Wild Green Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately about how other people perceive me. I know this is generally not a good thing to do, but I haven't been thinking about it in a way that makes me nervous or bad about myself. I more mean that I have just been curious about what other people say when they talk about me. I know they do – everybody is talked about to some extent. You exist to other people when you are not interacting with them, just as they exist to you. I've just been really curious how.

I think part of this curiosity has come about because of the books I've read recently. I'm currently reading a collection of five plays by Oscar Wilde, and it begins with a brief rundown of his life followed by an introduction that discusses his life and its effects on the things that he wrote. The biographical briefing is only a few pages long, hitting only the most important parts of his career. I started wondering if those points that the book deemed important would have included all the parts of his life he considered significant. Biographies are wonderful things; I want to be the kind of person they write biographies about someday. But I can't help but wonder how much they leave out. Would Oscar Wilde's autobiography look different from the ones written by everyone else? Does one exist? I don't think one does, otherwise I am certain this biography would have mentioned that. That, at the very least, seems like something they wouldn't leave out.

But if, against all odds, a biography about me gets written some day, I can't help but wonder what would be in it? Certainly there wouldn't be a passage about every single person I dated in high school or college. What would be considered the turning point? Where would they say my big break came? I might just be wondering these because I'm trying to figure out what my plan is after graduation. But I do think these are interesting things to consider. A biography absolutely cannot include everything about someone's life. Considerations must be made for cultural significance, what is interesting to read, and the fact that extremely long books can often be intimidating for publishers and audiences.

However, this question of mine doesn't just come from the introduction to a collection of plays.

This summer, I also read two novels by John Green: Looking For Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. I loved both of these books, of course; I'm not the one person in the world who doesn't like John Green. I might have been rather reserved at first, going into Looking For Alaska, but once I let my preconceptions about the characters go and allowed them to speak for themselves, I really found myself in love with the book. After the heartbreaking and lovely ending that was that novel, I went excitedly into The Fault in Our Stars and found exactly what I was hoping for. John Green writes young adult novels the way I wish I did. His characters are flawed but infinitely likeable. The emotion is always palpable between them, and their dialogue switches well between quick and lengthy. Not to mention I felt tears in my eyes at the end of both novels. I'm not afraid of that.

In The Fault in Our Stars, there is a big deal made over the significance or insignificance of funerals. Now, discussion over the validity of eulogies isn't particularly new. The Orson Scott Card novel Speaker for the Dead concerns itself with this as the majority of its underlying plot, and, putting aside my polar differences with Card's personal philosophy, that will still always be one of my favorite novels. But whereas Speaker for the Dead decides that the only way to truly remember the dead is to put their full, uncensored past on display, the characters in The Fault in our Stars disagree. While they hate the superficial nature of eulogies, the cliches that are spouted, the sugarcoating that happens, they ultimately decide that a funeral is never really for the person who died. Rather, they say, it is to comfort those left behind.

And while I would agree with that, I would also disagree with a larger theme that plays out in both Green novels. There seems that the characters hold a great deal of resentment towards those who are left behind. Not the close friends, of course. But many of the characters state that they feel that people who mourn but weren't close are fake or insincere in some way. I am inclined to disagree with that. Maybe I'm not the best person to state this, since I haven't particularly mourned the passing of anyone in a long time, but I think that someone touches the lives of a lot more people than they realize. Sure, there might perhaps be those who pretend to feel bad just to get attention, but I legitimately believe there will me more people than someone might expect at their funeral.

I think my point is that I would be curious to see who would be present at my funeral. That's something of a morbid thought, I suppose. I'm certainly not wishing for death, or even contemplating my own at all. I just really do wonder how I would be remembered if I was gone tomorrow, or how I will be remembered when the time actually comes. This isn't out of some vindictive spirit, nor do I think this with any particular vanity. But I really do wonder what exactly my significance is to people. I want to make a difference in people's lives, and I would love to be able to know exactly what difference I have made.

I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I write.

A very short review of Henry IV part II.

