keethink.com

I had planned to make some New Year’s resolutions. I really had. They were going to be things like “blog more” and “take more pictures” and “learn to use available programs more efficiently.” Also the usual suspects like “lose weight” and “spend less.” Scintillating stuff.

But then I remembered the times I had broken my new year’s resolutions, and how I beat myself up about it afterward, and then beat myself up for taking it so seriously, and so on.

For a few years, I made random resolutions that were easier to keep, like “floss every day” and “watch Citizen Kane.” That went pretty well, but wasn’t really life-changing or meaningful (although my dentist gave me an excellent report). I tend to drift back to the other kind of resolution, though, and was so tempted to do it again this year. Then I realized that I really needed to be kinder to myself. I want to treat myself, my inner person, as kindly as I treat other people. So this year, I will celebrate my successes, without setting up unrealistic expectations. I will speak kindly to myself, and give myself the grace I extend to others. After all, I am going to have to live with myself for my whole life.

Don’t get me wrong, goals are great. I love goals. I am on track to finish my PhD in 2012. I started running in October and can run 5k’s now. I’d like to run farther. I LOVE goals. What I don’t love is the self-flagellation that occurs when I don’t reach one.

I was thinking, in this vein, about my friend Anita’s coffee mugs. She collects artisan pottery coffee mugs. They are all different, and all lovely, in shades of soft greens and blues and browns. Some are tall, some short, some with handles, some without. They sit on her counter, a little flock of individual artistic works. I love to choose a different one each time I visit. I love the way I can see traces of the potter’s hands, the wheel, the kiln.

Anita doesn’t want a dozen perfect mugs that all match. That would not interest her one bit. As I thought about being kinder to myself, I thought about those mugs, and how Anita loves them because they are different, because they bear the marks of their respective journeys. Like us. I am a tall mug, a little lumpy, no handle, with one half of a good side, which I try to keep turned facing out. I’m trying to understand the miraculous truth that the Potter likes me not just in spite of this, but because of it.

I’m also trying to grasp the idea that it really isn’t the mug… it’s about the coffee inside.

here it is from the Message version of Corinthians:

“Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful.  If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at.”

Unadorned clay pots… not much to look at. Yep.

So my New Year’s Resolution, as much as I have made one, is to not berate myself for being a lumpy clay mug, but to accept my own clay-mug-ness and point people toward the coffee, toward the potter, toward the light.

(By the way, if you haven’t read the Message, you are depriving yourself of one of the most beautiful translations of the Bible since the King James* version. And if you haven’t read the bible, you are missing out on one of the most amazing and beautiful books ever written. But do yourself a favor and try the Message translation; it’s good.)

*King James was kind of weird, but he had the KJV Bible produced AND was a patron of Shakespeare. In that sense, he helped shape Western literature. And Hamlet was very possibly based on his life. Interesting stuff… for another post, perhaps.

First, let me say that I suck for not posting in so long. I know. I know. I do.

If I tell you that I got a last-minute job teaching writing, would you show me some mercy?

What if I said that a requirement of the teaching thing was being a full-time student and taking a full load of grad courses?  Would that melt your cold, cold heart?

In penance, I will now post a media critique I wrote of Judd Apatow’s movie Knocked Up. Enjoy.

***

When a nude female body is shown in popular film, it is most often a sexual object. By “object” I mean specifically that which is the recipient of some action, whether the advances of another character or the recipient of the gaze of the viewer. Especially when displayed in movies whose target audience is males 18-34, the female body is an object whose purpose is to be seen. In Judd Apatow’s raunchy comedy Knocked Up, Apatow toys with viewer conceptions of the female body, switching back and forth between women as sexual recipients of the male gaze and women as maternal figures (interestingly, he casts his own wife as one of the characters). In the movie, the female body takes on a primary role, albeit a dual one.

The movie’s simple plot is as follows: the overgrown and under-mature Ben, played by Seth Rogen, has the one-night stand of his dreams with Alison, played by Katherine Heigl. The tryst results in a pregnancy, and the pair attempt to form a relationship for the sake of the soon-to-be-born child.

