I saw the movie version of Doubt yesterday. It was intensely moving, but more full of definite ideas than uncertainties.
The play -- and the movie -- had been billed as a cat and mouse game between the ferocious nun and the wily priest. I didn't see that story at all. Indeed the two of them seemed to agree on one huge issue, an issue neither of them could name. Sister Aloysius tormented herself and those around her with fear that the priest might do something, or have done something, ""evil." But what she really despised was not his actions but his intrinsic being -- and worse still his attempt to harness that being for good. Father Flynn was aware of his intrinsic being, and sought to channel it in the service of selfless love. But that fell short of total repression, and they both knew it. The crux of the drama came in the confrontation scene in the nun's office. The look on the priest's face as he realized that nothing he could ever do would make him less loathsome in her eyes revealed that he knew her eyes were the eyes of his God. And he loathed himself as completely as God and the nun did.
The unnamed horror is homosexuality. Father Flynn was gay. Sister Aloysius saw that, and saw that instead of effacing all traces of his homosexuality Father Flynn allowed it to flower as nurturing. I have no doubt that Father Flynn's relationship with Donald, the black boy whose "purity" Sister Aloysius seeks to defend (Sister Aloysius has a consistency problem here; she treats all the kids as depraved but romanticizes them as sexually innocent) did not include actual sex. From the viewpoint of church teaching the relationship was just as bad: Father Flynn was seeking to make Donald feel good about himself, in effect to give him permission to be gay. Not to act out his desires, just to acknowledge his nature. That would not be acceptible to Sister A, any more than it would to Pope Benedict. And here I find myself both pitying and angry with Father Flynn, though I do not blame him for living within the confines of his time and culture. He sought to stay in a church that invalidated his being, a church with a history of abuse and even murder foisted upon such as he. He knew of no other way than to make himself as acceptible to God as he could manage -- and show others how to do the same. Better than beating the boy, as Donald's father did, but far short of spiritual liberation. Alas for a world of fear and judgment!
Donald's mother is beautifully realized, a woman who loves her child and is willing to accept almost anything if it brings love and a measure of peace. I am not sure that she could have existed with that worldview in 1964, but it is nice to think that anyone could focus so clearly on love without judgment.
Sister Aloysius is an awesome creation, an almost perfect horror. Her tics and looks, her spying and lying -- she justifies her actions as stepping away from God in the greater service of good, just like Dick Cheney -- all project an aura of creepy grandeur, Catherine de' Medici as grade school principal. Indeed, I wonder if the doubt here might not be less about Father Flynn's likely gayness than about Sister Aloysius's so-deeply-repressed-that-it-cannot-even-surface-as-an-issue lesbianism. She is certainly a virago, a woman outraged by her powerlessness in a church run exclusively by men, who revenges herself by using covert action to achieve her goals. Even she has a humanizing (or at least justifying) moment: she tells novice Sister James to put up the picture of the Pope, and when Sister James objects that the photo is of the wrong Pope she says that it can be used as a mirror so that Sister James can see what the pupils are doing as she writes on the board. Simple and effective classroom management. Poor Sister James goes from innocent to outraged, caught between her belief in goodness, her obvious crush on Father Flynn, and her awe of Sister Aloysius. The confrontation of the two nuns at the end is unfortunately the weakest scene in the movie. Sister James lacks the force to bring Sister Aloysius to any sort of spiritual crisis, and Sister Aloysius has been too thoroughly encased in stone to crack as horrifically as she does. I could see her raging against Father Flynn's promotion but not yielding to her doubts.
Meryl Steep, our Lady of the Accents, has been taken to task in some reviews for the bizarre diapaison she employs in this role, but I am here to tell you that, as a friend and listener of several Bronx-born and -raised Italian Americans, she sounds utterly real.
Worth seeing.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Milk and the tidal wave of thoughts that followed
I finally saw Milk last night. I haven't cried that way at a movie before, maybe ever. Harvey Milk was so uplifting, and what happened to him so hatefully wasteful. And yet he achieved so much, maybe as much as was his proportion of things to accomplish.
