EPISODE 332: THE PRINCE CHARMING SYNDROME

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

So Henry Cavill is maybe out as Superman, which I feel weirdly bad about because who knows what he could do with the role if he was not trapped in Zack Snyder’s apocalypse of shame, and Jon Hamm wants to play Batman, because apparently the internet has been telling him he should since Mad Men Season One, because apparently all it takes to play Batman is a five o’clock shadow and a grim look on your face. (He’s a great actor, but c’mon internet. No.)

And it’s only two weeks until The Good Place returns but everything is already better because Kurt Hummel’s dad is now in it, and I would totally get excited about the new season of American Horror Story if I could just remember the plotlines of the two long ago seasons it’s apparently going to be referencing, but I do remember the final scene of season two, and I feel like we should all scream “Balenciaga” at the moment of our death. (Stop at 3:55 if you don’t want to see the very end; it gets pretty violent there for a second.)

And Louis CK decided it was time to get on stage again (man a lot happens in two weeks away), and also that it was time to roll out a joke about assault, and Norm Macdonald thought it was the right time to defend him, and they were wrong. But hey, never mind, Morgan Freeman is still starring in a Disney movie for the holidays despite 15 accusations of harassment against him, and Garrison Keillor is back on tour, and Chris Hardwick is back on AMC, and Matt Lauer says he’ll be back too, but that doesn’t mean any of us ever have to watch any of them.

Also Les Moonves was finally removed from CBS, though not for the accusations of harassment and assault but for lying to his board about his attempts to pay off an accuser with a job, and Woody Allen finished a movie a year ago but no one will release it. As the kids say, womp womp.

Meanwhile the EU’s Parliament just approved legislation that may make it impossible for me to post links to an article explaining the legislation or images that express my reaction to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spmTNe5SKPA

And a judge who wants to be Supreme Court justice seems to have lied under oath, and a bunch of conservative bishops have decided to use the abuse of children and adults to try and stage a palace coup, and apparently I’m supposed to want to watch Michael Moore skewer Donald Trump on film or read Bob Woodward do the same (have they not been reading the news for the last two years?) and there have been more fires in California and a hurricane approaching the East Coast right now and a typhoon approaching the Philippines and another in Japan recently and a drought in Australia and there are almost thirteen thousand kids in detention in the United States and yes you read that right and at this rate we’re all going to be screaming Balenciaga a lot sooner than we might have hoped.

In the words of the prophet Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast.” He goes on to argue we should probably stop and look around once in a while or we’ll miss it, but forgive me if right now keeping your head down and getting caffeine-drunk on pumpkin spice lattes seems like a potentially healthier option.

My attention has been mostly consumed with Church stuff and/or the avoidance thereof. I just don’t even know where to start, honestly. No matter what I read it all seems to be pretty much the same article: Help me, everything’s burning, make it stop.

And trying to go placidly amidst the noise and haste of it to a more thoughtful or peaceful place has been like trying to float peacefully in a wave pool; you get like three minutes of calm and then suddenly you’re upside down and your mouth is filled with chlorine and there are people screaming. And then it starts again.

(I was always excited at the prospect of the wave pool growing up, but then when our park district finally got one it was like, How is this a thing that is to be enjoyed?)

I’ve been chasing church stories just like every other writer, but I’m less and less sure there’s anything worthwhile to be said. You don’t write a think piece after someone drops an atomic bomb. You shut up and try to process.

(Today we’d be tweeting about Hiroshima, wouldn’t we... “OMG MY COUNTRY SUCKS! #PrayingFortheVictims *prayer hands emoji*”. Lord take us now.)

So that’s what I’m trying to do...in theory...oh, and writing other stuff! Actually I got the opportunity to write an article about comic books for an online magazine I really admire. It’s about my early experiences in a parish, and also the Incredible Hulk. (Naturally.) So psyched to have that chance.

Meanwhile I’m flying to New York Friday to meet a pop culture icon from the 80s, hoping he’ll agree to let me write a movie about him. (Sorry to be weird about it. Suffice to say, even it doesn’t work out it will be a great story, and you will be the first to hear it.)

