Twilight, 1.9

In which there is a headache.

How do people fall in love? This is one of the oldest, most impossible, most obsessed-over questions in human history. I won't pretend to have a definitive answer. I like to think that I've been in love a couple of times, although the passage of time and clarity of hindsight brings me to question one of those. There really isn't a mechanism, a formula. It isn't as simple as flipping a hormonal switch and having that particular part of the brain explode electrically. And no, I don't believe in love at first sight. If anything, love takes time. It's a process, and endless process of growth and exploration. This does not happen instantly. Attraction at first sight, sure. Lust, easily. But not love.

All of this is preamble. Bella does not love Edward. She just doesn't. They've spent, what, a few hours together at the most? Most of which involved sitting silent in Bio. They don't really know a thing about each other, and what Bella does know is fairly horrifying. What is Edward passionate about? Is he familiar with the concept of humor? I'm not going to judge him for being a vampire, as I'm assuming he didn't make the choice to become one. See, it's important to judge people based on their actions and intentions, not assumptions, projections, and physical superficialities.

I do have a few questions for Eddie, though. Let's start with this; How fucking old are you? Seventeen for a while. Except, Bella is actually 17. She's a minor, a child. Edward is an adult. It doesn't matter how old you look, but how old you actually are. Tom Cruise, who clearly has a Lazurus pit in one of his backyards, isn't a kid and therefore has the decency to not date children himself. What we're seeing set up in this book is a disturbing, patriarchal relationship with a seriously fucking disturbing imbaance of power. I'm sure I'll have more opportunity to rant about this later, so let's move on.

I'm kind of amazed that PETA didn't burn Stephenie Meyer in effigy, but whatever. I myself am not a vegetarian, so I won't judge the vampires for hunting animals. What I am judging them for is endangering the lives of several hundred innocent teenagers. Edward wants to kill Bella, and presumably all of her classmates, every second of every day. So. Yeah. Great guy, that Edward. Why the fuck don't they go live in the woods where they belong?

Enough for tonight. This book makes me so angry. Next post, I'm going to shift away from recapping and try to be a little more intellectually engaged. It porbably won't go well. See ya soon, crips and bloods.

Twilight, 1.8

Oh boy. Is this really what we're dealing with? I've hated the book up until now (shocking, I know), but if I squint really hard I can kinda see something resembling good intentions hiding under all the misogynist bullshit and craptastic writing. There's an innocence and naivete on display that make me think the author is in needed of education and life-experience more than punishment. Yes, I know she's older than I am, and a married mother, but whatever. The belief that love conquers all and complete relationships can be created with one loaded glance…. It's like the dreams of a 12 year old girl just hitting puberty, sprung to vampiric life. Now, I'm not taking back a word of what I've written up to now, simply pointing out that there could be other and perhaps milder readings of the same material. And then the alley happened.

This chapter is horrific fan-fiction, the kind of thing you find in the first pages of pornographic novels that somehow get major-motion-pictures deals. I mean… What the fuck? What kind of cynicism and hatred does it take to actually write this? Think about it: How many male characters can you say this book has treated positively? One obviously, maybe two if you count the Doctor, and…… Mabye I'm just out of touch, but my instinct would be to start from a place of thinking humanity is fundamentally good when writing a book intended for teenage girls. Again, cynicism has its place in fiction. See the brilliant novels of Joe Abercrombie for a good example. But those books aren't meant for kids. I just… Fuck it, let's move on.

Um, ok, I need to say something positive. Angela seems nice, right? Quiet, unassuming, fairly recognizable as a real person. I'm glad Bella might get to have a friend. She's gonna need it. The other girl on the shopping trip, who didn't make enough of an impression for me to bother learning her name, is completely meh. Vapid, dumb, uninteresting, but basically not offensive so whatever. Also, girls still think and talk about exactly two subjects; Boys and clothing. They also don't bother to, I dunno, call their friend who's been missing in action for a fucking hour. Because, apparently, teenage girls aren't familiar with the use of a cellphone. This book is so fucking stupid…..

Right, back to the alley. In the interests of not ranting for another five hunded words, I'm going to ignore the hateful absurdity of the situation in which Bella finds herself. Like I said, there's a stunning lack of faith in the fundamental goodness of humanity in that scene. Now, I'm well aware that these situations do happen in real life, every day, and that they're purely horrific. But I can't shake the feeling that, for this group of small-town opportunistic rapists, their primary flaw is not being Edward. Look at the descriptors; "Casual… grimy…. raucous…" The men are poor and unattractive, everything our favorite piece of vampiric shit isn't, and so they're monsters. The binary thought-process is a wonderful thing, no?

