Favorite Characters: Rey (Star Wars)

I can hardly explain how well Rey works for me.  She’s smart, tough, capable, complicated, in over her head but still getting by, and even though she could easily seem over-the-top or too good to be true, she just comes off so well.  With her in the foreground, I think the Star Wars franchise is in fine hands (a few Rey-related spoilers for The Force Awakens.)

As with the other two members of the new trio (more on them some other time,) Rey bears a distinct resemblance to those who came before.  While the guys both take on some Han-ish qualities, Rey is definitely reminiscent of Luke.  I mean, come on – a young person of uncertain parentage with itchy feet stuck on a desert planet?  A talent for ships and flying, a natural flair with droids, and strong Force sensitivity that she hasn’t discovered yet?  She’s so Luke.

But at the same time, she’s not, and I like that.  Rey is more remote, more guarded, than Luke.  She doesn’t push people away exactly – in fact, she seems to fall pretty easily into friendships – but she’s incredibly self-sufficient, and she sort of wears that self-sufficiency around her like armor.  It’s like, she’s more than happy to have others around her and work together with her, but it’s important that they know she’d be fine on her own if necessary.  When Finn first meets her and (badly) tries to come to her rescue, she’s a little annoyed that he felt the need to try. 

This is informed, like so many of Rey’s traits, by her abandonment at a young age.  For such a long time, it’s been just Rey and she’s learned to make do with that, and so it weirds her out a bit when people act like she needs their help.  Incidentally, though, this same abandonment probably plays a big part in her compassion and her own inclination toward helping others, and in a way, that’s her “in” to letting others get close to her.  From almost the moment she crosses paths with BB-8, she’s determined to help the droid and even leaves her planet – which she’s clung to in the hopes that those who left her there will one day come back for her – to do so.  This means that Finn, and later Han and Chewy, become people who can similarly help BB-8, and that’s why she tells them to stay with her.  Even as it feels pretty obvious that she at least subconsciously craves a reprieve from the fairly solitary life she’s been living (she and Finn quickly fall in like old friends, and she probably sees something of a father in Han,) the official reasons she gives them are all about getting BB-8 back to the resistance.

And, also due in part to her years of fending for herself, Rey can get crap done.  She explores and investigates, she fights well with a staff and is a quick study with a light saber, and she both pilots and repairs unfamiliar ships with innate aptitude.  As she starts understanding her affinity with the Force, she soon learns to use it to her advantage.  All these skills likely have some calling her character a Mary Sue, but for me, it works.  Her abilities mostly feel earned, and I think they’re balanced out by her very human fears.  By all accounts, she can rock just about anything, but when she is first told about her true potential, it completely freaks her out.  She doesn’t want to be powerful or chosen or anyone’s great hope – it’s too large, too much to take in at once, and like so many heroes before her, she initially runs away from the call.  The Force Awakens shows her beginning to find her way back to it, and I’m excited to see where she goes next.

Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 17 – “Hat Trick” (2012)

I’ll be honest – about half of my motivation for initially checking out Once Upon a Time was the knowledge that Sebastian Stan had had a small but beloved role in it (the other half, by the way, was stuff I’d heard about Mulan,) so it’s not really surprising that I was more than ready for Jefferson’s first appearance on the show.  But even apart from that obvious check in the plus column, “Hat Trick” is one of my favorite episodes from season 1 and, really, I think it’s still one of the best the show has ever done (episode spoilers.)

At this point, Storybrooke is still under the curse, Emma is a disbeliever in Henry’s stories and her role as the Savior, and the show is dividing its screentime between the main characters/seasonal arc and more minor Enchanted Forest denizens, giving us side plots of Emma meeting and helping these characters in present-day Storybrooke.  We get some of both in this episode.  Snow/Mary Margaret has escaped jail, mistakenly thinking that Emma helped her get out, but in fact, Emma is desperate to find her before her arraignment, lest she get in even worse trouble.  Along the way, she meets and is captured by Jefferson, an unstable young man who corroborates Henry’s stories and insists that Emma, the Savior, is his only hope for being reunited with his daughter Grace.  In flashback, we see how Jefferson is separated from Grace when Regina talks him into making a return to his old ways:  opening portals between worlds with the aid of an enchanted hat.

