What the world needs now is yet another tribute to Norman Mailer. So here goes. Mailer has long been one of my favorite writers (Salman Rushdie and Charles Bukowski rounding out the trinity). Since his death on November 10, 2007, many of the tributes and obituaries have discussed his activism, his personal life, and his massive ego. While interesting, I don’t really care that much about that stuff. I loved his books.
I want to mention one particular element of his writing that goes largely unmentioned; the physical. More than anyone I have ever read, Mailer can make poetry out of men engaging in incredibly difficult, often painful physical activity. In The Naked and the Dead, his first novel, Mailer describes a squad of men pushing a cannon up a hill in the mud and rain. It goes on for pages and every word is perfect. In the same book he describes how two men must carry a wounded man down a hill in a vain attempt to get him medical help. It is picture perfect. In The FightI waited with patience until he finally gets to the Rumble in the Jungle that gives the book its name. I was not disappointed.
Yes, Mailer wrote about sex, politics, God and culture and he did it better than just about anybody, but it was those moments of physical endurance, of pain and anguish, (both physical and mental) and the bonds that those physical acts created among the men that performed them that made Mailer so damn good.
So I know I am a few months late for writing a review for the film 300 but I have a 1 year old so I don’t get to the movies that often. Give me a break.
I am writing this because a friend of mind asked me to. He was interested in my take on the film due to my current study of Islam and the Middle East. Specifically he wanted to know if I felt the film was as racist in its depiction of Persians as some have claimed. So here goes…
The film is simply okay. It is a highly stylized depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans hold off the Persian Empire’s advance into Greece. Or to put it a different way; a bunch of buff dudes run around in speedos in what must be the most homoerotic thing I’ve seen since the volleyball scene in TopGun. The argument against the film is that the Persians are depicted as bloodthirsty and barbaric, but that doesn’t hold up for me. Xerxes is depicted as over 7 feet tall and androgynous with this weird echoey voice, the Immortals look like rotting corpses, there is some huge monster-looking dude, the traitor is a deformed hunchback and there is the biggest damn battle-rhino I’ve ever seen (not that I knew a battle-rhino was a thing but whatever). The point is, it is too silly to be offensive. This is so far from the reality of what the Persian Empire was or Iranians are today that I have a hard time seeing it as stereotyping. I can see why some were offended but to me it is as if someone made a film depicting all Americans as green with three eyes. It has no relationship with reality.
Tony Kashani, a film professor, wrote a very good piece taking up the opposing view. He outlines all the reasons that 300 is racist, homophobic and so on. He also has some quotes from Frank Miller himself expressing take on current events. Mr. Miller is not exactly enlightened. While I think Professor Kashani reads too much into 300, and comes down a little hard on comics in general (he teaches the profession that gave us White Chicks while knocking the profession that gave us Maus), I do feel he illustrates the arguments against the film quite well and it is worth reading if you have the time.
Last night I watched An Inconvenient Truth. Yeah, I know. I’m a little behind the times. Anyway, there was something that struck me (beyond the whole “the earth is heating up and were all gonna die” thing). Al Gore will forever be linked, not to Bill Clinton, but to George W. Bush. The election of 2000 is the key moment in the political history of Al Gore, and for those of us on the left side of things, he will always be the man who should have been.
But this is what got me about the movie. Here is a film in which 95% of the dialogue is given by one man, and it’s riveting. A man considered dry, dull and boring talks for an hour and a half and it is amazing to watch. I then tried to imagine a movie in which George W. Bush talks for 90 minutes on his passion, whatever that might be. How bad would that movie be?! He couldn’t do it based on his personality alone. George W. Bush loses the charisma battle to Al Gore. Who would have guessed that? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go recycle something.
Vampires are after me. Well maybe not literally but they seem to be around. Let me explain. I just finished reading Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. It is a novel about a vampire. Not just any vampire, the vampire. Dracula. Now I am not goth or into any vampire subculture or anything like that, but I do like a good scare now and then. I enjoy a good horror movie from time to time (and by horror movie I do not mean the gorefest, exploitation films that seem to pass for horror today. I mean psychologically scary stuff). So I dig vampires as much as the next guy. From Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee and the Hammer films to Gary Oldman. Hell I even liked George Hamilton.
So anyway, I read Kostova’s novel and loved it. There are a few to many coincidences in the story which I always see as the least creative way to move a plot point along, but other than that I was totally sucked into the story and the characters. Then last night as I am flipping through the channels I come across a History Channel special on the origin of vampires. I was particularly struck by the disturbing tale of Countess Elizabeth Bathory. It was gross. Lastly, this morning I was checking CNN.com as I do every morning and I was pleased to see the Poe Toaster made an appearance again. For those of you that don’t know, every year on Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday a cloaked figure goes to Poe’s grave and leaves three roses and half a bottle of cognac. While this doesn’t have anything to do with vampires per se it is still gothic and creepy.
So maybe vampires aren’t really after me, maybe I just in the mood for a little scare.