EPISODE 335: CARRIE FISHER, THELMA & LOUISE, JAMIE LEE CURTIS AND THE COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

So there’s apparently a new planet in the Solar System, and for some reason we’re calling it the Goblin, so maybe not everything in the world is broken after all. (Also, somehow the orbit of said Goblin seems to be pointing to a massive Super-Earth planet somewhere out there, too, and clearly that’s not going to end up badly, is it?

(In the distant future, Robot Anton Chekov 4.7 is writing from his distillation chamber in the Andromeda system about how if you introduce a super planet in the first act of an eyestream vid vid it has to collide with your own planet by the end.)

Meanwhile in another celestial realm, Justin Theroux (the former Mr. Aniston and Leftovers grief-stricken police officer) just did an interview with the New York Times that is equal parts ridiculous -- “Mr. Theroux does not wear shorts, even on days when the denim clings to your thighs like paint. ‘We all have a uniform,’ he said” – and kind of great.

Here’s his description of New York City’s Chinatown: “It is kind of like a great Britney Spears song, where you put on your headphones, and there’s so much overproduced, bubble-gum, sweet poppy goo, but in a good way. There are these little robotic things clanking, and then there’s a big tub of turtles, the weird little lucky cats with their paws moving back and forth. It’s like a dream sequence from that Japanese anime movie ‘Paprika.’” Yes, it most certainly is, and thank you.

Also Gary Kurtz died (sorry), and although we knew he was involved in producing the original Star Wars, we had no idea that it was he that got the movie to 20th Century Fox, negotiated the deal that gave George Lucas total control and made merchandising a key part of the venture (and with it so many other franchises). And speaking of long times ago and far far aways, Disney just announced its big live-action streaming (because no one cares that we don’t have unlimited money) Star Wars TV show is called The Mandalorian, and no that doesn’t mean Star Wars is finally going all in on mandolins (sorry) but one of the episodes is going to be directed by Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, so also maybe it does (whee!)?

There’s going to be a movie about the Challenger explosion told from the point of view of teacher Christa McAuliffe, played by Michelle Williams, and how has this not already been done, and no we’re not crying your glasses are broken, and 80s band UB40 is now a thing again, for dumb reasons that definitely have nothing to do with a candidate for the Supreme Court once drinking to excess, but hey, it gives us the excuse to think back on our homecoming dances so we cool.

It’s the first week of October, the midterms are in a month and over ten thousand kids are being interned in tents in Texas because that’s apparently what being great again means.

Caution: Writer may be slightly unhinged due to 2018. Should he begin to spontaneously Dance Dance Revolution step away slowly and do not look him in the eye.

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In the midst of everything going on last week, I came across this Norman Rockwell painting online, which seemed um, appropriate?

Rockwell painted this in 1959 for the Saturday Evening Post. It was the cover for their Valentine’s Day issue, actually, because in 1959 they knew that the real flowers and candy is the truth.

The painting was clearly a riff on Twelve Angry Men, which came out in 1957; but it’s also a reference to the fact that recent years had seen a growing conversation about the right of women to be on juries. In Rockwell’s home state of Massachusetts, women had had the right since 1950, but there was a proviso that they could be excused from hearing rape or child abuse cases if they (read: men) believed the testimony would be too much for them.

Imagine a sexual assault or abuse trial where there is not a single woman on the jury!

Oh, wait...

*Stops, listens to Red, Red Wine, tries to breathe*

Everyone in the painting is either a friend of Rockwell’s or someone from his home town. He even put himself in the painting – he’s the guy directly behind the female juror, leaning in.

For me what’s really interesting, though, is how Rockwell altered his original choreography of the scene.

Here’s his photo of the group:

And again, here’s the painting:

In the photo, the female juror wears a frown and has her hands at her sides grasped into fists. She looks besieged, but also strong, almost defiant. She is the hold out sticking to her guns. Some people call the painting “The Holdout” in fact. (Others call it “The Jury” or “Jury Room”.)

But in the painting Rockwell gives a whole different quality to her. Her exclamation point-like stiffness has given way to a more turned in quality. She seems to be slightly twisted away from the men before her; her arms are crossed, her feet pulled up into her chair, and the look on her face mirrors her posture’s sense of uncertainty not about her decision, but about her situation in this room right now.

The thing that’s most struck me the last couple weeks surrounding the Kavanaugh case is the degree to which the whole situation has impacted so many other women who have themselves been the victims of harassment and assault, how it has brought back all the terrible things they went through not only in that moment but afterwards, as they considered what to do and then suffered through the often-brutal consequences of those choices.

That Rockwell painting, just the very tip of a freaking continent-sized iceberg... ++

++ As the founder of the Jesuits and spiritual homeslice Ignatius of Loyola was slowly making his way around Europe in the early sixteenth century, praying and then helping others to connect with God, he was repeatedly accused of committing heresy of one kind or another.