There’s a lot to enjoy here.  I really like the story of Jefferson and Grace, which is emotional and well-acted by all involved.  I like seeing Emma pull out all the stops to help Mary Margaret, and I love Mary Margaret discovering her inner badass princess/bandit Snow White, if only for a moment.  I like the inventive direction the show takes with the introduction of the Mad Hatter, opening up the series to other worlds beyond ours and the Enchanted Forest (some might argue that it’s not been a development for the best, since the show hasn’t always used its expanded universe well.)  Similarly, I like how elements of the Mad Hatter story manifest in Storybrooke.

But all that (even Sebastian Stan playing one of my favorite characters of his) doesn’t live up to what this episode really delivers in terms of the show’s mythology.  Before seeing “Hat Trick,” I was moderately entertained by Once Upon a Time and found some of the characters/actors quite engaging, but after seeing “Hat Trick,” I was invested in this narrative.  Jefferson’s conversations with Emma are so vital, both for Emma’s journey as a character – she still doesn’t want to believe, but against her will, she’s starting to – and for the trajectory of the series. 

Jefferson isn’t the only character in Storybrooke who retains his Enchanted Forest memories under the curse, but he’s probably the most interesting to me.  I love his observation about this world, that “everyone wants some magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”  And his response to Emma’s insistence that “this is the real world” is exactly what she needs:  “A real world.  How arrogant are you to think yours is the only one?  There are infinite more.  […]  They touch one another, pressing up in a long line of lands, each just as real as the last.  […]  Some have magic, some don’t.  And some need magic… Like this one.”  Though Once Upon a Time has a number of thematic cores, I think this one might be the most profound and well-articulated.  Moving forward, it’s what allows the day-to-day and the fantastical to exist side by side.  Bringing magic to a world that needs it.  How cool is that?

Made in Dagenham (2010, R)

In a lot of ways, this reminds me of Pride.  Let’s see here… British period piece about a labor strike.  Features a group of people who are historically overlooked and underestimated.  Despite its powerful subject matter, has an overall buoyant feeling that’s deftly reeled in when it needs to be.  Strong message of unity and the triumph of the little guy/woman in the face of pretty big odds.  Yep – definitely familiar!

In 1968, the all-female group of machinists working at the Ford plant in Dagenham complain about their work being relabeled as “unskilled labor,” with the pay cut to go along with it.  The women, led by the quiet but strong-willed Rita, go on strike, but soon, it becomes about more than a classification, an individual factory, or even an individual profession.  Rita sets her sights on a far bigger goal:  gender pay equality.

As I said, this movie takes a predominantly light tone, but it does get serious when the job calls for it, particularly when it comes to Rita and the other women looking to their husbands to support their movement, as the women in turn supported their husbands in previous strikes.  While it doesn’t shy away from the struggles or the injustice, it also has a lot of humor and knows how to have fun.  I can understand that some may find this attitude flippant, as if a women’s labor movement is more “frivolous” than that of their male counterparts, but that’s not how I see it.  For me, it’s more about showing the indomitable spirit of these machinists, who lean on one another and find ways to laugh even in hard times.  When one of them staggers under the weight of what they’re up against, the others rally around her and bolster her up, lending her the strength to keep going, and I think that’s really cool.

Sally Hawkins (a former Anne from Persuasion, and she has a lesbian Victoriana twofer under her belt, having appeared in Tipping the Velvet and starred in Fingersmith) is tailor-made for Rita.  She can bring a lot of force to her performance, but she does it with this little voice and this unassuming nature.  At the start of the film, she doesn’t think of herself as a person who can speak up, but she does it anyway because she just can’t abide continuing in silence.  Watching her, you see Rita discovering what she’s capable of at the same time that you do.  Really great work.

