Why I Will Never Be Judged By the Content of my Character

I suppose it’s no big secret that American culture holds a double standard for men and women. I am reminded of this, depressingly, while reading the headlines of women’s magazines in line at the grocery story. “Your best summer hair EVER!” proclaims Marie Claire. “Hot Moves to Drive Him Wild” promises Cosmo. Thin and beautiful women grace their covers. Turn to Esquire, and you see, well, more thin and beautiful women. But Esquire also boasts articles about the president and the war, and cultural commentary and essays by David Sedaris and Chuck Klostermann (two of my favorite writers). Okay, there’s also articles about how to score chicks, but even these are very well-written, whereas I’m pretty sure Marie Claire just reguirgitates the same articles every month while slapping a younger, thinner model on the cover. Overall, Esquire is written for a person who is reflective and intelligent – not just about their hip size, but about the state of their world.

Let’s relate this perception of men and women to the plight of Kirstie Alley. Alley was slender in her early career – her Cheers days – but last year sometime started grabbing tabloid covers (or to be specific, enlarged photos of her hiner started grabbing said covers). Alley got a spokeswoman deal with Jenny Craig, and a TV show called Fat Actress. Very publicly, she lost 50 pounds and showed up on Oprah in a bikini.

While spending the night in a hotel a couple weeks ago, I channel flipped to Pulp Fiction on cable TV (which, in case you’re wondering, is still pretty engaging sans swearing and bloodshed). Quentin Tarantino is traditionally credited with saving John Travolta’s career by casting him in Pulp Fiction. The early 1990’s found Travolta doing dreck like Look Who’s Talking/Too/Now, co-starring Kristie Alley. In 1994’s Pulp Fiction, he played a swaggering bad-ass assassin, and won an Oscar nomination. Travolta’s career has been up and down since then. Though finding success with movies like Face/Off and Ladder 49, he was panned widely for Battlefield Earth, based on the novel of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. (Incidentally, my friend Rob is the only person I know who’s seen Battlefield Earth, and he was only able to stomach 20 minutes, which is something because I’ve seen Rob stomach mass quantities of Jager). Travolta was also criticized recently in the press for saying psychotic drugs caused the Virginia Tech shootings (cringe).

Anyway, I’m watching Pulp Fiction, and one of the commercials is for a re-run of Grease on Nick at Nite. Holy Cow! I thought, John Travolta got enormous between 1978 and 1994! See a comparison here. Then, Google as I might, I could not find a single criticism of Travolta ginormosity, save for the article above which doesn’t even actively criticize Travolta, because his wife Kelly “finds his fuller figure attractive!”

What damaged Kirstie Alley’s career? Being overweight. What revived it? Losing weight. What damaged Travolta’s career? A combination of bad movie choices and a belief in scientology. What revived it? Great acting, great movies. Alley rises and falls on her expanding and contracting waistline; Travolta falls because of his beliefs, his thoughts, his actions. What kills me about this is that Kristie Alley is a scientologist; I didn’t know this until I started researching her career for this post. Do you see women scientologists (Alley, Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston) in the news for their beliefs nearly as much as you do their male counterparts (Travolta, Tom Cruise)?

Female stars are much more likely to end up in the gossip columns for appearance – rumors of eating disorders, weight loss/gain, pregnancy, flashing nether regions, plastic surgery speculations. Male stars end up in the tabloids for what they do or say – Tom Cruise for his heinous behavior on Oprah, Danny DeVito appearing drunk on The View, Isaiah Washington using the word “faggot” on the set of Grey’s Anatomy, Mel Gibson's anti-semitic rant, the time Russell Crowe threw a phone at that bellhop. Just last night I saw Tucker Carlson laughing at presidential candidate John Edwards for this video, where he spends several minutes zhushing his hair before a TV interview. When a man is concerned about his appearance, it is an occasion for hilarity! Yet when Kristie Alley stays at home with her kids and drinks 14 bottles of grape soda per day, suddenly it’s a “health crisis” and she desperately needs help. (As far as I know, Travolta’s grape soda consumption has never been reported in a major news outlet.)

