November 2009 Archives

We watched the movie Up the other night. Predictably, I cried. I knew that I would. I'd been told that I would. Even if you're not a crier, I was told, you'll cry at Up.

I'm a crier, so, yeah.

The thing of it was, though, that I didn't cry in that tissue-clutching, nose-dripping, Terms Of Endearment, oh my god this is so SAD kind of way. I cried because it was beautiful. I cried because the depiction, early in the movie, of a lifelong happy marriage was so beautiful. I cried because such depictions of marriage are so rarely seen. I cried because the movie demonstrated how companionship - whether with lovers or friends or small children or dogs - is just so deeply enriching and rewarding and necessary. I cried because the movie demonstrated that family takes many different forms, all of them wonderful. I cried because it was about life and love and dreams. I cried because it because it made me laugh and made me remember that even when life makes you sad you can still laugh.

I cried because - and forgive me for how banal this sounds - I was down and it lifted me up and it made me feel like I, too, have balloons. In my husband, in my children, in my friends and peers, I have balloons.

Balloons are good.

(Up was released on BluRay and DVD last week. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. And if you have seen it, you want to see it again. This is one for watching over and over and over again. And there's simply nothing better to watch after Thanksgiving dinner. This movie is all about love and gratitude and family. And balloons.)

(Also, with the DVD, you get all the extra features, and trust me, on this one, you want to hear the backstory and learn more about the characters and see more of the artwork. This is awesome, heartwarming, makes-you-want-to-be-a-better-storyteller kind of stuff.)

(Did I like it? Um, yeah.)

 

This picture was taken this past spring, at the Blissdom conference in Nashville. It was taken by my good friend Anissa, who, in the middle of a chat we were having outside the hotel, just dropped to her knees and pointed her camera at Jasper and me and said, 'this is just such a beautiful moment.'

Anissa's in the hospital. She had a stroke, and it's very, very serious, and my heart is sick with worry for her. I thought about posting a picture of her here, or a picture of she and I together, but when I was scrolling through my photos it was this picture, this moment, that jumped out at me, because when I look at it I can see her right there, on the other side of the frame, seeing me and Jasper and seizing the love. Just like her.

(Find out how you can send love and prayers and help to Anissa and her family by checking out the Aiming Low site. And maybe hug a friend today.)

It's Twilight/New Moon/Oh Hey Vampires And Werewolves Day on the Internets (well, maybe yesterday was, but I'm a sleep-deprived mother of two and so I get some creative leeway with my calendar): the release of the movie New Moon yesterday has unleashed, over recent weeks, waves of virtual commentary about the Twilight phenomenon and culminated, today, in a tsunami of red carpet photo coverage. So, you know, if you want to indulge in a little Edward-gazing, today's your day. I don't have any red carpet photos of the New Moon premiere, but I do have some reflections on the Twilight series (originally composed for MamaPop last year, when the first movie was released), and why it's simply not as bad as - and, in fact, probably much, much better than - the naysayers say it is.

Read on...

It was to be expected that there'd be a certain amount of criticism directed toward the Twilight series after the movie was released. There was, after all, a considerable amount of criticism of each of the books as these were released, criticism that was largely directed toward the purportedly anti- or un-feminist sensibilities of the series. Bella is a passive character, the argument goes: Bella sacrifices too much for love; Bella sublimates herself to Edward; Bella doesn't kick ass and take names like Buffy did; Bella washes too many dishes for her dad; Bella wears too much fleece, etc, etc.

Whatever. The quote-unquote feminist arguments against the Twilight series are specious at best, in my opinion (I mean, for example: Bella passive? Bella risks her own life on numerous occasions to save people. Bella saves EVERYBODY at the end. And she's not even a Slayer. *rolls eyes*), but nonetheless frustrating. I actually wrote a whole post ranting about how being cynical about love is the new black and how stupid it is - yeah, I called it stupid - to call out romantic love as de facto disempowering, even when the love at stake (heh) is love between a clumsy human girl and a powerful vampire, especially seeing as that clumsy human girl basically makes that vampire her bitch and makes him do whatever she wants.

But then I realized that long lectures on the place of romantic love in the history of feminist discourse and consideration of same against current critiques of Twilight were maybe not so interesting to a community of readers who are probably just looking for something lite to read while they scarf down their afternoon Snickers bar, and so I shelved it.