The rest of the cast is packed with familiar British faces.  For Harry Potter alumni alone, there’s Miranda Richardson (Rita Skeeter – but more importantly, Queenie!), Geraldine James (Lily Potter,) and Roger Lloyd-Pack (Barty Crouch, Jr.)  We also have Rosamund Pike (Amy from Gone Girl, a former Pride and Prejudice Jane,) Rupert Graves (Lestrade on Sherlock,) a young blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Robbie Kay (Peter Pan on Once Upon a Time,) Richard Schiff, Bob Hoskins, Daniel Mays (from “Night Terrors” in series 6 of Who,) and Andrea Riseborough (Angelica from The Devil’s Whore.)  Continued proof that two degrees is the farthest any living British actor can be from any other.

Warnings

Language, light sexual content, and drinking/smoking.

Buster Keaton Interviews (2007)

This collection makes for a nice read, with lots of anecdotes and insights straight from the horse’s mouth.  I’d recommended reading it bit by bit rather than in one or a few sittings, but it’s definitely a good time.

Just what it says on the label, this book compiles sixteen interviews with Buster Keaton.  Some are a page or two, while others exceed twenty pages.  There are print interviews, transcribed TV interviews, and a few interviews translated from foreign-language publications. 

It surprises me a little that the overwhelming majority of the interviews come from the last ten years of Buster’s life, during the Keaton renaissance of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  There are only three that were actually conducted during his silent career, and then, they’re very early in his silent career – the last of them was written in 1923, just after he finished Our Hospitality.  I wonder if that sort of thing, celebrity interviews, just wasn’t done very often in the ‘20s?  The first two, in fact, are more informational than anything else, with no more than a few short quotes from Buster.  The third, though, is interesting to me.  The interviewer spends a lot of the article commenting on the interview scenario, Buster’s friendly but shy demeanor, and the interviewer’s suspicion that she could get a lot more of the “real” Buster if they weren’t in a studio office with suits running around.

Fortunately, the later interviews are packed to the gills with the real Buster.  There’s plenty of plain-talking observations on Hollywood then and now (well, in the ‘50s and ‘60s,) animated stories about a particular scene from this or that film, polite brushoffs when the interviewers start waxing too philosophically on the Genius of Keaton, and notes from the interviewers about how engaging and personable Buster is.  What’s interesting is that, particularly in the ‘50s, Buster’s work had only recently been rediscovered and had started to be shown again on late-night TV and, rarely, in theaters.  So, many of these interviewers talking to Buster about his long and illustrious career have never even seen the classics they’re asking him about.  That must have been so weird, especially when you’re talking about silent movies.  It makes for a rather unusual interview dynamic, with Buster telling these interviews what particular shorts or features were about, but I think it also speaks to how resonant Buster’s work is, seeing these interviews asking him to describe movies they’ve only read about.

Some fun stories about particular films (The Navigator, The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and Seven Chances get a lot of time devoted to them for the features, and The Boat and The Playhouse are probably the most talked-of shorts,) covering amusing filmmaking challenges, Buster’s process, and, of course, stunt and technical mishaps.  He also shares quite a bit about his vaudeville career, his history with Fatty Arbuckle, and the difficulties of the MGM years.  Word of warning, though – the same stories get repeated in many interviews, which is why I’d recommend reading the book more gradually.  Obviously, it’s perfectly natural for Buster to tell eight reporters in a ten-year span the same anecdote about the rolling-boulders sequence in Seven Chances, but reading it eight times in the same week is a bit much.  Still, there’s a lot to enjoy here, and some nice tidbits – even with things I’d already learned elsewhere, I like to read Buster telling about them, and I love how consistently he fascinates his interviewers with everything he accomplished in his amazing career.

A Few Notes on Race and Time Travel (Doctor Who)

The Whoniverse means time travel, and, at least some of the time, that means visiting the past.  The subject of race doesn’t come too often in this context since 1) including Mickey, Doctor Who has only had two companions of color, and Martha’s the only one that’s been to the past, and 2) the main characters on Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures travel very infrequently in time.  That being said, there are still some interesting episodes of note – Who today, and we’ll check out the spinoffs next week.

