June 19, 2010

A Tale of Two Kids

nce upon a time there were two kids in the third grade.

Stacy had lived in this same town and gone to the same school all her life. Chris had bounced from town to town and state to state and this school was her fourth school, not counting preschools. Stacy and Megan had been best friends forever and now they decided to also be friends with Chris. They were good friends for a time and their little group expanded over the course of a year to also include Penny and Anna.

What Stacy Knew
Stacy and Megan had been friends forever. They did everything together and Stacy always declared how something was to go. She said when to do schoolwork, what number to stop at and wait for the other person to catch up - so they could turn their schoolwork in together - and what games they'd play. She let Megan decide the games sometimes, but mostly Stacy ran everything.

Then along came Chris. Chris was freaking bull-headed and not very cooperative. She tricked Stacy into thinking she'd also follow Stacy's orders, but she didn't. Why one day, Chris worked ahead on a language arts assignment and not only went past number ten and didn't wait for Stacy (and Megan) to catch up, but when Megan saw where Chris was ... and where Stacy was ... Chris made Megan also work ahead. And then Chris turned in her paper before Stacy and Megan! They were friends; they were supposed to do everything together!

On the playground, Chris had ideas. Big ideas. She suggested they play Star Wars. And somehow most of the third grade got involved. And Chris was directing everything. Stacy won, however, because she got to play Princess Leia while Chris didn't get to be any character because she was bossing everyone around and directing the whole thing.

It was pretty funny, though. Chris decided - and Stacy agreed - that Princess Leia and Darth Vader were actually getting drunk together during the interrogation. Stacy (as Leia) and some boy playing Vader pretended to stumble around, hanging on each other and hiccuping and singing "How Dry I Am." Stacy loved being the center of attention. And hanging on that boy. And being the center of attention.

But honestly, Chris was getting too uppity. It was Stacy who decided what the group did, particularly now that it had grown during fourth grade. To teach Chris who was in charge, Stacy cajoled one of the boys to "take care of her" during lunch.

Despite her best efforts, Stacy was appalled to find out that the boy didn't beat up Chris. And Chris somehow managed to not get in trouble for fighting. In fact, no one except Stacy seemed to even realize there was a fight going on!

Chris did seem to settle down - a little - so Stacy relaxed. But it wasn't long before she sent another boy after Chris. And another. And another.

In the beginning of fifth grade, Stacy got a lucky break. The teachers decided to re-evaluate all of the kids before placing them into groups. Chris got bumped down in language arts which meant that she was apart from the group more. Stacy worked hard on freezing Chris out so she could go back to helping the group be more of a group and support each other better. It worked. By the end of fifth grade, even though Chris had somehow convinced the teachers she should move back up to highest language arts, she was more distant and finally drifted away from the group.

Which was good, because Stacy was pretty sure that Chris was crazy. Why else would she argue with every little thing Stacy said or did?

What Chris Knew
Chris was tired of moving. She wanted friends that would last forever. Chris did everything fast. Run fast, talk fast, usually came to fast decisions. Schoolwork especially was done quickly so she could pull out a book and read something that was actually interesting. Schoolwork, to be frank, was simply a stumbling block in the way of life, always invading and interrupting. It's not that she didn't like learning, but schoolwork at this new school was way simpler than she was used to and it was boring. She was having to repeat work that she'd done at the beginning of the year in her old school. So she had a lot of time to think up new games to play with her friends.

Because she'd moved so much, she had a tendency to plan everything out in her head ... and when things didn't actually work out that way when it was time to act, she got very confused. Didn't everyone know this was the most efficient or most fun way to do things?

In language arts class one day, Chris worked to number ten like Stacy said. She looked up and over at Megan's paper. She was on number five. Stacy was on number three. Chris wanted to go get a book. She fidgeted. Bored. Bored, bored, bored. Looked over again. Oh for crying out loud. She worked the rest of the worksheet (the same one she'd done back at her old school weeks ago). She was appalled when Stacy finally looked up to discover that not only had Chris worked ahead, but so had Megan, and then Stacy burst into tears. She'd have felt way more bad about it if Stacy hadn't told the teacher that Chris had done something to her and made the teacher mad at Chris.

In fact, she was often confused as to why Stacy was mad at her this time. Also confused as to why Megan called Chris an egomaniac. Or why when she tried to make up for doing something wrong by genuinely saying sorry and offering a peace-offering gift, it was always the wrong thing to do. (Even Chris' Mom would say, "Oh Chris, you didn't. You can't just give things after you make someone mad. You can't buy their friendship.")

The more Chris tried to stand up for herself, the more she got in trouble. Teachers and her mom both told her to be more assertive, but it seemed like she'd never learn how. She was either just going along with everyone else to keep the peace or she was in trouble. There seemed to be no in between.