Sean Penn was astonishingly good. He suggested the accents of Woodmere without putting the dialect between himself and the audience. His tics and smiles, the intensity of his desire to connect, and his own fears which got in the way of his own relationships, all were vivid. The intermingling of authentic footage with recreation was seamless. One moment of musical editing was particularly unsettling -- the crosscut from the minor key ending of Tosca to the ringing of Dan White's phone, on the major third of the chord that had just concluded. One piece of video editing was just unsubtle enough to annoy me: Harvey said he wouldn't make it to 50 at the opening of the film, and there had already been a reference to that prophecy at his 48th birthday party, so bringing back the quote as he died seemed overkill. I would rather have seen a clip of him sharing that 40th birthday cake with his lover, which would have evoked the idea without hammering it in. But that is one quibble with a great film. Oh, one other: why a big fat girl as Tosca, when the actual Tosca that night was the ancient, overwhelming, but not enormous Magda Olivero? Surely a movie with "don't stereotype gays" content should avoid stereotyping fat opera ladies? (there is a moving recollection of the event by a member of the SFO Chorus at http://listserv.bccls.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=OPERA-L;EwFSqg;20081205201451-0800A)
Harvey's final speech, the exhortation that any bullet entering his brain should blast down all the closet doors, reduced me to sobs. Juxtaposed with the reality of the bullets, and the proper emphasis on his face -- with Dan White reduced to faceless unimportance -- the effect is to release the words and give them the power they possess. Poor Dan White, repressed and twisted by his fascination and his fear, a Claggart to Harvey's Billy Budd. Twinkies or no, he was a monument to what happens when people live for the approval of others.
I was struck after the movie, by the similarities between the struggle for gay rights and the situation in the middle east. It seems to me that a Jewish state is based on the same premise as having a safe haven for gays in the Castro: it avoids dealing with the worldwide discrimination against some people based on other people's fears, whether in Tblisi or Topeka (cities chosen randomly, purely for purposes of alliteration!). I have always thought Theodore Herzl was wrong -- the promised land is Miami! But all joking aside, striving to make a world where all are safe to be themselves regardless of race, creed, color, gender, orientation or other "difference" would stab at the heart of human misery. Claiming acreage as "ours" only reverses the problem.
There is a larger fear at the back of repression and discrimination, a Darwinian fear. People want to see their genes survive. This is discussed at http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795581 as a basis for seemingly self-destructive acts such as suicide bombing. In order for one's genes to go on into succeeding generations, one must compete with the bearers of other genes. Anything that hints at a genetic dead end sparks subliminal terror. And I guess for str8 people who want to make sure their children are str8 the idea that a homosexual agenda might interfere trumps all reasonable considerations. The out gay teacher who supports a teen as s/he comes out is not recruiting, but giving permission that the parents may dread. The teacher is not recruiting, or making the kid gay, but is only opening a path to the inevitable, natural state of that young person. Societal/parental repression cannot make the kid str8, but sure can make him/her miserable. Miserable but with grandkids might be preferable to some people. Educating people about overpopulation is unlikely to help -- most will only too glad to let somebody else's genes take a hit for the planet. How to progress beyond this point...?
With this the gist and sum of it
What earthly good can come of it?
-- Dorothy Parker
Sean Penn was astonishingly good. He suggested the accents of Woodmere without putting the dialect between himself and the audience. His tics and smiles, the intensity of his desire to connect, and his own fears which got in the way of his own relationships, all were vivid. The intermingling of authentic footage with recreation was seamless. One moment of musical editing was particularly unsettling -- the crosscut from the minor key ending of Tosca to the ringing of Dan White's phone, on the major third of the chord that had just concluded. One piece of video editing was just unsubtle enough to annoy me: Harvey said he wouldn't make it to 50 at the opening of the film, and there had already been a reference to that prophecy at his 48th birthday party, so bringing back the quote as he died seemed overkill. I would rather have seen a clip of him sharing that 40th birthday cake with his lover, which would have evoked the idea without hammering it in. But that is one quibble with a great film. Oh, one other: why a big fat girl as Tosca, when the actual Tosca that night was the ancient, overwhelming, but not enormous Magda Olivero? Surely a movie with "don't stereotype gays" content should avoid stereotyping fat opera ladies? (there is a moving recollection of the event by a member of the SFO Chorus at http://listserv.bccls.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=OPERA-L;EwFSqg;20081205201451-0800A)
Harvey's final speech, the exhortation that any bullet entering his brain should blast down all the closet doors, reduced me to sobs. Juxtaposed with the reality of the bullets, and the proper emphasis on his face -- with Dan White reduced to faceless unimportance -- the effect is to release the words and give them the power they possess. Poor Dan White, repressed and twisted by his fascination and his fear, a Claggart to Harvey's Billy Budd. Twinkies or no, he was a monument to what happens when people live for the approval of others.
