The Culture Enthusiast

True Grit

Movies 9:49 AM

A Coen Brother's western with Jeff Bridges wearing an eye patch - what else do we need?

What called my attention the most about True Grit was the things that called Imdb user's attention about True Grit. I couldn't believe the topics of discussion in the movie's page. It sums up to: the movie was too violent, the language used by the characters was unrealistic and the performance of 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld was either underrated or overrated.

None of that even crossed my mind while watching the movie. I didn't think the movie was that violent. I'm usually very sensitive when it comes to violence, especially unnecessary violence, and I wasn't bothered or shocked by True Grit. As a matter of fact, despite having a very westerny story ("After a drifter murders her father, 14-year-old Mattie hires an alcoholic US Marshal to help her exact revenge") the movie is also a compelling drama and a little bit of an action movie. I sure recommend this for people who, like me, are not western fans.

Secondly, the whole deal about the language - are we all History buffs all of a sudden? During the movie, I only noticed that it was difficult to understand what Jeff Bridges was saying, but I put on the subtitles and moved on. If we feel a bunch of uneducated criminals were talking too eloquently, well, shame on us.

Lastly, there's Hailee Steinfled. People have this thing when it comes to young actors. Let's face it, it gets us and them nowhere. Take a look at another young actor with a similar name: Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense. People were all over him after The Sixth Sense and where is he now? That movie was more than 10 years ago, can you name other good movies he's done? So, Hailee did a great job in True Grit, let's leave it at that.

Actually, I was expecting more talk about her character, Mattie. This is what really made the movie interesting for me. Unlike most westerns, this had a great female character who kept me intrigued.

Think about it. What does she have going for her? Her father has just been killed. She is a 14 year old girl in a world filled with men with guns. Nobody gives her credit. And yet, she is brave and persistent. I'm not just talking about the fact that she is willing to spend time with a US Marshal and a Texas Ranger looking out for a criminal (and all that entails). But even before that, she is smart and brave. She had me on that negotiation scene.

She handled that situation perfectly and got what she wanted. Yes, I envy her. I don't have the guts to bargain (plus, I think it's a little cheap, but the main reason is the non-guts thing).

Then there's the scene where Cogburn and La Boeuf decide to leave without her and she just doesn't accept it. She is the perfect example of a person who puts her money where her mouth is. She faces a great deal of hardship ranging from sleeping with corpses, to sleeping next to an old lady who pulls the blankets to sleeping in the wilderness with snakes and God knows what.

But, most importantly, she has a real sense of justice and duty.

Her character is so unique and amazing because movies are so ready to thrown in historical inaccuracies and plainly forget common sense just for the sake of pleasing feminists.

I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples, but take the last version of The Three Musketeers. Milady de Winter was a seductive woman and a spy for Cardinal Richelieu. This 2011 version portrays her as a ninja. (You needn't see the movie, to get the gist of it check the trailer, around 1:00).

Movies are too hasty in selling us this idealized version of the past where everything is as modern as the present. One of the many problems with doing this is that you make it seem there was no way for women to be heroines in the past.

Women's bravery does not necessarily have to do with physical skills. Mattie is a true role model because she doesn't go after Tom Chaney by herself - she goes with two other guys whose jobs was to persecute criminals. She is extremely independent and smart but there is nothing unrealistic about her. She makes the most out of the resources she has: her intelligence and her endurance (plus some legal knowledge).

She reminds me of the two female leads from Gone with the Wind, Scarlett and Melanie. All of these three women were ready to suffer and sacrifice for their families. Their strength is in the ability to struggle and to survive and not in the ability to be a high heeled ninja - with make up on.

As far as I could tell, Rooster Cogburn was not the only one who had true grit.

Have you seen any of the versions of True Grit? What other movies have great (or terrible) heroines?

Image via FYMovie Posters

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How to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennet

Books 11:23 AM

It's so strange that the book How to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennet is not more popular. I used to say I didn't have enough time to read or study but this book has certainly killed that excuse. It offers tips to manage time in order to both read and ponder over what you read - which is incredibly important.

Despite being written in 1912, it's not as stuffy as you'd thing. It's actually very clear and even funny sometimes. Here's a part I really like (the highlights are mine) from chapter 5, "Tennis and the immortal soul":

You get into the morning train with your newspaper, and you calmly and majestically give yourself up to your newspaper. You do not hurry. You know you have at least half an hour of security in front of you. As your glance lingers idly at the advertisements of shipping and of songs on the outer pages, your air is the air of a leisured man, wealthy in time, of a man from some planet where there are a hundred and twenty-four hours a day instead of twenty-four. I am an impassioned reader of newspapers. I read five English and two French dailies, and the news-agents alone know how many weeklies, regularly. I am obliged to mention this personal fact lest I should be accused of a prejudice against newspapers when I say that I object to the reading of newspapers in the morning train. Newspapers are produced with rapidity, to be read with rapidity. (...)The idea of devoting to them thirty or forty consecutive minutes of wonderful solitude (for nowhere can one more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self than in a compartment full of silent, withdrawn, smoking males) is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter priceless pearls of time with such Oriental lavishness. You are not the Shah of time. Let me respectfully remind you that you have no more time than I have.

I fit perfectly into the description of a person who acts as if they had all the time in the world, though I do I try to change constantly.

The only thing the book advises I failed putting in practice is to study and focus on one subject. I really wished I could read about one area only. I guess in this respect I'm a bit like Dickie Greenleaf from The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Byt the way, this book is available online on Project Guttenberg and Librivox (audiobook).

Do you struggle to find time for reading and studying? Can you focus on only one subject?

