People Who Hate Each Other Making Music Together.

Last night I watched a documentary about Wilco. It’s called I Am Trying To Break Your Heart and it was filmed while they were recording Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001. I love Wilco, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of my favorite albums of all time, so it was really interesting to see the behind-the-scenes of how it was made and Wilco’s creative process. While they were recording, Jeff Tweedy explained that they would first get the song down in its simplest form and then deconstruct it, and see if there was something more interesting or creative they could do with it. Obviously I don’t know very much about songwriting or recording, but I think that’s a really ingenious way to go about things, exploring capabilities through multiple avenues.

Another fascinating part of the film: a senior editor from Rolling Stone posits that the reason why Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn’t received well by the record label (Wilco was dropped upon delivering the finished album) is because it didn’t cater to our culture’s mentality of instant gratification. Listening to it didn’t tell the record label who was going to like it and how many albums it was going to sell, and thus they wanted the band to make changes. Which makes sense, to a certain degree. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot isn’t an easy, straightforward record: it has mystery, and melody paired with dissonance, and it takes effort to listen to it and appreciate it for what it is. But I think those kinds of records are often the most rewarding to listen to, and end up sticking with you longer than easy albums.

One thing that was kind of glossed over (I felt like) was the conflict going on between Tweedy and Jay Bennett. It was like, they had one pretty bad argument and then once the record was completed, Tweedy asked Bennett to leave the band, but no one really went into detail about why it happened. Bennett, when interviewed, said that he thought it was because Tweedy felt threatened by him and didn’t want to have to struggle over creative dominance with him. I feel like that’s kind of a cop-out, though.

Seeing the tensions between Tweedy and Bennett reminded me of an article I read about Interpol in Spin a couple years ago, right around the time Our Love To Admire was due to be released. Essentially, the article explained how Paul Banks and Carlos D. hated each other, and how Daniel Kessler was trying to keep everything from falling apart. I found that really shocking at the time, because somehow my subconscious image of a band is a group of friends who hang out a lot and jam together, and I think a good deal of the time, that’s the case. So to think that the members of Interpol didn’t really get along was perplexing. At the same time, I think it’s a real testament to the power and importance of art, that people who don’t like each other and who wouldn’t voluntarily subject themselves to each other’s company would do so for the sake of creating something that they love and believe in. And I think it says a lot about the vision and dedication of both Wilco and Interpol to their music that they continued to make music together for several years while certain members weren’t getting along.

I think about if I were making music with someone that I didn’t get along with, and I think that I would probably stick it out with them as long as it was contributing to the vision we had for our music. But if that person was getting in the way of the vision, I could see myself wanting to part ways. I think it would be incredibly difficult, though, to have three or four people with identical visions of what their music should be, which is probably a big reason why bands break up. With conflicting ideas for musical direction, one person’s vision has to be put first, and the other person’s has to be secondary. And if your vision isn’t being realized, why would you want to stay in the band? I think there are probably a lot of musicians who just want to play music and don’t have any qualms about playing a role and surrendering to someone else’s musical vision. But when you have two people who are creatively driven, like Tweedy and Bennett, or Banks and Carlos D., there is bound to be butting of heads. Making music with other people seems to be so much about compromise, and it makes sense that a person would sometimes not want to compromise on what they think is important for the music they’re making. I just find it interesting that it’s rarely a personal issue that tears bands apart, but is rather an issue of the music.

Book vs. Film: How To Tell A Story.

This may be common knowledge, but seems to be a general rule that movies based on novels are not any good. I can only think of one movie that did any sort of justice to the novel: Atonement. The rest I’ve seen, however, have been near blasphemous. I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo last week, and as soon as I finished it, I watched the film version and was so disappointed. I also went and saw Eat Pray Love on opening weekend (which I probably wouldn’t have done if a friend hadn’t wanted to see it, and definitely wouldn’t have done in hindsight), and though the book was only average, the movie was horrendous.

Why is it that movies based on novels are so awful, and take so many liberties with the original story? I think it mostly has to do with the difference between the two mediums of storytelling. Movies are meant to be watched in one sitting, which means that the entire story has to fit into the span of two hours, three hours at the very most, whereas books can be read in intervals over the course of several days, or several weeks even. Movies are targeted toward the mass public, whereas books are targeted toward a much smaller population of people who will actually put in the work to read it. In my experience, I can’t form an opinion about the value of the film until I’ve seen it through to the end, whereas I can tell pretty quickly whether or not I’ll like the book I’m reading.

