EPISODE 328: ESCAPIST FARE
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
So Black Panther’s definitely going to win an Oscar; Henry Cavill is supposedly done playing Superman, everything is literally on fire, and apparently everyone in the White House records everything (which when you think of it is probably not such a bad idea).
We’re already well into August, vacationtime is just about over. But as a spiritual director once told me, God is just crazy enough to give you the biggest gift at the very end. Let’s do this.
I’m sitting in the United lounge at LAX. It’s a sprawling sort of a place, hundreds of little pod person chairs spaced amidst subdued sounds and lighting. A place to relax and stretch before starting your trip.
A couple years ago Chase started handing out a couple passes to these lounges each year for its United Explorer card members. And when I travel to Australia I try to use one. It’s become kind of a ritual, actually. The days beforehand I am a whirling shrieking ball of DO, a hundred thousand things that I have put off for the last three/six/twenty seven months suddenly to be accomplished NOW, usually regardless of whether they are immediately pressing.
(It is astonishing to me how much deadlines help me and/or are required for me to fulfill non-essential functions.)
Right up until the minute I leave I’m doing that – writing three month old thank yous, answering old emails, cleaning my room. Finally I spin away to the airport, like a top that has finally broken free of the centripetal/centrifugal push/pull. I twirl through customs, up the United escalator and into my own little pod person seat.
I just sit there for a few moments, pulse racing. And then, all of a sudden – and this happens every time, and it’s always a total surprise – I BREATHE. Like Uma Thurman post-adrenaline Breathe, the huge intake of air that only happens because you haven’t been breathing for quite some time and your body needs it all, needs it right now.
And I think to myself, God, how long, how many months have I been trying to live a life while also holding my breath?
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There’s this comic book that everybody’s been talking about the last few months called Mister Miracle. It’s the story of escape artist Scott Free (see what they did there?) who can literally get out of anything. Anything.
Problem is, in the first issue he kinda sorta tries to get out of life. Razor, bathroom – brutal stuff.
The issues which follow are this strange combination of him living his life with his wife Barda, fighting in a never-ending cosmic war (it’s a whole thing); and this existential question of whether Scott can escape the subterranean torments that haunt him. It’s even kind of a mystery how much of what we’re reading is actually happening, and how much might be somehow related to his suicide attempt or his general sense of feeling trapped.
At some point in just about every issue we get a fantastic moments where, a propos of nothing, really, we get to see Scott doing some form of his act – he’s falling while tied up, or he walking into a chamber surrounded by swords that shoot in – some crazy impossible task.
And then the story just goes on.
As I was sitting there in the United lounge drinking in oxygen, I found myself thinking of that comic and Mister Miracle’s tricks. And I found myself realizing, for me travel is sort of like being an escape artist. In that moment when I’m finally in the airport – and even moreso when I finally get off the plane – there’s a sense of exhilaration like I sprung the lock just before the cage got lowered into the pool filled with piranhas and I am myself scott free.
I stagger off the plane and down the concourse into wherever I now am, and I find myself so totally relieved I want to laugh. How did I manage to get out of that one? That’s literally the kind of thing I find myself wondering, like it was a crazy close call. The bobby pin got caught in my sleeve and I had to dislocate the bad shoulder and it just wasn’t clear I had taken in enough air nine months ago to make it. And then here I am; somehow I did make it, and it’s ridiculous, it’s impossible and it’s hilarious.
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There’s a sense of permanence, too, definitiveness after finishing “the escape”. Thank God I don’t have to do that again.
I wonder if David Blaine feels that way after he’s spent a week in a block of ice and survives the hypothermia and the brutal frostbite on his tongue from having to lick the ice to get his daily supply of water. Does he say, Phew. Glad I’m done with all that.
I bet he does.
But then three weeks later he’s putting pins in his eyes and somehow avoiding going blind.
Me, at the end of the trip, the lock picked, the escape made, fresh road ribboning out before me, I don’t long for another feat. On like a cellular level I believe it’s all over now. Finally, I made it. I’m free.
Is that how it is for others? Is that what vacation-type travel feels like, like a new beginning? Like a fresh start?
And is that a little white lie? A necessary and happy part of the slow uncoiling, unclenching of oneself into ease? Or is it some kind of message?
