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October 27, 2002

Stoltz makes my life smell like pee.

First of all, I finally swallowed my convictions and rented The House of Mirth. Gillian Anderson, who up until now I'd only seen substituting growling for acting, was actually very good as Lily, who was one of my favorite characters in literature for a long time. Any flaws in her performance I am inclined to blame on bad direction.

Eric Stoltz, on the other hand, had me screaming at the television. Seldon was definitely one of my favorite men in literature, and Stoltz plays him like an old woman in a nursing home. Periodically he glances at Anderson with a searching gaze like he's trying to remember what she's doing there, but the rest of the time he's either querulously demanding that she surrender his spectacles or else nodding and smiling to himself in some private reverie that has nothing to do with the scene or his audience. He fucked up the film and I hate him now.

:Knock knock nerd.

Knock knock hippie:

So I went to this peace march on Saturday. (I think I mentioned it, shrilly, eight or twelve hundred times to y'all?) It was immensely amazingly huge; I've never seen so many people gathered with a single purpose except at Disneyland. But about half an hour into it, my mom looked around and said "You know, almost all of these people are white."

True story, my dad and I agreed. SF is a pretty diverse city, but this march was so white it was almost shiny. It was like being in a Cameron Crowe film. (Side note: watch the few scenes of New York streets in Vanilla Sky and tell me how many non-whites you see. Or, for that matter, how many black musicians you see in Almost Famous.)

I have to write a paper about the march for Government, and I'd like to include the weirdness with a theory about it. So if anyone has a theory, for god's sake hand it over.

Posted by didofoot at October 27, 2002 10:11 AM

Comments

i used to have a total hard-on for eric stoltz. primarily i beleive due to that one movie where he was an angel. with christopher walken. uhh....it had sequels. whatever. but then he got fat. and i liked him less. but...um ok i was going nowhere with this comment.

Posted by: michele at October 27, 2002 12:01 PM

me too. love the eric stotlz. you were pretty hard on him, eh? it was funny, but i've seen the movie and i didn't think he was all that terrible.

Posted by: tracy at October 27, 2002 01:33 PM

well, for example, the scene towards the end

WARNING, SPOILER:

where gillian just breaks down and he doesn't even look like this is totally out of character and strange for her (which it is) but instead looks like he's mildly annoyed. and I loved the character in the book and stoltz just raped him. I thought.

Posted by: didofoot at October 27, 2002 01:58 PM

The movie michele was talking about was "The Prophecy"

Posted by: nuala at October 28, 2002 08:59 AM

thanks nuala. =)

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 09:06 AM

thanks nuala. =)

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 09:15 AM

thanks nuala. =)

Posted by: didofoot at October 28, 2002 09:23 AM

aw, shuddup.

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 09:31 AM

aw, shuddup.

Posted by: marc at October 28, 2002 11:38 AM

a theory...

white people tend to gather and gawk more.
i'm not sure why, but i have definitely noticed it.
i'm guessing that most of them were not there for the peace rally as much as they saw a large group of people, so they came to see what was up.
look around at other gatherings, accidents, tragedies, and stuff like that. all white people standin' around. really odd.

Posted by: M@ at October 28, 2002 12:52 PM

a theory: the current issue of Harper's includes an article on "White Guilt." while it is written by an individualist...one might say Bastard Conservative, or Self By Bootstraps kind of guy...and therefore may not jive with a liberal (roll of eyes)(liberal with what, the heavy hearts?) perspective, the basic idea is in PC (personally correct, politically computerized) america, everything is the white folks' fault.

which, some things are. but bombing The Evil is more of a nationalist than a racist endeavor; more christian than WASPish, and thus it is brown people's fault, too.

and yellow and black red etcetera. whatever with your color wars. Radical Cheerleaders had Asian, Black, Israeli, Brown, Romanian and Mutt in Full Effect. Pom-Poms, Not Bomb-Bombs!

Posted by: punk rock gondolier at October 28, 2002 01:10 PM

p.s. i'm a lover of Lily as well, and always meant to see that flick... but am wary of novels-to-movies in general. thanks for the warning.

Posted by: Eric Stoltz, Rapist at October 28, 2002 01:16 PM

well, eric, I'm glad your cheerleaders were representin'.

I thought maybe white guilt. I also thought maybe activism on behalf of someone else is something only affluent people have time for, and most affluent people are white.

Posted by: didofoot at October 28, 2002 01:38 PM

i thought maybe stupid white people blocking traffic and making my life smell like pee (honestly, there was an over-abundance of urine on the sidewalks on saturday, far more than normal) while giving me serious shin splints having to walk thru the middle of their pointless march in order to get to where i wanted to be.

my mom pointed out that even with all the peace protests, marches, sit ins, what have you, that she particpated in during the 70's, no actual change was ever effected. the vietnam war went on just like it was going to.

and if saddam really does have nuclear missles, and won't give them up peacefully according to U.N. procedures, there's really going to be a war no matter how many useless endeavors in political activism a whole bunch of optimistic fools put on.

i'm sorry for being harsh. but i really do think that peace protests are stupid and ineffective.