I read a book a couple years ago about the making of the film The Bonfire of the Vanities, which was made in the early 90′s and based on a book by Tom Wolfe that was widely regarded as the quintessence of the 80′s. The film absolutely bombed, and before it was filmed, as Wolfe was signing away the rights to the story so that it could be made into a film, he was asked how he felt about the idea of his book being turned into a movie. He basically said that he didn’t care one way or the other, because even though the film was based on his book, it was still going to be it’s own artistic entity, and if it did poorly, it wouldn’t take anything away from his book.

I find this statement very interesting, and it’s something that I try to remember when I see movies that are based on books. It’s like everyone (myself included) wants the experience they had reading the book to be directly translated into film version. Which, if you think about it, is near impossible. There is so much interiority in novels that is really difficult to convey visually, and so much that seems to be of less importance has to be cut out because of time constraints. And the way I see it, there are some stories that are just meant to be told in a particular way. A book that is meant to be a book is not going to make a good movie, and vice versa. I mean, could you imagine if The Catcher in the Rye was a movie, or if Inception was a novel? It just wouldn’t have the same effect, wouldn’t have the same impact on people in an alternative form. I don’t think I could say that one medium is always better than the other, but I think I can say that one is better than the other in the context of how a story should be told.

Birth: It’s Just Business As Usual.

Recently I watched The Business of Being Born, a documentary about the way births are performed in the U.S. I think the title of the documentary is very tongue-in-cheek, because it explores the way in which birth really has become a business in the U.S., a business that is about expediting processes and making money (much like the majority of healthcare in the U.S.) rather than looking out for the best interest of the woman and the baby. It was really disturbing to hear experts talk about how interventions made by doctors can actually create complications in the birthing process, how there is a correlation between drugs given to women in labor and the likelihood of a caesarean section, and the lack of choice the women have in all of it.

C-sections are absolutely terrifying to me. All of the sawing through flesh and muscle and maneuvering around internal organs is just a little too gruesome for me. But what is almost more terrifying is the fact that the rate of c-sections has increased tenfold, and that nearly one-third of births in the U.S. are performed through c-sections. If there is something wrong with the baby or a complication in the delivery, I absolutely think that a c-section should be performed; but for the most part these days, it’s an issue of time efficiency. If performing births really is a business, then the concept that time is money definitely applies, and if a woman is in labor too long, taking up space in the hospital, a doctor can find an excuse to propose a c-section just to move things along. And then there are women who actually opt for voluntary(!) c-sections because it’s quicker and easier than huffing and puffing and pushing and screaming. You get a nice sedative and wake up with a baby, and have no thoughts about the complications that may arise further down the road.

After watching this documentary, I’m definitely interested in finding out more about home births. And though my giving birth is, like, years and years away, I was already certain that I wanted to have a midwife instead of a doctor. There’s something so much more calming and relatable about a midwife, like they’re actual normal people, as opposed to doctors who sit up on a high horse of knowledge and bask in their own loftiness… but maybe that’s just me. There’s also something much more reassuring about putting your child’s birth in the hands of someone who has specialized knowledge about the birthing process rather than a doctor who has a broad and limited understanding of it and who has probably never witnessed a live birth before. Did you know that in Europe and Japan, a midwife is present at over 70% of births, whereas that number is less than 8% in the U.S.? And yet, the U.S. has the second highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized nations. I see a correlation there.

But let’s return from that tangent back to home birthing. The film shows several different women performing home births (some of which are in little pools!), and, bloody mess aside, it was a really beautiful thing to witness a birth happen naturally, the way that it’s supposed to be. It was so different from the horror show that birth is depicted as on TLC shows, so much more calm and fluid and positive. I never before thought that I could possibly do a home birth; I thought home births were for crazies. But from watching these home births in the documentary, there are several things that appeal to me about it for myself:

1. It happens in my home, a place I’m familiar and comfortable with and that isn’t cold and sterile. And I know where the bathroom is.
2. I’m allowed, nay encouraged, to move around instead of laying on a bed for hours upon hours, and I can even take a nice bath if I so choose.
3. There aren’t hoards of medical professionals intervening without my consent. There is one midwife (and maybe a doula), and she is focused on me and my experience and committed to seeing it through to the end. I don’t have to worry about her rushing off to someone or something more exciting.