She didn't understand why Stacy kept sending boys to beat her up at recess. Or how Stacy managed to keep the teachers away so the fight wasn't broken up. Of course, Chris could take care of herself and no boy actually beat her up. In fact, other than the boy who fought like a girl, clawing at her arms with his fingernails, the fights were actually kind of interesting.

They all tried out for softball. Anna, Penny and Stacy were on the same team as Chris, but Megan lived across the line and had to be on another team. Chris wound up as pitcher, which was cool because she got way too bored in the outfield. She wished they were playing baseball instead, though. Pitching underhand was freaking lame.

Of course, Stacy couldn't stand for Chris to be good at something, so Stacy practiced pitching and practiced and practiced until by the summer after fifth grade, she was top pitcher instead of Chris. Chris let her. Told the coach she was tired of fighting and didn't even want to pitch any more.

Chris was pretty much exhausted in general.

What The Other Kids Didn't Know
Stacy and Chris were more alike than either one of them knew. As it turned out, they both had control issues although none of the kids would have necessarily called it that at the time. They also had the same reason to need to control things.

Stacy's mom was an alcoholic.
Chris' dad was an alcoholic.

As it turned out, so was Anna's dad which might explain why she had no patience for the power games but just spoke her mind and let the chips fall where they may.

Stacy's mom was checked out.
Chris' dad was checked out ... except late at night when he was a little too involved.

Neither kid was in a good position. Neither kid was allowed to control much of their own environment and so, they thought they both just wanted to get their way and feel in control of something.

Chris drifted away from the group because she was confused. Stacy was glad to have won.

In the end, however, neither kid won anything. Both of them continued to deal with an alcoholic and abusive parent. Stacy's mom eventually left ... disappeared. Chris' father remained overly involved late at night and Chris remained unable to speak of it (and almost unable to remember by daylight).

Some twenty years later there's a lot more understanding. Neither kid was actually trying to affect the other or hurt the other so much as understand the very confusing world around them.

There's always more to the story than the bits and pieces from one player. And even when you have the pieces both players are willing (or able) to share ... there's usually even more than that to the story.

Neither Stacy nor Chris was a bully, although listening to the opposite kid in third grade might have convinced you otherwise. There was certainly a war going on and it's a shame that both kids were so good at functioning as if everything were fine. They both could have used more intervention and questions to perhaps ferret out the causes for their behaviour back in the third grade.

But then, that's what it means for many survivors - not so much to ignore, but to rise above anyway. To insist that they can do things themselves, handle things themselves, no matter how tired or frustrated they are - or how unfair it might be. To not explain, because it's not possible to explain what you don't really understand. To take impossible situations and bull through them stubbornly to come through on the other side.

Because really? What other choice is there?

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:21 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

March 30, 2010

Grace

I have railed a couple of times (at least) about television shows I've liked that have been canceled. Yes, I'm one of those people who gets bitterly angry when "my stories" are interrupted, whether that be a book series, comic book run or television. I am notorious for snapping the head off of anyone who attempts communication with me during the last 50-100 pages of a novel that I'm into. I am known for buying an entire story arc of comics and not reading them until the arc is completed and purchased so that I can get through the entire thing in one sitting.

It's not that I use stories as escape from my own life, because that's never actually been the attraction. Instead, others' stories are a clear view into how people work. What makes people tick. Why do they act in the ways that they do. I learned, early on, that a really good story, no matter where it is found, doesn't just tell you about the unique experience of a particular person or group - instead it both tells a unique history and emphasizes how in our disparities we are so very, very similar.

In short, I become utterly fascinated with the dichotomy of different and similar in a good story.

Television stories, however, are often little more than amusement to me. They are rarely allowed to be complex enough to truly explore the differences deeply enough until they become similarities. Television rarely surprises me and it rarely requires my full attention. Frankly, in the last 10 years, I think my television has been on just too damn much - but while I prefer to listen to music, my partner can't read with music on, so I've grown accustomed to no radio. She enjoys having the television on for background noise - I can't read with spoken word as background noise, so my reading habit has gone largely by the wayside and has been replaced by various activities I can do whilst watching television. We watch a fair amount of DVDs since television is largely a cotton candy affair - nice and fluffy, but rarely anything of substance. With DVDs, we can stick to shows that require attention and are at least somewhat intellectually stimulating.

I watched Joss Whedon's Firefly and Dollhouse regularly, fascinated by the complex characters the writers and creator wove into being. Joan of Arcadia was another show that was complex, trusting the viewers to pay attention and think for themselves. Dark Angel started out as another complex show, but the more the network (rather than the writers) screwed with it, the less intelligent and demanding it became, until it, like all the others I've mentioned here, was canceled.

