The Unfair Critic vs Life Of Pi

Warning: I will spoil everything

This is a hard post to write, because I find myself in endless ironic loops. I’m just going to barrel forward and try to ignore them, you can do as you like.

I read Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I only knew what everyone knows about it: boy gets stuck on a lifeboat with tiger. I like animals, and I like ocean voyages, and I was hoping those things would be dealt with somewhat realistically. I was engaged by part 1, about Pi’s life in India. I thoroughly enjoyed part 2, the part about being stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. I found myself frustrated and angry by the end of part 3, when the author brings everything back around to a question of faith. It’s not the book I want it to be, which is my problem, not the author’s. The author, as far as I can tell, achieved exactly what he intended, and I commend him for it.

I didn’t see the movie, and I don’t plan to. I think I would hate it. The still images I’ve seen from the movie glisten with that CGI sheen. I don’t want this story to shimmer with magic. The situation is fantastic enough; I want the sights and sounds and smells to land with matter-of-fact, undeniable reality. I want to believe it. I want to be on that lifeboat with that tiger. I want to breathe the air in the middle of the ocean with a wild predator, at once dangerous, inaccessible, and part of a bond with a human being.

Part 2 of the book accomplishes all this admirably. Pi’s strategies for dealing with the tiger are surprising, ingenious, and plausible. Their journey is arduous and enthralling, and believable. The distance between human and tiger is never entirely bridged, because hello, it’s a wild animal. Believability is key. I desperately didn’t want the story to become fantasy. I enjoy fantasy, but with this story I was hoping to feel a more authentic connection to the natural world; the ocean, the sky, wild animals. Again, my problem. What’s the point in approaching any work of art with such specific expectations? I’m not writing the book. I can interpret it in my own way, but I don’t get to decide what happens.

Still. Expectations met, as I said, in Part 2. Even though there were some elements that stretched plausibility, that might be called magical realism. The oil tanker that blindly brushes past the castaways seems unlikely in the vast ocean, but also seems like one of those events so ridiculous it has to be true. The island of algae may or not have any basis in actual botany, but I had no trouble believing it. The one thing that really threw me was meeting the other blind sailor in the other lifeboat. That was so utterly unlikely, I thought the whole episode was a hallucination, right up until the two Japanese reps discuss it in Part 3.

Part 3, when Pi tells his story to the men from the shipping company, and they don’t believe him. So he tells them another story, with no wild animals, that they can believe. And then I start to doubt this wonderful story I’ve just finished. Why would the author do that? Probably for the same reason he wrote 100+ pages of Pi being in India and absorbing different religions. Pi is pious (is that why Martel chose that odd name for his protagonist?) and he prays a lot at sea, but it’s his empirical knowledge of zookeeping that saves him. So what’s all this religion in aid of? Only the central theme of the book, it turns out. In the end, we are given a choice. Believe the unbelievable, the much better story, or fall back on what fits with our own experience. Have faith, or don’t.

To clarify, I don’t really doubt the story with the tiger. It’s pretty clear what really happened to Pi (if anything can be said to have “really happened” in a work of fiction.) I think Martel is just giving us an exercise in faith, a miniature model of faith. I am not religious, so when I hear people talk about faith a part of me switches off. Faith is nothing to do with me. So I was frustrated to get to the end of the book and feel evangelized to, even in a most subtle and friendly way.

Still, I have to admit, all the things I wanted from this book–the sense of connection to the ocean, the sky, wild animals, the natural world–most people would call that a spiritual impulse. I don’t mind calling it that. One can seek and feel a connection to the larger universe without believing in God. We skeptics get a lot of spiritual juice from scientific observation. That’s why I so craved, and so appreciated, the realism in this story. Realism was my best path to a spiritual experience. When faith became the clear central theme, I almost felt my realist path to spiritual connection devalued.

Almost, but not quite. In the end I have to just let it go, as Pi lets Richard Parker go, connected and disconnected at the same time. Which again is the nature of spiritual experience, because unless you are fully enlightened and enter Nirvanna there will always be an element of disconnect. See! Despite my best efforts, Life of Pi remains the book its author intended. I’m gonna go read Spider-Man now.

Iron Man 3

For once I saw a movie opening night. Now it’s already 3 days later and I’ve blown my chance to write a timely movie post. Oh well. I liked the movie a lot, but I didn’t have a lot to say about it. Then I read this article by Linda Holmes. Genius. This is why, as my blog title says, I take this stuff so seriously. Because when it’s done well, it actually speaks to serious, real life situations, and offers new ways of understanding old problems.

Here’s an excerpt:

But the biggest conversation we’re having now? About balancing self-sacrifice and ego and capitalism, generosity and gadgetry, embracing other human beings versus shutting ourselves inside ever more advanced fortresses at every level from national security down to personal technology? It’s pure Tony Stark.

click for full article

My Favorite Part of Django Unchained (Spoilers!)

