A gorgeous spring day in San Francisco
Viola Davis as an Avatar
In an article in the Los Angeles Times, they opined on Meryl Streep’s win. They concluded that a major factor was that actors playing real people usually win because the Academy can compare the performance to the real person. I also think it would be useful to compare the performance to to the nonperforming actor and this was a problem for Viola Davis.
I don’t remember most of Viola Davis’s parts and I don’t think that I am alone: the CIA Director in Knight and Day – which I sort of fast-forwarded through on the TV – a social worker in Traffic, a doctor – I have no idea what kind – in State of Play. (I do remember her as Mosella in Out of Sight but that only because Out of Sight is one of Michele and my favorite movies and we have seen it more than several times.) Going into The Help, I read about how everybody in Hollywood thinks she is great but I didn’t have anything to contrast her against.
Watching the Academy Awards, I did notice the stunning chick sitting on the aisle when Octavia Spencer got up to accept her award, but I had no idea it was Viola Davis. If only I had seen the real Viola before I saw her as Aibileen in The Help, I would have been much more impressed.
The Jeremy Lin story hiding the bigger story
Richard Taylor took exception to my post on Jeremy Lin and he made a really good point in the comments.
I’m concerned at the mass fascination and the way the story is being told. Feels a lot like a classic pull yourself up by the bootstraps story of the American dream. As the world falls apart around us, he is proof that we can, by dint of hard work, make it and be the stars of our own world. Colbert must love this guy. He is proving him right in every measure! Every time a real manifestation of a dream appears, we can distract ourselves from the much messier reality and tell ourselves that with just a bit more effort we can pull ourselves up without any help from our community. Maybe I’m cynical and defeatist….I – I being Steve – do want to point out that Richard does go on to say, I do applaud and celebrate Lin for his accomplishments.
I can quibble with Richard around the edges – I think Colbert’s persona would love this, not Colbert himself – but I completely agree with his main point. We read a story about Lin, or any number of other basketballers and it hides the fact that it is almost impossible to escape poverty by getting in the NBA. Lin was great in highschool – the MVP – but, when he tried to get into Stanford or UCLA via basketball, everybody he was competing against was also a MVP. He ended up at Harvard, I suspect, mostly on his grades.
When he tried to get into the NBA from Harvard, the winnowing was exponentially tougher. NBA players are all great players from basketball schools. When we read about great players – or just mid-level NBA players, who were great in college – and read about how hard they worked1 and how lucky they are, it hides the very real fact that they are also very, very, rare. We don’t read read about the kids who worked just as hard, were just as good, and didn’t get that one lucky break. They end working at 7-11 or in prison.
It is even tougher and the winners from poor small towns or the ghetto are even rarer in the financial arena. I am an idealist and a optimist, so I don’t think that the system is rigged against poor black kids – or poor Asian kids or poor white kids for that matter – I just think that the people who are already rich, want to stay there. The very rich want low tax rates and lots of loop holes not to keep working people out, but to keep them and their descendants in. Shutting down social and financial mobility is a byproduct of the system, not the goal.
We used to be the land of opportunity and now we are not. Sure, some people make it, but a smaller percentage than in most countries in Europe. We have ended up with a system that is not the American dream, but the British gentry dream. As Richard pointed out, the Lin story hides that fact.
1. Lin worked very hard, according to Inside Bay Area http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_20033515?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com Lin could barely squat 110 pounds last May, three months later, he was pushing up 231 pounds; improved his vertical leap by 3 inches; lowered his time in the pro agility run by 17 percent, to 4.4 seconds, which makes him comparable to an average NFL running back. The New York Times also has a great article on how hard he worked http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html.
Why Romney can’t beat Obama
Everybody talks about the economy when they are discussing the election and I am sure that the economy is important, but running a good campaign is also important and the Romney campaign doesn’t seem to be able to do that. They booked Tiger stadium in Detroit and 1200 people showed up and from the seating arrangement they seemed to know that not many people would show up. Four years ago, Obama FILLED stadiums. Much smaller stadiums but they were full of energy.
Elections usually come down to GOTV – get out the vote – and that takes energy. Romney is not building it. The Romney rally must have been very depressing to anybody who did show up. Community organization – GOTV – is the Obama specialty.
Fat Tuesday, Lent, and the church steps at ChiChi
Last Tuesday, Michele and I celebrated – maybe over celebrated – Fat Tuesday, today our Lent starts. For the next six weeks, we have agreed to stay off of all intoxicants (we don’t count coffee, tea, or sugar). This has pretty much become a tradition of ours and we find it sort of ironically enjoyable to honor Lent without being Christians. Following a nominally Christian ritual without being tied to the dogma – or a Hindu ritual in a temple in Bali for that matter – always gets me thinking how religions build on the religious traditions they are replacing. Maybe build is not the right word, maybe it should be expropriate or piss on.
It seems to me that it takes both temporal and physical forms. Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, takes place at about the time of the old Pagan Winter Solstice festivals. The Pagans were here first with Solstice celebrations like the Roman Saturnalia, among others, and as Christianity became the dominant religion, it took on the trappings of Saturnalia but changed them to a celebration of Christ’s birth. Part of what happens in that the holiday is already there, so tweaking it to become the new holiday is easier than starting fresh but part of it is also sticking a metaphorical finger in their – whoever they are – metaphorical face.
I know that we are doing that in reverse. That is actually what we are doing. Every year we have a Solstice celebration that works because it is already holiday party season: the tree is up, the yule log is lit, so making it about the Solstice is pretty easy. That is also what we are doing with Lent. After all, Lent really is a result of adjusting to the scarcity of late winter, early spring. It makes a virtue of a problem. Like Gefilte fish came from the poor Jews of Eastern Europe not being able to afford a fish worth cooking whole, or beef bourguignon being the peasants answer to tough pieces of meat. The point being, the causes of Lent were already there; the Church just took it over.
In the same way. the Conquistadors, or Missionaries, whoever they were, built their new churches on old sacred sites. They jammed the new religion down the old religion’s throat. Now comes the fun part: in Chichicastenango, Guatemala – and I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of similar situations – the Mayas have now turned the Church stairs back into their Temple. They have re-expropriated the Sacred Temple. By acknowledging Lent, by honoring it; I like to think we are doing the same thing.