Oh, speaking of Bedward…. Young gents, allow me to impart wisdom; Following a girl around in your car is neither romantic nor sweet. It's creepy, illegal, stalkerish, and generally not recommended for anyone wishing to get anything more than a restraining order from said girl. Young ladies, listen up; If a boy treats you in the way Edward treats Bella, I recommend calling the police post-fucking-haste. Asking your father / brothers to practice tee-ball with his skull is also acceptable. That Edward's presence proves useful in this case in irrelevant to the larger point. STALKING IS WRONG!

Fuck this book and the Volvo it drove in on.

Lost, 1.7

I'm a big fan of visual storytelling. Film and TV are much closer to photography than written fiction, and it's great to see a show so completely embrace the principle. That said, was this episode really necessary? I mean, can ya get a little less subtle? Yes, Charlie is pushing and shoving and clawing his way out of the drug cocoon, and…. and the cave is his cocoon! Que sound of my mind blowing, I suppose. It's just brick-fisted and obvious in a way that isn't worthy of the show and what's come before.

A lot of it still works. Dominic Monaghan gives a taught, haunted performance, expertly layering grief and rage and overwhelming fear. Charlie and Locke have huge potential as a pairing. At first glance it looks like a contest between a wolf and a rabbit, but the quicksilver intelligence in Charlie's eyes promises something more. He's unpredictable in a way Jack will never be. If Locke can temper that with discipline and focus, he'll become a force in the group.

Beyond that, most of the plot isn't bad. Jack in the landslide is one of those big, predictable story beats that was probably necessary to open plenty of interesting possibilities in the larger group. Herald Perrinau's character (does he have a name?) showing some spine is a great touch, and gives him a purpose and level of engagement that the character hasn't yet had. Put it this way; I would've dreaded a flashback around that little family before this week, now it'll be painful but I won't necessarily want to perform some grade-a slittage of wrists. He and Locke are an intriguing possible interaction, and the geographic shake-up puts a lot of powerful personalities in a very small area.

Speaking of; Mr. Locke is in fine form this week. I wonder if the producers of Game of Thrones were Lost fans back in the day. There's a certain scene in the 1st season of the HBO show, with Tywin Lannister going all expository to his son while butchering a stag. It's a great, wildly bad-ass moment, and a seemingly direct echo of Locke and Charlie's little chat here. See, this is the kind of visual textuality the show should be aiming for. We learn something about Locke during the conversation, and probably more about Charlie. It creates atmosphere and audience identification, outlines a complex power dynamic with editing and shot choices. This is excellent pure filmmaking, working on a number of levels but always enjoyable as a simple entertainment. I can't say it's a great episode, but the flashes of propulsive badassery on display make it all worthwhile.

Twilight, Chp 7

In which your fearless blogger commits grievous self-injury. 

There's foreshadowing, there's roadmapping, and then there's just plain laziness. Guess which one Twilight picked?! Eddie is a bloodsucker. Jacob should invest heavily in body-hair trimmers. Bella will eventually (if she doesn't already) want to bang both of them. Hey look, a not-at-all cliched love triangle! But no, that turd-pit of a dream sequence is still too subtle. Clearly Mrs. Meyer worries that her audience hasn't quiiiite eaten what she's dishing out. So let's toss in the names of the classic novels that she's using as inspiration / blatantly ripping off for this little shitshow. Still not enough?!?!? Jeez, she must think her readers are complete fucking idiots. It's ok though, here's the single dumbest depiction of the internet ever delivered in fiction to make it all so very, very much worse. Somewhere, William Gibson just threw up in his mouth.

In case anyone is still wondering, this chapter sucks.

Now, I'm not one to argue that fiction should be solely concerned with delivering plot. Many authors get trapped on that particular hamster wheel, and end up re-jiggering promising stories into an escalating series of shocks, with diminishing returns (paging George Martin….). But there has to be some element of surprise / mystery for a story like this to work. That's the fuel for maintaining reader interest, for creating that sense of urgency to make some poor teenager huddle up with the book all night before a trig test. I can now predict the plot remaining in this novel, and I'd happily bet a kidney I'm right. It's just so easy, so lazy, so insultingly dumb. That little scene of Bella web-searching made me want to lobotomize myself so I wouldn't have to keep reading these books. Last week I questioned whether Stephanie Meyer had ever been to a party as a teenager. This week's question: Has she ever used Google?