And I think #3 contributes to the greatest reason why home birth appeals to me: because I get to be in control. I want to be free to do what I’m comfortable with, to be fully present in the experience of the birth of my child and be an active participant instead of a passive observer. I want to have the final say in all decisions and work with someone who is there through the entire process with me and who respects my wishes; I don’t want to be at the mercy of a doctor who tells me that a c-section is the best option because he wants to make it home in time for dinner. One of the midwifes in the film said something that I really liked: she was talking about home births and said that it was based in “the philosophical underpinnings of giving the power back to the woman.” I don’t think there’s anything more I could ask for than that.

List-O-Mania: 7 Foreign Films.

I enjoy making lists. And I enjoy making lists about everything, from what I need to get done on a particular day to favorite things. And because I’m nice, I want to share my lists of my favorite things with you, my faithful readers. Let’s start with foreign films, shall we?

1. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (France, 2002)
Director: Laetitia Colombani

Audrey Tautou, usually so cute and delightful, takes creepy to a whole new level in this film. Angelique, a young art student, is crazy in love with Loic, a married doctor that we presume she’s in a relationship with. It seems to be a pretty straightforward love affair with its typical ups and downs, but as we all know, there are two sides to every story, and Angelique’s side of the story is a little bit loco.

2. Waltz With Bashir (Israel, 2008)
Director: Ari Folman

This animated film (think Waking Life instead of Disney) follows Ari Folman as he tries to piece together the fuzzy fragments of memory that surround his experience fighting in the Lebanon war in 1982. Equal parts interviews with old friends who served with him and surreal visions of real trauma, this film is raw and powerful and heartbreaking, a reality check about the horrors of war and the lasting mark it leaves on those who live through it.

3. Maria Full Of Grace (Colombia, 2004)
Director: Joshua Marston

Maria, a seventeen-year-old Colombian who works for puny wages in a factory de-thorning roses, becomes pregnant and loses her job, forcing her to seek alternative way of making money. What she decides on: working as a mule, smuggling 60+ pellets of cocaine into the United States. A harrowing portrait of what a person can endure to gain a chance at a better life.

4. Amelie (France, 2001)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Amelie Poulain, a waitress in Paris and a free-spirited dreamer, performs a kind deed for a stranger and decides that she wants to continue to improve the lives of the people around her, and her whimsical escapades lead to a romance conducted through a photo booth while wearing masks. The bright, vibrant cinematography is gorgeous and fun, and I’m convinced it’s near impossible to finishing watching this film without a smile your face.

5. The Lives of Others (Germany, 2006)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmark

In East Berlin in 1984, Weisler, a secret service agent, is commissioned by the secret police to spy on a writer and his girlfriend, both suspected to be disloyal to the state. But as Weisler watches the life of this couple, he begins to care about them and decides to try to protect them. Brilliant acting and screenwriting. The Lives of Others won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2007.

6. Let The Right One In (Sweden, 2008)
Director: Tomas Alfredson

Oscar is ceaselessly tormented by his classmates and has no friends, but when he meets Eli, it’s love at first sight. Minor detail: Eli is an oooooooold vampire who just happens to look like a cute 12-year-old, and who, with her father’s help, is feeding on the town’s inhabitants. This is a stunning gem in the vampire movie genre, a story that focuses less on the sensationalism of the otherworldly and more on human connection and innocent love that transcends time.

7. L’Enfant (France, 2005)
Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Bruno and his girlfriend Sonia struggle to make ends meet on his petty thievery, and on their love and good intentions alone. That is, until one of Bruno’s hood friends tells him that he can make a nice chunk of change by selling he and Sonia’s infant son, Jimmy. He actually does it, Sonia has a conniption, and they have to figure out how to get Jimmy back. L’Enfant won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Humanimals.

Last weekend Josh and I caught part of Children of Men (excellent movie) on television. Even though we had both seen it before, we were completely appalled by the scenes where Clive Owen and the pregnant girl are being taken into the refugee camps. Those poor, poor refugees, getting beaten and shot because the British had the power. And then Josh and I started talking about how, if anything catastrophic like the cessation of births for eighteen years happened in real life, it would be exactly like it is in the movie: countries scrambling for preeminence of power, and whatever country seized it would use it to subjugate anyone not of their country or ethnicity.