This week, I finally finished slogging through William Shakespeare's King Henry IV part II.  Now a class made me once again a fan of The Bard, and I have enjoyed a lot of what I have read by him over the years.  I even enjoyed Henry IV part I, despite having a bit of a difficult time reading it.  So it came down to reading Henry IV part II, because I felt like I should continue the story.  Granted, I probably should have started with Richard II, but I didn't feel like entrenching myself that deep without feeling out the rest of the series.

For some background, it should be mentioned that William Shakespeare had a very popular series of plays involving the histories of some of the kings of England.  Those plays were Richard II, Henry IV part I, Henry IV part II, and Henry V.  Each of these plays has about fifteen billion characters, and approximately 67% of these characters are named Henry.  They're not exactly the easiest plays to read, even by Shakespearean standards.

Anyhow, for more of my thoughts on Henry IV part II, here is my review from Goodreads.


King Henry Iv Part Ii: Second Series by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Far be it from me to say that a Shakespeare play is "boring," but let's be honest, not a whole lot happens in this play.  Half of the play is nothing more than Jack Falstaff being sassy, and the rest of everything else is rather drawn out.  Essentially only two things happen in this play - The rebels surrender and Henry IV dies to make way for Henry V.  And yet both of those things happen in the last two acts.  I realize that Shakespeare wrote in a five act structure.  I realize that his tetralogy was very popular at the time.  I realize that William Shakespeare is far more acclaimed by critics and professors and popular audiences than I could ever conceive of being.  And don't get me wrong, I like Shakespeare.  It's just that Henry IV Part II is kind of like Shakespeare's Pirates of the Caribbean 3: A needless extension of a previous story that only exists to get more mileage out of popular characters where plot threads are dropped unceremoniously.


View all my reviews

Perhaps I am being harsh.  There are people who would probably stone me to death for daring to criticize William Shakespeare.  But luckily, those people are in a presently shrinking minority.  There's no reason why we can't hold the authors of our classic literary canon up to scrutiny.  And not just scrutiny in the sense of dangerous themes that the present, like how Joseph Conrad is extraordinarily racist or how every female character in Frankenstein ends up murdered.  I mean that the literary giants, yes, even William Shakespeare, from time to time wrote things that just aren't good.

And that's all right.  Shakespeare practically invented half of modern English usage.  He wrote more beloved plays than I will ever draft.  His reputation not going to hurt from the criticism of a puny literature blogger.  And even if more people stop holding him as flawless, he'll still be a great playwright.  That's how things are.

A Valuable Lesson - based on a true false story

“When I was a little boy,” my gravel-throated, slasher-grinning English teacher began one class – another seemingly endless fifty-two minutes regarding a lesser-known work by Cormac McCarthy – in his trademark tone somewhere between Jack Torrance and The Joker, “I used to have seizures.”

An uneasy silence fell upon the room like an upturned pot of chili: in tremendous, unsettling drips.

“I had seizures all the time,” he continued menacingly, none of us having the faintest clue where he was going with this.  “The kids were really mean to me.  They used to call me seizure boy.”

It's not that this had never happened before, because it had.  He would tell stories like this all the time.  About Stewie, his frog, who wouldn't come out from under the rock in his tank to look at him anymore, and how that made him unreasonably sad.  About the years back when the school would burned its garbage and how he would put starter blanks in trash bins so that when the janitor ran the incinerator, they would go off and he would think someone was shooting at him.  About his wife or his colleagues or his cross country team, really about anything.  Whether or not we liked it, we were very familiar with the man's tangents.  The problem was that we just never knew what they would be, how insane they would get, or if they even had a point relevant to class.

“And the doctor told my parents that unless the seizures would stop, I would die.”

I suppressed a shudder as the story went on in that voice that would make the Black Tongue of Mordor sound like a concert aria in comparison.

“This of course was bad news, but the doctor said he had a solution,” he said, getting to what we assumed, or at least hoped, would be the crux of the story.  “He said that there was a pill I could take.  And it would stop my seizures and save my life.  But there was a problem.”