These were all shows which attempted, some better than others, to examine how people work and why they work the ways they do. These were all shows which required thought and sometimes required watching the show a second or third time to catch important nuances. They could all certainly be watched at a surface level - at least I think they worked that way as well. But there was a deeper side to each of these which truly made them worthwhile.

However, only two television shows have ever required my full and complete attention: Showtime's Dexter ... and TNT's Saving Grace. Often, I have finished watching an episode of Grace only to immediately hit "Start Over" and watch it again.

I should have known it was too complex to continue to air, despite its very high ratings for TNT. Fox Television Studios, the producer of Saving Grace, decided last summer (at the end of season 3) that DVD sales were not "good enough" to continue making the show. Apparently they agreed to shoot six additional episodes and TNT is paying for another three episodes so the writers can tie up the series. Thank goodness TNT decided to do that.

Saving Grace has been more complex and important television than anything I've ever seen. As fascinating as Joan of Arcadia's questions into religion and God were, Grace has taken it to a completely new level, at once more realistic and less compromising than Joan (don't get me wrong - I still think Joan of Arcadia was awesome television).

Watching last night's episode was an experience I can't describe. It was so intense, so realistic, so well acted, written and well-paced - I've never seen television like it. And what I find particularly fascinating is how well it meshed with Same Kind of Different as Me - the book we just finished reading in Sunday School, with current events, with Passover and Palm Sunday both.

A quick recap of the show:
Grace Hanadarko is a detective in Oklahoma City, on the major crimes unit. She's a typical Southern cop - hard drinking, plentiful smoking, hard language, and promiscuous. Except, of course, instead of being a good ole boy, she's female. You get the impression that Grace has embraced the stereotype rather than the writers - because there are plenty of moments where that shell of the good ole cop breaks and we see the real person beneath it. Grace comes from a large Catholic family - her older sister was at the Murrah Building on the day of the bombing. Her father was a firefighter and at least one (if not two) brothers are also firefighters. Another brother is a priest. (She also has a sister and a very beloved nephew - the son of the dead sister.)

The first seasons deals with Grace having a "last-chance" angel named Earl, a real salt-of-the-Earth almost hick type. During the first season, Grace eventually confronts and acknowledges a series of events which largely shaped the woman that she became. (No spoilers here!) The second and third seasons continue to delve into questions of religion and God (never going so far as to call one religion any better or more true than another) but also delves more deeply into the lives of all of the cast. All of their trials. All of their joys. How each of them deals with the myriad of shit that life hands out to all of us. The third season ends with Grace trying to help Neely - someone she met through Earl's intervention and cryptic prodding. Grace and Neely are on top of a twelve story building ... and jump. The last bit of footage shows that both women are alive and well despite the fall.

This final season begins with them being rushed to the hospital ... and then tackles the questions of belief, faith, miracles and God immediately, without reservation and without trying to sugar-coat anything.

How does Grace, a rather avowed non-believer, deal with a miracle?

As is the character's wont, she does not take it gracefully, but spends the next day rebelling, continuing behaviours she knows are excessive ... and are "naughty." It's as if she has to wash away the good of the miracle with the mud and muck of the world she knows. A world where miracles happen is an unknown that Grace cannot trust. She knows what she gets with a night of beer and tequila. It's comfortable and familiar.

And yet ... she can no longer believe in the fight she's fought for so long.

An early scene in the episode:

Grace, at the altar:
(looks out over the empty cathedral-like church. Stretches out arms in crucifixion pose) Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
(pause)
(Grace takes off running. Goes to the podium area - one of the fancy versions w/ stairs up to its little cupola type spot. Grabs the fancy carved edges of the podium and lets out an almighty scream)
Okay. You've hunted me down like a spurned lover. I'm not going to take no for an answer. How can I deny you any more. You scare me.
I don't know what to trust, I don't know who you are. What you want. I mean, look at this place. This glory for you. Is it enough? Am I enough? I'm trying to hear you but I can't do it in this place. Not here.

(footsteps)

Earl?

It's the kind of breakthrough that Earl has been hoping for ... but we hear no response from God, only the footsteps which belong to a stranger rather than Earl.

In fact, it seems that Earl is with everyone around Grace ... but not really going to her. He seems nervous and in some ways, I think he is in awe of Grace - both who she was before and after the fall. Earl is afraid of the miracle he's seen because Earl is a softie ... and where there has been great light, must then fall great darkness ... and Earl hates to see anyone suffer.

The entire episode is a well-timed choreography blending darkness and light, good and evil, the sublime and the mundane and does so in such a way that you are completely captivated by the story ... and despite the overt theme and language, you do not feel preached AT. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction ... and Earl fears the backlash that will be caused by Grace's miracle fall.