My Jesuit superior sometimes will ask me out of the blue, How long do you think you can do this, work as a freelance writer? And it’s always with a lot of care and concern, but there’s also a certain sort of bystander curiosity. How long exactly can you hold your head underwater?
On one level it doesn’t scare me. It’s all part of the job.
But then I sit in that airport lounge feeling so totally relieved, and I don’t know. It sure seems nice to have gotten free.
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So you might have heard, the Oscars are changing to include an award for Best Popular Film. Which to me seems like a no-brainer. As a fan of genre films, it’s so frustrating to never see any of them taken seriously by the Academy. Any, Star Wars film, like December’s The Last Jedi, is a crazy enormous accomplishment of storytelling; so is Avengers: Infinity War, in a very different way. So were the movies of John Hughes, for that matter. And most of these films also make enormous amounts of money, without which there would be no real Academy or Hollywood.
Occasionally a film like Black Panther, Wonder Woman or a Disney animated film seems to have a serious shot at being nominated for Best Picture. But with the exception of Lord of the Rings (which was three films, and I think rewarded for its overall accomplishment, not for any one film), that’s as far as it goes. They’re never really serious contenders.
Scanning the headlines I see that some pretty good film critics are not happy with this decision. I find the arguments puzzling; is it really hard to figure out which films are popular? Is it really pandering to give moviegoers an award they can rally around when many of the best film contenders are mostly independent films that reach a relatively small audience, as is often the case?
Does having this award really mean we’re likely to see garbage films that made a lot of money suddenly nominated for Oscars? I mean, it is still the Academy doing the nominations; we’re not talking the People’s Choice Awards here, or MTV, Nickelodeon or whoever. We’re talking about an award that could see a film like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Bridesmaids, Breakfast Club or Captain America: Winter Soldier nominated for best popular film, and movies like The Sixth Sense, Moulin Rouge! or Raiders of the Lost Ark (all of which were nominated for Best Picture) actually winning one.
For every Little Miss Sunshine, which grossed 100 million and also won best picture, there’s a dozen Star Wars, which was nominated for best picture, totally changed the film business and yet had no shot at winning anything; and also a hundred Minority Reports, which grossed 360 million and was pretty freaking fantastic and if you had suggested giving it an Oscar nomination you would have gotten laughed out of the room.
To me, this new category bridges that weird and unnecessary gap. So if you’re looking for me next February, I’ll be the one with my arms up yelling.
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Just finished the third and for now final book in the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. And by finished I mean finally escaped from its clutches, because man alive are those books hard to put down. I’m actually on a whole other continent from my own, wandering around seeing people and enjoying life. And yet constantly in the back of my head I’ve had these books pulling at my coat, asking me to look over here, just for a minute, just for one minute, please, just come on.
Shades is basically the story of three parallel universe Londons, but bound together by old-timey magic instead of tech. And as it begins it seems to star Kell, this mysterious and powerful magic user in a London filled with magical ability; but somewhere along the way he encounters a thief in our own non-magical version of London, and she immediately steals not only his stuff but the entire series.
Not exactly a series about something today, in the way of a lot of fantasy or scifi. You will not see our own reality peering through on every page. But probably that’s why I’ve loved it so much. And it is asking one big question from start to finish: can you ever love anyone and still be the person you want, still be free?
Really recommend it. Find the first volume, A Darker Shade of Magic, here.
++ LINKS ++
Stranger Things actor David Harbour tells a story about Christopher Walken that is pretty much everything that New Yorkers love about New York and others think is kind of awful.
Kathleen Turner pretty much blows the roof off in this incredible interview.
(Best part:
What else, aside from luck, has driven your career?
Rage.
What do you mean?
I’m !*@%&! angry, man.
About what?
Everything.
Please keep speaking to me the truth of my life, Kathleen Turner.)
A couple email addresses you'd hate to have; some great stories of the Pope with kids (and photos, too); and Australian theologian Paul Collins with a fresh take on the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation.
(In a nutshell: nobody's going to confession, and a lot of people have problems with it, so what about reinstating the rite of general absolution, where people come to a service, together confess their failings, pray for freedom and receive the blessing of the sacrament as a group. As a friend put it, "So Yom Kippur for Catholics, then.")
Life is crazy. That doesn't mean you have to hold it all in. Give yourself permission to stop, drop and breathe. I'm right there with you.
Here we go.