What a depressing reality.

It makes me wonder if morality and ethics are just a front, just a way of being politically correct when political correctness is valued. In times of widespread crisis, no one seems to give a rip about being moral or ethical; it is all about self-preservation. Or, preservation of the people that are like you. And that is an animal instinct, to use your strength to cut down the weaklings in order to assure your own survival, caring about nothing but preserving your genetics so that they can be passed on. That’s survival of the fittest. And I would say that humans on the whole are social Darwinists, but I think it goes much deeper than that: I think when humans, or groups of humans, are threatened, they revert to the ferocity of their pure animal natures, right and wrong be damned.

These dual natures seem like they should be in conflict a lot more often than they actually are. But perhaps because ethics and political correctness are virtues that are socially ingrained from a young age, we are only able to let them go under extreme stress, or because of extreme fear. This isn’t a pun, but I think fear is one of the most terrifying things in the world, because it can brainwash, it can make people do things that are hateful and vile. It can deprive us of our humanity, and blind us from seeing the humanity of others. It can make someone torture another person, a human being just like themselves. Because if you do it to someone else, that means they can’t do it to you. If fear was eradicated, or at least dealt with in a rational way, we could avoid having to witness things like genocide and terrorism.

This is what happens when I watch post-apocalyptic movies: I get depressed and start ruminating on everything that is wrong with the world and whether or not humans are inherently good or inherently evil. I can’t help it!

So as not to end on a downer note, can we have three cheers for Prop 8 being repealed in California? That, I think, is one huge step in recognizing everyone’s humanity and conquering fear.

Dreamworlds and the Mysteries of Sleeping.

I saw Inception on Friday night, and it was a mind trip, to say the least. It was a very smart film, I thought, and made some assertions about dreams and dreamworlds that I found very astute. It’s worth ten dollars to see it.

I’m not much of a dreamer, and when I do have dreams, I can rarely remember them once I wake up. After I saw Inception, I had the most dream-filled night of sleep I’ve ever experienced. Was my subconscious just kick-started by the themes of the movie, and that’s why my dreams were so complex and vivid that night? Or was it just a coincidence?

To me, dreams are like one of the most mysterious things about life. There may be some science to it, but science itself can’t give concrete explanations for what happens in dreams and why. Psychology attempts to assess dreams and explain them based on what’s going on in the subconscious, but even those explanations seem to be mostly conjecture. So, dreaming is this thing that our brain does when we’re sleeping, but why do dream in the first place? Are dreams an outlet for expression that can’t find a physical manifestation in the waking world? Are dreams just a skewed reflection of the waking world?

One of the most interesting things about the movie was the notion of the architecture of dreams. The architect in the film has to dream the entire landscape of the dreamworld, and do it with enough detail to convince the dreamer that it’s real and not just a dream. In thinking about my own dreams, I realize that a lot of the locations in my dreams (that I can remember) have been based on real places that I’ve seen, but even more locations are entirely unrecognizable to me. Like I’m dreaming and I know that the location I’m in is meant to be my childhood home, but in actuality it looks nothing like my childhood home. How is my brain able to make up the architecture of this location from scratch? It seems like a really incredible artistic feat to be able to do such a thing.

The ways in which the dreamworld can bleed into the waking world is really bizarre as well. Have you ever had a dream and woke up thinking that what transpired in the dream had actually happened in real life? I’ve had about a hundred dreams like that, about relationships ending or people dying, and I wake up with regret or anguish only to realize that it isn’t reality. But it felt so real in my dream, it’s hard to divorce it from reality; there’s such a thin line between being awake and being asleep, and likewise with what happens when awake and when asleep. But at the same time, just because you dream something doesn’t mean it’s something you really desire in the waking world. I may dream about boys wooing me or getting back to together with ex-boyfriends, but that doesn’t mean that’s what I want in real life. And yet, if it’s not something I want in real life, what is making me dream about it?