As I write this, I can't help but marvel about the oppositional nature of the show - Grace falls not to her doom, Grace doesn't fall from the heavens to become a fallen, prideful being like Lucifer. Grace falls ... to gain grace/Grace.

And the effects are far-reaching. Her brother Johnny denies that he's ever seen an angel when a doctor questions him on Neely's behalf in the hospital. Later, Johnny sits next to Earl in a bar, the local hang-out.

Earl:
Your boss at the Vatican might be pretty happy. A miracle for the whole world to see.

Father John:
Oh you'd be surprised. The Vatican doesn't need proof of God's existence. When unexplained occurrences are attributed to God, the process to confirm or deny, embrace or reject, causes, excuse me, a shitstorm of political and societal repercussions which frankly, the church doesn't really deal with.

Earl:
So these two women saying they got an angel.

John:
Yeah.

Earl:
What do you think? You think they got an angel?

John:
(instantly) No. (long pause) Yes.
Peter denied Jesus three times because he was afraid to die. What am I doing? Worry about being silly or ending my career.
Yes, I know those two women had an angel.

Earl:
See. Until the proverbial cock has crowed, there's always time to make it right.

But intertwined with this story of a modern-day miracle, with Grace's newly burgeoning belief, is a cop story about a dog who killed a person. The mundane and the sublime. The muck and the glory.

[THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS A SPOILER ABOUT THE EPISODE]
The easy out for the writers would have been to make the character I'm calling "Dark" be the culprit of murder by dog. It would have been quite easy to say that just as Denver in Same Kind of Different As Me said that Deb's light was shining so bright that there would be a darkness coming to balance it, that there be some kind of supernatural act which precipitated the woman's death. That somehow "Dark" used a perfectly good, sweet and innocent German Shepherd and somehow forced him to kill the girl, without the owner's consent. And I was prepared to suspend disbelief and go with it. But the show is more complex and realistic. Why take a cheap and unrealistic shortcut? Blending with the storyline of Grace's discovery of grace, we have a storyline where the rest of the cops in Grace's unit uncover a man who took a sweet puppy and used him as bait. Trained him to attack. Trained the dog to attack people. At the neck. This man trained his dog, sent the dog after this woman "because she was there" and had the dog kill her. And then he took the dog out back behind a warehouse, shot him and threw him in a dumpster.
[END SPOILER]

God did not kill the woman. The mysterious stranger, "Dark," did not kill the woman. It was simply man's inhumanity to man.

Likewise, God did not kill Deborah and take her from her husband, Ron (the co-author of Same Kind of Different as Me). As Dewey (one of the cops in Saving Grace) says, "shit happens."

Shit happens and how we react to it, what we choose to do with our experiences, how we allow those experiences to shape us ... that has always been the core element of Saving Grace that has kept it amazing television.

At the end of Sunday School, as we were finishing our discussion of the book, a discussion question was "how do you think Denver, who'd had such bad things happen all his life, could keep such a simple faith in God? What keeps us from having such a simple faith?"

Now, I'm not going to preach at you. I don't do that.
But I think the answer here is very simple, regardless of what god/gods/higher power you believe in.

I think it's often how we're raised. I don't mean raised with or in a religion. It's something more basic and more profound than that. I think it's with what expectations we are raised. If you are raised to believe things like "if you work hard, you'll have a great job, career, family, interior life, stuff, whatever" - then I think you come to expect those things. Most people do not believe they are doing bad ... most people think they live good lives. So why, then, if you are living a good life, do you not have whatever it is that's missing? Why don't you have kids? Why did this bad thing happen to you? Why did you lose your job, your career, your wife?

We can blame ourselves ... I didn't do enough. I wasn't good enough. But I think there are times when we discover that we really didn't do anything wrong. A friend once told a story of how she went to church every week. And then more than once a week. She was very, very into it. Tried to constantly do good, to live as God and her pastor wanted.

And as she walked home one evening, she was raped under a bridge.

How could God let such a thing happen to her, His faithful servant? She was doing GOOD ... how could God allow this to happen?

She expected, like many people, that doing good, being good, is also protection from evil.

On the other hand, Denver was raised an ignorant farmhand. He owed everything to The Man who owned the property, his clothes, his shitty window-less shotgun shack. He was taught that "this is the way things are." He was taught that God stands with you in times of trouble.

In last night's episode of Saving Grace, the writers covered this as well. Neely is coming to realize that God has not spoken directly to her as she'd thought. She's disappointed, crushed.

Neely:
What's going to take me away from here, Earl? From this feeling I have right now?

