HopkinsCinemAddicts

Get Your S*** Together, Girls (Natasha)

    A lot of people have been talking about her, the girl with the upper arm tattoo.  But Lena Dunham is more than just a person who should always wear sleeves; she is a very endearing woman with a pretty awful vision of the lives of young women in New York.  Her new HBO series Girls is neither terrible nor excellent; it is sometimes good and often bad.  Three episodes have aired so far, and while plot points have emerged, nothing has really happened.  Even with the issues of financial instability, job hunts, abortion, dead-end relationships and the occasional horrifying sexual partner pervading each episode, I as a viewer have not really been fazed by any of it because the eponymous girls haven't been fazed either.

    All these "not really" qualifiers point to the show's great weakness: all four girls seem to be stagnating in a muddy puddle of drab furniture, unflattering clothes and profoundly unsatisfying professional, romantic and sexual lives.  These girls are languishing in apartments they deem too impermanent and transitional to decorate; they are entertaining the whims and inappropriate behavior of their first bosses to much too great an extent; they are pseudo-pursuing or passively staying in relationships that do worse than just fail to satisfy them--they further diminish what little joie de vivre these particular girls can occasionally muster.  Yet they seem to believe they are self-possessed, independent, worthwhile young women who have inexplicably been thrown into situations they must sigh and shrug their way through.  They do not pursue opportunities, they let themselves be led. They never demand anything, never even show an interest in making their desires known.  They graduated from college, hopped in their car and followed the traffic towards the road to adulthood, but then their tire blew out.  No one can figure out how to use the jack, none of their contemporaries is stopping to help and none of the girls had the foresight, the capital or even just the autonomy to become a member of AAA.

    These girls fail to entertain me because they themselves do not actually do anything, entertaining or otherwise.  Things happen to them and they barely react, they merely acquiesce.  There is no private torture of the dependent, the confused, the hopeless; there is no public outrage of the oppressed, the overzealous, the aggressive; there is only the blank-faced displeasure of the unmotivated, the uninterested, the utterly passionless.

    It infuriates me to hear female critics call this show an affront to womankind, because I believe we should not allow these girls to represent womankind.  They certainly do not represent the kind of women who deserve immense respect and appreciation.  If you allow yourself to be sexually subjugated time and time again and continue to pursue your subjugator, that is entirely your fault.  Men, particularly awful men, do not have absolute power over how women are treated; women have to command respect and never stop.  The onus is on her to demand proper treatment--the choice is hers to discard, punish or educate the wrongdoer who treats her poorly.  We are not natural victims, and we should put no faith in women who act like they are. We don't go back to some creepy guy's apartment day after day, playing into his perverse desires and indulging in the wrongheaded but popular notion that all men are terrible.  There are countless situations in which being a woman works against you, but that is not one of them.

    On another character's note, you don't stay with the effete and overly wholesome boyfriend you can no longer stand and with whom you have terrible sex just because you have been together for four years.  To revisit the driving metaphor: you actually have to try to free your wheel from a rut, you can't just sit in your car with your head in your hands and wait out the rest of your life.  So, as I said:  Girls, get your s*** together. There are plenty of women who have.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

 

Many thanks to Lucy Bucknell for the above image and for the chance to write this blog.

I'm Famous (Jake)

So the biggest thing that's happened to me since we last spoke is this:

I'm on the cover of this week's JHU Gazette!  They did a piece on four of the senior Woodrow Wilson Fellows and subsequently took a photo of me staring down the camera while holding a camera in front of a computer and subsequently chose that image to grace the cover of their publication (we could get into how I then used a computer to take a picture of myself holding up a picture of myself but that would be EXTRA dumb).  Because the main point of all of this is that--I won't mince words--I am now a celebrity. Nowhere on campus  can I escape my own self-serious visage.  Not to brag, but a student in one of my classes said to me "hey, I read that article about you in the JHU Gazette."