I keep thinking about a scene from the movie Waking Life, where the protagonist is talking to a fellow with a biker vest on, and the biker is talking about lucid dreaming and recommends that, if you aren’t sure if you’re dreaming or not, that you should try to adjust light levels, ie. flip a light switch and see if the light changes or not. Lucid dreaming seems like a simple enough concept, but when I find myself dreaming and know that I’m dreaming, I’m unable to take advantage of that. It’s like, I am 100% positive I’m dreaming because I know there’s no possible way I could be executing an Evel Kneivel-style jump on a motorcycle in real life, but I still can’t make the motorcycle keep flying through the air; it always lands.

This post is kind of all over the place, but the movie kind of blew my mind and then all of these questions about dreams surfaced, and I just wanted to get it all down. What’s your take on dreams and their significance?

Overzealous Parents and Getting Accepted to Nursery School.

If there was any doubt in your mind that the “cult of the child” is not a reality (and a disturbing one, at that), you are hereby required to watch the documentary Nursery University. The film follows several groups of parents in New York City who are frantically and obsessively trying to get their two- and three-year-old children into the elite nursery schools in the city, because they assume that starting out at the best nursery school will lead to the best elementary school which will lead to the best high school which will lead to the Ivy League. It is amazing how much emphasis these parents put on starting their children’s education on the right foot when their children aren’t even fully potty-trained yet, and what lengths they will go to in order to get their kids accepted into their (the parents’) first choice school. It is also horrifying. (Although, there is one particularly hilarious scene where one of the couples sits down to open the decision letters, and the husband explains to his wife, who is a native Argentinian, that big envelope packets usually mean acceptance, while little envelopes mean rejection. The wife then opens and reads aloud each of the seven little envelopes, all of which are acceptance letters.)

Throughout the whole film, my feelings were split between understanding these parents on an emotional level, and thinking they were just batty. I really do feel like all of the parents in this film had their hearts in the right place, and were willing to spare no expense (some NYC nursery schools cost $20,000 per semester!) in order to give their children every opportunity to succeed, which is really admirable. And I suppose it’s never too early to get a head-start on education. But at the same time, it worries me how early these parents are beginning to micromanage their children’s lives. There is no conclusive evidence that shows that children who attend a prestigious nursery school (if there even is such a thing) will go on to attend a prestigious college, and it takes a lot of the fun and frivolity out of being a kid when you’re being groomed for college before you’re even out of the crib. And if parents start micromanaging their kids at a young age, it sets a precedent of micromanagement that inhibits a child’s abilities to make their own mature decisions without parental intervention, and can keep them in a state of permanent infantility (Betty Friedan definitely talks about this in The Feminine Mystique). Also, there is the danger that these rich families that use nursery school as a funnel into the Ivy League are just furthering the nepotism of the private school network that seems to be especially heinous on the East Coast, teaching their children that having connections is the most important thing instead of working hard and earning their success. (In the film, one of the nursery schools did a random drawing to choose who would attend, which I thought was a wonderful way to go about it: it levels the playing field, so that no matter who has the most money or the best connections, everyone has an equal chance. I wish all schools were like that; it would make it so much easier for able students, who happen to be poor, to go on to higher education.) Money and connections can only get you so far before you have to actually prove yourself worthy. Just ask George W. Bush.

Basically every film I see is an opportunity for me to mine some future parenting skills, and I feel like this film gives me both sides of the spectrum, positive and negative. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this topic of over-parenting and education obsession.

A Royal Monarchy: Yay or Nay?

I just finished watching The Young Victoria, which, aside from being a smorgasbord of extravagant costumes and stunning architecture, was a really fascinating story about what it means to assume the throne as Sovereign of England as an eighteen-year-old girl. Intense stuff. One scene I found incredibly evocative was when the former Queen is advising the new Queen, Victoria, against politicians who will try to take advantage of her youth and inexperience: the former Queen tells Victoria, in essence, that politicians always resent the monarchy because politicians come and go, but the monarchy is always there.

