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A Lot of Things Happened.
Saturday, January 21st, 2012 03:57 pmWhen I was a kid, I read differently than I do now. I loved narratives with immediacy; I didn't care for lengthy background and details (at least, I didn't think I did.) The best reading experiences that come to my mind were the ones I had during the summer, or on long car trips when there was nothing else to do but read, and no one was about to suggest a better activity. And it was at those times that I craved stories that were exciting in a particular way, that made me feel like I was standing next to the main characters or had so many things happening that I couldn't wait to turn the page. This action didn't always have to be Indiana Jones-style death trap/escape from Nazi's; in fact, I really enjoyed plots where there was a great deal of mundane action. (The Ramona books, for example, are a wonderful illustration of this: things happen at lickety-split speed, but they're simple, everyday activities and problems which I could easily relate to.) But the movie-style action-packed narratives were great, too. I pored over Choose Your Own Adventure books, and I read the Hardy Boys novels pretty exhaustively, even though I realized they were basically the same thing over and over again. In these stories, things happened one-after-another, crazy-action-pace, but it was OK, because the characters were so good, and the pacing never ran into overly confusing territory.
But the King of Narratives Where Lots of Stuff Happens But Not Too Fast and It's OK Anyway Because We're The Good Guys (or, NWLSHBNTFIOABWTGG for not so short) were the Tintin books, which I adored beyond measure. And I am pleased to say (by a very roundabout way of introduction) that the Tintin movie captures the spirit of NWLSHBNTFIOBWTGG in all of its summer-reading glory, and in 3D movie format. Lots of stuff happens! (Model ships! Betrayals! Comedy! High Seas Adventure! Opera! Funny Animals! Chase Sequences!) But not too fast! (At no point in the movie did I feel like I was exhausted or wrung out, and the kids around me certainly didn't feel this way, either.) And it's OK anyway, because we're the good guys! (The script writers wisely chose to keep Tintin a relative paladin/cypher, and that makes his actions both heroic and accessible.) The CG didn't bother me like I thought it would and the characters looked like they'd just stepped off a page of Herge's wonderful illustrations. In fact, I was so trying to compare all the characters and backgrounds with my memory of the original books that I almost forgot I was watching a live-action movie of them. Much of the dialogue is lifted verbatim from the books, and I am incredibly pleased to report that Captain Haddock gets to say "billions of blue blistering barnacles!" more than several times. I should also add that the opening credits are intricately beautiful and relentlessly witty, and pay homage to the spirit of the Herge originals. Hell, the whole movie is a loving homage to Herge, and I'm fairly sure that he would be very pleased with the outcome.
In a similar category of "Lots of Things Arbitrarily Happen At Once", Marjane Satrapi's book The Sigh is a lovely fairy-tale style story about a Prince of a mysterious country, and the woman he falls for, whose courage and ingenuity grow in leaps and bounds throughout the tale, despite arbitrary and somewhat confusing limitations on the part of the world that it occupies. Satrapi's accompanying artwork lends drama and weight to the work. It's nice to see her working in color after Persepolis. Reading this story reminded me of the sick days I spent in bed going through the volume after volume of illustrated Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales.
And then, on the far more serious side, and from a country that could probably use a bit of escapism because, well, YIKES doesn't even start to cover it, there's Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, by Anne Elizabeth Moore, about her mission to educate young women there about the art of making 'zines. Moore's story, which reads a little like the unpublished and more personal half of a women's studies doctoral thesis, lays out the stark realities and challenges that she was confronted with, like the fact that most of the parents of the girls she teaches are too afraid or scarred to discuss what happened to them and their families during the Khmer Rouge, or the issue that the girls she teaches are very concerned with a particular kind of femininity, one which doesn't necessarily include 'zines, or Moore's style of working and teaching. But Moore doesn't lose sight of what she's trying to do, and if depression bothered her, it certainly doesn't appear to have slowed her down. This zine and the ones her students produced are a passionate argument why democratic media should exist, and what form it may need to take, even if it seems rudimentary and slow. I especially liked the excerpts in the back from her students' 'zines. This book isn't one kid!me would have enjoyed (there's some pretty appalling details from survivors) but it's a book that adult!me enjoys for separate reasons. A lot of things happen in it. A few of them are action-packed crazy, but most of them are everyday life events, some of which I can easily relate to (Moore's explanation to her ESL students of why Playboy magazine is a double-edged sword for American women is a thing of honest, truthful beauty). But reading this, I found myself turning pages quickly, wanting to know what happened next and how Moore would deal with it. In some ways, this was the best of all possible worlds: reading like a kid (need to know! exciting! righteously good!) and reading like an adult (need to know! remind myself to understand this part of the world better!).
