EPISODE 222 -- THE VALUE OF BROKEN THINGS

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

People have lots of criteria by which they evaluate whether a movie is good or not: box office, acting, plot structure, awards, a good twist.

For me of late the bar has become this: Am I still thinking about the movie later? Is there some idea or moment that stays with me?

Take Wonder Woman. I liked the movie as a whole, right from the start on Themyscira to the final battle against Ares and from Gal Gadot and Chris Pine to Lucy Davis (who plays Steve’s assistant Etta Candy, and deserved so much more screen time). It’s a excellent example of the super hero film (and so so so much better than either of the Superman films that have preceded it).

But what am I really surprised by is how much I keep thinking about not the big sequences (although Diana crossing No Man's Land is an extraordinary, emotional scene), but three very small moments. First, there's that random flirty chat Steve and Diana have as they prepare to fall asleep on the boat. It’s cute, but kind of long, and a little meandering – a perfect example of the kind of thing you would normally cut or cut back in a script, because it's not really moving the story forward, and we've got a lot of territory to travel before we get to see Diana do her WW thing.

But here they didn't cut it, and instead we get this moment where we just get to sit back and enjoy being with the characters. And it turns out, I didn't come to Wonder Woman just to see Diana just explode out of buildings (though wow do they do a pretty fantastic job of showing that). I want to hang out with her.

We go to movies in part to feel some kind of connection. And that’s what that scene was for me, a moment where we're allowed to just connect.

Second, there’s the minor storyline of that Scottish sniper Charlie who can’t bear to fire a weapon anymore. All the members of Diana’s Scooby Squad are pretty fantastic – I can’t tell you how happy I was to find a Native American man in her group who was so clearly Native and at the same time not stereotypical -- no lit sage, no references to his grandfather or the spirits, no "earth wisdom". (Also, according to director Patty Jenkins he has a basis in history; Native Americans really did enlist just to escape the situation on the reservations.)

On the surface, Charlie is the least original of Steve’s three amigos; oh look, another crazy Scotsman. His storyline isn’t exactly a surprise either; of course he was going to shoot again.

But has stayed with me was the scene where Diana convinces him to come with them to the final battle. He wants to bow out because he’s of no use. And she says, “Oh, but then who will sing for us?”

And that seems to be exactly what she means, too – not "This is my clever way of getting you back into the killing game, because movies", but "Even if you’re also in some ways shattered, your life means something. You not being with us would be a loss for us."

It’s such a beautiful sentiment, especially in a super hero movie, to say strength or power is not the only value, that there’s value in broken things, too.

The third moment: Diana’s walking through London with Steve and Etta, arguing about something. Suddenly she sees a baby carriage, and she squeals like a little girl and runs over. It’s ridiculous, but it also reveals a lot about her, how much of human life she hasn’t experienced and how much she treasures seeing it. In the end it seems like her nickname is not just about her power but her perception. Like a child, or an alien (or God), she sees us with a wonder we easily lose track of ourselves.

It really is on so many levels such a good movie.

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Where do you land on super hero movies? I see pretty much all of them, and I'm almost always excited, I go to the nice theater with the cushy chairs and the reserved seating. (And sometimes I consume a huge cone of caramel corn, too. And yes I feel bad later, but not so much if I eat it slow.)

But I'm getting really tired of films with too many characters and a story that seems more like an ad for some future story that won't be out for years. And I can't believe I'm saying this, because I used to love them, but I'm seriously done with post-credit scenes. Know when to walk away, Marvel Studios. Less is more.

The cast of the next Avengers movie (not really, but it feels like it, no?)

For me, there are probably four or five truly great comic book super hero movies (outside of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, which are all excellent): the original Superman (obviously; we're still looking for someone who got Clark Kent like Christopher Reeve); Spider-Man II (Tobey, not Andrew, Sally Field as Aunt May? Come on now); Captain America: Winter Soldier (the elevator scene...); X-Men: Days of Future Past (I really like bits and pieces of a lot of the X-Men films, especially all things Magneto and Wolverine; but DOFP is the one film for me that elevates into something more.)

Also, Guardians of the Galaxy; Deadpool (I still can't believe how good that was); Logan. And now Wonder Woman.

Wow, if I include the Nolans that's eleven films, isn't it? I can't believe there are that many. And I didn't even mention the Avengers, which is also pretty darn good.

I wonder, what do these films have in common? A sense of humor, for sure. And maybe also a willingness to think of "super hero" less as its own genre than an interesting way into another genre -- Winter Soldier is really a spy movie; Wonder Woman is a war movie; DOFP is a 60s conspiracy flick meets a stop the apocalypse.

Logan is a chase movie; Guardians is in large part a scfi office sitcom; Deadpool is an assassin-with-a-sad-backstory flick (theory: Deadpool and John Wick have way more in common than Deadpool and Logan); and the Nolan Batman movies are I don't know, maybe Westerns? The lone hero who stands alone against the bad guys who come rolling into town?