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Living Machines by E. Michael Jones

Architecture 10:50 AM

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Addams Family Values

Analysis 2:29 PM

A post where I over-analyse Addams Family Values and ask a whole lot of questions.

When I was a child, I used to love the Addams family. They seemed so strange and at the same time so cool. I was strange and wanted to be cool, so it was the perfect movie for me. The cast was amazing and the jokes were dark and funny.

Gomez's mustache, Morticia's glowing eyes, Pugsley striped shirt... it was all fun and games until I watched Addams Family Values with a more critical eye. I didn't mean to do it, it just happened. Suddenly, I'm scared of the Addams. While I was watching this sequel I was shocked and it wasn't at the fact that the beautiful blond nanny is actually Joan Cusack.

So, we need to talk about the Addams. First off: why are they rich? The characters are different but they a) seem to accept that difference in themselves and b) not care if others don't accept it. But the producers want us to accept them too. Why not make them poor or middle class? It's like the producers thought we'd might be more responsive to them in case they were rich. Apparently, the Addams need validation.

It's like that saying: "Rich people aren't crazy, they are eccentric." Does this apply to the Addams clan? Are we willing to accept and overlook strange behaviour as long as it comes from rich people?

Notice that this is not a mere detail. The plot of both Addams Family movies revolves around people trying to get their money (first their sleazy lawyer, then a gold digger psycho).

This shouldn't be so important, but the thing is: the movie is supposed to make us like the Addams, so are we supposed to like them only if they have money?

Secondly, is Wednesday a bully? I guess so many people like Christina Ricci's performance and Wednesday's lines that it's difficult to assume she's a bad person. Let's not forget that often times in movies being evil equalls being cool.

In one of the first scenes of Addams Family Values Wednesday is shown as emboding one of the key aspects of what's wrong with the movie. She is different but she doesn't accept difference in others. In the maternity ward, Wednesday and Pugsley hear a little blond girl going on and on about where babies come from, using all the possible cliches. Wednesday turns to the girl and says her parents just "had sex".

Everything Wednesdays does is to shock others. To be more specific, to shock people with conservative values.

Take the bit about school presentations. In the first movie, Wednesday and Pugsley act out a duel which ends poring (fake?) blood on the audience, Tarantino style. But in the sequel, Wednesday delivers a speech which is (slightly) anti-American. Regardless the validity of her speech, she still goes on to imprision and burn the other kids. This type of black or white worldview (popular kids X weird kids, blond kids X dark haired kids, pilgrims X indians, parents X children) is the type of logic who leads to bullying and its extremme reaction - attacks such as the ones in Columbine.

I'm not saying that any kid who watches this movie might go on to kill his colleagues. I'm just saying that's what Wednesday did and it's what the movie proposes as cool.

Just like a true dictator (remember that Mao was on the list of possible baby names for Pubert), Wednesday does little herself, leaving all the destruction to be perpetrated by other children. They go after not only the other kids but also the camp counselours and their parents.

Lastly, who are we cheering for? Debbie is supposed to be the villain, right? The Addams are all against her and so should we. But what's the difference between Wednesday and Debbie?

Debbie didn't like her parents because instead of giving her a ballerina Barbie they gave her a Malibu Barbie - which is hilarious, I admit it. But in Wednesday's mutiny the other kids go after their parents. She seems to forgive her own parents (just like that!) but the other kids don't. Should we do as she says or as she does?

Debbie killed all her previous husbands for money but she tries to convince herself and others that it was actually their fault. The doctor was too focused on his job, the senator didn't give her expensive things to "set an example". In her words, "they had to go". Debbie also complies with that black and white logic which puts all the blame on the victim who is being killed.

Wednesday doesn't admit there was anything wrong with Debbie besides being "sloppy". Wednesday thinks she could kill her husband without being caught. To make matters worse, she goes on and test this hypothesis.

All this makes me wonder: are the Addams that strange? When I was a child I thought they were strange people, but a more fitting label would be "gothic" or just "morbid". if you look closely you'll see they (or have become) as mainstream as it gets.

If they were so strange we wouldn't share their points of view. Watching and enjoying the movie entails laughing with them at others and very rarely laughing with other people at them. The Addams always get the upperhand. Addams Family Values doesn't make fun of the Addams themselves, but at all those suburban white Americans who take their kids to camp and who watch and enjoy Disney movies and so on. The Addams and their values are the cool ones. And they can only be cool inasmuch as we share them.

Their views on history, for example, are very politically correct. Wednesday's speech against the pilgrims is no different from what was taught in my university. Earlier in the movie, Wednesday re-enacts a guillotine execution - French Revolution style - with the baby as Marie Antoinette.

The only politically incorrect joke are the ones concerning the environment. When a hippie nanny proposes a discussion on how to prevent forest fires, Wednesday replies "prevent them?" while lighting a match. There's another scene when the kids are practicing shooting arrows and Pugsley shoots an American bald Eagle - that are now extinct.

Since we mentioned Pugsley, why does he exist? He has few lines and does nothing. He only does what Wednesday tells him to. Even in camp he seems to be in the same room as she is.

Who are the boys in this movie? Joel Glicker is a shy boy who's allergic to everything and who is despised by Wednesday in the end. How are boys supposed to react to this movie if there isn't one interesting, confident boy in it?

Anyway, it's difficult to watch and enjoy Addams Family movies now. It seems that their agendas are too out there for me to overlook them. You have jokes concerning killing other people (be them your annoying camp conselours, your camp mates, your parents, your husbands etc), jokes about the devil, a glamorization of all things criminal.

Wednesday did prove her point - she is scaring me to death.

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