Review: The Book Thief

For some reason, when I go to the library I often get out books on a theme, usually unintentionally. A few months ago (because I take a while to read and, more importantly, write), the theme was "books and censorship." Oddly specific, I know. It largely started because of a novel that happened to catch my eye in the young adult section: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, about a young girl who steals books in Nazi Germany, narrated by Death, all sort of things that appeal to me.

11 Great Things About Baltimore

You know, Baltimore gets a lot of bad press.  Much of what people know about it comes from Homicide: Life on the Street or, more recently, The Wire.  It's not unusual for visitors here to expect little better than a war zone, instead of the few bad neighborhoods that all cities have.  It doesn't help that our (now former) mayor was recently convicted for stealing gift cards from needy children.  Even when we top a "best-of" list, the news story is how surprising it is that we're not "worst-of".  However, in the six-plus years I've been working and/or living in this city, I've grown to love it, and here are a few reasons why.

Duty to God

Exactly one hundred years ago last month, Chicago publisher W. D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America, several months after being helped on a foggy London street by a boy who refused a tip, explaining that he was simply a Boy Scout doing his daily good turn.  Much has changed over the past century, but much has not.

I've mentioned before that even if I wanted to get back into Scouts as a leader I couldn't, not without being dishonest with them and with myself.  See, I'm an atheist, and the Godless are one of the three "G"s not allowed into the Boy Scouts, along with Girls and Gays.  I was only just starting to figure this out in high school, after I was well into Scouts (and had earned the Methodist religious award).  Even though I've only started calling myself an atheist within the last few years, at the time I was definitely at least an agnostic, and became pretty uncomfortable with the religious aspects.  I kept my mouth shut, though, because I loved Scouts, and wanted to see it through to my Eagle.

Of COURSE I Knew That....

The majority of my posts have been of the "lengthy diatribes on serious social issues," and I've been snowed in for the past five days, so I think it's time to lighten up a bit.  (Don't worry, we'll get back to the social commentary soon enough.)  With that in mind, here's a brief list of pretty obvious things I didn't realize until well after I should have, along with the age of realization.  Note that they are all from my late teens or later.

1. "The Beatles" is a pun, not just a creative misspelling.  I remember realizing this, and thinking back to the old episode of The Simpsons where Homer is in a barbershop quartet.  The whole story was a reference to the Beatles, I understood that at the time, but when they were thinking up a name and Professor Skinner said they needed "a name that's witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it," and Apu suggested "The Be Sharps" it sailed right over my head.
   Approximate age of realization: 18
2. The lead singer of Rush is male.  All right, to be fair about this, I never really listened to Rush all that much.  Honestly, they kind of annoy me.  Not that big of a deal.
   Approximate age of realization: 19
3. My grandmother has a New York accent.  And boy, do I mean a strong one.  It's not like it's subtle or anything; it's full-on New Yawker.  She's just always talked (tawked) like that, and I never really gave it a second thought.  She just had Grandma voice, that was all.
   Approximate age of realization: 22
4. The song "Black Velvet" is about Elvis.  This one was really more a case of never actually listening to the lyrics outside of the chorus.  I do that a lot, actually.  I usually have to make an effort to listen to lyrics, and not just drift off during songs.  I was driving home one day and the song came on the radio for the billionth time during my lifetime and I thought "Hey, I wonder what the rest of the song is about?"  Turns out it's obviously and blatantly Elvis.  Huh.
   Approximate age of realization: 25
5. The word "segue" is pronounced "segway."  See, okay, I knew the word pronounced "segway," and could use it properly in a spoken sentence, and I knew the word spelled "segue," and could use it properly in a written sentence, but I thought the former was spelled "segway" and the latter was pronounced "seeg" (long "e", hard "g").  I guess I thought they were synonyms or something.  I finally realized it when someone else mentioned to me that they were once confused on that point.  I kept my mouth shut.
   Approximate age of realization: 26
6. The term "upwards of" a number means "more than," not "almost."  I have no excuse for this one whatsoever.  This is also one of the few where I was caught out by someone, and had to be convinced of my error, because my version was so ingrained in my head by that point.
   Approximate age of realization: 27
7. The old joke "I don't trust anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die" is talking about women. This is one that I first heard long before I knew what a period was, and by the time I did know had long since relegated it to the back of my mind, in the "weird crap that makes no sense" bin.  It was revived years later while watching Mel Brooks's High Anxiety, but since the joke in the movie is that the guy had actually been bleeding for several days without dying, it didn't help.  It only popped up in my head and clicked into place for no apparent reason I can remember maybe a year ago.
   Approximate age of realization: 27 
8. The cookie brand "Chips Ahoy!" is a pun on the phrase "Ship ahoy!"  Nothing special triggered this one.  A commercial came on TV, and it just suddenly clicked.  This was maybe a few weeks ago.
   Exact age of realization: 28