In the film, Apatow’s choices surrounding the female body both define and subvert the cultural expectation. To show, or not to show? For much of the film, the nude bodies he shows are male. These male bodies are not sexualized or objectified; instead, their nudity is played for laughs. Ben’s band of merry men are a group of slackers who smoke pot and watch R-rated movies in a half-hearted attempt to develop a filmography website, searchable by actor, which will allow users to skip directly to nude scenes. Interestingly, almost all instances of nudity in the film are those shown in service to the characters’ website documentation process. These shots are framed within a television screen and tinted so as to be easily recognizable as television. The film audience becomes ultra-voyeuristic, watching the characters as those characters watch the nude scenes. The characters are obsessed with the nude female body, and their obsession makes a promise to the audience that Apatow fulfills in an unexpected way.

These “televised” nude scenes are a direct counterpoint to the two (not-so-sexy) sex scenes featuring the two main characters. In both scenes, bodies are covered by blankets, and Katherine Heigl’s character wears full-coverage bras. Far more of Seth Rogen’s soft, fleshy body is revealed than Heigl’s conventionally attractive female one. Once Heigl’s body does appear on screen, it is an increasingly pregnant one. What does it mean, this intrusion of the maternal body into a sex comedy? In Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers’ Bodies, Rebecca Kukla says: “Beginning in the late eighteenth century, mothers’ bodies became peculiarly public in several senses… Their mundane practices… now became a matter of great social import, performed for the public benefit and open to public scrutiny” (66). This process began two centuries ago and continues today, as shown by Rosalyn Diprose. In her book The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment, and Sexual Difference, notes that “the labor of pregnancy has also been privatized but remains, paradoxically, open to public scrutiny in the interest of the health and welfare of the social body” (26). Importantly, Alison’s pregnancy is a performance, something to be observed and judged by the other characters (even the most ridiculous of Ben’s friends become involved). Alison’s career as a television interviewer places a spotlight on her pregnancy as performance. As Alison’s boss tells her, “the bigger you get, the higher the ratings.”

This performance results in a film where the visual image is overwhelmingly maternal, especially considering the constant references to female sexuality within the dialogue. The second sex scene in the film involves a hugely pregnant Heigl, and the scene is set up to be as awkward for the characters as it is for the viewer. The one instance of explicit “full frontal” female nudity in the movie is the opposite of titillating. Apatow’s characters reference female nudity over and over in the dialogue, setting up an audience expectation that the viewer will, at some point, see the (sexualized) female body. When Apatow makes good on that promise, in the last few minutes of the film, the shot is framed as a full-screen close-up of a baby’s head emerging from the womb. Theater audiences, predictably, cringe. Apatow has fulfilled the audience’s anticipation of the explicit viewing with an image of the female body that is a maternal one, not a sexual one. He has taken the cultural expectation and subverted it. The characters within the film see the female body as a sexual object whose purpose is to be seen, but the audience is forced to view a maternal body during an act that defines maternity.

The other incidental occurrence of female nudity is during a scene set in a strip club. Although the nudity is brief and not explicit, this also constitutes a nude female body in the act of performance. During this short scene Rogan’s character, Ben, makes a scatological reference, which from a Freudian perspective further demonstrates his stunted sexuality and inability to interact with a female body in an age-appropriate way.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is a scene in which Alison and her older sister (played by Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife) are denied entrance to a club. The doorman refuses to admit them because Alison is noticeably pregnant and her sister is “too old.” In this scene, Apatow allows the doorman to voice the concern of viewers that pregnant or older women fall outside the realm of those women who may be seen as sexual objects. Alison and her sister end up sitting on the curb of an empty street. They cannot be admitted to the on-screen club, and the implication is that these bodies are also often excluded from the “club” of women who receive defining film roles. Apatow asks the viewer: if the female body cannot be viewed as a sexual object, where does it belong?