Earl:
We're gonna stay smack in the middle of where you are. You and me. Face the feeling.

And while that's not the ending of the episode, it is the ending of this post. Cuz we're gonna sit here, you and me, and face the feeling right here in the middle of where we are now.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:40 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

February 27, 2010

The Narcissist

There once was a girl with a curl in the middle of her fore'ead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Her backyard was a thing of wonderment. The patio was covered by a metal roof bent to and fro like a piece of corrugated cardboard. The far ends of the roof were supported by pieces of what looked to me like wrought iron metal. Standing underneath it during a storm, I would completely lose myself in the sounds the rain made on that patio roof.

Staring out at the yard from the patio and the right side of the yard was bounded by a typical chain link fence. The left was a tall, tall privacy fence with slender boards with practically sharp points - it reminded me of an old west fort. The back fence was the same as the left, but only as tall as the chain link fence. I'd never seen a wooden fence so short before.

But the best part was the old willow trees. The one practically in front of the patio was okay, but a bit sparse. The one off to the left, though ... I played jungle in the branches hanging down every time I went out back. It was interesting how the yard was exotic and somewhat forbidding on the far side - by the tall privacy fence, but open and clear near the chain link side.

The interior of the house excited my imagination just as much - the floor in the den was a wood parquet that I was always dying to take apart. After all, it looked like a floor made out of thin wooden blocks. I always wondered what other designs I could make with the floor if I could just be left alone for a few hours ....

The hallway back to the bedrooms was always dark. The carpet was old and red and had a path worn down the center. I was fascinated by this and would try to walk against the wall, where there was still loads of cushy padding, just to be different. Even the walls were odd. A bit of molding created a frame every so often on the wall. And inside that was some red wallpaper. Maybe some day I'll find a picture of that or try to draw it from memory ... but the pattern of the wallpaper was raised and flocked ... and apparently I was not supposed to pet it.

The front room of the house was a combination living room/sitting room and dining room. The carpet was white. There was a HUGE blue velvet couch underneath a large painting of little boats on a European beachfront. The end tables and coffee tables had magazines carefully arranged, a few tasteful knicknacks and a couple of candy dishes with lids. My first foray into learning to be quiet was trying to remove the glass lid from the blue candy dish to have one piece of hard candy. It was a game I played with myself even when I had asked and been given permission to have a piece of candy.

It really wasn't about the candy ... it was about the challenge.

Everything in that house was a challenge to me of some sort. An exploration of new things. I would crawl underneath the dining room table - a gorgeous Heywood-Wakefield piece with legs curved like the rib bones of a dinosaur - and be lost in my own adventures for hours. Sometimes I was in a submarine, a rocketship or a dinosaur's belly. Sometimes it was a cave.

In retrospect, I was often so overwhelmed by the experience of my grandparents' house in Oklahoma, that I was rather lost in my own little world when there.

This mostly kept me out of trouble.

And like most little kids, I thought Grandma was perfect.

In retrospect that was a combination of a couple of factors. As a child, I largely wanted to be left alone to my own devices. That's not to say that I didn't fall into the tedious "I'm bored" trap, because I did. I did want some attention from adults. But for the most part, if you gave me a project I was interested in, I was pretty self-sufficient and content to be left alone for hours.

Grandma was good at that. We'd go shopping for a few toys or books and then she'd expect me to entertain myself thereafter. She'd give me toys that she felt my aunt didn't want any more (while most of the time she was correct about that ... she also screwed up rather royally more often than I'd like to admit). She gave me my aunt's Mego Batman and Robin and then took me to the store to get some vehicles (and maybe a bad guy - I'm a little fuzzy on that now). These were things my mom considered "boy toys" and Mom would never let me have them. Frankly, I wasn't sure how they were truly different from the Barbie dolls she handed down to me from her childhood, but there it was.

Of course, the stereotype of the grandma in the U.S. is that grandmas spoil grandkids. So naturally she got me special things.

Looking back with adult eyes, though, it was more than that. She would purposely buy the things that Mom most wanted me to not have. A six-shooter. A drum (she'd been very specifically told NO DRUMS on multiple occasions). Various "boy toys" by Mom's definition. All things that made Grandma look good ... and Mom look like an ogre. And it wasn't so much about making me happy ... although she did enjoy making me happy ... but it was often about the adulation and attention she got by gifting me with these things. As well as the opportunity to make Mom feel bad - or make me feel like Mom was in the wrong.

For years, I saw her as my protector. Where Mom seemed arbitrary and overly controlling, Grandma was sure to let me march to the beat of my own drum (that she gave me, of course). Where Mom always seemed to interrupt my playtime (or project time) with an arbitrary chore that for some reason had to be done RIGHT NOW OR THE UNIVERSE WILL IMPLODE, Grandma had no chore agenda for me.