This was not something to be taken lightly. The Inquisition was still a force back then, and things like excommunication, jail, torture and/or death were all fun options that the wrong judge on the wrong day might think you really needed to try out.

The smart move would have been to either back down or, in the words of Monty Python’s Knights of the Round Table, RUN AWAY. (Nasty, big, pointy teeth, those Inquisitors have.) But Ignatius refused to do either. If I leave town, yes I might survive, he thought, but the stink of all this is just going to follow me and ruin my ministry. And I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong.

So instead when accusations like this were made – and I mean every time, whether they came from a bishop or some clerical dudebro with an axe to grind, he immediately went to the authorities and asked for himself and the matter to be thoroughly investigated.

And each time he was vindicated. The worst judgment he suffered was that he needed to go to school both to ground the spiritual teaching he was doing and almost certainly also to give him a credential that would protect him from some of this nonsense in the future.

Meanwhile Go-To Move 2018 seems to be to deny everything until the evidence is so overwhelming you have to say sorry. Except in the last two years we seem to have learned there’s actually a cheat code – if you insist it isn’t true, even when they’ve got you, more often than not you’ll win the day.

Of course, you may also kind of burn down democracy, but hey, you did win!

(So many of these cases, it’s like being so invested in landing a certain parking space that you’re willing to wreck your own car and mow down a bunch of bystanders in order to get it. Or it’s like setting fire to all the property around your dream house so no one else can have it.

Or it’s like being so invested in having your religious agenda win the day you decide to undermine the moral credibility of the person that has been having the greatest positive impact not only on your community but the whole world.

Hypothetically, of course. I mean, who would do something as foolish and destructive as that?

Hey, scorched earth, how you livin?

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I’ve been trying to think of some kind of pop culture-y take on all that’s been going on, films or TV shows that have really attempted to address the kind of situations Ford (and so many others) find themselves in.

But I don’t know, it kind of seems like pop culture is inadequate to this moment, and for a very unexpected reason: it’s too hopeful. There are many good stories about women who have been through the very worst stuff and have faced the aftermath with incredible courage. Thelma & Louise, The Accused, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, to name a few; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Sleepers and even Spotlight offer excellent variations along similar themes.

But I can’t think of a single story where instead the woman risks everything to reveal what happened to her and is both threatened by friends and strangers and then finally ignored.

Thelma & Louise definitely gets at it in a way. Yeah they’ve found real solace in each other; but their hero move is to commit suicide. And it’s not like you walk away from movies like The Accused feeling better, either. Lord no.

I’m usually all for the stories that paint a doorway into a world that is not yet but definitely possible. That help us see we can get to a better place. But right now I just find myself looking for stories that examine the brutal truth. This is who we are, this is what we as a society allow. This is what it’s like to live as a woman in America. (Actually, I, Tonya came at some of this. Can’t recommend that movie enough.)

What do you think? Women, in what stories, songs, artwork are you finding comfort and strength at a time like this? And what sorts of stories do you wish you could see more of?

And men, what are you making of what’s going on all around us?

I would so love to hear from you. Hit me up at jptmcd@gmail.com. ++

This is an image of Jamie Lee Curtis kissing the forehead of her Halloween character Laurie Strode. Of the shot she said, "In all my years playing Laurie Strode & representing the Halloween movies there has never been an image that captured the journey better than this."

++ LINKS ++

The Guardian had a great interview with actress Claire Foy (Queen Elizabeth if you’re nasty). She talks a lot about her struggles with anxiety and being a mom.

Once she establishes that we both have young daughters, she poses one of the great questions of modern parenting: “Who would you be, Elsa or Anna?” In both our homes there has been a lot of Disney’s Frozen, a lot of introspection brought on by the ruthless 24-hour scrutiny of four-year-olds. In the garden, Foy marvels at it – how parenthood holds up a mirror, and an unflattering one. “It makes you realise, looking after a child, the holes you have in yourself.” And why not, she goes on. “You become someone’s parent – and suddenly you’re supposed to be capable? Have all the answers? Know what to do every day?” That’s never really been her way.

There’s also this great New York Times profile of Maya Rudolph (yes, it’s true, I really do love a good profile), which starts with this fantastic riff on how she is kind of like God.

Supposing that God is real and possessed of a human corporeal form — mankind being created in his image (reportedly) — we might reasonably conjecture that God’s anthropoid body integrates the totality of physical traits expressed in Earth’s human population: the skin tones blended to a light tan; the hair dark and thick; the height neither too tall nor too short — about 5-foot-7, say; every shade of human iris (the iridescent blue of a morpho butterfly, the pale green of lichen clinging to a tree, lots of brown) combining to create eyes that are ... also brown. Considering his propensity for giving life, God would probably be a mother. Considering his appreciation of beauty (e.g., snowflake geometry) and busy schedule (e.g., Genesis), he would probably clothe himself in breezily tasteful garments made from natural fabrics cut for maneuverability, like a long denim jumper dress worn over a shirt of pure white cotton. God would look, in other words, like Maya Rudolph running errands on a Tuesday.