Oh, so you're all aware….. Teenage girls discuss what dress they'll be wearing to the next dance, to the exclusion of all other topics and interests. Teenage boys switch infatuation from one girl to another in the time it takes a butterfly to fart, and with no sign of bitterness, disappointment, or sadness whatsoever, because hormones or something. I'd start ranting about misogyny, but let's be real. This book is insulting to everyone, of every gender and orientation. It fetishizes physical beauty and wealth, refusing to ackowledge any other positive qualities. Every time she even hints at liking a character, Mrs.  Meyer has them act in the most vapid, shallow, fucking stupid way imaginable, because anyone who isn't a Cullen must be a worthless walking turd.

Now, let's talk about the worst part of this chapter. What, you thought I'd led with the truly awful stuff? Oh no, kids. The early going is shitty and the ending is materialistic cliche that insults every high-schooler is the history of the world, but whatever. It's her first book, and it I can't hold it against Mrs. Meyer that some editor was dumb enough to remove this from the slush pile where it belongs. But…. But there's a little scene in the forest, with our fearful heroine out for her walk. She's thinking that maybe it's time to kick Eddie to the curb. But no, she's in too deep. Fearful of him getting hurt. Obsessed with the beauty of his face and the force of his personality. In short, she's in love with him.

Hang on a second while I hit myself in the face with a baseball bat.

Ok, we're back. Edward has been an asshole to Bella since day one of school. A raging fucking asshole. He saved her life, which is nice, but two seconds of reflexive action shouldn't excuse months of deliberate douchebaggery. Look at the descriptors she uses when lusting after him. Voice, face, magnetic force of the personality etc etc bullshit bullshit. Superficialities, every one of them. There's nothing about his personality, because they don't fucking know anything about each other. They've never had a real conversation. In a better book, I might extend the benefit of the doubt and say that it's trying to depict the first rush of hormonal lust or something. This isn't that book. These two idiots are on a collision course, one that ends in insipid declarations of mutual wanting-to-bone. But, one minor problem, every scrap of Bella's agency, dignity, and intelligence has to be shredded, burned, and shat on to get them there.

Lost, 1.6

Are the eyes really a window to the soul? To anything? Lost seems determined to push the aphorism to its limits. No, I don't mean the repeated cornea closeups. Focusing each episode on one character (or pair) is such a great tool for deepening understanding and focusing audience sympathies. I spent the first five episodes thinking Jin was a fairly standard-issue asshat abusive husband. Now, I still think he's kind of an asshat, but I can also sorta see where he's coming from. Imagine going through a terrifying and traumatic experience, only to end up stranded with a bunch of people whose language you don't even speak. Wouldn't you get crazily overprotective, anyway you could?

Now, I'm not trying to excuse his behaviour. Jin is being a jackass anyway you slice it, but anchoring these actions in recognizably human motivations brings a certain depth and richness to the character that he hasn't had to this point. I'd call him overwhelmed more than evil, but to the point of being horribly misguided. This is a man who's tried blindly to do the right thing for so many years that he's managed to royally fuck the only relationship that should actually matter. Daniel Dae-Kim is a forceful, charismatic presence, fully realizing the character through expression, physicality, and, yes, his eyes. He's really more interesting without the subtitles, layering frustration and impotent rage skillfully. There's clearly much more to this story we haven't seen, hopefully focused on the ways a simple witer turned into…. whatever he is now.

One of the hardest things for any television program to achieve is thematic coherence that doesn't seem like lecturing. Jin is a good man gone astray. And then there's Jack…. Oh Jack. I get it buddy, I really do. You're a doctor, a scientist. You don't get the whole "morale" thing. Moving to the caves is logical, it really is. But in the long run, it hurts you. It admits that there's no hope of rescue, that the group is aiming to survive and build rather than thrive. Is that the message you want to send?