So there you go.  All minor things, to be sure, but still.  So what sort of things did you not realize until embarrassingly late in life?

Jack Chick Is My Inspiration

If you know or live near some seriously conservative Christians, or have a predilection for snarking on crazy conservative paraphernalia, then you very likely have, at some point or another, stumbled across the Chick tract.  If you aren't familiar with them, check that link to their Wikipedia page for a brief introduction or, better yet, read a few at random from the official website, where they are all freely available.

Briefly, they are small, short booklets containing a comic-book-style story that usually tells how a certain thing (such as Halloween, Harry Potter, Catholicism, and homosexuality) is horrendously evil, will make you go to hell, and that Jesus is the only salvation.  Now, as you can surely guess, these things are pretty much completely antithetical to my personal philosophy.  As such, it would be easy for me to write a post here making fun of a specific tract, decrying how horrid his strawmen and stereotypes (used for "humorous" effect, of course), or going point-by-point through one to show how inaccurate it is.  Many people online and off have done so, much better than I can.  So instead, I want to tell you why these tracts, and by extension, their creator. Jack Chick, are an inspiration to me.

Let me tell you a story.

Pixar's bitch

I am Pixar's bitch.

Everyone who knows me even a little knows this about me.

I have seen all but one (A Bug's Life, their second) of their movies in the theatre, and own all but one (Cars, the A student's only B+) thus far available on DVD, in addition to the collection of their shorts.  Last night I bought and rewatched Up, and it was still superb.  Not necessarily my favorite, but then it's so difficult to pick a favorite.  All of their movies have such original stories (except for the aforementioned Cars), such believable characters, such complex themes that don't talk down to the audience, child or adult, such incredible attention to detail, such brilliant visuals, that they make nearly every other American animated movie seem positively amateurish by comparison.  My ticket to Toy Story was one of the first I kept.  Toy Story 2 pulled off the nearly impossible feat of being a sequel that is arguably better than the original.   Monsters, Inc., perennially overlooked, cracks me up, and has one of the greatest child movie characters ever.  Ratatouille had one of the most effective character moments I've ever seen, in thirty seconds without dialogue.  Last year, I sat literally open-mouthed through nearly all of WALL-E.  Up managed to choke me up within the first ten minutes.  It can be safely said that I am, indeed, a huge fan, and have been for a long time.

However.

With each successive movie they've put out, I've had a growing unease.  Not because of the quality, or the themes, or the messages, or anything like that.  No.  It's because, over the course of ten feature films, they have yet to have a female protagonist.  Woody (with Buzz as second lead), Flik, Woody and Buzz again, Sulley (with Mike as second lead), Marlin, Bob "Mr. Incredible" Parr, Lightning McQueen (with Mater or possibly Doc as second lead), Remy (with Linguini as second lead), WALL-E, and now Carl Fredericksen (with Russell as second lead).  Now, don't get me wrong, these films have had many wonderful, strong, believable female characters, some of them even second leads: Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl, Dory, Helen "Elastigirl" Parr, Collette, and EVE immediately leap to mind.  They're all fantastic characters, and none have been there purely as a romantic foil, even the one in the (robot) romance movie.  But the story hasn't been focused around any of these characters; they at best play a major role in the story of the male protagonist.  Their story arc, even if it's a good, strong, compelling arc, is still secondary to his.