Besides throwing wood into the fire of my burgeoning fame, the article also served to substantiate this whole filmmaking process It publically and officially announced the premiere (May 12th, 7th P.M, my loyal readers).  Right now the film is just an unexported (and half unedited) file on Final Cut Pro, but no matter what happens it will always have been a thing that was going to happen.  And there's something cool about that.

Substantiation is something I want desperately.  I really want to show the film to people.  Not (just) because I'm desperate for people's approval, but because I'm growing increasingly interested in film as event.  With this movie I feel like I didn't just bring to fruition my artistic vision. I also captured a moment in time.  Most of my friends are in this movie in one way or another, many as heightened versions of themselves.  Years from now we'll always be able to look back on the film and remember.  Remember what it was like to be young, to be dumb, to have our futures ahead of us.  

So I don't see it as just a movie screening, but also a community event.  Even if it happens to be a tiny community.  Maybe as I continue to work on movies my community will get larger.  But that paradoxical feeling of both insularity and extreme inclusiveness is not something I want to lose, at least not yet.  Because sometimes the love machine malfunctions a bit.  It's easy to lose love for yourself at times, even your art.  But when you've packed your film with a bunch of little buddies eagerly awaiting your finished project, it's hard not to crack a smile and keep plugging away.  

So maybe that's why I go through all this trouble.  To build communities.  Or maybe it's just to get my big 'ol mug on the cover of as many magazines as possible.  Either way.

 

 

Superhumanity: The Human Characters of The Avengers (Chris D)

WARNING: SPOILERS

 

                After 4 years of setup, The Avengers has finally become a reality. Thankfully, it has lived up to its expectations, as it had the potential to be one of the biggest disappointments in cinema history. However, while it is filled with big explosions and thrilling action, it succeeds not through its thrills, but through the humanity of its characters.

                Superheroes represent the pinnacle of humankind. They are able to do things that people can only dream of doing, and they operate in a world of black and white. We love to go to the theatre or read comic books in order to imagine how awesome it would be to fight off evil invading aliens or a maniacal super villain. The Avengers gives us this escape, but each of the main characters is also a deeply flawed person in addition to an epic superhero.

                The majority of the film focuses on the team having troubles coming together in order to face their common foe. Each of their personalities forces them away from each other. Tony Stark overcompensates for his ego and drives everyone around him away with his pompousness, Bruce Banner struggles with his severe anger problems, and Steve Rogers is dealing with being a man who has lost touch with the modern world. Each of these problems is extended into the fantastical realm, such as Bruce Banner turning into a giant rage monster when he gets angry or Steve Rogers having been frozen in ice for several years, but they all resonate clearly with the audience. We like these people because we can relate to their problems, not because they can jump over buildings.

                The one member of the team that stands outside this pattern, and as such is a less effective character, is Thor. While he has to deal with the fact that the villain is his brother, he speaks in Elizabethan era English and feels less human than the rest. He is a god and as such exists on a different level than the other characters. In the end, he ends up getting less screen time as he is simply less interesting than the other characters.

                The humanity of the characters is truly brought to the forefront when, in classic Joss Whedon fashion, the most human of the characters is killed off. This death does not happen to one of the superheroic members of the team, but instead to Agent Colson, their completely human friend. He dies trying to protect Thor from his brother, but in the end proves mostly ineffective. His death provides a truly emotional moment for the audience. For those who have been watching these films since Iron Man, Colson has been a constant presence who helped to bring these characters together. However, even for those who have only seen The Avengers his earlier scene in which he starts to gush to Captain America about how he has collected all of his trading cards endears him to the audience. He represents us as we get excited about these characters. He looks up to them just as we do. His death allows the Avengers to move past their own personal issue and unite in their common grief.

                All of these human emotions pay off in the very last scene of the film. After the credits are done rolling, we are treated to a two minute long scene of these superheroes, still in costume, eating shawarma in a grungy New York restaurant. This moment is the most human moment in the film. No one does anything fantastic. No one says anything to each other. They simply sit there and eat, allowing themselves to relax after the stressful day they have had. This relaxation is a sentiment that everyone can relate to. Sometimes we just need to sit back and eat some food. It’s a refreshing thought to know that superheroes need to eat too.