenly father to be like. which is something i’ve found to be tragically true. it seems that it would be almost impossible for people who have dysfunctional relationships with their fathers to embark on a functional relationship with god, or to even be attracted to such a thing; and it is, i suppose, a sad fact of psychology that someone looking to find solace or peace in a spiritual being can be thwarted by their past, arrested by it even, to where they can’t grow, but remain stuck in a conditioned state of sadness or self-deprecation because that’s all they’ve known, and all they think they deserve. i guess my thought is: is this an unfair (albeit completely arbitrary) advantage?

polanski.

i’ve had the roman polanski documentary “wanted and desired” in my netflix queue for months, but in lieu of his recent arrest in switzerland, my attention has been sufficiently piqued and i decided to sit myself down this afternoon and watch it.

it was a really disheartening film, but one that i think is important for people to watch if they want to have any kind of educated opinion about the situation polanski finds himself in. the film does an excellent job of giving reasons why polanski should perhaps be pitied (the death of his mother at the hands of the nazis and his childhood struggle for survival in poland, the murder of his wife by the manson family, etc.), but ultimately doesn’t deny that his furnishing a 13-year old with quaaludes and then having sex with her was wrong and inexcusable. the film focuses more on the trial, and how the fame-whoring judge presiding over his case treated polanski and his case completely unlawfully. so much of this story has been skewed by disreputable media sources, that having all of the information sheds a new light on this debacle.

after watching this film, i feel even less sure of my opinions about this situation. obviously, it was wretched that he had sex with a minor, but there is something about him and his life that impels me toward empathy. i think polanski is often painted as either a monstrous figure or a duplicitous one; i just see him as a person filled to the brim with an overwhelming amount of sadness, and as a person who made a really big mistake and simply wants, after thirty years, to be able to move on with his life. he’s an incredible artist, but no one is above the law; similarly, the representatives of the law had no right to abuse him because of his celebrity status. it’s a big twisted mess, if you ask me. watch the film and tell me what you think.

EDIT: there was an article in the new york times movie section today about “wanted and desired.”