Then I read this (warning - some spoilers follow):

Is the Twilight series pushing its own kind of morality along with its love story? I think so -- and it is an element that parents and teachers need to be aware is in the books. The narrative suggests that it is better to submit and sublimate yourself to a superior being than to be your own person. Having a will of one's own is not conducive to Meyer's brand of love and living. Only heterosexual relationships are explored, and (married!) sex is always a power play with painful consequences. Plus it is preferable to be a teenage mother above all else, even if it kills you. (io9.com)

Let's break this down:

1) The narrative suggests that it is better to submit and sublimate yourself to a superior being than to be your own person.

This canard is getting old. How is Bella not her own person, exactly? She falls in love and fights - fights hard - to carve a space in this world for that love. She fights Edward - who worries about her life and her future and her breakability - in her pursuit of this love. And she gets what she wants, against all of Edward's initial preferences. She joins Edward's world, sure - but doesn't that happen for many of us when we align our lives with someone else's? We follow partners as their lives take different directions, and they follow us. Since when is sacrifice in the name of love an incontrovertibly bad thing? If Bella left her family and gave up her college plans (which she wasn't keen on to begin with) to go do community work in sub-Saharan Africa, would we be all oh, she's just sublimating herself to community work? Why does love necessarily mean sublimation? SERIOUSLY.

And this 'superior being' bullshit? It's bullshit, for two reasons: one, as I suggested above, Edward is not a superior being. He's an angst-ridden, self-flagellating monster-boy. I think that part of the force of Meyer's narrative lays in the fact that Edward's beauty and strength conceal vast reserves of self-doubt and - in some moments - self-loathing. He's a monster, and he hates that he's a monster. It's Bella who brings to full flower his determination to fully overcome his animal side; it is Bella who overrides his tendency to self-doubt. Who's the superior being? 

Two: as I argued here, the idea that a remarkably 'good' character is a troubling romantic partner is, well, troubling. Why shouldn't we (or our children) aspire to love really good people, people who would love us as well as Edward loves Bella?

2) Having a will of one's own is not conducive to Meyer's brand of love and living.

Huh? See above. 

3) Only heterosexual relationships are explored, and (married!) sex is always a power play with painful consequences.

Right. Because all novels should explore homosexual relationships, just because. They should also take care to ensure that characters represent a range of ethnic and class backgrounds and abilities. Writers should be encouraged to include seeing and hearing-impaired characters, and also characters in wheelchairs. Down with heterosexist, ableist, racist, classist storytelling!

(Wait. The Twilight series does have characters from a range of backgrounds! And a character in a wheelchair! And depending upon how you read those two Romanian vampires who appear in Breaking Dawn, there's a case to be made that homosexual relationships are not ignored. Stephenie Meyer did take Political Correctness In Novel Writing 101! Take that, Tolstoy, you racist, ableist, heterosexist bastard!)

Also, someone's been reading a bit too much Catherine Mackinnon. That whole 'all sex is rape/all sex is violence' line is so last millenium. Sex is dangerous for Edward and Bella because Edward is - wait for it - a vampire. That there's a risk of him eating Bella during the act doesn't speak so much to a power play as it does to, you know, his diet. And Bella's the aggressor, remember? If anyone is pulling power moves v.v. sex in their relationship, it's Bella.

4) It is preferable to be a teenage mother above all else, even if it kills you.

This is the one that I find most baffling and infuriating.  It reduces Bella's desire to protect her unborn child to a desire to be a teenage mother. That's just stupid. Bella didn't set out to get pregnant; she didn't pursue teenage motherhood. She got pregnant and decided to keep the baby. Oh, hey, maybe you've seen Juno? She preferred teenage motherhood above all else, too!

The writer argues that because Bella refuses an abortion, the book is "a virtual pro-life P.S.A." and that Meyer is forcing 'anti-abortion hysterics" upon her readers:

The too-predictable plotline would be bad enough without statements like this from Bella: "This child, Edward's child, was a whole different story. I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice -- a necessity." Never mind that Bella, 18, had never wanted children and had been arguing with her husband about going to college, which he summarily dismissed.

(Ed. note: that last parenthetical statement is just wrong. Edward does everything in his power to convince Bella to go to college. She's the one who resists.)

But then bad Edward wants to give Bella an abortion because he knows their half-vampire/human baby will kill her! "He leaned away and looked me in the eye. 'We're going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don't be scared. I won't let it hurt you.' 'That thing?' I gasped...Edward had just called my little nudger a thing. He said Carlisle would get it out. "No," I whispered." You see, Bella often refers to her unborn child as "her little nudger," since it grows inside her at an unnatural rate. Yes, she does.