What do you think? What makes your list?

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Speaking of super heroes, this week I was also reading this comic book GENERATION X about a group of misfit kids with super powers. Most of the story was concerned with one kid getting attacked and the others then trying to figure out who the attacker was. The newest member of the group has the power to re-experience your whole life when he touches you; he hates how it can intrude on other people’s secrets and also what it puts him through. He’s not just seeing what you’ve been through but feeling it himself.

But the kid that’s been injured, who is blind, deaf and dumb (his face was actually blown off when his power emerged -- which seems like a way more realistic depiction of what would happen if people got super powers than "hey, I can fly!"), can’t communicate what happened himself. So eventually New Kid agrees to touch Face (that's actually what they call him, yeah it's a little on the nose) (heh).

And he sees the boy’s whole life--the accident that destroyed his face, the way other people tried to use him as a weapon, and finally how he got mugged. When he lets go, the new kid has all the information they need.

In 99 out of 100 stories what happens next is New Kid tells the others what he’s learned and they leave Face to go find the bad guy. But in this case, New Kid lets go, and then before anything else we get this:

He’s seen Face's life, and really he’s the only person that can truly understand what this kid has been through. So of course, the first reaction is to embrace.

Those little moments of what happens next; so easy to miss in story and in life. And it’s so lovely when you can slow yourself down enough to see them.

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Do you know Roxane Gay? New York Times-bestselling essay- and novel-ist, prominent commentator on culture, race, gender, sexuality and society, and all around super interesting and challenging person. (Follow her here.)

She just put out a book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, about some terrible childhood trauma she endured and how it has affected her relationship with her body. Everything I've read about it says it's a painful, powerful story about dealing with trauma. I'm looking forward to reading it.

So she’s in Australia on a book tour and gets invited to be on a podcast run by a women’s site called Mamamia, which bills itself the “largest independent women’s website in Australia,” “utterly committed to making a difference to women’s lives”. Sounds like a perfect fit.

But then host and Mamamia publisher Mia Freedman introduces the podcast by describing Gay as “super-morbidly obese” (her actual words) and talking things that went into planning this interview, like the fact that Gay requested no pictures be taken and asked for a "sturdy chair". “Will she fit into the office lift?”, Freedman worries in her introduction.

All of this was said in a separately-recorded segment that Gay had no idea about until the podcast dropped, on the day before her book was being published in the United States. She wrote that day on Twitter: “Today was supposed to be about my new book. That is what I wanted. And then an Australian website made today painful.”

Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke wrote her own response to this mess, explaining that this is in fact the kind of garbage person nightmare treatment minority and female writers face every day.

Everyone’s got their implicit biases and prejudices, and eventually (if we’re lucky, really) they’re drawn out into the light where we can see them and hopefully begin to change. I find NPR’s “Code Switch” podcast a constant education in race-related assumptions I didn’t know I had.

So that I get. We all muddle through and make mistakes.

The thing I can’t understand is, if you don’t like someone’s thing, you’re made nervous by their issues or life situation, why invite them to be on your show? Why not just leave them alone? Why do that?

Why Jake Tapper? Why?

++ LINKS ++

The Future 5 Minutes From Now: If you do nothing else this week, check out this super-short science fiction piece that seems both likely and terrifying. First sentence: "I was late paying the water bill, so the parking meter refused service until I coughed up."

Learn Quantum Physics with Queen Elizabeth: Quantum physics, expressed through 22 images of Corgis. (At first it's like, Aww, so many Corgis! But starting with #9 it's also "Wait, is it possible I might also through the loving power of dogs now understand quantum entanglement?")

Holding a Baby is Apparently Now a Form of Mindfulness Prayer: "Take a moment to reflect on the vulnerability of this tiny being and the reality that every human being on the planet, including you, was once a baby."

And lastly, We Still Gotta Laugh: Bloomberg Business, known for its truly insane magazine covers, recently announced a change in style: "We’ve moved into a time where we want our covers and our imagery to reflect the seriousness of the content, and the times that we are living in."

The Buckslip newsletter responded in a wonderful way: "We call bullshit on that. These times need all the batshit, nose-thumbing design intervention they can get....Acknowledging fun in the world does not preclude one's ability to take that world seriously.”

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In her article about Roxane Gay, Maxine Beneba Clarke describes why she writes about difficult life experiences. The last couple sentences really leapt out at me.

Writing a memoir about racism and its physical and psychological impact is like writing about your house burning down while you’re still locked inside. The writing process, and the publicity trail, would be far easier if we didn’t write about issues such as racism, sexual assault, discrimination or mental health. If we refused to storytell about being belittled, bullied, broken or dehumanised. If we didn’t let strangers see us at the lowest points in our lives, leave our actions and our trauma open to scrutiny and debate. We write our lives for many reasons. For me it is because I hope it might make some small difference, somehow, some way, to a former incarnation of myself. Make her world a little easier, kinder, less lonely.

Have a good week. Maybe be a little bit of light to the younger you.