At first glance, Knocked Up may seem to belong to the genre of lowbrow comedies; certainly with its raunchy dialogue and strip-club scenes, it does not feel entirely out of place there. However, as with all of his films, Apatow uses mainstream entertainment to pose intelligent and provoking questions. By forcing the viewer to look at the female body in an alternative way, Apatow provokes a reaction that forces the question: are the viewer’s expectations of the female body on film the same as the expectations of the characters? Why does the explicitly nude maternal image provoke a much more shocked reaction among audiences than an explicitly nude sexual image? The characters on screen are only interested in the sexualized female body; this is a marker of their immaturity. By subverting cultural expectations of the nude female body on film, Apatow allows the viewer to conceive (pun intended) the meaning he invests in the female body apart from the explicitly sexualized dialogue spoken by his cast of overgrown boys.

WORKS CITED

Diprose, Rosalyn, The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment, and Sexual Difference.

New York: Routledge, 1994

Kukla, Rebecca. Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers’ Bodies. Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Today’s “Follow Friday”  blog to follow is Inkygirl: Daily Diversions for Writers. Inkygirl is Debbie Ridpath Ohi, and she is a writer and illustrator. She draws cartoons that make me laugh, because they’re mostly about writers who procrastinate or who are totally clueless or who hugely overestimate their own talent. Not that I relate to that or anything.

One of my favorite things on Inkygirl are the Golden Marmot awards. These are a collection of random tweets, usually related to writing, that are funny/brilliant/bizarre. They make me laugh.

Inkygirl also has interviews with authors and agents. This is helpful for writers, but it also can just be fun to know what’s coming down the pike at your local bookstore.

Speaking of local bookstores, if you have one, go there. Ditto for local coffeeshops, local restaurants, local farmers’ markets… you get the idea.

Follow the Inkygirl blog for fun cartoons and great articles, and/or follow her on Twitter at @inkyelbows. And then go get a cup of joe at your local coffee shop. See you there!

This is something that my husband asked me recently, after we watched Pride and Prejudice for the one millionth time. At first I thought he was just really into Keira Knightley, but he has also seen the Colin Firth version with me and seems to like them both equally. Or maybe he’s just really good at hiding his crush on Keira.

In any case: How rich IS Mr. Darcy? This has been written about by several historians, economists, and Austen scholars, but here’s my reply, geared toward a 2009 audience:

You know in Sex in the City how Mr. Big has a driver and the biggest New York apartment you can imagine? How he seems to have everything he wants and a ridiculous amount of folding money? That’s how rich Mr. Darcy is. Except Mr. Darcy isn’t a philandering jerk. (Sorry, SITC fans, but Mr. Big’s got nothing on a nice Regency gentleman.)

Economist Brad Delong puts it this way:

“Figure him as a thirty-year-old retired dot-com millionaire with wealth of $150 million or so…” Here’s the link to Mr. DeLong’s article.

This article by James Heldman is probably the best one on the topic of Darcy’s wealth, as well as the wealth of Austen’s other characters (and of Austen herself). When you read Heldman’s article, which pegs Darcy’s annual (adjusted) income as about $300,000/year, plus this article, which refers to the fact that Darcy’s annual income represents 4%-5% of his actual wealth, you begin to see the whole picture.

Think of his 4%-5% income as the annual return on his investments & properties. That means that Darcy’s net worth is closer to six million dollars, in today’s terms. Now think about Elizabeth Bennet telling him that she won’t marry him. Now think about Jane Austen making Elizabeth fall for Darcy the moment she sees his six-million-dollar estate. It’s really a deliciously mercenary story, couched in romantic love.

Interestingly enough, Darcy isn’t Austen’s richest character. That distinction (according to Heldman) is Mr. John Dashwood, from Sense and Sensibility. This may be because, as one of the commenters on the DeLong article points out:

“P&P takes place in 1811-12. First Impressions, the original, probably took place in 1799; it’s likely that Darcy’s income, being such a round number, didn’t change when Austen revised FI to P&P. So the basis for comparison is the high-price mid-war environment, rather than the low-price post-war slump.”