This is what I mean about balance. The mataphor isn't the most subtle, especially that borderline-absurd shot of the matching black and white stones, but it's a strong and intriguing emotional through-line for the season (and probably beyond). For the survivors to achieve anything, faith and science have to work together. Jack and Locke are going to come into conflict, and probably soon. Who will win, I don't know.If this sounds repetitive, well…. yeah. The episode is the first genuine piece of filler I've seen this season. Basic plot, contrived conflicts and so on. It's probably needed to have these once in a while, both for timing and budgetary reasons, but the general lack of stakes isn't my favorite thing. Ah well. It still can't be as bad as Twilight. For that, I'll see y'all Sunday. Peace!

Twilight, Chp 6

I hate it when critics or bloggery types make assumptions about an author based on their fictional works. Fiction is an act of imagination, and while Stephen King is certainly correct in telling authors to write what they know, usually those experiences are interpreted and re-imagined so much as to be all but unrecognizable. Now, a lot of great books are nevertheless autobiographical, and often not even too subtle about it. My favorite author, James Joyce, enjoyed nothing more than writing about the difficult life of one James Joyce, with different aspects of his personality brilliantly reflected in various characters. This is a fairly common phenomenon, but I'm not going to make the leap to thinking that Stephenie Meyer became intimate with a young man fixated on carotids. I'm starting to wonder, though, about certain aspects of her childhood.

Actually, I started wondering a couple of chapters ago. My thoughts can be summarized thusly; "What the fuck kind of teenagers start planning a beach trip three weeks in advance?" I am 25 years old. Teenage-dom isn't that long ago, and my college years (extended teenager-hood if ever there was), even closer. During that near-decade of boarding school and higher education, about the furthest away I ever planned going to the beach was buying a plane ticket for Cabo three days before Spring Break. Now granted, I was and still am an idiot. So we'll double, and allow a week of planning for the actual smart people. Um. A week. Not three.

The entire beach trip is an instructive moment in this book, because it reads so completely and utterly false. Broad strokes are fine. A bunch of kids get out of town, with no intentions other than a campfire, some hotdogs, good tunes, and perhaps a clandestine-but-everyone-knows makeout session or two in the woods. Sure. Some of the best times of my life have been doing exactly that. Just not like this. The whole long scene reads like Stephenie Meyer sat some teenagers down, took careful notes about what they do on weekends, and tried to write about it in the tamest, most adult-filtered way possible. The whole thing is intellectually removed, academic instead of immediate. And the details are all wrong.

Are a bunch of kids going to hike to tide pools instead of pounding the beers they snuck out of the parental fridge? What kind of teenager drives a suburban? Do the social dynamics make sense here? At all? Just for example….. You have two groups of kids, not knowing each other and somewhat hostile. They meet, and the resulting interaction looks like a fucking board meeting with everyone standing around waiting to be introduced by name. Like, really? Would they all pretend to make friends, or glare at each other for a minute before someone (probably the locals) left?

And then, of course, there's poor Jacob. He seems like a nice kid. Dumb and deluded, but nice. I can only conclude that Bella will eventually want to fuck him, because he's described in fairly positive fashion, with lots of nice descriptors. As a side note; I'm deeply disturbed at the way everyone is boring, ugly, and dumb, or someone Bella does / will want to have sex with. Is there such a thing as a platonic relationship in this world? This is what I meant, a few paragraphs ago, about drawing conclusions regarding Stephenie Meyer's childhood and worldview. The views of relationships, ways of thinking about people and interactions, the twisted social ideology…. These are the writings of someone who had a very sheltered, or just very bad, child / young-adulthood. There's no understanding, no depth, no illumination. The whole book is one of those anatomical drawings of sex we all gagged at in highschool science texts. The mechanics are semi-right, but the fire, the passion, the sweetly chaotic sense of exploration…. All missing.

I came into this project expecting to snark a bunch and get some lulz. I'm honestly stunned and worried by what I've found so far. And from what I hear, it gets much, much worse. Oh boy.

Lost, 1.5

Jack is starting to piss me off. Looking back on the first four episodes, my hope for the character was based on potential. Matthew Fox, when unleashed, is a sparky and dangerous actor, with an edge of real insanity in his eyes. There are flashes of that actor in this episode, particularly when screaming at the unfortunate airline employee and going all Hulk-Smash on a coffin. But the rest is just so boring. Jack is exactly who he appears to be, and whatever horrific thing he did to his father, it'll be revealed as one of those tough-but-nessecary choices that only a true man who "has what it takes" could make. Que swelling strings and redemptive (probably hallucinatory) hug with daddy's ghost aaaaand….. Cut.