Ah, now this must be the point.  A story about a choice where neither option presents a victory.  This would be a perfect way to discuss the unfortunate choices that John Grady, our book's code hero, would have to make.  A few of us straightened up, sensing the importance of what was to come.

“If I took the pill,” he said, looking us dead in the eyes, “it could have the side effect of rotting the bones in my jaw off.”

Macabre? Of course it was.  But anyone would come to expect that sort of thing from a teacher who decorated his desk with a replica of the possessed doll from Child's Play.  We knew that wasn't the point of the story.

“So I could either lose my jaw, or I could die.  Obviously, I didn't want to die.  But I was a teenager.  I wanted to suck face.”

By this point, another teacher appeared in the door, listening, not speaking, and carrying a sizable roll of CAUTION-printed Police line.

“So I didn't take the pill.”

We waited.

“And I died.”

There wasn't a sound in the room.  None of us knew what to think, much less what to say.  We wondered if we should have seen that ending coming.

“Hey Dom,” he said, looking up as the other teacher laughed and started adhering the caution tape to the door frame for unknown reasons.  “You'll never guess what I got these kids to believe.”

The Freeze Ray that Stopped the World: Dr. Horrible as an Example of Powerful Film

An unsuccessful supervillain, frustrated by his egotistical nemesis constantly thwarting his schemes (which rarely work as planned anyway), runs a video weblog where he talks about his plans and pines over the girl he always sees at the Laundromat but cannot work up the courage to engage in conversation. This unconventional tale is the backbone of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the wildly successful internet musical created by famed writer/director Joss Whedon. And while it may sound like sheer ridiculous comedy, Dr. Horrible is a shining example of writing in a popular culture that still produces great things.

The beginning to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog can basically be summed up as it is in the introduction. The mad scientist Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is a “supervillain” who aspires to enter the Evil League of Evil, the penultimate evil organization, led by a villain known as Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin, and to take over the world. His reasoning for this, of course, is that, as he says, “The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.” He talks about his life and plans on his internet video journal, from which the musical gets its name. On this blog, he discusses the problems he has with his nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion), and a girl named Penny (Felicia Day) to whom he can’t seem to bring himself to talk.

One of his plans involves building a freeze ray, which, as Dr. Horrible is certain to make clear, is “not a death ray or an ice beam” but instead stops time. To build this contraption, he first needs to steal a shipment of “Wonderflonium” that is being moved in a courier van. Thinking that this heist will for sure get him into the Evil League of Evil, he goes undercover in his secret identity (just a normal, timid guy named Billy) and uses a remote controller to carjack the van. When his plan seems to work and he is about to steal the Wonderflonium, suddenly, from out of nowhere, Captain Hammer jumps on top of the van and crushes the device controlling it. This causes the van to swerve out of control and head straight toward Penny, who had only just introduced herself to Billy. Captain Hammer jumps in to push Penny out of the way, just as Dr. Horrible manages to stop the van remotely. This has the unfortunate side effect of Penny falling in love with Captain Hammer, who completely ignores Dr. Horrible as he runs off with the Wonderflonium. This then kicks off the rest of the musical. In the two acts that follow, Billy tries to win over Penny and vows to defeat Captain Hammer as Dr. Horrible.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog began during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America Strike. Director Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack and Jed, and Jed’s fiancée Maurissa Tancharoen, all screenwriters, had their studio projects shut down because of the strike. So they decided, as Tancharoen relates, to “get together and write something, whether . . . for $100 or whatever it [would turn] into” (quoted in Los Angeles Times). They worked independent of any studios, had a budget in the low hundred thousands, and created a 42-minute short film and released it online for absolutely no profit.