Separate from the irrefutable fact that God looks like Maya Rudolph is the equally remarkable revelation that Maya Rudolph looks like God — that is, she looks at you the same way, you must imagine, that God takes in his creation: happy to see it, while somehow existentially disappointed in it, but forgiving of it and still maintaining affection for it, even though it has absolutely let him down in some indefinable way only he can understand. Her wide eyes, which lend themselves so easily to bald astonishment or mania in her comedy, turn down one fraction of one degree at the outer corners when at rest, lending a suggestion of ruefulness to her neutral gaze. The effect is offset by Rudolph’s cautious, closemouthed smile, which rests on her face as easily as powder on a puff. It’s invigorating to find yourself the subject of a look so wistful, even if the expression is inadvertent. It makes you want to be the better version of yourself Maya Rudolph apparently knows you can be.

Love that image of God as all at once happy to see us, disappointed, forgiving and giving us a glimpse of our better selves.

There’s this powerful story of Glynndana Shevlin, a long-time Disneyland employee who has been quietly strugging (with an overwhelming majority of her co-workers) to survive on what Disney pays them.

And the first woman ever to translate Homer’s Odyssey, who is the first to recognize the initial description of Odysseus is purposefully ambiguous and conflicted.

To the modern English reader who does not know Greek, does “a man of many turns” suggest the doubleness of the original word — a man who is either supremely in control of his life or who has lost control of it? Of the existing translations, it seems to me that none get across to a reader without Greek the open question that, in fact, is the opening question of the “Odyssey,” one embedded in the fifth word in its first line: What sort of man is Odysseus?

(Well exactly.)

Lastly, Solo co-writer Jon Kasdan on 52 random things you would never have guessed about Solo, many of which are such cool glimpses into the process – such as that the Chewie/Han meet cute was entirely the fired directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s idea, “and for my money it’s one of the best scenes in the film”; or that an early iteration of the speeder chase at the beginning involved the additional obstacle of rolling TIE fighter cockpits; or that Woody Harrelson’s Beckett betraying Han at the end of the film is very much a riff on Han abandoning Luke and Leia near the end of Star Wars, only then to come back and save the day, because Han is fundamentally a good guy for a stuck-up, half-witted scruffy-looking nerf herder; or, my favorite comment:

35. While figuring out the Kessel Heist, we kept revisiting the Mission Impossible movies because we wante the sequence to have the kind of momentum and feeling of coordinated effort that the best sequences in those movies always have. Ultimately though, Han's personality is very different from Ethan Hunt. He's much more... laid back, and things tend to go best for him when he just sorta bullshits his way through... which is why Han Solo is the patron saint of screenwriters.

HECK YEAH HE IS

In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, there’s this great idea for a meditation where you imagine yourself chilling out with the Trinity up in Heaven, looking down on everything going on on Earth. (Our Earth, not the Super-Earth living in the shadows that is coming to destroy us.)

And all you’re asked to do is just watch and listen to everything that’s happening – children being born, people working and playing, wars, grief, suffering, laughter, death. Just watch, listen, and let it affect you however it does.

Maybe somehow it all seems hilarious or it makes you think about some terrible unresolved thing in your life. Maybe you walk away profoundly moved, or just really really quiet, or SO bored. All good. There’s no wrong answer. It’s just about being present to it and to yourself, in the midst of the whirlwind always going on all around us.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed (he says, talking to himself) you might give it a whirl. Just sit your good self down for five minutes, take some deep breaths and imagine yourself hanging with Jesus or Vishnu or your Grandma and just looking down on all of everything that’s been going on like you’re watching a movie. See what you notice, feel what you feel and just be there for yourself. And let God or Loki or Carrie Fisher or whoever be there for you, too, your advocate and friend.

(Seriously, if you are feeling lost or alone right now, you could do a lot worse than to imagine yourself being kind to yourself like Jamie Lee, or having coffee with Carrie Fisher.)

Hold onto your hope, hold onto your joy. Life may be garbage right now, but you’re not crazy, there’s also more to it than that. And don’t trust anyone who wants to convince you otherwise.

(Maybe reconsider how much time you’re spending with Loki. I know he’s the Internet’s Boyfriend and he’s going to get a television show and he kind of helped Thor in the end, but he is still the Prince of Lies. And again, you could have Princess Leia.)

Send me a postcard, let me know how you’re doing. I’ll meet you back here next week.

Geronimo!