Or it could be, as another commenter points out, that Darcy’s wealth is merely symbolic. The point is not whether he is richer than a character in another novel; the point is that within the world of Pride & Prejudice, he is ridiculously wealthy. He’s a dot.com millionare who got out before it went bust. He’s Mr. Big. He’s the man. The point is that Elizabeth is a damn fool to tell him no, and THAT, my dears, is what makes it a wonderful story.

So I decided that I would read Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s great white whale of a novel. It’s been intimidating me my entire life, but no more.

I bought a copy at Half Price Books. It’s huge, which doesn’t really help with the intimidation factor. They had a paperback version that was smaller but the print was incredibly small, so I went with the impressive-on-the-bookshelf massive hardback edition.  Strangely, the typesetting in this Castle Books 2004 edition looks like the publisher scanned it from an older copy instead of resetting it for this edition. It adds to the authentic feel, I guess.

I’ll be honest with you: I was really nervous about starting Moby Dick. For one think, I’ve never really read Melville. I was expecting it to be really difficult. I was expecting not to like it. I was expecting to have to slog through it for weeks on end.

Boy, was I wrong.

First of all, it’s really pretty funny. The first meeting of Ishmael and Queequeg is hilarious. I’ve only seen snippets of the movie versions. If anyone can comment on whether the film adaptations are funny or not, please do. I’d love to know.

Secondly, it’s relatively easy to read. Not sure what I was expecting — Hawthorne? Faulkner? Pynchon? — but Melville moves the action along and holds your interest.

I’m not finished with it yet. But I’ve started it, and I’m enjoying it so far, and that’s a lovely surprise.

On Twitter there’s a trend at the end of each week called “Follow Friday”, where everyone recommends the people they most enjoy following. I’m extending that to this blog, so once a week I’ll be recommending one of my favorite blogs for your reading pleasure. I’ll try to stick to blogs that are somehow related to writing, although I may occasionally veer off into blogs featuring other subject matter that demonstrate great writing. And by “occasionally”, I mean, “a lot”.

This week, my Follow Friday recommendation is WWdN: In Exile. This blog is written by Wil Wheaton. Yes, THAT Wil Wheaton, the kid from Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Wesley Crusher! To the bridge!). Except now he’s all grown up and is an author. Wil still does some acting here and there, but he has published three books and writes some very funny stuff on his blog. His subject matter ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, but he’s best when he reminisces about his adolescence and the long, strange path we all take from childhood to adulthood.

Did I mention that I am a closet Trekkie? I should probably tell you, by way of disclaimer, that I’ve seen every original Star Trek episode, plus every episode of The Next Generation. And every one of the movies. Wil doesn’t really write about Star Trek on his blog, but I forgive him.

In the title of his blog, “WWdN” is short for “Wil Wheaton dot Net”. The “In Exile” signifies his move from his own site over to Typepad until he can get his .net site up and running again. This was little disappointing to me, as I was hoping that “In Exile” carried deep emotional significance, rather than describing technical server issues.

If you, like some of my friends (I’m not mentioning names, but… Lisa, this is for you), are overwhelmed by the number of blogs you want to follow, I highly recommend Google Reader. You can go to Google Reader to set it up, or click on the RSS link in the sidebar to the right of this post to get started.

You’ll want to go ahead and do that now, because I’m going to be recommending a new blog each week!

Here’s the link to WWdN: In Exile:  http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/

If you have any blogs you’d like to recommend for a future Follow Friday, please leave them in the comments below. Have a great weekend!

I know you can’t tell a book by its cover. But sometimes, a beautiful cover is an excellent reason to pay a tiny bit more.  While perusing one of my favorite blogs, design*sponge, I came across these lovely, lovely editions of some of the classics.

Photo of Penguin Hardcover Classics by perfectbound for design*sponge

Here’s a closer look at Pride & Prejudice.

(image from amazon.com)

These beautiful books are printed by Penguin Classics Hardcover and the cover designs are by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Sadly, they won’t be available in the U.S. until October 27, 2009.

I find it interesting that in addition to the usual suspects (Austen, Bronte, Dickens), Penguin chose to include Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.