So, let’s talk Martha, shall we?  Series 3 has three stories set in the past, two of which are two-parters, plus a brief glimpse of our heroes in the ‘60s in “Blink.”  That’s a more-than-average emphasis on history, although consideration of race is mostly light.  I do like the show’s recognition that race relations aren’t a straight line that’s always marched forward (albeit slowly) towards progress.  Instead, matters have gone back and forth, as shown in “The Shakespeare Code.”  Martha, realizing she’s in 1599, asks, “Am I all right?  I’m not going to get carted off as a slave, am I?”, but the Doctor points out that the Elizabethan era isn’t as different from her time as she thinks.  The times aren’t exactly progressive – Shakespeare variously calls Martha a “delicious blackamoor lady,” an “Ethiop girl,” a “swarth,” a “Queen of Afric,” and “Dark Lady” – but Black people do exist in this era, and not solely as slaves.  At other times, however, the show goes too far in this kind of thinking.  There is no way I buy the racially-harmonious Hooverville of “Daleks Take Manhattan” / “Evolution of the Daleks,” where everyone accepts a sagacious Black man as their leader.  Part of it might be some writer disconnect between race in the UK versus the US, but glossing over historical fact in this way feels jarring.

The strongest racial ramifications for Martha occur in “Human Nature” / “The Family of Blood,” in which the Doctor is in hiding as a human without his real memories and Martha has to keep an eye out for him.  The TARDIS deposits them in a very casually-racist 1913, where Martha is forced to spend three months working as a maid in a prep school.  Between the outright racism (a student sneers, “With hands like those, how can you tell when something’s clean?”) and the patronizing remarks about both her position and assumed ignorance, (a number of adults, even the nice ones, lecture Martha on her “place,” and the Doctor-as-John-Smith in one scene talks to her like she’s an idiot and assumes she can’t tell the difference between fiction and fact,) Martha gets put through the wringer in this story.  And that’s before you add the aliens!  It’s a fairly unsanitized portrayal of the realities of racism in the Edwardian era, and after the pulled punches earlier in the season, I was pleased the see the show acknowledge this.

And clearly, that’s rough to watch.  It’s infuriating to see poised, intelligent Martha dismissed like that, especially when she just has to sit there and take it; the instances where she gets to push back are like a pressure-valve release, so satisfying.  With the heaviness of this story, I can understand why the show felt tempted to go easier in “The Shakespeare Code” and the Dalek two-parter.  Companions should expect to have their lives endangered by aliens wherever they go with the Doctor, but if Martha were to have every historical adventure be an exercise in racist assholery, that would be so unfair to her.  An alternative might to be keep her out of historicals all together, but that would just be ignoring the issue.  Overall, while there are problems (especially in the Depression-era story,) I think the show does a decent job of balancing racial complexities without making Martha’s time as a companion uniformly horrible for her.

Further Thoughts on Room

Difficult as it is to watch, Room has a lot of interesting ideas going for it.  When I saw it, however, one thought kept rising to the top:  I can’t imagine being in Ma’s shoes.  And I don’t just mean the abduction or abuse, although that’s obviously horrific.  Rather, I mean the struggle of deciding how to raise Jack in such reprehensible conditions (contains spoilers.)

I completely get why Ma initially spins Jack the fantasy of Room being the entire world, with the trees, dogs, other people, and everything else he sees on TV being purely fabricated.  Their situation is untenable, and I don’t blame her at all for wanting to shield Jack from that horror.  Just like she hides Jack in the wardrobe when Old Nick comes in, she hides the idea of an outside world from Jack.  She doesn’t want him to know that he’s a prisoner, and what’s more, she doesn’t want him to envy everything the world outside Room has to offer.  If he thinks grandparents and soccer games are “just TV,” the fact that he’s cut off from those things won’t bother him so much.  He can be surprisingly happy in Room if he thinks that’s all there is.

As time goes on, however, Jack’s contentment in Room is a new horror in itself, because Ma can’t allow him to come of age there.  She can’t let Room be his “normal,” and so, despite the enormity of it, she has to tell him the truth.  It breaks her heart to destroy that innocence, but she has no choice.  Additionally, she’s realized that her only hope for getting Jack out depends on his help.  She needs him to believe the reality of their situation, because what she needs him to do is monumentally dangerous/scary and he won’t do it unless he understands the stakes.