I was struck after the movie, by the similarities between the struggle for gay rights and the situation in the middle east. It seems to me that a Jewish state is based on the same premise as having a safe haven for gays in the Castro: it avoids dealing with the worldwide discrimination against some people based on other people's fears, whether in Tblisi or Topeka (cities chosen randomly, purely for purposes of alliteration!). I have always thought Theodore Herzl was wrong -- the promised land is Miami! But all joking aside, striving to make a world where all are safe to be themselves regardless of race, creed, color, gender, orientation or other "difference" would stab at the heart of human misery. Claiming acreage as "ours" only reverses the problem.
There is a larger fear at the back of repression and discrimination, a Darwinian fear. People want to see their genes survive. This is discussed at http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795581 as a basis for seemingly self-destructive acts such as suicide bombing. In order for one's genes to go on into succeeding generations, one must compete with the bearers of other genes. Anything that hints at a genetic dead end sparks subliminal terror. And I guess for str8 people who want to make sure their children are str8 the idea that a homosexual agenda might interfere trumps all reasonable considerations. The out gay teacher who supports a teen as s/he comes out is not recruiting, but giving permission that the parents may dread. The teacher is not recruiting, or making the kid gay, but is only opening a path to the inevitable, natural state of that young person. Societal/parental repression cannot make the kid str8, but sure can make him/her miserable. Miserable but with grandkids might be preferable to some people. Educating people about overpopulation is unlikely to help -- most will only too glad to let somebody else's genes take a hit for the planet. How to progress beyond this point...?
With this the gist and sum of it
What earthly good can come of it?
-- Dorothy Parker
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Good eats -- then not
Yesterday was a good day for dieting: oatmeal with cinnamon for breakfast; omelet with soy sausage and onion for lunch; white bean soup and salad for dinner. Snacks of nuts. I felt good. Today I had a challenge that was truly unfair. After the oatmeal I had to bake a cake for my son's belated birthday party. I made the traditional organge layer cake, the one that Mother used to make for Daddy and me all throughout my childhood. I could not resist sampling the icing as I frosted the cake. Delicious, but instant headache. Ouch.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Ich bin was ich es
New Year's resolution: to put food in my body that doesn't harm it.
Breakfast: 1/2 cup oats dusted with cinnamon
So far so good.
I finally read up on my diabetes meds yesterday, and was appalled. Actos causes weight gain. That I had figured out. Januvia has a cancer risk profile. That I had no idea about! Byetta, which my doc has mentioned as an alternative, causes pancreatitis. I think I have to lose a lot of weight and stop needing pills, if possible. It does seem that type 2 diabetes can be reversed by diet. So this is my project for 2009. This is going to be hard, given my chaotic lifestyle. But the other choice might be ... two weeks in Philadelphia!
Breakfast: 1/2 cup oats dusted with cinnamon
So far so good.
I finally read up on my diabetes meds yesterday, and was appalled. Actos causes weight gain. That I had figured out. Januvia has a cancer risk profile. That I had no idea about! Byetta, which my doc has mentioned as an alternative, causes pancreatitis. I think I have to lose a lot of weight and stop needing pills, if possible. It does seem that type 2 diabetes can be reversed by diet. So this is my project for 2009. This is going to be hard, given my chaotic lifestyle. But the other choice might be ... two weeks in Philadelphia!
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