Why should I care? I’m not (yet) planning on being a movie star, but I am planning on making a career out of what I do and say. In fact, the career I’ve chosen for myself will rise and fall on teaching and publishing, and though I like to think that academia is more forgiving than Hollywood, something in me doubts that people are willing to switch gears so quickly. Part of the reason I write about pop culture despite its seeming triviality is that I honestly believe it is a reflection of society and that it has the power to influence people. Though publishing allows for physical anonymity, what I achieve as a professor will also depend on the way I appear to others: teaching, job talks, presenting at conferences, and it feels naïve to believe that people will hold me to Travolta standards instead of Alley standards. What does this double standard mean for the way women should present themselves professionally? Is the solution to embrace the beauty standard, work out and buy the latest fashions? Or do I deny the standard, let myself go, and dress ultra-conservatively? Isn’t it wildly unfair that I have to ask such questions in the first place?

More on Borat

On my last post about George Saunders’ take on Borat, Brady (on Facebook) makes the excellent point that it’s unfair to hold up documentaries to traditional journalistic standards, and I couldn’t agree more. This mythic “standard of truth” was what irritated me about the whole James Fry vs. Oprah debacle: Oprah got mad because James Frey was representing as “truth” was Oprah did not believe was truth, but Oprah never bothered to consider the messy meaning of truth, or what it means to tell the truth, or the circumstances under which one is obligated to tell the truth, or the artistic sensibilities of memoir as a valid genre, or the complexities of memory. No. Oprah felt that some “facts” were “wrong” and got on TV and yelled at James Frey. So I agree that Sacha Baron Cohen (creator of Borat) and Michael Moore deserve some slack.

Brady also writes that Borat is really about Borat and his stunts, and maybe that’s whence the big laffs in the movie, but the stick-to-your-ribs sinking feeling that accompanies you out of the movie theater is from the moments where Borat, with his outsider charm, forces the viewer to confront his society. As I asked myself leaving the theater, “I live in a country where people want to kill gays?” This is not information I have to confront every day (straight privilege!), and I originally thought the movie was successful at jarring me into revelations about my culture.

And this is why Saunders’ argument is so compelling. He contends that Borat appears to be “edgy” and shocking and attention-grabbing and jaw-dropping and an indictment of modern culture. But really all Borat does is make fun of people it’s okay to make fun of : (1) People in power -- middle-class people, white people, Christians and (2) People without a voice – villagers in Kazakhstan. For a movie with a backwards, anti-semitic outsider as a protagonist, its targets are surprisingly politically correct. Saunders further argues that Borat is not trying to Make A Point (as would likely be the case for someone like Michael Moore); instead, he’s trying to make a buck. In this way, the movie isn’t really compelling at all. It’s really rather mundane and somewhat mean-spirited. It’s not that Borat’s facts are wrong, it’s that his motives are impure.

Roger Ebert says that one judges a movie based on how well it accomplishes what it sets out to do. Borat was not marketed as truthful or journalistic, and we can’t hold filmmakers to a standard of Truth if they don’t represent their movies that way. But before we start revering Borat as a piece of cultural criticism, we need to examine what and who is being criticized.

I want to be little parts of different things

Recently, I’ve been thinking that our society allows for very little nuance or ambiguity in our beliefs. For example, you have to choose a religion. Church-hopping with my parents as a kid and then also with LaRue, I’ve found that I don’t want to commit wholeheartedly to one religion, I want different parts of different religions. I like the community atmosphere of the Orthodox church, the worship music at The Crossing, the communion at the Catholic church. How come I can’t be different percentages of different religions?

This same thing happens with politics. What if you were just given, like ten votes, and you got to distribute those among the candidates? So if you thought Barack Obama’s health care plan was great, but you wanted a woman president, and you’re pro-life, you could put in four votes for Obama, and three for Hilary and three for a Republican candidate (or something like that). This might force people to actually think about the differences between the candidates instead of just voting for someone who agrees with “most” of what they believe. In fact, I think I remember David P telling me about some kind of election reform that was similar to this. David, care to comment?

