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Monday, June 21, 2004
If you have a chance, go see Lily Festival (Yurisai)! I just caught it at the SF International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and it's wonderful: funny, heartwarming, provocative and visually gorgeous. Directed by Sachi Hamano, known for some 300 low-budget adult ("pink") films exploring sexuality from a woman's perspective, Lily Festival is the story of a group of elderly women living in a retirement complex. When one of them passes away, Mr. Miyoshi, a suave, beatnik-y Lothario, moves in, creating a flurry of excitement among the women. One by one, he seduces them, reawakening long-forgotten passions. Of course each woman thinks she's his only lover, but when the truth finally surfaces, the underlying competition between the women takes a surprising (polysexual) turn. Lily Festival is an affirmation, not only that sexual passion endures at any age, but that age and circumstance can sometimes break down sexual barriers in highly unexpected ways.
For me, it was also a reminder of the sheer pleasures of cinema. I arrived late to the screening at the Castro theatre -- an occurance that almost never happens (I'm chronically early for EVERYTHING) -- and had to stand just inside the door of the theater for a few moments to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. Standing there, in the almost (surprisingly) full lower level of the grand old Castro, watching the flickering glow of gorgeous images play across the contours of the heads and bodies seated before me, I was reminded of that silky, seamless moment when you slip comfortably into another reality. In a dark room full of strangers, you all suddenly have something in common.
It helps that Lily Festival is a feel-good kind of movie. Visually reticent and understated, it surprises by presenting a cadre of vibrant, bold, even girlish old women. I found the fact that they were Japanese a tad disturbing, actually -- visions of my grandmothers (may they rest in peace) rekindling (or never extinguishing?) the flames of lust was a bit unsettling. But that revelation is really the film's strength. It makes their passions believable, human and humorous, without sacrificing their dignity or making fun of them. It's basically the antithesis of those cell phone commercials that show grannies and grampies on skateboards, speaking slang and "kickin' it wit the homies." The commercials are funny because the characters' behavior is unexpected, but in the end, they're making fun of the disparity between old bodies and young actions. Lily Festival succeeds in making us rethink not only our privileging of youthful passion, but the experience of growing old, and how it reconfigures the relations between body, emotions, and sex.
Stop reading if you don't want to spoil the movie's ending, but there's one gem of a scene that I have to describe. After the women discover Miyoshi-san's philandering, two of them have tea and end up discussing his "thing." At 75, Miyoshi-san can no longer, uh, rise to the occasion, but neither of the women seems to mind. One of them, Miyano-san, goes so far as to compare the feel of his appendage to the supple softness of a cat's "paw pad." From there, it's only a short leap to finding the same softness in the earlobe of her friend, Yokota-san, and from there...well, if "paw pad" isn't suggestive enough on its own, you can imagine what other body parts might fit the bill. As the women discover, at their age,the difference between the sexes is really no difference at all.
5:14 PM
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Thursday, June 10, 2004
However retrograde (a TV show that sides with the NYPD and the Manhattan DA's office can't be up to any good), I love to watch Law & Order, and it's spin-off, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I have friends who find this predilection for plot-twisty, ripped-from-the-headlines, cop-and-lawyer-centric stories that wrap up neatly within an hour hopelessly reactionary -- it plays into all our fantasies about a just and caring government that protects us from the devious and ever-present forces of evil (sound familiar?). I know! How can I mortgage my progressive principles in enjoying such drivel?
I'm not going to make any excuses. L&O and its rapidly multiplying offspring are like crack -- addictive as hell, and readily available on every street corner in Cableville. TNT has the original almost every night of the week. On Mondays & Tuesdays there are back-to-back episodes (sometimes 3 in row!). When TNT lets me down (cursed NBA games), I can always turn to USA, with at least one (more often 2 or 3) SVU's per weeknight. Weekends are often dry (unless there's an L&O marathon!). If I get really desperate, I can settle for L&O: Criminal Intent, which mucks up the formula -- in an effort to reveal the inner-workings of the "criminal mind" -- by giving away who's really guilty too early in the show. But, in a pinch, it'll do.
To be sure, there is something vaguely comforting about L&O. Each episode is such a neat little package: you get to investigate a heinous crime (you are intrepid), examine some finer point of legal argument (you are brilliant), and emerge satisfied that justice has been served (you are righteous -- usually -- once in a blue moon the DA actually loses, or wins the battle only to lose the war). You get to dip into the darker side of life for an hour and come out unscathed (relatively -- I have had the occasional L&O nightmare...). It's like a mini-vacation where you get to be as intrepid, brilliant and righteous as you always knew (hoped) you would be, in the face of senseless murder, rape or child abuse.
What makes this tourism even more appealing is that it takes place in New York City. Former New Yorker that I am, I can't help but feel both at home and nostalgic about the shows' locales and references. Of course, it's not like any New York I ever experienced, but it looks and feels like New York, in the romanticized, disembodied way that only exists on TV, in movies, or in memory. The mythology of New York, like the mythology of justice, is always grander and more impressive than the sum of its parts: the decidedly unglamorous navigating and negotiating through all the inconveniences and annoyances of everyday life.
I've been reading Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and I'm struck by the way she separates what it means to be a true patriot from the knee-jerk, don't-ask-don't-tell definition we commonly accept. Like Vowell, I usually have no use for the word -- it smacks of blind, unquestioning allegiance, and the worst kind of cultural nationalism (or just plain ol' nationalism). Vowell tells a story about having coffee with friends, shortly after 9/11. One friend selects a cupcake adorned with a tiny U.S. flag. She asks why he selected that cupcake, expecting him to say, perhaps, that he's feeling "patriotic." Instead, he says he's feeling "jingoistic." Vowell's essays, however flippant, get to the heart of the often inchoate ambivalence many of us feel about our country. We love the ideals and promise for which it stands, yet abhor its policies, actions, and lies on our behalf. We feel privileged to be living in the richest country in the world, but disgusted and ashamed by our country's bullying and purposeful under-development of other nations at our mercy. Like justice, or New York, the mythology of America is larger, more principled, and more illusive than the motives that guide its day-to-day operations.