Would a silly, small production released on the internet actually become popular? The answer is a resounding yes. According to the Los Angeles Times blogs, in less than a week of the show’s three-part release, “so many people were clamoring to watch the show that its web site crashed completely, sending the makers scrambling to find more bandwidth” (Los Angeles Times). The demand for this short film was so intense that the people who made it were completely unprepared to handle the web traffic that it drew. Part of the reason for its popularity is, of course, the renown of Joss Whedon, who also created the cult classic television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. However, Whedon himself attributes the success to another factor, saying, “[There] is a modern societal truth about the kind of guy who needs to tell the world his troubles and show off his talents” (quoted in Los Angeles Times). This is also true. Dr. Horrible, supervillain though he may be, is an extremely relatable character. Who hasn’t wanted to talk to that special someone but just couldn’t, felt like they deserved something they couldn’t get, or aspired for greatness in their field and wanted to share these things with the world?

However, Dr. Horrible is not just popular for the sake of being popular, but actually has a fairly powerful impact. The film starts rather comically, with Dr. Horrible displaying the work he has done on perfecting his maniacal laugh, saying, “A lot of guys ignore the laugh, and that’s about standards.” It remains comical throughout, with slapstick, sight gags, and clever writing. However, at the end of the very last act, things take a very drastic turn. Dr. Horrible manages to trap Captain Hammer in his freeze ray at one of Hammer’s public appearances. Most of the people flee the room, but Penny, who was sitting by Captain Hammer at the time, hides behind some chairs in the room. Dr. Horrible aims his newly constructed death ray at Captain Hammer, but torn between his evil goals and his reluctance to kill, he hesitates, which gives just enough time for the Freeze Ray to lose power and Captain Hammer to punch him in the face. Dr. Horrible is sent careening through the room, and his death ray lands hard on the ground, causing it to malfunction. Captain Hammer picks it up and aims it at Dr. Horrible, who warns him against pulling the trigger. Ignoring the warning, Captain Hammer tries to fire it anyway, and it violently explodes, throwing Captain Hammer through the air and sending shrapnel flying in every direction. This causes Hammer to experience pain for the first time, and he runs screaming from the room. Dr. Horrible gets up from the floor, and looks around, thinking he won, until he sees a sight that makes all color drain from his face: Penny, who was still in the room, had been hit in the torso by some of the shrapnel and was now lying on the floor, dying. Dr. Horrible rushes to her side, where she recognizes him as Billy. In her delusional dying state, she feebly tries to reassure Billy that everything will be all right, her final words being, “Captain Hammer will save us.” These words completely shock Dr. Horrible to the core, and, emotionless, he sings a victory song to the tune of a funeral dirge. When he is given blame for her death and Captain Hammer’s defeat, suddenly everyone respects him and is afraid of him. He finally joins the Evil League of Evil, but at the cost of everything he truly ever wanted.
This tragic twist is what gives the film its power. Jonathan Bignell, in the book Media Semiotics, writes about the concept of film genre and its power to create expectations. Everything in a film – such as the stars, the setting, and the narrative structure – causes the audience to expect it to fit into a certain genre. However, according to Bignell, “it is . . . possible to position the film by raising generic expectations that will not be met, so that the film reacts against generic expectations by raising them in the first place” (Bignell 199). In the case of Dr. Horrible, we are shown for almost the entire film that it is a comedy. The writing, the bouncy musical styles used throughout, the casting (such as comedy star Neil Patrick Harris and notorious ham Nathan Fillion) – all of these create an atmosphere of humor and lightheartedness. We laugh at the ridiculousness of musical numbers popping up, sometimes from completely out of nowhere, we feel empathy for Billy’s hesitation to talk to Penny, and we laugh at the silly things Captain Hammer says. The audience expects this comedy to end the way all comedies do, with a happy ending. However, the moment we see Dr. Horrible’s expression change from cautious optimism from defeating Captain Hammer to absolute horror at seeing Penny lying wounded, we know that this film will not end happily at all. This is not so much a mood shift as it is a mood whiplash. This tragic ending to such a previously funny musical evokes quite an emotional response, one that keeps the viewers coming back for more.

This, then, is the reason why Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is such a success. But successful or not, it still is an important work. Some might write it off as silly nonsense. After all, one might reason, it’s a fourty-two-minute-long musical about superheroes that was released on the internet. Surely nothing could be serious about that. Certainly Mark Edmundson would not call it great writing. In his book Why Read?, Edmundson condemns America’s consumer culture and the current generation as “the progeny of two hundred available cable channels and omnipresent Blockbuster outlets. They grew up with their noses pressed against the window of that second spectral world that spins parallel to our own, the World Wide Web” (Edmundson 10). Edmundson goes on to say that in the internet, the current generation “met life at the second or third hand, peering eagerly, taking in the passing show, but staying remote, apparently untouched by it”(Edmundson 10). Edmundson views the internet and the expansion of media as the thing which causes complete and utter disconnect in today’s youth. It would seem to Edmundson that no good can come from the internet, and there is nothing in pop culture that can be held up as an example of important writing.

However, this is absolutely not the case. First off, the argument that nothing in pop culture is worth noticing is completely false. This is even the main point of Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You. In the introduction to this book, Johnson discusses many writers and essayists who have claimed just what Edmundson is claiming: that popular culture is thoughtless, morally bankrupt, and damaging to children and adults alike. However, Johnson argues, “[lost] in that account is the most interesting trend of all: that the popular culture has grown increasingly complex over the past few decades, exercising our minds in powerful new ways” (Johnson 13). Johnson views popular culture as changing in ways it never has before. With television shows with long, sprawling, complex narratives, such as The Sopranos or Lost, popular culture has found a medium of storytelling that allows for far more depth than an episodic sitcom or even a three-hour feature film. A film franchise such as Lord of the Rings told a complex story in a total of about nine hours for the theatrical versions. A television show such as Lost, which ran for six seasons with a total of 121 episodes, can tell a much deeper, fascinating, and intriguing story in the well over 80 hours of screen time it was allowed. But even outside of long sprawling narratives, the importance of popular culture also lies in the worldview it presents. While some may argue that today’s media exposes kids to violence and sex and dishonesty, Johnson would reply that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While it’s not the main point of his book, Johnson does go out of his way to point out that he is sympathetic to the argument that “[the] real world doesn’t come in nicely packaged public service announcements, and we’re better off with entertainment that reflects that fallen state with ethical ambiguity” (Johnson 14). And while certainly no one would call a musical about superheroes and supervillains “realistic” on the surface, it does present an interesting moral conundrum. Dr. Horrible seeks to be an evil mastermind, but his heart is not entirely in it. When Dr. Horrible makes the decision to kill Captain Hammer, it is these actions that lead to everything he truly wants being taken away from him. Does he triumph over Captain Hammer? Yes. Does he then fulfill his dream of being a renowned supervillain and joining the Evil League of Evil? Well, yes. But at what cost? Though he did not pull the trigger that caused the explosion that killed Penny, he is very much responsible for the death of the woman he loves. It is this moral quandary that makes the end of Dr. Horrible so poignant.

While the medium may be the Internet, while the budget may be small, and while the finished product may be a pure example of pop culture, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, despite its silly name, is a very important work in the millennial age. It may start out light and happy, but with its tragic twist and dark morals, it is a challenging film that at the same time remains one of the most enjoyable movies to watch again and again.

written 2010 by Dave Briggs, (c) 2011 all rights reserved

works cited:

Bignell, Jonathan. "Cinema." Media Semiotics: an Introduction. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. 155-78. Print.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Simon Helberg. Mutant Enemy, Inc., 2008. DVD.

Edmundson, Mark. Why Read?. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. 10. Print.

Johnson, Steven. "The Sleeper Curve." Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead, 2005. 1-14. Print.

"Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible' Is a Site-crashing Success." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2008. Web. 14 May 2010.

Amy is Being Chased

Guest post by Jerry Vogelsang
I think I figured out blogging. Anyways, I wrote this for my um... well of one my many English Classes.

Read it. Love it.

In an age of he said/ she said, love triangles, and adolescents in trying to find themselves; Chasing Amy is a romantic comedy that mustn’t be overlooked.