I hope I don’t seem as though I’m noncommittal. I believe that ideological commitments have many places and purposes. I just think that if people weren’t given the option of pigeonholing their beliefs in one place, they might be forced to think about and articulate those beliefs more clearly.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei

Or, the voice of the people is the voice of God. Here at Things Other Things, I’m always trying to be responsive. So I’ve decided to take a moment today to respond to some of the insightful feedback nuggets you nice folks have left for me.

In re: My post on Why TV is better than the Movies, Lesley astutely points out that a major downside of TV is that it gets abruptly canceled. I too have felt the sting of early cancellation! Curse you NBC for taunting me with the potent intellectualism of Studio 60, for once making me believe that America Is Real Smart, and then yanking out the carpet of Sorkin Speak! May your fall lineup rot like Olive Garden leftovers! A pox upon your house, HBO, for delightfully unraveling the mysteries of Carnivale only to tie up so tantalizing few by the end of season two that I was forced to get my fix of Biblical metaphor from *gasp*Network TV. (In fact, reflecting on those two shows in particular, I can see that both seemed to suffer for being too smart. Lesson today is that people hate smart.)

Anyway, I see Lesley’s conundrum, but I don’t think that movies necessarily do a better job of creating satisfying endings. For every Sixth Sense, there’s a The Village. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out of a movie with some burning unanswered question due to lazy filmmaking. The best examples I can think of are Lost in Translation and The Piano. “What?” you’re sitting there thinking. “What about?” Or “Whatever happened to?” My point is that TV shows often get cancelled and thus never end, but movies do not necessarily have more satisfying or effective closure. Thanks for this comment Lesley, and for being my friend even when I was a nerd in high school.

In re: My post on Why I Like Rosie, JR writes that just because someone is loud and obnoxious does not mean they are an effective communicator; therefore, Rosie’s rants on the View don’t actually accomplish anything. I would agree with JR that she’s not making any converts. I would argue that Rosie draws attention to issues that the American public prefers not to think about, and certainly doesn’t wish to discuss in the comfort of a morning talk show. I’m concerned that we live in a society where none of our popular culture reflects the Real World we live in. In our parents’ day, folks like Bob Dylan topped the charts with songs that talked about, for example, the complicated ethics of war and peace: “How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man?” I randomly turned on the radio today to hear Fergie pondering the age-old question: “How come every time you come round my London London Bridge wanna go down?” With the exception of maybe Jon Stewart (and even he uses humor), can you think of any popular entertainers who consistently address Dylan’s issues? And this is why although Rosie isn’t a solution, she’s certainly a step in the right direction. However uncouthly, she can (London) bridge the gulf between the Paris Hilton-obsessed public and the troubles of the world it inhabits. Thanks for reading my blog, JR. I hope your London Bridge always goes down (Or something. I don’t actually know what that phrase means. As the Good Book says, “To the pure, all things are pure” Titus 1:15).

In re: My post on my favorite American Idol perfs, Kristin has helpfully alerted me to a circa 2002 Kelly Clarkson performance, which, like Kristin, is pretty fabulous. Watch it immediately! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64S5Rn9mlxs

In re: my post on Ian McEwan’s Saturday Jennifer writes (NOT because she’s procrastinating studying for comps, of course) about McEwan’s simile of the smell of hay drying in August. Jennifer objects that she would actually think something like this, but that hay dries in May, not August. Well, Jennifer, McEwan’s character lives in London, which may affect the time he dries his hay (those zany Brits! Drying hay year round!) Or perhaps he, like most of us, wouldn’t know when hay dries, and this is just another example of McEwan messing up point of view. Jennifer also writes that it is a trademark of modernism to write about the mundane in a grand way. She is correct, and I thought I said that in the post. If I wasn’t clear, what I meant was that McEwan is trying to achieve an effect of postmodernism by writing about the mundane, but his modernist impulses keep overtaking the writing. If you’re going to be pomo, for crying out loud, just be pomo, don’t try to dress it up. I’m saying that the writing feels torn between the two and is the worse for it. And I was going to make the connection not only to Ulysses, but also to Mrs. Dalloway, thankyouverymuch, but then I got tired and remembered I was supposed to be on vacation. Thus, Jennifer, I will allow you to cook me dinner sometime and I will pontificate for you to no end (or at least until dessert).

Thanks for the comments, folks! Please keep writing!