Unfortunately, Ma’s old fairytale is so convincing that Jack won’t believe the world is larger than Room.  He rails against her true explanation, insisting that she’s trying to trick him.  This is in part because the truth is so awful – of course he doesn’t want to believe that there is a world out there but that a predator kidnapped Ma and refuses to let her and Jack leave Room, hurting her night after night.  No one wants to believe something like that.  Another reason for his denial is the simple fact that the fantasy is all he’s ever known.  Ma has just refuted his entire worldview.  How is a 5-year-old meant to wrap his head around that?  He’s lived his whole life within four walls.  Having been explicitly told by his mother – in his mind, the only other “real” person in the world – that there’s nothing else, and having seen nothing to contradict that, it’s no wonder he accepts the story and becomes upset when the truth intrudes on it.

And Ma hates to do that.  She hates that she has to tell him.  She doesn’t want to hit him with terrible truths that he can’t comprehend, and she doesn’t want to send him on an escape mission.  Her top priority is always protecting Jack.  She hides him from Old Nick, she provides for him as best as she can, and she allows herself to be abused by Old Nick for Jack’s sake, “cooperating” to ensure that Jack has food, vitamins, and heat.  Any attempts at escape have always had their true intentions shrouded from Jack – for me, one of the most affecting moments of the film is the scene in which Ma and Jack both scream as loud as they can, to see if the “aliens in outer space” can hear them.  As the scene is framed, it’s clear that this is a regular “game” Ma has them play.  But these efforts yield no results, and if Jack is going to get out, he needs to be proactive in his own escape.  He has to be brave, follow multi-step directions, evade Old Nick, and pass on a message to someone who can help.  And in order to do all that, he has to understand what’s going on.  And so, the only way to really protect him is to shatter his impression of the world.

News Satire Roundup: March 20th-March 24th

Sunday, March 20 – The opening included corruption in Brazil (I loved the the comment about their legislative body having only 40% fewer criminals than their prisons) and Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination; while the latter story didn’t have much new to say, the intransigence of McConnell and co. should be pointed out whenever possible, so I liked it.  Even better, though, was the ending tag, in which John brought out the potential Garland stand-ins for the show’s all-dog Supreme Court.  But before adorable judiciary dogs was the main story:  Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.  In John’s trademark fashion, he systematically tore apart every claim and rationalization about the wall.  It will not 1) cost $4-12 billion, 2) be easy to erect/maintain, or 3) be widely effective in keeping out undocumented immigrants (who, by the way, are statistically less likely to commit crime, not more.)  Any other questions?

Monday, March 21 – While it feels kind of contradictory to do a news/satire story on how Trump has benefited from news over-saturation, the show did an interesting job with it.  The statistics shared were especially enlightening (Trump’s campaign coverage has been comparable to that of the entire Ebola crisis,) and I liked Trevor calling out the uncoolness of news moguls who admit to knowingly contributing to the Trump machine in exchange for ratings.  So-so piece from Ronny on robots and AI technology.  My favorite part was his point that, if we don’t want to AIs to rise up against us, we should stop teaching them war strategy games like chess.  The guest was Shaka Senghor, who talked about his experiences in prison and the need for reform.  I especially liked his comments about adjusting to contemporary life/technology after a long prison sentence.

Tuesday, March 22 – It felt odd that Brussels didn’t come up until the interview (although there was a brief tribute at the end – along with Ankara, which I appreciated.)  As such, the first story, a blurb about the online voting that may result in a British research vessel being named “Boaty McBoatface,” was funny but felt weirdly chipper.  Good story on Obama’s visit to Cuba; I loved Obama “cock-blocking” Castro’s attempt at a photo op, as well as Trevor calling out “braving the rain” as a first-world phrase.  Nice to see Desi back, reporting on the planned gentrification of Cuba.  Roy did a field piece on an NBA player who fought/beat the charges that had involved him being injured by police, comparing his case to the many that don’t go in Black people’s favor.  I liked the interview with Taavi Rõivas, prime minister of Estonia.  I liked hearing about some neat things he’s done there, as well as his remarks on not giving in to fear amidst terrorism.

