What the Hell, Nicole?
Um, I saw The Human Stain tonight. I went by myself at the last minute; I wasn't prepared to go study after my meeting with Marcela and I didn't want to study. So I went to the theatre and took my seat about 25 minutes before the flick started. I pulled out a reader and continued planning for a paper due on Wednesday.
And in order to avoid the annoying ads, I listened to Cat Power. So about five minutes before it started, I looked up to see Cornelia looking for a seat. She, too, was alone and it was also a last-minute decision for her. Together, we sat through the movie.
Oh, Nicole. I enjoyed the tank tops, tattoo shots, and black underwear, but that was about it. The film was contrived. There was too much going on. And let's put Jews, blacks, and poor whites in one movie and depict how terrible their lives are. I felt the racial struggle of Hopkins' character in the flashbacks, which is a good thing. But that could have been its own movie. I wanted more, especially after having just finished Passing.
Cornelia had a lot more to say. She has the language, because she has an undergrad degree in film and theatre studies. I just didn't like it. It was too much. And, yet, not enough. But, I was treated to an extra special glimpse of Nic's next flick, Cold Mountain due out on Christmas. I know what I'll be doing that day.I'm starting to feel my brain come alive again. I am afraid to put this sentiment out there, as that may stifle its reemergence. But I did anyway. I read an article today by a guy named Michael Walzer who is an editor of Dissent Magazine. He is discussing the relationship between blacks and Jews during the Civil Rights movement. His thesis is, basically, that the blacks blew it. They failed to maintain a cohesive relationship with the Jews, a relationship that would only serve to benefit the blacks as they attempted to climb up into the social system of which they had never been a part. I have no problem with this analysis. What I do have a problem with is the tone the author uses. Victimization. Paranoia. Blame. He goes so far as to suggest that all blacks need to do is open clinics and shelters and things like this, which would, of course, be supported by the neighborhoods inhabited by a majority black population. Yes. Of course. These neighborhoods with the large tax base will definitely support such things. That's all the blacks have to do. Oh, and they have to integrate with the other oppressed groups so that everyone who doesn't get a fair share has an opportunity. To be fair, he is speaking specifically about what happened in the 60s, and he is looking for strategies to overcome what has most definitely gotten out of hand. I'm not arguing against integration. I'm arguing his apparent short-sightedness of the situation. As he writes in the late 1990s, he fails to take into account the historical, economic, and political climate that blacks faced and had faced for over three centuries. In the end, he does concede that both Jews' and blacks' have roles in the conflict between the two groups, but ultimately insists on placing the onus on blacks to fix it: "Indeed, the voting record of blacks and Jews in recent elections suggests that in some rough and ready way, the coalition already (or still) exists. But its full articulation, and the good feeling this would bring, await a serious campaign against gestural militancy and Jew-baiting in the black community." He won't end on this note, of course, because it's a bit harsh and he has to let up a little bit, which he does in the very next, and final, paragraph: "The burden falls that way now, though few people talk about it openly in these terms. If I insist on them here, it isn't in order to deny that political work is necessary in the Jewish community too, to sustain the old commitment to racial equality [that's so big of him to admit]. I put the fight against black anti-Semitism first because it is so visible in American politics today and I believe that there are black intellectuals and political leasers ready to take on this fight, ready to take the crucial step toward an American left-liberalism that might, by reckoning with its recent past, give itself a future." The way I see it, if you want to fix it, then work together. Don't separate. He said it himself: "Separatism in these spheres is self-defeating and silly." I could really go on and on about this essay. I have so many problems with it. But I'm going to stop here and save it for my paper. I made another decision about PhD programs. I've decided (I think) to apply to NYU's English department instead of American Studies. It just feels right. It happened as I was brainstorming my statement of purpose, which I did by accident. I was watching a very interesting, though unfortunately not very positive for queers, episode of CSI, when my mind started wandering into statement land. I grabbed a notebook and wrote some things down, and all of a sudden, I realized that I really want to study literature. It seems I have come full circle. I come alive when I'm reading books. I used to not be too big into fiction, but during the last 10 years or so, I noticed (tonight) that I developed a strong list of novelists I'm interested in. And tonight, it dawned on me that I can merge my interest in identity with my love for literature. Chopin, Woolf, Eliot, the Brontes, and Cather are all writers who deal with identity within a social setting they created. Who knew this was brewing? Anyway, as my literary stars continued aligning themselves, I thought back to my sophomore year in Chico and my intro to literature class. It was a general education class and I wasn't all that interested in taking it. I was a P.E. major, after all, and was only interested in learning how to tend to injured athletes. But I had an assignment to write a response to a poem. I chose Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy:
This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending.
I had put the paper off until the last minute and I had only one night to work on it. I had a beer, and, with my Brother word processor (!) on the counter, began typing furiously. I remember I had a strong reaction to the poem and it must have come out in the writing. I'll never forget what Prof. Vic Lams wrote on my A paper. Ok, so this is a paraphrase; it was 11 years ago: "You should get a PhD in English." I thought he was crazy. But it was nice. And here I am, getting applications together for PhD programs in English. I never woulda thought it. There is a chance I'll wake up tomorrow freaking out again and not feeling confident about this latest development. And change my mind. We'll see. Speaking of Chico professors, I e-mailed Carol Burr yesterday. I just dropped her a line to let her know what I was up to. In it I told her that I felt I wasn't a good reader. She said she didn't understand that and she went on to say that I'm good at making connections. Cool. I'm sure one of the things to which she was referring was the fact that my two favorite books, though written in different centuries and originate from different countries, have lots of similarities in the text, as well as the women who wrote them. And then there's the Spurs. I love ESPN's NBA Live Gamecast. With that on the computer and the play-by-play on TNT (I could only hear them, because I don't get TNT), I followed the double OT loss by the champs. And I thought it was going to be a blowout. No Duncan. No Parker. Shaq and Kobe combine for 72. Give me a break. They won by three. Ok, I'll stop there. I'd be very afraid of the Spurs. And will Kobe go to the Spurs next year. Only time will tell.
