Pearls of Wisdom from Mother Pearl: On the Brotesque

One year after I graduated from the bastion of white privilege that is my former high school, my mother got her own taste of Deerfield.* After I left for college, my mother decided to audit a Chinese class in which she would be the sole adult, surrounded by 15-year-old New England preppy oppressors-in-training. (To put this in context, my mother began studying Chinese in the 1960s so that she would be prepared for the global Socialist revolution. I also have a picture of this woman holding a sign on the streets of San Francisco that reads STOP BLACK PANTHER EXTERMINATION. As for the average student at Deerfield...well, let's just say that on Martin Luther King Day, when a black speaker gave a speech about how oppression & white privilege still exists, he was booed off the stage. Literally booed.)

Mother Pearl on Her Classmates and their Pink Pants:

"Why do the boys dress like that? With the pink pants! I mean, you have to be rich to dress that stupid. It's like PLUMAGE. (long pause) But in the end, what's so stupid is that they are new money with no class compared to Chinese dynasties. Sometimes when they speak I wanna hurl."

For more reflections on the lasting effects of preppies, see Lau's blog and this online version of the Official Prep Handbook.

*Warning: This video features pink pants IN THE FLESH.

Turn Up Your Radio

Perusing through journals tonight I found a list called "My Favorite Songs...In my 21st Year." Thank you, 21-year-old self.

Slow Dance - John Legend
Valerie - Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse
Rock n Roll - The Velvet Underground
Nothing Can Change This Love - Sam Cooke
Call Me - Aretha Franklin
The Big Payback - James Brown
Caravan - Van Morrison
Stop Breaking Down - White Stripes

Watching that performance of Caravan confirmed for me once and for all that whatever the writer equivalent of Van Morrison is, that's the writer I want to be. If it requires a stretchy purple-sparkle suit and vigorous leg kicks, this is no obstacle for me. If it requires reading poetry and humorous memoir in dive bars whilst the haters hate, so be it. I believe I will skip over the drunken slurring, however. Sorry, Van the Man.

Pearls of Wisdom from Mother Pearl: The First Installment

My mother is a woman of stupendous quotation. In what is sure to be the first of a fruitful and fruity series, I offer you this.

Mother Pearl on Amateur Hour and her current profession:

“When you’re an undertaker, Halloween just seems like Amateur Night. Kind of like what New Year's Eve is like for alcoholics.”

[My mom and dad.]

Being Predictable

Boxing is going well. One day there will be a jump roping emergency in my neighborhood and I shall be well-equipped to rise to the occasion.

I'm actually about to head out to the boxing gym, though ten minutes ago I was totally not psyched to go. But then I watched...YOU GUESSED IT:



Me siento fuerte ahora!!!

My Brechtal Exam

In the fourth year of my supremely useful liberal arts education, a professor opened her lecture on Bertolt Brecht by saying that, after she finished speaking, we would be fully equipped to use the phrase "Brechtian theatre" at cocktail parties. This was bleak, as I had never been invited to a cocktail party. I spent the lecture doodling in despair.

Then I saw The Twilight Saga: Eclipse!!! I realized that the painful feeling in my chest as I watched it was, in fact, Brechtian detachment! I realized, indeed, that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is fine Brechtian theatre...right??!??

Here is a boring and detailed description of what Brechtian theatre is, but in essence, Bertolt was all about the audience never being able to "get into" the fantasy of the play/film, so as to keep a critical distance from it. (Bertolt actually had nothing to do with this since he stole the idea from his girlfriend -- SURPRISE!) "He" suggested several ways to achieve this:

1. Whenever the audience is in danger of getting sucked into the storyline, you snap! them out of it.

This is sooo Eclipse. Just as I was getting into the PSA about domestic violence that was any discussion between Bella and Edward, the camera would SNAP! to this:



Then, just as I was holding my breath about who Bella would choose as her forever lover, SNAP! Kristen Stewart would forget her line!

I know -- you're thinking, "Wow, I can't focus on this storyline at all! Damn you, Bertolt Brecht!"

2. Distance between the audience and performance can also be maintained by avoiding "good" or "bad" characters who a viewer is supposed to root for, identify with, or despise.

The director really went to town with this one. We are given three choices:

BELLA:



Bella might as well have been represented by a stringy-haired Muppet whose mouth couldn't close.



Stephanie Meyer cleverly makes her unrelatable by having her cream her pants over Edward's promise that he will woo her like it was done "in his time," i.e. back when women were property.

EDWARD:



Whose "smile" makes it impossible to tell whether he is pleased or has shat himself.

JACOB:



The most redeeming character in the movie still proves he isn't that great by having a crush on Bella, being into non-consensual kissing, and transforming into a badly animated wolf.


Am I right or am I right? How much would Brecht love Eclipse? Right?