Wednesday, March 23 – On Monday, Trevor looked at the media’s culpability in the Trump mess; tonight was the GOP’s turn.  It was a great story, pointing out that, despite the GOP’s insistence that Trump doesn’t reflect the Republican Party, a lot of their stances align pretty closely.  All the comparative clips were perfectly chosen, and I loved Trevor taking Trump to task for calling America a third-world country.  This led well into the guest, Senator Lindsey Graham.  He was a surprisingly good sport about Trevor undermining his endorsement of Cruz by repeatedly showing clips of Graham talking about how awful Cruz was, including one where he compared the prospect of a Cruz presidency to being poisoned.  Graham got two segments of the episode, the final one featuring a pool game between him and Trevor in which they had to read compliments about Trump every time they missed a shot.

Thursday, March 24 – We opened with Tay, Microsoft’s new AI that was taken off Twitter when users taught her to be racist (with Twitter, it was inevitable.)  Next came a story on reactions to the Brussels attack.  The juxtaposition between calls for unity/strength (most world leaders) and opportunistic fearmongering (Cruz and Trump) was just as pronounced as you’d expect.  There was an update on the Apple vs. FBI showdown, or lack thereof; I loved Trevor’s annoyance at the FBI for the whole thing.  All this, unfortunately, was crammed into the first segment to make way for more Third Month Mania stuff in the second.  Roy and Hasan’s commentary wasn’t even as funny to me this time (except for their description of Congress as a surfeit of assholes.)  Enjoyable interview with Ethan Hawke, promoting his Chet Baker biopic.  I liked his story about how his wife keeps him accountable when his characters get into his head.

Dear Hollywood Whitewashers: Cameron Crowe (Aloha)

Hollywood has a long history of whitewashing Asian characters:  the horrifying yellowface of past decades, the near-total white-ification of screen adaptations of popular animes, the Asian erasure of real-life people in movies about them, and the shoehorning of white guys into samurai movies are just a few oft-used techniques, past and present.  Cameron Crowe’s rom-com Aloha became one of the most recent offenders on this front when Emma Stone was cast as Allison Ng, a mixed character of white, Chinese, and Hawaiian descent.

Now, the quote we’re looking at is actually from an apology letter Crowe posted on his blog after controversy about Stone’s casting blew up.  It’s not the sort of apology one would hope for – he extends the mea culpa to “all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice,” using fairly soft adjectives and focusing on people’s perception of the casting rather than agreeing that it was objectively wrong – but at the very least, he does seem to acknowledge the mistake and places the blame at his feet rather than Emma Stone’s.  But I digress – here’s the quote:

“As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one.  A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii.  Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets.  The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.”

Okay, Cameron Crowe.  Character-wise, that’s all fine.  Granted, when the only prominent Hawaiian/Asian character in your movie set in Hawaii looks white, it’s not particularly cool, but the character itself is fine.  As you say, she’s based on a real-life person.  But do you know what that real-life person is?  Mixed.  Regardless of how she looks, she and her heritage is mixed.

So, you’ve neatly established for us that mixed people who look white exist.  It then stands to reason that mixed people who look white can be cast in movies, and that’s who you should have cast here.  When you’re talking about race and a long history of cinematic whitewashing and Asian erasure, it’s not just the look that’s important.  It’s so essential to recognize that actors of color have far fewer opportunities in Hollywood, and the absolute least that Hollywood can do is cast these actors in the roles that are written as PoC/mixed.

I get that you were specifically looking for an actress that didn’t look Asian, but you could have found one without hiring a white actress.  (After all, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zach on Saved by the Bell, is part Indonesian, and I don’t think many saw Zach as anything other than a white kid.)  Why not someone like Olivia Munn, or Chloe Bennet from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (altered hair color optional?)  Coincidentally, Bennet is a great example of why “the character’s supposed to looks white” isn’t a good enough reason to cast a white actress instead.  Back when she used her given name, Chloe Wang, she had a hard time getting roles, being told, “You’re not white enough to be a lead character, but you’re not Asian enough to have a best-friend role.”  While she’s now the lead in a genre show, it’s as Chloe Bennet (her father’s first name.)  White and mixed/PoC actors are not awarded the same opportunities, and so, when roles like this come along, it’s your duty as a person with power in Hollywood to fill them as they ought to be.