this clumsily worded entry brought to you by R's cheap keyboard
ugh, i hate when you want to write your thoughts down and your means is way too slow/awkward for capturing it.
so i'm trying to get through game of thrones because increasingly i cannot escape it, both on the internet and in meatspace, and. it's exactly as Karin says, where i have these push-pull reactions of being repelled and forced to march onward, and i feel so damn manipulated. it's irritating. i've been thinking about this some lately, maybe partly spurred on by the recent discussions and reflections on Roald Dahl that bob up seemingly every few months--the way other Mefites talk about how eyes-wide those stories turned you as a kid (The Whelk about the Witches, how the boy turns into a mouse and then...just stays a mouse. his grandmother is like, well mice don't live as long, but we'll be together at least until the end, the sort of love story of it referenced in the Erica Jong review and the shout out to the fact there are different frames for viewing the world, and this one, well it's just the crueler one, not less for it either, just another way to view the world). like for lots of people, for me it was Matilda. anyway, i don't know what to think lately about the whole showing cruelty as matter of fact and finding weird emotional connection or validation in it, but also wincing, the pain as matter of fact*. and i wonder if part of my conflict comes from a personal bias against genre writing maybe--i sigh and go "here we go again" when it's huge surging moments of "those BASTARDS!! oh the injustice and double crossing wickedness of it all!" in fantasy or when it's breeder-or-"innate animal drives openly acknowledged"-focused misogyny in science fiction or whatever. especially with the epic fantasy violence and "individual is helpless to their fate" stuff i think over and over "ok, so this got my pupils dilated and heart pumping, and for what?" some of it is also kneejerk subconscious attempt to draw a line between childhood and now too for me, i'm guessing--that kind of stuff just takes me back vividly to being 11 and staying up all night in bed reading fantasy and feeling all those helpless wide-eyed emotions, and i almost feel...like being annoyed now is my way of telling myself (truthfully or no) that i've moved on. huh. so will i keep on? and if so why? am i not over it? am i nostalgia-tripping? what.
what i'm saying is i guess i don't know the point of it for me yet. it's on the one hand mostly feeling like playing emotional dress up, and i have a hard time not noticing that the whole time. it's quite a departure from the last 10 years of strong focus reading habits-wise of dalkey/nyrb-ish pomo "no plot, please" rebellion, the way i settled into that and the mechanics and workmanship in small details became everything. i thought i'd set up shop there forever, that epics and whatever were behind me. it feels strange trying to revisit, go back. displacement.
EDIT: i should clarify despite my admitted bald and cosmetic biases (i've haha-but-really joked before to friends "if they'd make D&D-type games but without fucking trolls and wizards and shit, some other shell say, modern girl and her artist friends, i might be all over it"), i'm not unaware of how fantasy by its very nature/premise has its own set of powerful tools, nor do i mean to dismiss or ignore all the rich possibilities for interpreting martin's writing--the chapter-by-character-focus thing, for example, including which characters he makes a point to leave out despite their central importance, and why. maybe that will be something i enjoy sifting through later.
*one thing i loved, LOVED about Winter's Bone was how it would've been so easy to make the abruptly stressful premise of it, and the really well executed ominous/creepy/inescapable environment with its pervasive patriarchal violence as given displayed so early on, run through the entire course of the movie in matter of fact fashion like this fantasy thing i'm talking about...but it doesn't do that, nor does it cop out with a cinematic happy ending of escape/permanent relief either. i was thinking about half-way in plot-wise (later than that time-wise i bet) "how the fuck are they going to end this?" not because of what i know independent of the movie, universal tight plot mechanics or tropes, but because of the logic within it...it seemed any ending i could imagine would either undercut the first half and the entire point of the thing or just wouldn't work (in a funny way, a tragic movie that just kind of keeps being tragic until it stops instead of "ends", no closure, wouldn't have been true to the movie either...in the internal world of how the movie presents itself that would've felt just as false due to the how much the movie works to make you feel the gravity of the thing, even without typical Hollywood melodrama or hyperbole...it's not an art house-y navelgazing cerebral Linklater film, or even No Country for Old Men, I guess I'm saying, and you realize that well before the end). and then i got the answer. well played.
and not only that--a strength for sure but one many movies do manage--it doesn't sell out the character and environment/atmosphere brushstrokes of the first half. the patriarch's partner (?)'s actions, actions which save the main character's family, and how she goes about them is still in line with everything you know about her and the entire town. the solution felt as much the ozarks as ever, grotesque and utterly, painfully unsentimental. masterful. it isn't, i don't know, fucking dogville or whatever. no narrative razing. i also loved how the army wasn't the answer, and not just in on-paper plot terms but how it actually played out, was acted, in that scene.