And I spent my last few days in Australia picking away at a script idea about a pastor in a parish dealing with terrible revelations from his parish and bishop and deciding he’s done just going along with all of it and god no this isn’t autobiographical what makes you think that.

Also I've been collecting memes for you.

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I don’t know why other people write. For me it’s to discover things. Whether it’s creative writing or reporting, I’m always an explorer hoping to stumble onto something new and surprising. I love to interview people for the same reason; I want to be surprised. I want to learn something. I want my world to get bigger.

Also I’m greedy. It’s like when they asked Rockefeller, “Johnny D, how much is finally going to be enough?” He nodded, thought about it, and finally responded: “Just a little bit more.”

If you had asked me ahead of time what I might learn in writing about the Hulk, I’d have told you probably something about monsters. But in fact the thing that came out of it and has been like a lens over everything I’ve seen since is the moral blight that is “good intentions”. That is, the way we tend to look to our supposedly good heart to excuse our bad behavior.

As a priest I’m leery of getting too “you kids and all your sinning”. The Catholic Church has spent so much effort over the centuries trying to convince people they’re awful. (Fun fact: if you check out Mary Magdalene in the Bible, you’ll discover she was not a prostitute. In the Middle Ages people started to say that she was as a way of giving themselves hope. If Jesus could love a prostitute, the argument went, he must be able to love the garbage that the Church has taught us we are.)

And the fact is, church aside I think most of us carry pretty heavy burdens of shame and grief over things that we’ve done anyway. No need to pile on.

But our capacity for self-deception is pretty awesome, too, you know? Like, I would definitely watch the Olympics if “Denial” was an event. It would be like a slalom run where people blow out on the flips and then have to explain why they still deserve to win. (Maybe that’s what reality TV is?)

Anyway it seems those magic spells of innocence we weave is usually built around some version of the fact that we mean well. For example, check out this recent article in the Washington Post about a racial incident at a local community pool.

The woman at the center of the drama, who shouted and swung at some African American boys who actually had permission to be at the pool, denies doing so even though it’s on the video. Which is wild enough -- although I am immediately reminded of being at the box office at the Met Opera a few years ago trying to get student rush tickets tickets and then when the ticket agent points out there is no way I am a student I for some reason immediately double down and insist I am and produce an old ID with no dates on it to try and prove it; nothing like the truth to incite some hard core denial.

But then she goes on to explain herself: “I have children. My husband is a respected coast guard officer. I have a special needs son. . . . My husband and I are being threatened and slandered all over social media [and it] is not okay.”

I’m a mom and I have a very committed husband and life is not easy for us and we’re being victimized now. All of which is fine information to share. Irrelevant, but fine.

Except it’s not irrelevant. Each of those comments is another way of saying I’m a good person or I’m not a bad person. Therefore, the argument goes, I could not have done those awful things, even if I did.

It does not compute at all, and yet somehow it does. Because how can I be a monster and a good person? You better go back and have a rethink, ‘cuz that doesn’t make any sense, y’all!

I’m not being judgey here. I’m pretty sure if I check my own internal tapes, I’m going to find my own jazz hand-embroidered riffs on that all over the place. (Which is of course why I destroy my internal tapes. No fool this guy!)

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Somehow this feels totally on point.
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I’ll give you another example, from pop culture. Last week I watched the new season of Iron Fist. Me, and like three other people on the planet, I’m guessing. You might remember that the first season was um, not loved.

Believe it or not season two decided to double down on main character Danny Rand’s unlikeability by turning him into a humorless fight junkie who treats the amazing girlfriend he does not deserve like a dishrag. Yeah, not the choice we might have expected. In fact every man in the new season is a walking heap of awful when it comes to women, constantly talking over them, dismissing them and just plain insisting that their own needs are more important.

But having finished the season now, I’m pretty sure that was kind of the point. I don’t know about you, but when I hear that term “toxic masculinity”, I think Weinstein. Lauer. Charlie Rose. Guys who have done horrible stuff.

But most of us who are treating women badly are not assaulting them. In fact we probably see ourselves a lot more like Danny Rand; we think we’ve got a good reason for talking over our girlfriends or dismissing their needs. We’re trying to do something important here. We really mean well. It’s just, we’re the heroes of the story and #!#!% is goin’ down right now, baby.