Over the last several years/movies since I noticed the pattern, it's been getting increasingly embarrassing.  It's like when your dear, loving grandmother, who taught you so much about treating everyone with respect, refers to your adult black friend as "a colored boy," and locks her jewelry box when he visits.  You find yourself making excuses, because you know she obviously doesn't mean to be offensive, and all of her other actions show that she's not racist, and she just doesn't really know him yet, and she grew up in a different time, and and and....

And yet, there it is.   Nine protagonists, no women.

But wait!  There, in production!  No, not Toy Story 3, presumably starring Woody and Buzz, due out next year.  Not Cars 2, presumably starring Lightning and Mater, due out the year after.  After that, in December 2011!  It's The Bear and the Bow!  Written and directed by a woman (both also a first for Pixar, which is telling), and starring Reese Witherspoon as Pixar's very first female lead character... Princess Merida.

  

Well, crap.


Okay, look.  There's nothing inherently wrong with princesses as lead female characters.  And yes, I have faith that Pixar will put an interesting spin on it (already we can see that she wants to stop being royalty and become an archer, which has promise).  They could turn it into a "take that" against the very idea of animated female leads needing to be princesses, much as Up took a shot at the idea of the hero needing to be young.  They could end up turning the whole idea of princesses upside down, somehow.  We can't really judge now, a full two years before it's even released, can we?

And yet....

She could've been anything. They specialize in unlikely heroes: an old cloth doll, a rat who likes to cook, a lonely garbage compacter, the monster in your closet, a clown fish.  Ed Asner.  Do something else gosh-wow adventurey, like The Incredibles and Up: make her a time-traveler trying to fix the past.  There can be dinosaurs, because everyone loves dinosaurs.  Something else with animals, like Finding Nemo or Ratatouille: she could be the elephant who actually never forgets, and sees some sort of classified information.  Something offbeat, like Toy Story or Cars or Wall-e: she's, I don't know, a sentient vacuum cleaner or something.  I know, I know, my ideas suck (erm, no pun intended.) I'm not a writer.  But come on.  I could have come up with "princess."  It's been done, it's played out.  Disney even has a new animated movie with "Princess" right in the title!  You folks can do so much better, I know you can.  This is what you guys do.

Because no matter how well they handle it, no matter how much subversion they put in there, no matter how great a fighter she is, even if she saves him (though Pixar's been pretty good about such things so far, there most likely will be a "him") instead of the other way around, even if the entire point of the movie is about how girls don't have to be princesses and can be anything they want to be, even stereotypically male-dominated occupations, it doesn't really matter, because she's still a princess.  She'll still be folded into the vastly disconcerting "Disney Princess" line, togged out in the dress she probably hated wearing at the beginning of the film.  She'll still be made into a dress-up doll, likely without the archery outfit as an option.  She'll still end up, somehow, irritatingly and horrifically pink.  Hey, it happened to Mulan, and she's not even a princess in-story, through marriage or otherwise.

So I'm sure it'll be a fantastic movie.  It'll be funny, touching, mature, beautiful, original and everything else we've come to expect of them, and I'll be there to see it in the theatre.  I just wish that for their first female lead, after twelve movies, they could've picked something other than a princess.

Note: This was originally posted in slightly modified form last summer on Facebook.

Privilege

I've been thinking a lot about privilege lately.

See, I'm a very privileged person.  Oh, I don't mean I'm wealthy or anything; far from it, but the simple fact is that I have advantages that many people simply do not have, unearned advantages that I was simply born with.  I'm a straight, white, naturally-thin male who was raised Christian and who, while not wealthy, has never been exactly poor.  There are doubtlessly many other privileges I have that I don't have space to list, or that I don't even know I have.  Because the thing about having privilege is that... well, it's hard to see, when you have it.

There are, of course, many things that can go wrong when one has privilege, especially when one can't see it.