And as her grandchild, that was exactly what I needed.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:24 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

February 15, 2010

The Stories Our Age Brings

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:13 PM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 18, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are

1963. Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are

This is a children's book iconic, so well-known, so beloved ... and so short ... it's hard to believe Hollywood would even attempt to make a movie out of it. Of course, they're making re-makes of re-makes, so I suppose they've totally used up all of their creativity anyway. I could rant, but why waste the energy? We all know Hollywood's been sucking for a long time now and that they're making movies designed to be understood by people who've done so much crack and huffed so much paint they can barely stand upright.

Let's face it. Most Hollywood movies don't encourage thought. Those that do, get panned as too artsy or high-falutin'.

(Yes, I'm generalizing. Overstating the case. That's not really a good thing either, but let's roll with it for a minute.)

Anyhow, back to Sendak. When I saw Todd McFarlane's Where the Wild Things Are toys, I was over the moon. I was teaching at a university and my students were working on their essays during class. I was on a computer in the front of the room, ready to help if they needed anything - a student walked up while I was discovering these toy/statues.

"What's that?"

"Where the Wild Things are action figures."

"What's that?"

I blinked. He had never seen the book. So, the day before Spring Break, I brought the book in and after we'd done a little work, told them they could leave if they wanted, but those who wanted to stay, we'd sit down on the floor and have a little story time. I promised it would be quick. There were a couple of kids who started to leave ... but since the bulk of them were already plopping their butts down on the floor, most stayed. I think only 1 or 2 actually left.

Upon hearing that this book was to be made into a movie, I was furious. And it was going to be a live-action flick instead of animated. I was HORRIFIED.

And then I saw the trailer.

I was hooked and couldn't wait for it to come out.

It was absolutely fantastic.

It is not a typical Hollywood flick.

It is not a movie for children the same age as the book's original audience.

It is primarily a movie for adults, not because it's too scary or inappropriate ... but because kids aren't really the target audience. Spike Jonez is mostly reminding us what it was to be a child. The immediacy of emotion, the attempts to fix everything, the surety that a good story could fix the world just by your own force of will and belief. The mercurial emotions - gleeful one moment and devastated beyond the ability to explain in words the next. In fact, the movie is largely about being without words ... and learning to find words ... and being content knowing that sometimes words are completely unnecessary.

I've seen criticism that this movie encourages bad behaviour in children. Not really, although children do mimic what they see and they are sure to mimic the snowball fights and dirt clod wars and perhaps even the odd moment of biting. But they do this because they are children, just like Max and just like Max they are learning how to deal with their emotions and urges ... and their anger.

That's the core of this flick. How to deal with anger, with relationships, with living in community with other people.

Kids are not born knowing how to deal with anger. They are not born understanding that their actions have consequences both emotional and physical.

Max, in the beginning of the film, is a very angry little boy. He's ultimately pretty good at heart, but he is a wild thing. He is acting out. On the one hand, he wants to fix everything and make everyone happy all of the time. On the other hand (or claw), he doesn't know what to do with the anger he feels when he's lonely or sad or can't help his mom to not be sad. And with all of that confusion and anger and frustration, he behaves, oddly enough, like a child.

This is not to excuse him, mind you. His behaviour is unacceptable. His mother's reactions are not depressing, at least not to me, they're freaking realistic. She is tired. She is stressed. And while the boy is a wild thing ... she is obviously doing something right as he's also kind-hearted (when he thinks things through all the way).

However, children have to act like children in order to learn how they are supposed to behave. And if we ignore bad behaviour, they learn nothing and they act like Charlie Weis when they grow up. This movie does not hit us over the head with the punishments Max gets in order to learn how to behave ... that's a typical Hollywood gambit. Max learns it more organically than that. And sure, it's pretty obvious that there a Wild Thing that rather parallels Max ... but I think the movie manages to make that character an extension of Max's psyche in a way that's more of a literary foil than a dumbed-down version.

It's a film that captured, for me, what it was to be a child. It captured all of the things I promised myself I would never forget - how hard it is when no one has time for you, how impossible it is to explain yourself and what you're thinking and feeling sometimes.

Kids watching this flick may act out for a while after seeing it. Testing boundaries and to a certain extent, feeling that momentary freedom of just acting rather than thinking. The movie walks a very fine line with Max's behaviour. As adults, I don't think we need to see his mother punishing him because really, we get that Max gets it - how bad his behaviour has been. It's subtle, but it's clearly there. Children - well, it depends on the maturity and intellectual capabilities of the specific child (or their attention span - the movie isn't really paced for kids). Some of them will get it. Some of them will think Max got away with murder and that they can as well.