The pre-Civil War South is a land of insanity. The most loathesome, dehumanizing acts are protected by the law, and people of good conscience must move with utmost care. To stand up for simple decency could cost one everything.

Django’s wife Brunhilda is owned by Mr. Candie. Django and Schultz go to the plantation to buy her. They have to trick Candie into believing that they are as monstrous as Candie, as the whole society of a slaver nation. Candie must believe that they see Brunhilda as a commodity, not a person.

While Candie is entertaining them, a woman plays Beethoven on a harp. Schultz can’t stand it. The atrocities he’s witnessed play back in his mind, and he demands that the harpist stop. He can’t abide the beautiful culture of his native, eminently civilized Germany in the heart of the evil empire.

It’s a stunning reversal of every tale of American heroism in Nazi Germany– especially the one featuring Christoph Waltz as the Nazi, also by Tarantino.

It’s a subtle scene, and it happens fairly quickly, but it shook me much more than any of the amped-up spaghetti-western bloodshed. Somehow Tarantino’s signature goofiness serves to emphasize the deadly serious history lesson. The righteous happy ending of Django Unchained could only happen in a cartoonishly unreal Old South. Attitudes of American exceptionalism can only be maintained with a cartoonishly unreal grasp of history.

The Dark Knight Rises Revisited

Yes, it’s another not-at-all-timely movie post. The other night I watched The Dark Knight Rises for the second time, the first time I saw it since it opened in theaters. I really wanted to like it then, enough that I enjoyed watching it once. But its flaws were too much for a second viewing. I probably could have overlooked them all, if I wasn’t immediately tripped up by how wrong they got Batman.

Batman is supposed to be relentless. He is someone who draws strength from the tragedies of his past. He is committed to his personal crime-fighting mission beyond ordinary rationality. Yet, the movie begins by telling us he gave it all up — due to a broken heart – and has been idle for 8 years. Which incidentally means that the sum total of Batman’s career is the first two movies. If he only ever fought The Joker and Ras-al Ghul, he’s not much of a superhero.

Superheroes are not complicated characters. That’s a large part of their appeal. The name and the costume should give you all the vital information you need as an audience. Not all there is to know, but all you need to get on board. (This is why the show Heroes never worked– they eliminated hero names and costumes. That and the stupid stories.) Uncomplicated does not mean unsophisticated; superheroes can have rich inner lives, inhabit complex worlds, experience convoluted plots.  But, dear moviemakers, you have to stay true to the characters’ root elements. Do that, and you can have a whole thrilling ensemble of distinctive mythic beings, like The Avengers. Fail to do it, and you get Green Lantern, Spider-man 3, Daredevil, etc etc.

As a standalone action movie, The Dark Knight Rises isn’t bad. But The Dark Knight really raised the bar. It captured Batman and The Joker so well, it illuminated the whole superhero/supervillain dichotomy. To wit: a superhero turns weakness into strength. Within himself at minimum, within others when at his/her best. A Supervillain turns the strength of others into weakness. Watch it again and see how beautifully that basic conflict plays out. That’s what I’ll be doing. What third movie?

Avengers: Best Marvel Movie of Them All

Yeah, I said it. Better than X-Men, better than Iron Man, better than Spider-Man. I enjoyed all those movies a lot, but they always felt like the classic comic books being filtered through Hollywood for a larger audience. Which is fine. I don’t mean to get all snobby about it, and I believe the box office returns have already shown that the general public likes Avengers as much as the comic readers.

Still– Avengers felt like the raw, uncut stuff. If you are a fan of Marvel comics, this movie is the purest transmutation into contemporary film of everything that makes them fun. ‘Nuff s– naw, I won’t go there.

John Carter

I had a lot of fun at this movie. The pulpy action, the deep worldbuilding, the cool creatures and alien devices, the princess being not only a badass but also a brilliant scientist…lots of good stuff. I don’t plan to watch it a second time, because it surely won’t hold up. I have no problem accepting fantastical conceits like John Carter’s super strength in the low Martian gravity; that kind of suspension of disbeleif is one thing. Suspension of disbelief for plot points that make no sense is different. The romance between John and Deja seems to happen for no reason, and (spoilers) the wedding as a ruse to invade the city doesn’t appear to add anything to the invasion. If the story was just a little more solid, this could have been a classic. It’s not that, but it is a fun couple of hours.