~~~
To those who are only reading my public entries: Thanks for sticking around and bearing with me through January. It's been a rocky start to 2012 and my on-going resolution to do four public entries a month got stymied by work-related deadlines, and then by the world's most annoying error message, "Bad unicode input." I was finally able to get this thing to post after cutting and pasting individual paragraphs. :p Anyway, more from now on!
But the King of Narratives Where Lots of Stuff Happens But Not Too Fast and It's OK Anyway Because We're The Good Guys (or, NWLSHBNTFIOABWTGG for not so short) were the Tintin books, which I adored beyond measure. And I am pleased to say (by a very roundabout way of introduction) that the Tintin movie captures the spirit of NWLSHBNTFIOBWTGG in all of its summer-reading glory, and in 3D movie format. Lots of stuff happens! (Model ships! Betrayals! Comedy! High Seas Adventure! Opera! Funny Animals! Chase Sequences!) But not too fast! (At no point in the movie did I feel like I was exhausted or wrung out, and the kids around me certainly didn't feel this way, either.) And it's OK anyway, because we're the good guys! (The script writers wisely chose to keep Tintin a relative paladin/cypher, and that makes his actions both heroic and accessible.) The CG didn't bother me like I thought it would and the characters looked like they'd just stepped off a page of Herge's wonderful illustrations. In fact, I was so trying to compare all the characters and backgrounds with my memory of the original books that I almost forgot I was watching a live-action movie of them. Much of the dialogue is lifted verbatim from the books, and I am incredibly pleased to report that Captain Haddock gets to say "billions of blue blistering barnacles!" more than several times. I should also add that the opening credits are intricately beautiful and relentlessly witty, and pay homage to the spirit of the Herge originals. Hell, the whole movie is a loving homage to Herge, and I'm fairly sure that he would be very pleased with the outcome.
In a similar category of "Lots of Things Arbitrarily Happen At Once", Marjane Satrapi's book The Sigh is a lovely fairy-tale style story about a Prince of a mysterious country, and the woman he falls for, whose courage and ingenuity grow in leaps and bounds throughout the tale, despite arbitrary and somewhat confusing limitations on the part of the world that it occupies. Satrapi's accompanying artwork lends drama and weight to the work. It's nice to see her working in color after Persepolis. Reading this story reminded me of the sick days I spent in bed going through the volume after volume of illustrated Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales.
And then, on the far more serious side, and from a country that could probably use a bit of escapism because, well, YIKES doesn't even start to cover it, there's Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, by Anne Elizabeth Moore, about her mission to educate young women there about the art of making 'zines. Moore's story, which reads a little like the unpublished and more personal half of a women's studies doctoral thesis, lays out the stark realities and challenges that she was confronted with, like the fact that most of the parents of the girls she teaches are too afraid or scarred to discuss what happened to them and their families during the Khmer Rouge, or the issue that the girls she teaches are very concerned with a particular kind of femininity, one which doesn't necessarily include 'zines, or Moore's style of working and teaching. But Moore doesn't lose sight of what she's trying to do, and if depression bothered her, it certainly doesn't appear to have slowed her down. This zine and the ones her students produced are a passionate argument why democratic media should exist, and what form it may need to take, even if it seems rudimentary and slow. I especially liked the excerpts in the back from her students' 'zines. This book isn't one kid!me would have enjoyed (there's some pretty appalling details from survivors) but it's a book that adult!me enjoys for separate reasons. A lot of things happen in it. A few of them are action-packed crazy, but most of them are everyday life events, some of which I can easily relate to (Moore's explanation to her ESL students of why Playboy magazine is a double-edged sword for American women is a thing of honest, truthful beauty). But reading this, I found myself turning pages quickly, wanting to know what happened next and how Moore would deal with it. In some ways, this was the best of all possible worlds: reading like a kid (need to know! exciting! righteously good!) and reading like an adult (need to know! remind myself to understand this part of the world better!).
~~~
To those who are only reading my public entries: Thanks for sticking around and bearing with me through January. It's been a rocky start to 2012 and my on-going resolution to do four public entries a month got stymied by work-related deadlines, and then by the world's most annoying error message, "Bad unicode input." I was finally able to get this thing to post after cutting and pasting individual paragraphs. :p Anyway, more from now on!