If you take a child to this movie, it's up to us as adults to DISCUSS it with the kid afterward. Not hammer them about what was right or wrong about Max's behaviour. Not point out how much trouble they'd be in if they ever behaved that way. Discuss all of it. Ask them if they ever feel that lonely. If they ever get that terribly out of sorts that they feel like an out-of-control wild thing. Tell them how you used to be. How you sometimes still feel those feelings. And what you do to cope with the feelings and still behave like a proper person instead of a wild thing.

I loved this movie because it's not a passive thing. Sure, you can turn your brain off and watch it if you want. You might even enjoy it that way.

But if you engage with it and with other people ... if you discuss it ... the issues it brings up ...

Well, then it's a film that is as timeless as the book itself. A book which caused quite a bit of controversy itself when it was first published. And even more when it snagged the Caldecott.

One of my favourite bits (and it's giving nothing away, it's depicted on some versions of the movie poster) - is the parallel between Max and a Wild Thing walking through the desert and the very similar poster for the absolutely wretched George Lucas flick. Without overdoing it, Jonez is making a comparison, I think, that each of us has an Anakin/Vader battle of our own. Really, Jonez probably places more emphasis and symbolism on the desert the characters cross and its mere existence on the island of the wild things more than he was making a nerd reference to Episode One, but the visual "one-liner" was just one of many delights I found in the movie. For me, that was a still frame every bit as rich and engaging as a page from Sendak's original book.

I hope the movie does well. Maybe it will encourage Hollywood to make more films that don't require we turn off our brains and mindlessly consume without engagement.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:50 PM | Comments (6) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

Homes

When I was just starting school, we moved to a very magical place. The north side of Austin, in a little subdivision called Balcones Woods. You got there via the highway, passing a couple of active quarries - the subdivision was marked by a large stone wall turned into a sign ... that was Balcones Woods Drive, a long, winding road into the subdivision with little branches coming off of it like tiny creeks fracturing off a slightly larger river.

Having just come from the frozen northlands of Indiana and townhouse living, I was mesmerized with the duality of our new house. If I stood in the front yard and faced south, it was a neighborhood. If I stood in the backyard, faced north and through the section of fence that Dad had taken down ... woods. It was beautiful and I was in heaven.

Dad began carving out areas of the backyard for plants. There was a border lined with decorative cement "fence" pieces, scalloped like little half circles erupting from the ground - and rose bushes and other plants safely ensconced between them and the fence. There was the garden area to the west side of the yard. And one little "wild" patch that Dad never did figure out what he wanted to do with. In a lot of ways, that was my favourite area, oppositional child that I was.

Despite my allergies, I spent long and happy hours in the backyard. I learned to not give completely in to Mom's fear of wasps and bees, although they do make me rather nervous now. I played with little garter snakes ... and brought them up to show Mom and Dad both before learning that 1) Mom is terrified of any creepy-crawly, but most especially snakes and 2) some snakes were serious business. Dad was good about it. He told me what to watch for in rattlers - but I never did see one. I'm not sure we really discussed cottonmouths much, but we probably should have.

I continued to pick up and play with my little ribbon snakes, however. And lizards. If I could have caught the rabbits that came into the yard, I'd've picked them up as well.

In the evenings we'd watch as the rabbits and deer would come to the garden for a snack. Dad was alternately furious with the wildlife and entranced. We could have built a critter-fence around the garden, but somehow despite his complaining, Dad never built it. I wonder now if it wasn't because he, too, enjoyed watching the animals come creeping into the backyard through the gap in our back fence.

One of the most memorable and even magical moments, however, was one shared by the entire neighborhood.

I don't know how the whole neighborhood knew to open their front doors and come outside. This was long before cell phones or even cordless phones. Besides, no one could hardly move or take their eyes off the scene.

A large buck was leaping diagonally across Balcones Woods Drive.

I can remember watching as it passed our house, lightly touching down and then this surging ripple in the muscles of the hindquarters and with this silent explosion of energy he was flying all the way across the street to the edge of Julie Koska's yard. Another surge and he was at the edge of Keith's yard, next door to ours. In a matter of heartbeats he was bounding down the street and around the curve out of our sight.

It was one of the most beautiful events I've ever witnessed. It seemed to happen so quickly and yet it also happened in slow motion.

And while it was a beautiful event ... it was also the harbinger of bad things to come.

You see, the subdivision was expanding. We were forced to put our section of back fence back up because the builders were going to put in a two-story house behind us. The woods behind us were bulldozed. Rabbits, opossums, snakes ... these were just a few critters we saw trying to move into our backyard because they had nowhere else to go.

