Good morning, all:
Roger: Doubtless Elvis will be responding to you about Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, but I’ve got to say I flinched when I read that “his function is essentially to absorb and process white pain, suffering, disease and guilt, which he does visibly–which is a novel change from the decades of films in which black characters have done the same thing invisibly.” That’s exactly what drives some of us crazy about that character–that he has no autonomous existence, that he’s there solely to help “process” white pain. Poitier might have humanized Steiger, but Mr. Tibbs is nominally flesh and blood, a man with a full range of emotions. John Coffey is another of Stephen King’s mystical black martyrs with extra-sensory perception. In the scene in which he heals Patricia Clarkson, he hovers over her bedridden form in a way that’s meant to summon up rape fantasies of fragile white Southern flowers menaced by darkies–and to miraculously invert them. But to me a miraculous inversion of a rape fantasy is almost as cheap and false as the thing itself–the black saint as much of an unhealthy projection as the black demon.
Before I drop the film-vs.-video, reverie-vs.-hypnosis issue, let me say that a) I’m salivating over your home theater setup and b) I’m slightly wary of anecdotal evidence. Your fears about the medium might be warranted (and let’s find out before all those theaters get converted!), but the tendency to trance out in front of a boob tube (even a mega-mega-boob tube) has a lot to do with the setting and the quality of your attention. You can stretch out, glance around the room, go to the toilet, read a newspaper–and even if you don’t, you know you have the option. I’ve had most of my really intense aesthetic experiences at live theater (and a few at the opera), and I’ve always figured that’s because I’d been forced to make more of an investment in what I was watching–to commit to it in a way I don’t when I watch TV.
I want to apologize, Roger, if I gave the impression yesterday that Joel Siegal and John Simon were making fun of Magnolia at a showing of that film. They were each discussing it–not discreetly but not “publicly”–at a screening for critics of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I’m certain that they didn’t think some smartass like me would report the gist of their conversations to the world. (I gather, however, that Joel Siegal has lambasted the picture on an upcoming program of yours. And John Simon has never been ashamed to have his opinions widely broadcast.) I suppose I invoked them because they represent such wildly divergent sensibilities–one populist, the other defiantly highbrow–and both were united in a kind of ebullient loathing of this poor picture. I’m glad you’re putting Magnolia on your 10-best list, because it needs champions; it seems to me so poignantly vulnerable to ridicule.
Sarah: In your final post yesterday you asked: “Can it really be that difficult to write a song called ‘Kyle’s Mom Is a Bitch?’ I bet any number of people reading this exchange could do as well or better.”
I don’t wish to discourage anyone from doing as well or better–my mailbox is open (as, I’m sure, is yours, Sarah). But I’d like to speak up for that number, which is emblematic of many of South Park’s strengths. “Kyle’s Mom Is a Bitch” is an infantile playground chant raised to the level of comic art by a) Cartman’s speed-freak/squalling-baby vocal, b) the sophisticated Broadway-style orchestration, and c) the happy notion that people in other cultures (the Netherlands, Holland, China, Africa) would come out in full national regalia to sing about Kyle’s mom being a bitch. In form, it’s a showbizzy patter song, but because of its lightning tempo (which makes the words barely intelligible) and the steady repetition of “bitch” on the downbeat, it has the primal force of an incantation:
Kyle’sMomisaBITCHshe’sabigfatBITCH
she’sthebiggestBITCHinthewholewideworld …
OnMondayshe’saBITCHonTuesdaysshe’saBITCH …
OK, it’s not Noel Coward, but it makes me as blissful as anything has since I was toilet-trained.
Yours,
David