Movies Made to Satisfy Expectations

We rented Cowboys & Aliens. My experience was much the same as with many Hollywood blockbusters: the first act is quite good, suggesting interesting characters and unique situations to come. In the second act, everything quickly devolves into familiar clichés. By the third act I don’t care anymore. Cowboys & Aliens followed this pattern with a vengeance, weaving tired stereotypes in with the familiar clichés and piling on the unearned dramatic payoffs in the final scenes. This movie was not made to challenge or surprise, but to go exactly where the viewer expects it to go. I guess people like that. It’s certainly a good formula for making money. But, no one will remember this movie in five years. The memorable movies are always the ones with surprises.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve been thinking about the disproportionate effect a small number of billionaires has on our politics. This movie got me thinking, could the same be said of big-time producers and our culture? A handful of names crop up over and over in producer credits; Brian Grazer, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg, etc. Could there be a tiny cabal of producers who constantly give us the same movie, dressed up with different actors and sets?Are they restricting us to a diet of easy, familiar stories, when we could be consuming inspired, challenging surprises?

Well, not really. I looked at the top grossing movies of 2011, and didn’t find any big prevalence of my producer cabal. Most of the movies have half a dozen producers I’ve never heard of. If I was a diligent researcher I would look at top earning movies of the past 10-20 years, and track producers, directors, and studio executives, but I prefer to guess based on my initial shoddy search. My guess is, there are too many people involved in making movies to assign all the influence to the top dozen recurring names.

Anyway, there’s a big difference between politics and movies. Surprising, challenging movies get made all the time. Quality movies are out there for anyone inclined to do a little searching. (For sci-fi fans, I suggest Primer, Ink, Monsters, and Attack the Block, to start with.) They don’t tend to get big-studio funding or mainstream promotion, and maybe that’s wrong, but they also aren’t made to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which seems to be the focus of the big studio mechanisms. Anyway the big studios will only become less relevant as digital streaming continues to shrink their profit margins, and the technology of movie making becomes cheaper and more accessible.

So, a moviegoer can always go look for a better movie. Politics don’t work that way. We all have to live by the same laws of the land. We don’t all agree on what those laws should be, but no one gets to pick and choose which ones apply to their own life. So in a free, civil society, we negotiate and compromise. Unfortunately the bad billionaires are busy distorting those laws in their favor.

I can hear David Koch right now: “If you don’t like it, move to France!” No David, you’re the one who should move away if you can’t abide the little people having any influence.

Slow Critic on Tintin

Spielberg, Jackson, and Wright, I recant my previous statement. You guys absolutely get it.

I still would have preferred Tintin in 2D animation. (In fact if someone were to make a whole movie in the style of the opening credits I would be ecstatic.) However, the 3D characters felt entirely true to Herge’s books, porous skins and all. Any movie based on a book or comic has to be different than the source material in order to work as a movie, and when it comes to the characters, Tintin is different in all the right ways. While far fleshier than their pen-and-ink origins, they are totally convincing translations into near-real life. The designs and voices are spot-on, as are the choices, tactics, and reactions of Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy.

In typical Spielberg fashion, the action set pieces ramp up and up and finally go too far. Massive, wanton property destruction without consequences doesn’t fit in Tintin’s universe. But while the movie maintains a human scale, it works. The numerous easter eggs for fans of the comics were fun.

Unfortunately, Marcie found it tedious. That may be further testament to the movie staying true to its roots, which are aimed at young boys after all. But it suggests the movie won’t have a lot of appeal beyond kids and dudes, which is too bad.

When I was a kid, the magic of Tintin came from exploring our world with him. The first time I got on a plane to another country, I felt like I was living a Tintin adventure. Even when he visited fictional nations, the stories always spoke to real cultures and environments, and the richness of experience available in real life. It’s hard to see animated movies playing that role, when so many live-action movies transport audiences to exotic scenes. Still, I find myself eagerly awaiting the next Tintin movie.

Worldcon 2011: The Hugos

Yes, the Hugo awards, voted on by Worldcon attendees and presented Saturday night. I enjoyed the ceremony this time much more then at Denvention in 2008. In fact all the major events seemed better organized and more hospitable. Mad props, Renovation peeps!

The Hugo Award is always a sleek rocket, but every year it gets attached to a different base. As part of the awards ceremony, they brought out the artist behind this year’s base and had her talk about her inspiration and process. I was really glad they did that, because her ideas and execution were brilliant. Inspired by recent photographs of geysers on Enceladus, Marina Gelineau used layers of scored and painted glass to represent the surface of an icy world, with strange life forms beneath the surface. (Click here and scroll down for a blurry photo.)

For in-depth analysis of the Hugo outcomes, visit Erik’s blog. The full list of winners is here. I’m just going to talk about some of my favorites.

For best novel, I voted for The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. This vote was pretty much a foregone conclusion ever since I heard the author read some excerpts at my last Worldcon in Denver. I also really liked N. K. Jemisen’s The 100,000 Kingdoms, which built a compelling, original mythology and put the gods in the action with the mortals. And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Feed by Mira Grant, a.k.a. Seanan McGuire. I’m generally not a big fan of zombie stuff, but her scenario was different than the standard undead apocalypse and offered some significant surprises. But after reading all three, I still liked The Dervish House best. The other two entries I didn’t finish. Not especially cool, I know, but I had a lot to read in a short span of time, and after getting about 100 pages into each I could confidently rank them fourth and fifth. (Connie Willis won with her 1000-plus page epic in two volumes, Blackout/All Clear.)