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 01:56 PM

well, they might be. but no more ineffective than sitting at home would be, and I need to feel I'm doing something.

I think that probably political change can only be purchased, and I don't have that kind of money. all I can do is stand and yell on the off chance that the rest of the world will see me doing it, and they'll understand that bush does not equal america.

Posted by: didofoot at October 28, 2002 02:01 PM

also, in order to believe that street rallies are a valid method of resistance, you may need to

(1) believe that you will be seen and heard
(nearly all television/movie stars are white, some are black, and only 2 or 3 are other colors. do people of color expect to be seen at all?)

(2) come from a tradition where this has "worked" in the past, such as '68 Chicago (mostly white college kids, i think) or Civil Rights (which doesn't explain where the black folks were--and i don't feel qualified to say, tho i might point out that SF is way more Asian/Latin than it is black).

i'm going to argue that urging your own country not to spend your own money and your own children's lives on a war in your own name to fill your own gas tank and sate your own fears is not "activism on behalf of someone else."
----
like if i go to the WTO protests, i'll be frank, i don't give much of a damn about women in Saipan and how much their salary is, as long as they aren't My Employees. which, structurally, if i pay their employers (and i do, if i shop) or their governments (and i do, if i pay off my Citibank loans), then they *are* my employees, and i want out of this deal.

hey jane, get me off this crazy thing...called exploitation

Posted by: pass the hemlock at October 28, 2002 02:08 PM

on protest-
when they come for you, at least you can say you said "no."

i just did my last Girl Army class....fought off different kinds of attacks from some strange guy with not enough padding on. this does not mean i will not get raped/bombed/whatever, but it does mean i won't help it happen.

Cognitive Dissonance. if thousands of thousands of people say "no," and the people who pretend to represent them all say "yes," maybe we'll stop believing all that shit that Ekdahl fed us 'bout Our Founding Slaveowners and how they really felt that men were equal.

Posted by: Govern This, Motherfucker at October 28, 2002 02:18 PM

what we have children now?

and as to your points. well yes, maybe people will say, hey our government doesn't listen to us. and in the future far away maybe eventually somehow a true democracy will be born. or something. but i was meaning that these recent protests (nation wide or otherwise) having any impact on america/the world going to war in the near future was not a very likely scenario.

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 02:32 PM

except...why not?

I dunno. you may very well be right, but I feel like I spend most of my time feeling cynical or mocking other people's efforts and very little time doing anything, in case it might not work...this is not a reflection of you, mind you, just how I am. I just am tired of not being involved in stuff on the off chance that I'll fail. (writing, protesting, school, etc.)

not that I'll be getting on a bus anytime soon...

Posted by: didofoot at October 28, 2002 02:38 PM

well then you should get out there and protest more and feel like you're DOING something. even if nothing is tangibly ACCOMPLISHED. but it's the effort that counts, i guess. kind of like the thought in gift giving. only on a bit more of a globally important scale. and who knows someday somehow you might effect real changes. and that's the dream that all activists fight towards. seeing as how they're non-cynical, non-mocking, and action-packed. and only a tad bit like proselytizers.

Posted by: michele at October 28, 2002 02:49 PM

proselytizers want to save your soul through verbal dominance. i'm just trying to defend my actions.

i was considering coining the term "Passivists," to denote the non-activist population, but as that sounds like "pacifists," which they are generally not (present company excluded) i think i'll go with "sittists," which is like satisfied and seated citizens, or maybe mellow-preservationists (those who do not Harsh the Mellow). tolerance advocates? compliance artists? is this flaming? because i can stop.

Posted by: mock mock at October 28, 2002 04:54 PM

"sittists" seems a little too indicitive of those who might be particpating in "sit-ins" so you might want to rethink your new phrase coining.

Posted by: michele at October 29, 2002 08:20 AM

you're right. Compliance Artists it is!

Posted by: get in, shut up, and sit down at October 29, 2002 04:05 PM

I think I heard Bill O'Reilly make that whole pacifist/passivist pun during the controversy over Barbara Lee's "No War" vote. Actually, I don't know if it was intentional... he sort of acted like he thought that the word really was "passivist."

Large demonstrations can prompt media coverage of people expressing a non-establishment viewpoint. That's useful. Still, I don't think that shouting slogans at people ever makes anyone change their mind, unless the rhymes are really, really clever.

Posted by: sean at October 30, 2002 02:40 AM

I still have a hard on for Eric Stoltz. I loved him in the House of Mirth. I thought Gillian Anderson ruined that film, that Laura Linney should have played Lily Bart and that Eric Stoltz was better than the book. Ambiguity is something rarely seen on film, and I totally got off on it.

Posted by: Michelle at December 10, 2002 07:37 AM

I guess I didn't see him as ambiguous. I thought he was pretty clear on what his character was feeling, I just disagreed with it.

Lynch, now. There is some ambiguity.

Posted by: didofoot at December 10, 2002 10:35 AM

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