Books Read: April 2010

April 23 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I read this one for a class. It's interesting to see how frequently the Pulitzer committee has chosen these sort of multi-layered histories for their fiction prize in recent years. They may feature different protagonists and narrators, themes and tones, but there's still a lot in common between Oscar Wao and, say, Kavalier and Clay, Middlesex and The Known World. I dug Diaz's take on Oscar's epic nerdiness - it kind of makes me want to create an "Oscar Wao Sci-Fi/Fantasy Reference" tumblr.

April 30 - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

The first book I've read using the Kindle for Mac application. I tend to not be a huge fan of reading on the computer, but it wasn't too bad. I think my biggest problem was the progress bar at the bottom of the window, which allowed me to rationalize spending time reading when I should have been doing other things. (75% read? I could probably finish in a few hours!) I was prompted to start reading North and South after I watched the BBC miniseries adaptation from 2004. I don't do too much nineteenth-century reading outside of Austen and the Brontes - Gaskell's take on labor conflict, as well as the relative agency she bestows upon her heroine, was truly unlike anything else I've read from the era.

Mood Music XXIX: Retro Saturday Night

As I noted a couple weeks ago, I spent some time reminiscing about "Retro Saturday Night," a radio show I used to listen to when I was in high school. The show was a fun, dance-y mix of R&B, pop and disco from the 70s. I thought I'd put together a mini-playlist sampling a few of the songs featured on Retro Saturday Night.

On the Value of Primers

That is, of the "See Spot Run" variety, rather than paint or makeup. I just finished watching Visions of Light, a documentary about the history of film cinematography. I was alerted to the film by Roger Ebert's blog post regarding Variety's dismissal of film critic Todd McCarthy, who wrote and co-directed Visions of Light. Ebert's brief description spoke to the film nerd within me, so I added it to my Netflix queue.

Working on finishing my thesis and looking ahead to putting together reading lists for my comps has pushed me to think a lot about gaps in my knowledge of fields I'd like to work in, and how best to fill them. I'm interested in popular culture and media (that much is obvious), but from more of a cultural history standpoint than an aesthetic one; I've never done much literary analysis, art history or visual culture work, and while it won't be a major field of study for me, I don't want to neglect it either. A film like Visions of Light, which clocks in at a little over ninety minutes, is an ideal primer text for me, anchoring a discussion of an aesthetic history of film in a wide selection of clips that directly illustrate each point. If only every area of academic study could have such a painless, jargon-light breakdown.

I thought I'd also include my favorite primer clip - TCM's explanation of why they show films in the letterbox format. The clips they use to illustrate how pan-and-scan cropping alters movies will make you never want to watch one in fullscreen format ever again.

I recently watched Grease in widescreen for the first time after I saw this piece, and it was sort of astonishing to feel myself noticing new things in a film I've seen dozens of times in the cropped format.

Music Monday

Remnant of a weekend dive into 70s r&b/soul/disco I used to listen to on the radio. Maybe someday when I'm really in the mood to stall instead of doing work, I'll do a full-tilt playlist. I forgot how much I like this song, especially the spoken part at the beginning. It would probably be too pretentious to introduce "dig" into my vocabulary, seventies-style, right?

Retraction!

As Jerry Orbach says at the end of Dirty Dancing, "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong." You guys, I was wrong. 10 Things I Hate About You the TV show is not a pop culture travesty. It is a charming, delightful high school comedy.

From the pilot on, the show has really used the movie on which its based to provide little more than sketchy character guidelines. The actors don't really invite comparison with their earlier counterparts, because they're not really playing the same people. ABC Family has managed to carve out a decent niche for itself by presenting original material that's a step more mature than the offerings of, say, Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, which has the added bonus of making its characters seem more like actual teenagers. When 10 Things is at its best it's hilariously witty, and the show manages to feel simultaneously familiar and fresh. I also have to give it up to 10 Things for having a smart outspoken progressive teen feminist as its heroine - Kat Stratford remains the kind of character who is all too rare in popular media today.

Flashback: Totally Minnie

So recently the commercial I've been getting more than any other on Hulu is Verizon's new takeoff on Big Red's 80s ads.

It seems like kind of a genius campaign to me - it plays on the familiar while acknowledging the cheesy, and the jingle remains unbelievably catchy. It took me back to the video tapes of late-80s TV specials I used to watch ad nauseam as a kid. It's a means of media consumption that I assume would be totally foreign to kids today, who can get their made-for-TV movies on DVD weeks later or keep them stashed on DVRs. On those tapes, the commercials became part of the viewing experience; I was too young to be annoyed by them, so it never occurred to me to fast forward through them. Frankly, The Wizard of Oz still feels kind of incomplete when I watch it without the commercials touting McDonalds' employment of a young man with Down's Syndrome or an episode of 48 Hours featuring a story about a lifeguard trapped at the bottom of a pool. It's a fascinating glimpse into the world of whatever week the special aired and a mini-tour through a moment in history of advertising.

I thought it might be fun to write about some of the things I watched over and over as a kid. Several are really strange to watch again now, recognizing people who I didn't realize were celebrities at the time or noticing holes in plot logic that I once accepted at face value. The one the Big Red ads immediately brought to mind: Totally Minnie, starring Suzanne Somers and Robert Carradine.

To summarize: Somers is Carradine's guide at the "Minnie Mouse Center for the Totally Unhip." That's right, Somers is the "hip" one in this scenario. Oh, the "rapping." The special, which aired as part of the Wonderful World of Disney (or whatever its equivalent was at the time), is an impressive bit of Disney branding from the time right before they would recapture the hearts of America's children with The Little Mermaid, mashing up clips from old shorts and features with pop songs from the 70s and 80s. Bizarrely, this was my first encounter with the phrase "Miss Jackson if you're nasty":

I think repeated viewings of the following clip made me A) love "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" forever (I was really excited when I got older and realized that this was actually a real song and not just some random Disney thing) and B) buy heart-shaped sunglasses last year.

Every once in a while when I'm getting ready to go shopping, this ode to unrepentant materialism pops into my head. Oh, the tragic, tragic 80s fashion.

Walt Disney says Be Yourself! (Unless yourself is a cartoonist who wants to unionize!)