(image from amazon.com)

I confess, I haven’t read Cranford— for my Victorian Literature experience of Gaskell, I read Mary Barton instead. But I’d buy this and read it in a heartbeat, if only because the cover is so lovely.

You can find these books on Amazon by searching for Coralie Bickford-Smith.This is much easier than searching through every possible edition of Great Expectations.

These remind me of the cover of Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

(image from amazon.com)

As I look through my copy, I see that Grace Adieu was published by Bloomsbury and the illustrator is Charles Vess.  They aren’t related to the Penguin editions at all. Maybe a general trend is (re)emerging?

I’m hoping that as digital books become more prevalent, more publishers will risk the expense of editions like these. I’m happy that Penguin and Bloomsbury are honoring the hardback book and the art of talented designers and illustrators such as Vess and Bickford-Smith.  Show your enthusiasm by buying these wonderful editions; I certainly will.

I’ve been known to keep duplicate paperback copies of favorite books; that way I can allow friends to borrow a book without panicking over a favoite copy. Sorry, friends, but my new Penguin Hardcover Classics will definitely go on the shelf of non-borrowable books.

My temptation is to have this site be all about me and my qualifications. I’m so great! I’m so brilliant! Hire me! Love me! Me me me! But, let’s face it— that would be dead boring.

I’d like my blog to be helpful, fun, quirky, and smart. So I’ll be posting writing related items, as well as tips, hints, nifty finds, and the like.

So why read this blog? Well, because I’m going to do my best to make it something I’d want to read. Some of the best writing advice I ever received wasn’t “write what you know” (although that’s pretty good advice). It was, “write what you want to read.”  That’ll keep you honest when nothing else will.

Heck, why read at all? Now we can just watch youtube, or read no more than 140 characters at a time (I’ve got nothing against Twitter; in fact you can follow me at @slkeeth). And I don’t think that reading blogs can compare to reading a book. Blogs are more like magazines. If you ask me, blogs are killing the magazine publishing industry. I personally have gone from 10+ magazine subscriptions down to about 3 in the past year. Of course, part of that is because I just quit my day job and seem to be lacking in disposable income at the moment. The other part is that I’m able to get very similar information delivered to my RSS reader daily.

As a side note, I use Google Reader, and it has totally changed my life. I used to have a few blogs in my Blogger menu, and on my iGoogle home page, but Google Reader is a huge step up. You can manage multiple blogs (far too many, in my case) easily and sort them quickly. I can even view them on my non-iPhone-mobile. It’s totally changed my life. Ok, maybe not my whole life, but it’s definitely changed the way I assimilate information. If you aren’t using Google Reader, you should. You can sign up at Google.com, even if you don’t have a gmail address. Try it; I think you’ll like it.

Back to the question. Why read at all? My answer would be that reading expands your world while it expands your brain. Moving images are all around us, all the time, but reading works your brain in a different way. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. I’ll probably expand upon my love of reading in another post. Or in a thousand other posts. It’s an obsession for me.

Can I tell you about the first time I went to a big library? I grew up in a very small town in Oklahoma, where the entire library was about the size of my current living room (and that’s not very big).  I read almost every book there. In junior high we moved to a larger town, with what you might think of as a normal-sized branch library. And the school library was a wonderland for me. But oh, the first time I went to the downtown Tulsa library… I can still remember the feeling I had as I stepped off the elevator into that forest of books. It felt like I’d been breathing through scuba gear my whole life, and I’d just stepped into the fresh air. I was overjoyed, and overwhelmed. I realized that I would never have time to read all of those books. I still feel that sad, overwhelming feeling every time I walk into my local Barnes & Noble or Borders. The tradeoff is the abundance, the sheer bliss as I contemplate that endless stream of the printed word. It’s so good that I’ll put up with the overwhelming feeling any day. Bring on the books.

I worked at the same place for almost eleven years. The people were nice, the pay was ok, and the work was often interesting— sometimes even fun. So why did I quit?  I have a few reasons. Some may sound crazier than others, but they all made sense to me. See what you think, and tell me your thoughts.