So naturally, I started thinking about the pros and cons of a monarchy, and how strange the monarchy is in theory. On the pro side, monarchies are something that can always be counted on; there’s never any question about who will ascend the throne once the current Sovereign is no longer. On the con side, the monarchy is always there and the population can’t choose a new one, no matter how much they may want to. I suppose that’s what the Prime Minister is for, to make the people feel like they have some choice in the matter. But what I have to wonder about a monarchy is, who decided that one particular family should be the rulers of all of England for the rest of time? I suppose it was waaaaaay back in time when governments were just being born; I can just imagine someone saying “This family has wealth and power and a good reputation, so naturally, they should be in charge,” but when exactly was it decided that they would be the rulers forever? I guess I don’t have an answer. And perhaps it’s simply my uncultured American mind, but the thing that gets me about monarchies is that they thrust people who may be incredibly ill-suited to run a country into the highest position of power. Just because Elizabeth was a great Queen doesn’t mean that her progeny will be great as well; the heirs may very well be slackers. And it seems, from what I’ve seen/read of royalty, that many monarchs assume the throne not with great confidence or conviction, but with a resigned sense of duty. It’s a big job, and I suspect it appears even bigger when you don’t possess the freedom to pursue it voluntarily.

Sometimes I think how lucky it would be to be born into a royal family, but a lot of the time I just feel sorry for royals because they probably just want to have a normal life and be able to have a job that they want and to marry a commoner if they want to. Which I suppose is another downside of being a monarch: arranged marriages. I’ve heard it said that royals are told that they marry who they have to, and sleep with who they want to; again, maybe the concept is just foreign to my American mind, but it seems so sad to have to lump marriage into the category of “duty,” or at the very least something that is advantageous for all parties involved even if it’s devoid of love. Like poor Charles and Diana. And I say, good for Charles that after years and years of loving a woman that he wasn’t supposed to love, that he was finally able to marry her. Sadly, I’m sure the Queen was not pleased in the slightest.

But a marriage built on real love is possible in a monarchy, even if it’s rare. Victoria and Prince Albert, I would argue, had one of the greatest love stories of all time. She married him by choice, and they understood each other and were completely devoted to each other. Their relationship was a true partnership, and it showed in the way they shared the Queen’s work. When Prince Albert died in his early forties, Victoria never remarried, but she continued to lay out his clothes each day and wore black mourning clothes until she died at the age of 81. What love! What devotion! Seriously, theirs is the kind of love story that I hope for.

Masterplots and the Secret Self.

A couple days ago, my friend Scott blogged about the idea of the masterplot, or “stories that we [as a culture] tell over and over in myriad forms and that connect vitally with our deepest values, wishes, and fears.” Since reading his post, I’ve been keeping an eye out for masterplots that manifest themselves in cultural artifacts (ie. books, films, etc.) and just thinking about masterplots in general.

I was watching Aladdin last night and recognized a masterplot that is prevalent in so many films, serious and silly alike: the person who isn’t who they say they are.

Aladdin is a poor “street rat” who constantly gets into trouble with the law for stealing the food he needs to survive. He falls in love with Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah, and realizes that he has no chance with her because by law she can only marry a prince. Luckily, he comes upon a magic lamp, and promptly wishes to be a prince so that he can try to marry Jasmine. Both hilarity and trouble ensue, mostly as a result of his not being up front with Jasmine about who he really is. But in the end, as tends to happen in Disney movies, everything works out: Jasmine forgives Aladdin for lying, and the sultan changes the law so that they can marry.

What does this masterplot mean in the context of our values, hopes and fears? I think it suggests that we fear being rejected, and that we hope that the people we love will accept us without condition when they are exposed to our true self, no matter how unappealing it may be. I think a story like Aladdin speaks more to our sense of wish fulfillment than it does to reality, simply because this masterplot assumes that the person who isn’t who they say they are a) has good intentions and b) is actually a good person on the inside. It also assumes that pretending to be someone you aren’t doesn’t have that negative of an impact on a significant other or the other person involved; this made me think about stories in which people that hide who they are do so carelessly if not maliciously, and who end up destroying the lives of their significant others. The film An Education and the Showtime series Dexter immediately came to mind.

In An Education, 16-year-old Jenny (played brilliantly by Carey Mulligan) is pushed by her parents to get good marks so that she can attend university at Oxford. When she meets the much older David, he introduces her to a world she has never experienced, a world of adventure and romance and spontaneity that makes her school life look dull in comparison. David, with the encouragement and blessing of Jenny’s parents, asks Jenny to marry him, and Jenny promptly drops out of school in favor of being a wifey. What she doesn’t know (spoiler alert) is that David is actually already married. When she finds out and confronts him about it, he disappears from her life all together.