Sometimes we even understand that we have screwed up, and we want to apologize, but we cannot abide that the women won’t accept it on our terms. There’s that “But I’m ready now” quality.

All of that, every seemingly persuasive justification that men use to be awful, gets put under the microscope in Iron Fist. It’s like a case study in the way men fool, manipulate, bully (and then justify ourselves with) women. And the basic building block is very clearly, everything is okay because I think I have good intentions.

To its credit, the show is filled with strong, insightful female characters that allow none of that nonsense to slide. There’s these amazing moments where they call it like it is, while the men mostly stare at them like they’re speaking in tongues. It’s so far removed from their own self-perception it’s almost impossible for them to see. Which seems super realistic, actually.

Anyway, it seems like a pretty bold response to the first season, and a meaningful one. You hate Danny Rand? Cool cool cool; instead of fighting you on that, we’re going to lean into it so that we can explore the garbage hero men that are in all of our lives, and this nonsense of meaning well.

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I even wonder if the whole thing isn’t a sort of quiet meta commentary on male hero stories in general. And just to make you hate me, let me take that idea to a place none of us want to go:

Straight up, I love Harry Potter. I love that it’s a children story about having empathy for one’s enemies, and also about how totalitarianism/fascism is really just one wrong leader away. (Over ten thousand children in detention...) I love that Harry shares a birthday with the feast of the Jesuits. I love Harry Potter.

But in every movie – and to be clear, not the novels, the movies – there comes a point where I just get so sick of everything having to be about Harry I know, it’s not his fault he’s got a lot going on, evil dark lord scar buddy and all. But still, there always comes that moment where the other characters, who are equally awesome, are forced to become the backup dancers while Harry sings the aria. (Fun fact: I don’t know how opera works.) And it never feels right.

One of the reasons I think we all love Hermione with a deep and everlasting love that makes us wish that some day JK will write a series about her is that there’s some magic in the DNA of her character that almost totally refuses to be put to the side. She always has her own agenda and her own opinions. But it still happens. Voldemort could not give two nostrils about her, and so eventually we’re back to Harry and she for a time becomes Harry’s hyper-useful magical assistant.

In the latter books we have to endure an ever-more-toxic boyman Harry, pouting and shouting and woe is me. Which is JK’s take on adolescence, and pretty darn accurate, I realize. But it’s also not all that far from Danny Rand, Jack Shepard, Don Draper and so many many many other male protagonists.

I'm exhausted just looking at him like this.

My test of whether the story you’re consuming is actually kinda toxic: Does there come a point where the non-leads (especially women) are made to shut down their stories and/or points of view and just be quiet get on board? Watch for it – it happens SO MUCH.

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One last example, that has kind of been driving me crazy because it is absolutely unintentional: This week I finally got out to see Crazy Rich Asians, which has triggered such great conversation about Asian representation. (Would that we could some day have a conversation like that about Native American representation...)

I knew nothing about the plot other than it involved a wedding, but based on the buzz I was psyched.

But as it turns out, it was shocking, really, in its treatment of women. And that’s despite the fact that the lead is a strong woman, and the three other main characters are, too.

Usually the main character of a film takes a journey, and that journey is going to challenge some issue or belief in their lives and force them to grow (or die). Super hero/action films often ignore this rule; Tom Cruise does a lot of cool crazy stuff in Mission Impossible, but it’s not like you get to the end and think, “yo ethan has really grown tho”. Marvel films often do better, sometimes a lot – Thor: Ragnarok gives Thor such a great emotional journey. But that’s not generally true of the genre.

In Crazy Rich Asians, our hero is Rachel, an economics professor at NYU specializing in game theory, whose handsome boyfriend Nick invites her to come meet his family in Singapore. She doesn’t fit in his world, mostly because he never told her how rich he was or how driven his mother is or literally anything else about his life. And she’s left to just flounder her way through his friends and family’s increasingly terrible treatment of her.

Which she does. And pretty damn well, I’d say, so much so it’s hard to say what exactly we’re supposed to understand as her journey. She struggles at times, but she never really has self-doubt. The story is really more like an action movie, the protagonist having to make their way through an insane obstacle course of stupid.