At first, I thought this was wonderful. More rabbits in our yard. More deer. But then the deer stopped coming at all. The two-story house now where my beautiful extended backyard had been looked directly into our back porch and kitchen. An opossum decided to live in our trash can (until Mom freaked out so much that it left when she wasn't looking).

One night, soon after our new backyard neighbors moved into their two-story ... we had some old neighbors decide to move into our house. Mom and Dad were in their bedroom ... when they heard this odd skritch, skritch, skritch sound. They turned the lights back on, went into our wood paneled den and looked around. At first, nothing. Then the skritch.

Then there were three loud THUDs as Dad took a shoe and killed the three scorpions on the wall.

Mom came into my room the next morning and explained how we'd have to check our shoes every morning before putting them on from now on. So, I looked in my shoe carefully and saw something scurrying back and forth. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the critter doing the 50 yard dash back and forth in my shoe even had Mom not warned me. I wasn't sure what the hell a scorpion was, but the thing in my shoe didn't move like a spider, that I knew. I bent over the shoe for a few minutes, studying the speeding critter. Definitely not a spider. And I had no idea what the issue was with scorpions - maybe they were somewhat poisonous. Not rattler poisonous or Mom would have been freaking out more, but maybe they were more painful than a wasp sting. Best not experiment.

Since she'd said something about it, I calmly went into her room, "Mom, there's a scorpion in my shoe."

"Oh honey, just because I just told you about that doesn't mean there's a scorpion in your shoe."

My poor mother never did understand that I was not a child who made up stories like this. If I said I didn't feel good, chances were that vomiting was in the near future, not that I was trying to get out of something. That kind of duplicity just didn't occur to me. If I said there was a critter, there was a critter.

Don't get me wrong, I could make up a wild story, but they were obviously wild stories. And I did like to play practical jokes, but I could never keep a straight face when I did. Which rather gave the joke away.

"Mom, there's a scorpion in my shoe."

"Now, don't make up stories."

I just stood there. Finally, "I've never seen a spider that looked like that."

Exasperated, Mom went into my room, picked up my shoe with casual abandon that I'd never seen her use around a creepy-crawly more than a daddy-longlegs, and dumped my shoe out over the toilet to prove to me for once and for all that there was ...

She screamed. Well, squeaked.

There in the toilet bowl, attempting to swim its way out, was a light tan, semi-translucent scorpion.

I was fascinated to see it where it couldn't hurt me (could it shoot venom or something out of that tail? maybe I should re-think this curiosity thing). Mom pushed me away and flushed the toilet. And apologized.

Whether it was coincidence or not, soon thereafter we began making plans for moving out of Austin to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Dad went up into the attic to lay down some more insulation to make the house more salable ... and discovered one more creepy-crawly who'd moved out of Balcones Woods and into the house.

As we were finishing our packing and waiting for the moving van to take our stuff away, I heard Dad laughing about the "bad luck" of the new home owner who'd bought this house. I should interject now to say that my Dad had the morality and ethics of a child who thinks pulling the wings off of flies is a roaring good time. When he was installing the insulation, he discovered not termites ... but thousands upon thousands of ant eggs. I like to think that he at least sprayed something up there, but probably not.

It's the thing we understand least, I think, when we tear down a "wild" area in order to build a new subdivision. We're not just building up a place for ourselves, we're evicting others. I'm not saying we shouldn't ever build! I do wonder, though, if we shouldn't re-think the arrogance with which we build. We get upset when our homes are invaded by spiders or ants or scorpions. (Or, mice in the attic, I say, shaking my fist at the mouse racetrack above the living room ceiling. Apparently mouse and chipmunk Nascar is held in our attic. Yeah, it's exciting to hear the zooming mice in an oval whilst trying to watch tv.)

What effect is displacing the native wildlife going to have on the neighborhood? What effect will having fewer trees and more concrete and asphalt have on the area? Can we figure out ways to coexist with the creatures we can coexist with?

Some things we learn through experience - like the midwestern farmers who tore down fences and tree lines to keep the landscape unmarked by ridiculous boundary lines (and thus keep us looking different from the "ugly" partitioned farms of the U.K.) ... only to find out that without those windbreaks, small though some of the were, snow swept through the fields and buried farmhouses and barns. Is there some kind of balance to be struck between living near the rich, rich farmland of an old river bottom ... and the completely natural and necessary flooding of that area every decade or so?

Why is our first instinct when an earthquake or hurricane rips through and destroys a town - or a tornado mutilates a trailer park - "well, they decided to live there." Why isn't our first thought a way to adapt to existing conditions instead of putting on blinders and assuming we can "fix" the nature of the area?

I don't know any of those answers ... just another one of my crazy-talk think-pieces.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:41 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble