Monthly Archives: April 2009

Bullying

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I’m working on a post about Rorshach, and it reminded me of a thought I had during my seventh or eighth viewing of Pulp Fiction. Jules (Samuel Jackson) tells us that fearsome Biblical quote he uses is just a badass thing to say, a tool of the trade. But there’s no business reason for him to use it. When he’s terrorizing those boys early in the movie, there’s nothing he wants them to do, no lesson he wants to engrave on their minds. Vincent (John Travolta) has found the stolen briefcase and now there’s nothing to do but execute the boys and let their bodies rot. Why torment them? If you think about it, Jules is not a just a thug but a sadist. But we don’t think about it. That’s because he’s going thru the whole rigamarole for our sakes. We enjoy aiming that gun and browbeating that pasty-faced little squirrel. People don’t dream so much about being violent, more about having the complete upper hand and seeing their advantage played out in the face of their opponent.

Personally, I think this fact is a byproduct of office life. On the frontier you might have the opportunity to hit someone but not the guts. We still don’t have the guts, but nowadays hitting isn’t the point; you just want to see the other guy blink. Consider all the perfectly innocent witnesses on Law and Order and CSI who are morally one-upped by the cops and then look at their shoes or try to swallow their lips. Considering that we have to find a killer, who cares if some guy used a fake name on a date? We do because it gives us a chance to see the guy’s face crumple.

David Denby

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Nobody can stand the guy. And it’s not like he’s mean and slashing; he’s just a drag. You can imagine him in conversation with his pompous beard wagging from side to side and the long uhhhhhh‘s between sentences as he dredges up his points.

When I say “nobody,” I mean this: 20 years ago a coworker read Denby’s review of Gorillas in the Mist and said, “He’s always so overblown,” and she hadn’t even seen the movie — it was just his voice, the way he wrote. Eight years ago, trying to define “douchebag” for another coworker, I said, “Like David Denby” and he said, “Oh God, yeah.” Three days ago my mother said, “That David Denby is such a jerk.” And whenever I look at The New Yorker and see his name I think, “Too bad,” whereas when I see Anthony Lane’s byline I think, “Well, there might be some good jokes.” Of course there might not, but the sight of Lane’s name doesn’t in itself make me turn the page.

Via Andrew Sullivan, Reason Online reviews Denby’s new book, Snark. Apparently Denby is trying to shame “douchebag” out of the national discourse. I would too, if I were him. The review says Denby downgrades Tom Wolfe — disturbing if true — and that he doesn’t have much use for Maureen Dowd. The second point is also disturbing, because it means Denby can’t be entirely bad. Of course, Reason may disagree: “the reader comes close to simply telling him to lighten up, rather than explaining that Dowd is a satirist, not a sexist political scientist.” Hah, no. Maureen Dowd is a twit.

The big problem with snark isn’t that it’s mean or shallow, it’s that the people who want to be snarky are inferior. The word sprang up when trying to be snotty and clever became a national passtime. Everyone swarmed in and only a very few had any sort of gift for the assignment.

Your Questions Answered

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I figured out religion a while ago. God is infinite; people are finite. The finite is not equipped to deal with the infinite. That includes determining whether any given infinite being exists. Therefore, I’m agnostic.

That being said, the believers and the atheists often have a lot of pep, which can be entertaining. Matt Taibi blogs the following about Newsweek‘s recent “America: It’s Not Just for Christians Anymore” cover story:

You’re usually more likely to see a Newsweek cover illo of a 1st-century BC man netting lake-fish over the headline:

MEN OF THE BIBLE:

What History Tells Us About What They Wore

John The Baptist’s tips on summer swimming

The post goes on to note Taibi’s extreme and justified skepticism regarding the Adam and Eve story.

Oh! Pipsy the Elf Is Dead

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… the novel’s delicate tone, which is poised between whimsy and heartbreak.

A. O. Scott, reviewing The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in the NY Times today. Headline: “A Stockbroker in Training Has Turns in His Journey.” Headlines in the paper’s Arts and Leisure section are often entertainingly gnomic (another: “At the Way Station of Life, Departing to Anywhere”). But they can also be overambitious and top-heavy: “Satyajit Ray’s World of Restless Watchfulness and Nuance.” Expanded into a paragraph, the thoughts in question might make sense. As a headline, they make you imagine a tense scene in the Ray living room: “Will you stop looking at me? And don’t fidget! And what do you mean, what do I mean by ‘fidget’?”

I suppose the problem isn’t the headline writers, it’s the situation. The A&L has to cover a lot of movies and shows. Page after page of straightforward headlines (“Chabon’s Mysteries Poorly Adapted,” “Satyajit Ray Retrospective Displays Director’s Eye for Behavior, Emotion”) would quickly become excruciating. Trying to be jokey and clever in the British style would result in the same puns being recycled over and over (the Ray headline would involve Apu and “Come Again”). The only solution is not to read the NY Times unless you’re at your mother’s place and want to put off writing.