Meanwhile her boyfriend Nick is this suave mama’s boy whose good looks and upper crust accent are used to hide the fact that he wants everything his way. He takes Rachel to his home without warning her about his family or past, why? Because he liked the fact that she didn’t think of him that way.

As terrible stuff goes down for Rachel, he keeps aw shucks that’s terrible-ing her, but does nothing to make it better. And when his mother does just the worst possible thing to Rachel, really terrible stuff, his response is to propose. Let’s run away and start our own life, he says, the light just right on his perfect skin. It sounds great, except it’s got nothing to do with Rachel, and everything to do with this dream of his to be this dashing figure from a storybook, pronouncing his love and getting the girl.

And then, when she says no and decides to go home, after making the kind of bold exit with Nick’s mother that daughters-in-law dream about, Nick shows up on the plane and begs her to marry him again. And his final monologue is all about how he wanted to do this some kind of Prince Charming fairy tale nonsense, he had it all planned out, and instead he’s doing it here on this plane amidst cranky, sweaty, stanky passengers.

As though that itself is not another kind of fairy tale, the handsome prince sweeping in to gather up his Cinderella. And again, who is his action serving? Only himself.

And of course she says yes, which is just infuriating and wrong.

Every scene that Nick is in, you see it in his eyes, he’s living in a storybook and fighting for his fairy tale. And in the end he’s done nothing to deserve its happy ending; he hasn’t grown, he undertakes no journey, he’s still just pulling the same garbage over and over. And still the movie rewards him for that.

I’m thrilled that a movie with an all Asian cast could hit American mainstream success. I love the fact that Asians have felt seen and heard because of this movie. I think that’s amazing.

But seriously, enough with stories where pretty men are entitled to everything because they’re pretty or dashing, while women have to struggle to adjust and ultimately concede. I have nieces and nephews; they deserve better.

Here endeth the rant.

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​Welcome back to school, students!

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The Pudding did this amazing piece on the weirdly enormous difference in the size of women’s pockets versus men’s. on women’s versus men’s pockets. I love their infographics so much.

Wired has this fun story about how geology is the OG version of augmented reality.

Not far from the marsh, for instance, is a limestone quarry. The slabs of gray rock seem unchanging now, but your headset reveals that they were once a coral reef in an inland sea. Below the former reef is a layer of golden sandstone, whose perfectly round quartz grains, pounded smooth by the ancient surf, speak of a beach that existed long before life came ashore.

How the wizard paintings in Harry Potter make no sense and also they’re just like Alexa.

Philadelphia 76ers player Joel Embiid on growing up in Cameroon and learning how to shoot from YouTube.

I was basically just imagining that I was a good basketball player. The power of the mind is kind of amazing. I mean, I sucked. But somehow, I convinced myself that I was Hakeem. And I started getting better and better. And then I sort of started killing it.

I pretended my way to the NBA. I seriously got to the league by watching YouTube and living in the gym. There’s no other way to explain it. Remember when KG won the title with the Celtics, and he was acting all crazy, screaming out, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!!!!!!”

That speaks to me. That’s my life. It happened so fast that it doesn’t even make sense.

(This is such a great piece.)

And is it me, or is this not a great idea for how to set goals for your life? I’m aiming at ten rejections before Christmas.

That article on geology also has this take on being human:

...Most humans are chronophobes. We worry about where the time has gone, whether we’re spending it wisely, how much of it we have left. Geology puts things in temporal perspective; it reminds us that, while the current version of the world is ephemeral, it’s also intimately connected to countless others, long past and still to come. If I’m successful, my students will finish the class seeing backstories everywhere in nature, their sense of place and time on this old Earth irrevocably altered.

There's something about being reminded that this is just one small moment in eternity that I find endlessly reassuring. Yes, this is an important moment for us, but there's a bigger picture in which we're like not even big enough to be a dot on the canvas.

In other words, take a breath. Don't feel forced to respond. We're allowed to give ourselves a moment, to let in sink in a bit.

​It's great to be back with you. Thanks for coming along. Let's meet up next week and see how we're going. I'll provide the chocolate. You bring something that you find beautiful.

Here we go.