Any continued optimism has to be based on the potential for a clash between Jack's doctory non-religous science, and Locke's (newfound?) belief in miracles. And yeah, if my paralyzed legs were somehow restored by a fucking plane crash, I might drop to my knees and pray to the almighty. I appreciate that the show isn't making Locke into some starry-eyed proselytizer (although I'd love to see what O'Quinn could do as a fanatic. He's so compelling that it might actually work.). Watch the conversation in the forest carefully. Locke is pretty sure Jack simply hallucinated the well-dressed man. Pretty sure, but not knowing it as once would have. Doubt has crept in and wo't be leaving anytime soon.

Speaking of doubt, Jack has some of his assuaged in that crap-fest of a redemptive return to the group. Like, really guys? This is the one you want to have as a leader? Yes, his medical skills are invaluable, but having Hurley and the various pretty little idiots unable to make a desicion without Jack undermines them as characters and gives him a weight he hasn't earned. Quick thought experiment; Wouldn't this all be more fun if, I dunno, the other survivors took Locke's side in the science vs faith debate? I mean, these peeps survived (allow me to emphasize) a fucking plane crash. Forty-seven people and one dog. A fucking plane crash. Oh, and there are polar-bears and oversized somethings with a serious distaste for the indigenous flora.

The point being; There's a serious clash of titans being set up here. Actually, one titan and one boring-ass doctor. And there's a serious possibility that the doctor might lose. Wouldn't he be inherently more interesting as a bit of an outcast, someone marginalized? It's a tricky route, especially given that Terry O'Quinn blows poor Matthew Fox off the screen at every opportunity, but it can be done. And I think it should be. The one thing we haven't really seen from the good doctor is a genuine struggle. The bullshit c-plot involving pretty-boy's swim escapades and subsequent survivor's guilt is actively annoying because anyone with a functioning frontal cortex can see that Jack made the best, and in fact only choice possible. This is the show artificially and pointlessly creating conflict. How much better to let it evolve from an intelligently deployed clash of strong personalities.

Twilight, Chp 5

In which fingers are pricked, balls are thrown, faints are had, and your blogger wants to slap a vampire.

Another quick one this evening, because I just got back from vacation and I'm really kinda exhausted. Your regularly scheduled snarkery will resume with Lost on Thursday. Anyhoo…..Maybe it's the hangover talking, but I kinda sorta maybe didn't despise the chapter. There're still a shit-ton of problems, which we'll get to in due course, but there's a tiny bit of course-correction to be glimpsed under the rampant misogyny and shitty writing.

My biggest issue with the current state of "YA" literature is that the teenage leads are so rarely allowed to just relax and be teenagers. There's always a revolution to lead, an apocalypse to avert, various evil wizards in need of smiting. Kids quickly forget to be kids, grow up fast, and turn into super-serious short adults declaiming in expository fashion about the state of the world. Look at the descriptions of Harry Potter by the end of book seven. "Haunted… Weary…. Solemn…." Poor Harry isn't alone, mostly because every YA author ever has imitated his series.

If Stephanie Meyer has done anything right, and I'm not saying she has, it's in choosing to make the stakes of this book so refreshingly low. We're looking at a story about two kids who want to bone, and may or may not get around to doing that in these pages (Ed: I know they hook up eventually, not sure of the book). Now, I'm not saying this isn't an important, life-shaping decision. It's strongly implied, if never outright stated, that Bella is a virgin. Edward seems to have designs on changing that, and doing it in the most woman-hating, choice-robbing fashion possible short of outright rape. So yeah, this is a huge moment for Bella, but it's only about her and that makes the book wonderfully personal. Wait, wonderfully? Ok, that may be stretching things.

But still, this is the first chapter where Bella feels human. She's witty, sarcastic, insecure, and generally teenaged. Edward is still a raging asshole,  but at least he feels like the kind of asshole we all hated in highschool. I still don't buy for a second that these two have some kind of pre-destined connection, but we're getting pointed in a direction that might, possibly, lead me to think they could have coffee in the same zip code without me wanting to papercut myself to death. This is progress! In other news, Edward still sucks, Stephenie Meyer is still determined to make every feminist in the country burn her in effigy, and the bizarrely negative treatment of every supporting character continues apace. So, yeah. See Y'all Thursday for Lost! Peace!