As a character, David is incredibly charming and seductive, even to Jenny’s stickler parents. He portrays himself as someone he isn’t to Jenny’s parents so that they’ll trust him, and then Jenny is surprised when he hasn’t been completely honest with her about who he is. The thing that is so awful about this story, and about this masterplot in general, is David’s abuse of Jenny’s trust in him. His intentions were dishonorable because he wanted to maintain two separate lives with two different women, and his deception derails everything that Jenny has worked for in school; he lets her drop out of school, knowing that she won’t be able to re-enter, to partake in an illusion that he has masterfully created. In this story, David hides who he is because Jenny wouldn’t want to be with him if she knew she was his mistress. No good intentions, no upstanding person underneath, no harmless aftermath. Just an asshole who wants to have his cake and eat it too, without caring about whose life is affected.

On Dexter, Dexter Morgan is a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department by day, and a vigilante serial killer who kills other murderers by night. Obviously he has to hide his identity so as not to be found out by the police, but he works hard to maintain the appearance of an Average Joe, complete with wife and kids. His wife, Rita, has no idea of his double life; she just thinks that he works a lot.

Dexter hiding who he is from Rita makes sense: he is afraid that she would be horrified by who he is, by the fact that he kills people. And justifiably so; if I found out my husband was a serial killer, I would run for the hills. Whether Dexter is a good person or not is debatable (though I think he’s a decent, and even loveable, guy), but his intentions are two-fold: he hides to protect himself but also to protect Rita and his family. He wants to have a normal life but he also wants to be able to continue killing; another case of having his cake and eating it too. Dexter is a meticulous killer and always covers his tracks, and this makes him think that he is somehow above getting caught. The lie of the double life, however, catches up with Dexter when one of his serial killer nemeses, The Trinity Killer, decides to kill Rita, shortly before Dexter kills him. Poor, poor Rita. Dexter put her at risk because of his “hobby,” and Rita didn’t even know that she was at risk or know to be careful of her husband’s murderous rivals. Obviously this is fiction, but there are lots of people in the world who choose to do evil things like kill people, putting their family at risk and leaving them open to psychological turmoil and social scrutiny when they do get caught.

I find this all really depressing, because it just affirms my suspicion that it’s damn near impossible to actually know a person. All we can know is what we see and what the other person wants us to see.

Maybe instead of having a masterplot that tells us it’s okay to lie about who we are as long as the ends justify the means, we should have a masterplot that tells us to be honest about who we are, to strive to be good people, to place self-acceptance above the acceptance of others and to love ourselves so that if we are honest about who we are and end up being rejected, that we can bounce back and feel like we are still valuable in the absence of outside acceptance. Maybe that’s too vague or idealistic, but I feel like masterplots in general are both vague and idealistic.

Love Turns Hearts To Paper.

I watched the movie Paper Heart the other night, and though I thought it was going to be really goofy (because what movie with Michael Cera in it isn’t?), I thought the concept of the film was actually really interesting even though it’s technically a mockumentary.

The film is about Charlyne Yi, a comedienne who has never been in love and doesn’t quite believe it exists. She goes all over the country, from a playground in Atlanta to the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas, to ask people about love. She talks to psychologists, bikers and lawyers to try to get a sense of what love is and what it means. During the film, she meets Michael Cera and they start hanging out and becoming interested in each other, and the remainder of the film focuses on their burgeoning relationship.

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The early parts of the film where Charlyne is interviewing people are the most compelling to me (sorry, Michael Cera) because everyone had a different description of what love was. A woman who got married at the age of seventeen described it as lightning bolts. A divorcee described it as a once-in-a-lifetime thing. A biker describes it as equal parts love and hate. Love is an experience that is unique and individual, but also one of those abstract things that requires a great deal of faith to trust in. Love makes a person so vulnerable; when in love, we’re like pieces of paper in someone else’s hands, waiting to find out if we’re treated with care or ripped to shreds. Which makes it really scary, but also makes it kind of beautiful. There is a loveliness in taking a chance.

How do we know that love is real? Do the heart and the brain chemistry and the circumstances all have to add up to a particular sum in order to qualify as love? I don’t have the answer, and though I wish I did sometimes, more often than not I’m willing to rest in the mystery of it and be content with not knowing. I wish I could feel that way about more things.