Tarantino's Case for Style over Substance (Abuse)

          There’s just something riveting about Amanda Plummer. She’s ugly as sin, but you just can’t look away. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw her lecherously hiss, “That’sss a lot of walletsss.  Pre-tty sssmart.” Tim Roth’s initiation of the diner robbery that bookends the film merely serves as a platform for Plummer’s frenetic delivery of one of the film’s signature lines: “Any of you pigs move! And I’ll execute every last muther fuckin one of ya!”  The frame freezes on Plummer and surfs straight into Dick Dale’s finger slide entrance to his iconic “Miserlou.”

The first time I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the opening felt like plunging over the first peak of a roller coaster.  It was the sort of vivid and visceral movie-going experience I’ve had only a handful of times—Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, Eastwood’s Unforgiven—one of those times when you know full well that you are seeing a special film for the very first time. And you just don’t want it to end. [continued after the break: click "read more"]

Tree-Hugger: An (Online) Genealogy of Morals

How can I possibly be related to you?

Recently I was shocked to learn that, not only theologians, but scientists now assert that every last human being on the planet—white and black, Christian and Muslim, Cardinal fan and Cub fan alike—are all—yes, ALL!—descended from a single female, dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve” by geneticists, and a single male, “Y-chromosome Adam.”  I stumbled upon this astonishing scientific fact in a Jeremy Rifkin talk animated by the Royal Society for the Arts.  Rifkin’s idea is that, since we are all related, it may be possible for all of humanity to identify as one large family. I’m skeptical.

And before you run off half-cocked to start spreading the “good news” that the Bible had it right all along, allow me to burst your bubble: scientists believe that the genetic “Eve” lived about 200 thousand years ago whereas “Adam” lived only 60 thousand years ago.  How does this happen?  I’m not exactly sure, but Adam must have been quite the Casanova in a small, yet uniquely successful population entirely descended from Eve.  Frankly, I find a large degree of peace in that 150 thousand year gap, for it avoids the truly frightening question posed by literal Creationism: where did Seth’s wife come from?  For there is only one answer to THAT question: she would have had to have come from the same place that Seth, Cain, and Able came from. A sister. Or, even worse: Seth procreated with Eve herself. Ug. Ew. Yikes!

"Calvin Klein! Isn't he a dreamboat?"

And of course incest is the fundamental taboo upon which civilization depends.  Don’t believe me? Just go ask Freud or Oedipus…or Marty McFly.  No, no, kids, the fundamental taboo is not murder. In fact, according to Freud the threat of capital punishment was first used to prevent—you guessed it—incest. We are just fine with killing certain people in certain situations, but the mere contemplation of mommy-son action is enough to make us wanna gouge our own eyes out or, dare I even mention, listen to Huey Lewis songs. Gag me! But don’t worry: the genetic Adam, his many partners, and their progeny were probably cousins…very distant cousins.  Whew! …though incest would certainly go a long way toward explaining the nightly news. [continued after the break: click "read more"]

New American Gothic: Hardboiling the Coen Brothers

Among the numerous fringe benefits of my profession, I get to concoct harebrained schemes; but not only do I cook them up: I indulge them, make them realities…well, realities in my head. And the fun doesn’t end there, kids: before I think them through, I like to go and share them with people. We’ll call it stunt blabbing or daredevil gum-flapping.

The primary victim of my struggle to delineate between reality and fantasy happens to be my department chair.  She’ll be sitting in her office at a desk over-flowing with work wearing either a look of deep concentration or “where the hell do I even begin,” and all of a sudden I’ll pop my head into her open door: “Hey, Karen! I’ve got an idea!” I have to admit, I get a kick out of her jumping about two feet out of her chair. I mean, if she didn’t want to be interrupted by me, she shouldn’t have left her door open, right?  I’ve noticed that she’s given up coffee since hiring me.

That was a few years back and by now she’s figured out how to better deal with me.  Rather than rationally explain to me why I can’t teach Beowulf in Old English or take a class on a field trip to Seattle to reenact the WTO protests, she merely waits for me to finish, after which she calmly distracts me back to world of reality. “Proctor, have you given that 101 class their grammar diagnostic yet?” So, the other day, instead of even seeming to notice that I’d just proposed teaching Ulysses in my freshman composition course, she asks me if I have a DVD copy of The Source, a biopic about the Beat Poets starring Dennis Hopper, Johnny Depp, and John Turturro.

“Never heard of him,” she says.

“Who? Kerouac?!”

“No! That last one…Turtle.”

“Oh, Turturro?  He’s been in lots of stuff.  He was the racist son in Do the Right Thing.” She’s starting to put a face to the name.  “He was in Miller’s Crossing.”  I’m losing her.  “He was the Jesus in The Big Lebowski.” Nothing. “He’s been in a bunch of Coen Brothers’ films!” Eyeroll.

“Ooohhhh, the Cooowwwen Brothers. It’s a generational thing.  You young people and your Coen Brothers.” Huh? The Coen Brothers are “a generational thing”?  At first, the idea struck me as odd, but the more I thought about it, the more is seemed downright preposterous. So, I did some research, and, turns out, the Brothers’ last three films—in a row!—have been nominated for the Academy Award^® for Best Picture, and No Country For Old Men won the award (for which the Brothers also won Best Director).  One of the three—A Serious Man—received no marketing and featured no star power, yet is still a truly great film. A fourth—the absolutely unforgettable Fargo—was nominated for the award in the 90s. In addition, some of their best work has received no recognition from the Academy. [continued after the break: click "read more"]