Marie Antoinette

Coppola's Marie Antoinette

Every single person I come across seems to hate this movie. It’s “silly.” It’s “weird.” It’s “NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!”

While I don’t think the film is a stunner like “Lost in Translation,” it did rock my world on several levels.

First of all, I wish the humourless drones harping on about various inaccuracies would lighten the hell up. This isn’t a period piece. It takes the lush landscape of the doomed court at Versailles and subverts it. It exists in a time of its own. The timeline largely concerns itself with the history of emotions, rather than with a history of events. People who missed out on that crucial bit of information and are bursting at the seams with righteous indignation ought to take a chill pill. Or a chill suppository.

There are too many lingering close-ups of Kirsten Dunst’s dimpled, dreamy face, sure. But one thing that Sofia Coppola does as well here as she did in “Lost in Translation” is capturing memory as it is created. The weak sunlight on the morning that the Austrian princess is “handed over” to the French; tinkling champagne glasses; snatches of conversation; the baby dauphin sobbing on the morning of the departure from Versailles; this is what a person’s individual history is really made of. The film, in that sense is very personal, but it also ironic, hence the lack of oppressive melodrama that so many other people have taken to be silly.

The modern music and dialogue, as well as the kaleidoscope of what we would now refer to as consumerist indulgence, are particularly touching because, in a way, little has changed. Pretty teenage girls still shop for uncomfortable, overpriced shoes with their girlfriends, while someone somewhere is starving, being killed, being oppressed. And Marie Antoinette’s inability to escape being blamed in the end (the film largely glosses over the way in which the nobles themselves hated her, although it does include a memorable display of collective disdain toward the end) is something we can, and should, explore further. It’s the old Dostoevskian conundrum: who is guilty? Aren’t we all?

If people come to kill me tomorrow because today I drank wine and ate bon-bons while the people of Darfur were dying, I will look as stricken and surprised as she. I don’t know how to be someone I’m not, and neither, I suppose, did Marie Antoinette. I can only be glad that my privilege is lesser, and that I am, on the whole, unimportant in general.

How About a Riot? Since I’m Not Sufficiently Embarrassed, Or Anything…

These are the sort of immigrants that give the rest of us a bad name. By saying this, I am in no way claiming that they have no right to free speech. I am, however, deeply troubled by their behaviour, and here’s why:

Let’s set aside the issue of homosexuality. Homophobes make my blood boil, but whatever. If people want to be hateful and stupid, that’s entirely their problem. If these people, however, are antagonistic to the larger community they live in, it becomes everyone’s problem.

Slavic Pentacostals were persecuted in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. They* came to this country like most of us did, seeking a better life, and have set about living said better life by… persecuting others. I wish Stanley Kubrick were still around to make a film about this. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Also troubling is the vehemence they have against California in general. They way they keep talking about “sin” this and “sin” that makes me think that the Golden State is a giant prison, and they are its most unfortunate inmates. They want to blame the people of California for their inability to fit in. This is childish.

If you don’t want to be good neighbours, that’s entirely your problem.

*- No, I don’t think they all act like this, naturally. Just the particular community profiled in the article.

What Can You Do?

I think I offended someone horribly today.

Whilst eating lunch with Le Boyfriend, I saw friend Stepha. Friend Stepha informed me that the potluck dinner (yes, we do potluck, and no, we’re not boring and middle-aged… I think) that we have been planning with friend Paula may be postponed, due to the latter’s commitment to cook with friends from the campus Catholic network.

Naturally, I rolled my eyes and said something like, “God damn it. Stupid Catholic meeting.” Not because I hate Catholics, mind you (well, I don’t like the Pope, but that’s another issue altogether). It’s just that Paula’s Catholic friends seem to reside in a whole different area of her life, and it’s natural for the rest of us to get weirdly possessive of her when she’s with them (because she is that awesome, yes, it’s true). Of course, that little thing called context was missing from the conversation we were having.

Shortly thereafter, I noticed that the girl at the table next to us was eyeing me with white-hot hate. I also noticed the Catholic-style (I could be wrong on that one) cross hanging around her neck. Oh dear. She had spent most of her time listening in on our conversation, which was a little weird, but I didn’t mind it. I guess at that point, she’d heard more than she could handle.

What can I say? I guess there’s one more person out there who thinks I’m an evil bigot. They better get in line, honestly.

Monday Night Poetry Club

This is one of the best short poems that I’ve ever come across, I think. It perfectly captures the peculiar nature of childhood memory against a backdrop of racism. There isn’t a single word here that’s out of place (I’m a florid writer myself, and so I like minimalism). People sometimes say that this poem is “over-quoted,” but I don’t think that this alone takes away from the experience of reading it. As Langston Hughes wrote, poetry like this addresses “the problems of freedom in a white dominated society.”

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

– Countee Cullen.

Rumble in the Jungle

The femininst blogosphere played host to yet another scandal this year. This time, the contentious topic had to do with whether or not women could wax their pubes and still be good feminists, or something along the same lines.

The debate was very culture-specific. It made wonder about Muslim feminists, where does that leave them? After all, a lot of Muslim women out there believe that shaving one’s pubes is required, or at least recommended.

I don’t really have anything at stake here, seeing as I do not give a damn about whether or not I fit into whatever stereotypical mold of “proper feminist” is currently en vogue over here (hell, I’m sure there are people out there who think that my Sleeping Venus is anti-feminist), but the entire thing did make me think as to why do I do the things I do to my body. There is no definite answer. Some traditionally feminine trappings I find aesthetically pleasing on my own body (see this poetic, raunchy post on pubes and the like), others I do because I feel pressured to (particularly because there is a whole lot more demand for Ukrainain women to be perfectly put-together, even if they’re only going out to get a carton of milk, and yes, that’s a cultural thing as much as it is a patriarchal thing), yet others I reject outright (NOT a fan of high heels, for instance). I believe these things make me (us) human.

One of the greatest feminists I know in real life is a person who not only shaves her pubes, her armpits, and her legs, but also hardly ever leaves the house without a coat of pink lipstick and an assortment of gothic jewelry. I guess that American feminists who frown on that sort of thing among their homegrown counterparts might cut her some slack because she’s “from a different culture,” or something condescending like that. And this is why this “feministier-than thou” stuff gets so complicated and upsetting after a while, because you sense that it applies only to certain people who, for whatever reason, ought to know better (or not).

People can, and should, critique each other. But the root of the problem (har har), is the fact patriarchal culture inevitably pits (hardy har har) us against each other.