1. I couldn’t stand dropping my kid off at daycare every day.

No matter how great the place is (and ours was great), it’s a beating. I tried it for a year and just couldn’t take it any more. Besides, there’s a law of diminishing returns. Daycare for one is like having a second mortgage.  Daycare for two is just plain ridiculous.  I couldn’t afford to work anymore.

Some of the gals at the office told me that it get easier to drop the kids off everyday. That, my friends, is a lie. And as much as I hate to be a cliche, here I am, right in the dad-gum middle of Cliche Town, living on Cliche Street.  I’m a working mom who was conflicted about professionalism vs. motherhood who decided to become a stay at home mommy blogger. You can email me at mommyblogger@cliche.com. (Not really, but that’s about how it feels.)

2. Because I was tired of doing the same thing over and over. For over a decade.

My previous job was a good job, don’t get me wrong. But when you get to the point you can do your job with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back, you should start looking for another job. Being overly competent at your job may be comfortable, but it’s dead boring.

Right before I quit, I found one of my daytimers from four years previous. I flipped through it and realized I was still doing the exact same thing at work.  That was the final nail in the coffin.

3.  Because God told me to.

Before you write me off as some religious wacko, let me tell you that I am just your average religious weirdo, not a wacko.  Seriously, though, here’s the way it went down:

For months I had been doing some serious soul-searching. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with my life but I was pretty sure it wasn’t what I was doing at the time. I applied for jobs, cried, moped, and pulled my hair out. None of that seemed to help, so I also prayed.  And I didn’t hear squat-diddly.  Nothing. Nada. Zip.

So I prayed some more, and cried some more, and generally felt like a wild animal that had been trapped in a box. If you aren’t around wild animals much, just imagine putting your cat in the carrier to take it to the vet.  I was spinning around in circles and throwing myself against the walls of my little (self-made) box and I had no idea how to get out.

So one night I was in the bathtub telling God how I thought He should answer me, since He clearly hadn’t figured it out yet, since I hadn’t heard anything from him in weeks. Months. Possibly years. I was spelling it all out for Him. I mean, He is God Almighty, but I thought I needed to make it easier for him, just in case he didn’t understand my request. So I was listing all of the possible options I could think of, and numbering them off on my water-wrinkled fingers. As in: “#1. I could get a new job. #2. I could keep my old job. #3. I could work from home.” Etc. I let God know that He could just give me a number, if that was easier. But I honestly felt like He wasn’t listening anyway.

And then, right there in the bathtub next to the Pantene, I heard a voice plain as day that said,

“Are you willing to give up all of your ideas about what your life should look like, in order to receive what I have planned for you?”

*crickets chirping*

And I said: “Uhhhh… can I get back to you on that?”

I thought about it for a minute.

“So, will I still be able to use my gifts and write, and do stuff I like to do? You aren’t gonna send me to some jungle where nobody reads books, are you?”

(Imagine the Lord of Hosts with his arms folded, raising one eyebrow.)

“Umm, OK. What about my husband? What if I say yes to what you have planned, and he doesn’t want to go along with it?”

(Now imagine that He’s tapping one foot, but trying not to laugh at you.)

I thought about it for twenty-four hours. I was a little bit afraid I was pushing my luck, you know, what with God finally giving me an answer, and me asking Him to please just hold on because I am afraid He might actually give me what I want. After the twenty-four hours of more soul-searching, I said, “OK. Let’s do it. You show me the cliff, and I’ll jump. As long as it’s a metaphorical cliff, cause you know I have that fear of falling, right?”

Just to make sure, I asked about two dozen of my closest friends what they thought, and they all agreed that I should quit. But I think they knew, anyway, that my heart wasn’t at the office anymore. It is in the possession of a baby boy, who has chubby little fists and banana on his face.  Now that I’m where my heart is, I can be true to myself, true to my heart, true to my writing.

So here I am. I’ve jumped off the cliff and lived to tell about it.

And no, there aren’t really any crickets in my bathroom.