I really wanted Bryan Talbot to win best graphic story for Grandeville Mon Amour. It’s a steampunky murder mystery in a world of anthropomorphic animals, where France has colonized Great Britain (and renamed it Grandeville, also the name of a 19th century illustrator known for animal characters.) However the Hugo went to Girl Genius by the Folgios, as it has every year since the category was added. I’m a longtime fan of Phil Foglio, but it would have been sweet to see Grandeville Mon Amour win. Oh well.

In the end my only vote for first place that actually won (besides Inception for best long-form dramatic presentation, a shoe-in) was Shaun Tan for best professional artist. He’s more of a cartoonist than the book cover artists he was up against, so I was surprised but psyched to see him win the Hugo.

So now, as a member of this year’s Worldcon, I get to nominate works for next year’s Hugos. I’m going to make an effort to read books that actually come out this year. I’ve already read China Mieville’s Embassytown, and it’s one of the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read. I’m still working my way to A Dance with Dragons, but I believe George R. R. Martin has taken himself out of the running. The HBO series is probably fair game, though.

Got any other suggestions?

This was given to me while waiting to board the plane home. (I was reading the book.) Thanks Brigid!

 

Worldcon 2011, part 1

I’m not going to give a day-by-day accounting of the world sci-fi con in Reno, like I did for Denver. Just recapping the highlights this time. Or lowlights. Most-interesting-lights.

I flew in from Portland and my brother Erik flew in from Denver. I started reading A Game of Thrones on the plane. I wanted to have a nice fat book for the trip–reading in airports and on planes is no fun when you have to pace yourself so as not to finish the book with hours of travel time left over. And I’ve been hearing good things about the HBO series, although I won’t be seeing it until it’s released on disc. Still I was glad to have jumped on the Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon. The popular series always loom large at these events–Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Being a lately converted George R. R. Martin fan made me feel that much more plugged in.

The first evening, Erik turned me on to a new writer, Lauren Beukes. I read the first few pages of her book Zoo City, and promptly bought it and her other book, Moxyland. Am I too quick to judge? Probably. But it usually doesn’t take more than a few pages to know if I’m going to like an author. Mira Grant is a notable exception- more on that later. Anyway, we signed up for a Literary Beer with Beukes. The Literary Beer is a gathering of one author and 10 or so fans, much like the Kaffeeklatches, but with alcohol instead of caffeine. As with the Ian MacDonald Kaffeeklatch in 2008, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of the con. Beukes is a South African journalist, and she shared some of her remarkable experiences that inform her writing. I’ve been home for a few days now, finally finished Game of Thrones, so now I’m reading Zoo City for real. (I did run out and buy A Clash of Kings, but I’m taking a break between Ice And Fire tomes. Otherwise I’ll be reading nothing else for the next year.)

We kept busy attending panels. As in Denver, there were a dozen rooms of programming throughout every day of the con, with subject matter ranging from writing tips to hard science to scholarly critiques to fun goofiness. (One panel we went to posed the question, which historical events are so unlikely they are clearly the work of time travelers from the future?) Due to the panels I attended, my experience had a strong political theme. Some socially-minded panels I sought out (Social Justice in Science Fiction, Revolutions in Science Fiction, for example), others just bubbled it to the surface (The Far Future, How To Draw People of Different Races, The Future of Cities, F&*# Your Knight and the Horse he Rode In On, and others).  My next big project was on my mind, and I want it to address inequality and corruption in the real world without degenerating into a mere screed, as my past satirical efforts have tended to do. I picked up some strategies that seem promising.

Some people wear costumes. The majority of costumes I saw were steampunk in nature. There were lots of steampunk books and artwork as well, but the prevalence in costumes really struck me. I think we’re looking at a 3rd phylum of fanciful tales, alongside Science Fiction and Fantasy. Steampunk could be considered a subset of either sci-fi or fantasy, but it sort of has to pull elements from both, and it has its own distinctive aesthetic and tropes. It also contains a wide variety of sub-types, as sci-fi and fantasy do. (Does everyone really hate the term “sci-fi?” Too bad, I’m using it anyway.)

I didn’t wear a costume. I took advantage of the venue to wear dorky clothes I would wear everyday if I wasn’t self-conscious; leathery flight hat, big round goggles, pockety vest. I added a BPRD patch to my vest, so if anyone asked I could say I was dressed as an agent of the organization from Hellboy. My specialty: archaic cosmologies. Or silly drawings. Yes, I’m a nerd, we’ve established this, if you don’t like it read some other blog.

Next: The Hugo Awards