So perhaps therein lies the real reason for L&O's appeal. More than just the gritty, depressing urban realism we've come to expect from shows that purportedly tell us the "truth" about life in the messed-up city/nation/world, it shows us how law enforcement should be. Full of good-hearted cops and district attorneys with a passion for justice, L&O doesn't shrink from addressing challenges that range in subject matter from the Abner Louima case, to Michael Jackson's baby-waving fiasco. But it does make sure that those cases come out, not the way they really do, but the way they're supposed to. It redeems our disgust with ourselves as Americans and reminds us of what we're really all about. Each episode, no matter how fantastical, is like a mini-civics lesson, a reminder of the founding principles on which justice in America is supposed to stand.
Of course, the danger in this addictive combo of grit and righteous integrity is that it lulls us into complacency. At its most simplistic, it makes us think that there really are good cops and lawyers out there, guardians of American ideals. On another level, it seems to say that it's enough to know you're in the right. And when everything wraps up so neatly within the hour, there's no action required.
10:18 AM
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
I'd like to say this is unbelievable, but I really should know better by now. Artist and professor Steve Kurtz has been detained by the FBI under the Patriot Act for his work with Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) on the traveling installation "Free Range Grain." The installation uses standard scientific equipment (found in most high school chemistry labs) to test food brought in by visitors for genetically modified ingredients. The aim of the installation is to make people aware of the dangers of genetically modified foods and the degree to which they are easily hidden in the foods we consume every day. The installation is in part a response to the U.S. government's refusal to label genetically modified foods (because it would be bad for business). But CAE isn't even going after the government directly -- they just want to make people aware of the issue and demystify the scientific processes around it.
Under the long, fabulist arm of the Patriot Act, Kurtz has been accused of manufacturing biological weapons. What's more, the equipment for the installation was confiscated from his house when he called 911 because his wife had just died of a heart attack. Her body was also confiscated. Kurtz was held illegally without charges and is due to appear before the grand jury, along with 6 other members of the CAE, on June 15.
It goes without saying that this whole episode is a direct violation of first amendment rights, let alone an attack on art and artists who take a critical, questioning stance.
Visit the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund site to learn more, sign the letter of support and if you can, donate to the defense fund.
10:14 AM
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
I subscribe to the "Review-a-day" from Powells.com, which, if you like books and reading about books, is a great service -- they email you a book review from a different publication 7 days a week. Tuesday is Atlantic Monthly day, for example.
I also subscribe to their "Daily Dose", books recommended by Powells' customers. If your book is featured, you get a gift certificate. I've never had any of my books chosen, and I usually don't find the recommendations that compelling, but this one caught my eye: Alfred Lubrano's Limbo: Blue-collar Roots, White-collar Dreams. Although I haven't read the book (yet), the synopsis says it's about a generation of people whom sociologist Lubrano dubs "Straddlers" -- that first generation to live the American dream, raised working class, but living middle class, the first kids in the family to go to college and get white-collar jobs, etc. (Amazon also has reader reviews which are quite illuminating) Lubrano identifies "class-clash" (my made-up word, not his) in many areas of interaction between "Straddlers" and their middle-class born peers. For example, working class people tend to put a premium on straight-forward, blunt talk, whereas middle class people communicate more circuitously, through suggestion or passivity. You can imagine how these codes get scrambled in the workplace, where there's a mix of class backgrounds.
None of this is any surprise, I suppose, but it did get me thinking. I was raised in a middle class home by parents who were raised in working class homes. My parents are the "Straddlers," but I experience some of the same effects, especially in the area of communication. In addition, with a liberal arts education, I tend to be somewhat idealistic. Not only do I want to be blunt, I want to believe that my bluntness will be well-received by people with our greater good as teammates at heart. So, I wouldn't be surprised if the phenomena Lubrano describes have repercussions over several generations. It's taken me 8 years in corporate America to understand that sometimes it's better to just keep your mouth shut, or to "kill with kindness," both of which are necessary evils, but by no means intuitive to me.
If anything, reading about Limbo made me realize that I need to better understand where my parents come from. I'm curious to see how the book deals with ethnic differences. For example, my parents are often verbally reticent in a typically Japanese American way, but I suspect that trait is somehow different from the circuitousness that Lubrano attributes to middle class communication.
10:38 PM
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While the SF Chronicle struggles to formulate a quality list of the Top 100 Restaurants, New York has a Top 100 Italian Restaurants list. Need I say more?
10:13 PM
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Thursday, June 03, 2004
Go see Takeshi Kitano's latest: Zatoichi, or as it's known here in the States: The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. God forbid we should have a film with a foreign language title that can't be translated (by virtue of being the main character's name). Kitano's back in fine form on this one: plenty of his trademark explosive violence, interspersed with some lovely pensive moments, and laced with a broad, quirky good humor.
If that doesn't convince you, read my PopMatters review.
10:44 PM
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Wednesday, June 02, 2004
...like me -- every word of non-standard English I utter sounds hopelessly "inauthentic" -- but no more! Enter "The Shizzolater," which will translate the text of any Web site into Snoop Dogg-ese. I'm not sure whether to be amused or offended. (sighted on Why Not Sneeze?)
12:20 PM
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