Apparently, it is just the most insidious and troubling thing EVER that Bella becomes attached to her unborn child. Because, you know, that never happens! ALL accidental pregnancies are supposed to end in abortion, because if you were ambivalent about becoming a mother before you got knocked up, you should just stay ambivalent, and ambivalence = being anti-baby, so seriously, you should just flush that thing out and forget it ever happened. That's why Juno was such a bad movie; it was so unrealistic. Also, pregnant women never name their unborn babies, and would never risk their lives to protect them! Because abortions are awesome, and we like to keep our abortioning options open until the last minute! NEVER GET ATTACHED TO A FETUS, is what I always say.

GAWD. This is the shit that makes pro-choicers (which I, emphatically, am) look bad. Deciding against abortion doesn't make you rabidly anti-choice or even anti-abortion. It means that you want to keep your baby. Last time I checked, that wasn't a reprehensible thing.

Look, you don't have to like the Twilight books. If they're not your thing, if you don't find them convincing, that's your opinion and that's fine. I mean, they're not going to end up on any Great Books list alongside Shakespeare, so you don't need to worry about Edward and Bella being canonized as the second coming of Romeo and Juliet. The march of Great Literature will continue, helped along by the publication of the latest variation of The Jane Austen Book Club or whatever it is that Oprah is putting her stamp on these days and literacy will not get hurt. But please: resist the urge go all Savonarola on the Twilight books, with preachy denunciations of its troubling morality and insidious teachings. What makes your insistence that 'parents and teachers should be made aware' and readers 'forewarned' that the content of these books is potentially 'dangerous' any better than any other censor's self-righteous attempt to get the books they deem 'troubling' put behind the library check-out counter?

And if not, at least come up with more sophisticated criticism. My eyes get tired from all the rolling.

(You can read the companion piece to this post - Five Reasons Why You Should Totally Let Your Kids See Those Vampire Movies - over at Her Bad Mother. And you can see the discussion prompted by the original version of this discussion over at MamaPop. And then you can go see New Moon. Or go surf entertainment blogs in search of photos of Robert Pattinson at last night's premiere. Enjoy!)

Four years ago, my daughter was born. Four years ago, I became a mom.


My own mother used to tell me that she considered my birthday as much her day as mine, because it was the day she gave birth, the day that she became a mother. For many years I rolled my eyes at this. Not anymore. I know, now, exactly what she meant. For fours I've known.

Emilia's four years have been four years of her growing and learning and transforming from an impossibly tiny - and impossibly loud - little baby to an impossibly mature little girl. They have, for her, been fours of wonder and joy and frustration and love and screams and hugs and tears and giggles and giggles and more giggles. They have also been, for me, four years of sleep deprivation and confusion and anxiety and learning and learning and learning and - of course, always - wonder and joy and love and laughter. These have been her four years, but they have also been my four years. They've been her four years of becoming a little girl, of becoming - of continuing to become - her. But they have also been my four years of becoming mommy, becoming a mother, becoming me. Because becoming a mother has been one of the - if not the - defining transitions of my adulthood. It, more than almost anything I've done in the last two decades (almost) (gah), has made me who I am. Becoming a mother was a birth, of sorts, for me, too.

And such a birth it was.


Happy birthday, baby girl. And happy BIRTH day, me.

Most of my family has served in the military in some capacity or another. My grandfather was in the (Canadian) Navy. My mother was in the Air Force. My father (pictured above) was in the Air Force. My father-in-law served in the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada in World War II.

None of them died in service. But they did serve, and today - as I remember that so many have died - I think that that is going to be what I focus on when I talk to my kids about what Remembrance Day and Veterans Day mean. Not the death, not the sacrifice, not the loss (how can four year olds wrap their heads around loss of life in war? should we even expect them to try?) - just the service, the tremendous service, that so many men and women provide to their countries day after day, year after year. Just that. The service. The protection they provide, the security, the maintenance of peace, the defense of peace, the making - in some cases - of peace.

That, I think, is easy enough to explain to a child. And well-worth doing. So worth doing.

(Is that enough, do you think? How SHOULD we talk to our kids about Remembrance/Veterans' Day? Talking about death with small children is complicated enough - how do we discuss it alongside war and conflict and all those terrible things that, although we should remember, we so often struggle to forget?)

(Thank you, veterans and service-people. THANK YOU.)

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