Chasing Amy is the story of a comic book writer named Holden who falls for Alyssa, a woman in the same trade. Unfortunately, for Holden; he later discovers Alyssa is a lesbian. Eventually, Alyssa begins to date Holden, although Holden goes on to find that his dream girl’s past makes her far from perfect.

Cult director Kevin Smith is popular amongst teenagers and the twenty somethings of today as his films feature vulgar language, pop culture references, and witty dialogue as well as some low brow “dick jokes.” Smith’s Chasing Amy is no exception to this rule, but it is more than the sum of its parts. The film would be great to teach to as it’s Kevin’s most personal, romantic, dramatic, and least seen film.

Along with a big star like Ben Affleck in the lead role, Chasing Amy features the iconic duo of Jay and Silent Bob, the beloved foul mouthed drug dealers with heart, that appeared in all of Smith’s films since his down to earth debut film Clerks. I have seen these characters on posters in a number of dorm rooms, so I have no doubt they would intrigue an audience who wouldn’t normally go for romantic comedies with gay characters.

Chasing Amy has a little something for everyone. The average teenage girl would swoon over a romantic movie. Chasing Amy contains one of the most beautiful and honest speeches I’ve ever heard in a film. However, movies with romance and feelings being expressed through words rather than bullets tend to turn off male viewers. Chasing Amy has plenty to offer those with y chromosomes. It has plenty of vulgar humor, comic book references that will most likely go over their girlfriend’s head, and even a great hockey scene.

The movie is also quite relatable in how real the characters and their New Jersey tongues are. There’s probably a cuss word in every sentence, and if anyone has heard a conversation between teenagers nowadays, would surely agree that seems about right. Any comic book or movie enthusiast would agree that they’ve had similar conversations to those in the movie. Conversations about topics as silly and unimportant yet gripping as Archie and Jughead’s sex life or who should play Batman, are conversations not far from what a teenage male would discuss. A conversation near the end of the film has the ironically named Silent Bob give a big speech about who Amy is and why she is being chased. The gist of Bob’s speech is that there shall always be the girl who got away, and even if you think you move on with your life; you will spend every day chasing your Amy. Change the name and perhaps gender, and this speech could apply to many heart broken teens.

In terms of the story being relatable, Holden deals with his homophobic roommate, Banky, who disapproves of Holden’s friendship/relationship with Alyssa. Banky also gets jealous that Holden is paying as much attention to him as he used to. Many college students have had problems they’ve had to deal with their roommates. I’ve known plenty of people who have had issues with their roommate’s not spending enough time with them.

Chasing Amy is movie that works hard toward tolerance and breaking social norms. A humorous scene at the beginning of the film features a speech on racism in comics from a character named Hooper X. Hooper is essentially the Malcolm X of comic book writers; he is a proud and angry black man. This is merely a guise of his true self, a mellow homosexual man who only exploits his image to help sell his comics.

Chasing Amy focuses on gender roles and sexuality. When Alyssa was a lesbian, Holden has no problem with the fact that Alyssa has slept with dozens of women. Holden later finds out that early on that she used to sleep with men, and a lot of men at that. This raises the issue of whether if someone, man or woman, sleeps with a lot of women, that’s fine. Yet, for some reason, sleeping with men, transforms one into a whore. There is also a lot of gay subtext between Holden and his roommate Banky. Banky could be much like Hooper and needs to pretend to be something he’s not, for he fears that society would not accept his true self.

The movie’s subject matter may turn a lot of people off. I only believe that to be a greater reason to view the movie. If people have negative views on the gay community, then perhaps this movie could enlighten them. Comfort zones must be left at some point in life. Even homosexuality aside, the vulgarity and the in depth discussions about sex may also turn people off. Again, this is how people talk in real life. At a college level, one must accept these kinds of conversations.

All things considered, Chasing Amy is a hilarious romantic comedy with deep social issues that should be embraced by all.

written by Jerry Vogelsang, 2010, all rights reserved