and superficial sheltered clueless TWOP-y add on: it disturbed me how much the whole thing was exactly like the episodes of Intervention with midwestern meth users.
so i'm trying to get through game of thrones because increasingly i cannot escape it, both on the internet and in meatspace, and. it's exactly as Karin says, where i have these push-pull reactions of being repelled and forced to march onward, and i feel so damn manipulated. it's irritating. i've been thinking about this some lately, maybe partly spurred on by the recent discussions and reflections on Roald Dahl that bob up seemingly every few months--the way other Mefites talk about how eyes-wide those stories turned you as a kid (The Whelk about the Witches, how the boy turns into a mouse and then...just stays a mouse. his grandmother is like, well mice don't live as long, but we'll be together at least until the end, the sort of love story of it referenced in the Erica Jong review and the shout out to the fact there are different frames for viewing the world, and this one, well it's just the crueler one, not less for it either, just another way to view the world). like for lots of people, for me it was Matilda. anyway, i don't know what to think lately about the whole showing cruelty as matter of fact and finding weird emotional connection or validation in it, but also wincing, the pain as matter of fact*. and i wonder if part of my conflict comes from a personal bias against genre writing maybe--i sigh and go "here we go again" when it's huge surging moments of "those BASTARDS!! oh the injustice and double crossing wickedness of it all!" in fantasy or when it's breeder-or-"innate animal drives openly acknowledged"-focused misogyny in science fiction or whatever. especially with the epic fantasy violence and "individual is helpless to their fate" stuff i think over and over "ok, so this got my pupils dilated and heart pumping, and for what?" some of it is also kneejerk subconscious attempt to draw a line between childhood and now too for me, i'm guessing--that kind of stuff just takes me back vividly to being 11 and staying up all night in bed reading fantasy and feeling all those helpless wide-eyed emotions, and i almost feel...like being annoyed now is my way of telling myself (truthfully or no) that i've moved on. huh. so will i keep on? and if so why? am i not over it? am i nostalgia-tripping? what.
what i'm saying is i guess i don't know the point of it for me yet. it's on the one hand mostly feeling like playing emotional dress up, and i have a hard time not noticing that the whole time. it's quite a departure from the last 10 years of strong focus reading habits-wise of dalkey/nyrb-ish pomo "no plot, please" rebellion, the way i settled into that and the mechanics and workmanship in small details became everything. i thought i'd set up shop there forever, that epics and whatever were behind me. it feels strange trying to revisit, go back. displacement.
EDIT: i should clarify despite my admitted bald and cosmetic biases (i've haha-but-really joked before to friends "if they'd make D&D-type games but without fucking trolls and wizards and shit, some other shell say, modern girl and her artist friends, i might be all over it"), i'm not unaware of how fantasy by its very nature/premise has its own set of powerful tools, nor do i mean to dismiss or ignore all the rich possibilities for interpreting martin's writing--the chapter-by-character-focus thing, for example, including which characters he makes a point to leave out despite their central importance, and why. maybe that will be something i enjoy sifting through later.
*one thing i loved, LOVED about Winter's Bone was how it would've been so easy to make the abruptly stressful premise of it, and the really well executed ominous/creepy/inescapable environment with its pervasive patriarchal violence as given displayed so early on, run through the entire course of the movie in matter of fact fashion like this fantasy thing i'm talking about...but it doesn't do that, nor does it cop out with a cinematic happy ending of escape/permanent relief either. i was thinking about half-way in plot-wise (later than that time-wise i bet) "how the fuck are they going to end this?" not because of what i know independent of the movie, universal tight plot mechanics or tropes, but because of the logic within it...it seemed any ending i could imagine would either undercut the first half and the entire point of the thing or just wouldn't work (in a funny way, a tragic movie that just kind of keeps being tragic until it stops instead of "ends", no closure, wouldn't have been true to the movie either...in the internal world of how the movie presents itself that would've felt just as false due to the how much the movie works to make you feel the gravity of the thing, even without typical Hollywood melodrama or hyperbole...it's not an art house-y navelgazing cerebral Linklater film, or even No Country for Old Men, I guess I'm saying, and you realize that well before the end). and then i got the answer. well played.
and not only that--a strength for sure but one many movies do manage--it doesn't sell out the character and environment/atmosphere brushstrokes of the first half. the patriarch's partner (?)'s actions, actions which save the main character's family, and how she goes about them is still in line with everything you know about her and the entire town. the solution felt as much the ozarks as ever, grotesque and utterly, painfully unsentimental. masterful. it isn't, i don't know, fucking dogville or whatever. no narrative razing. i also loved how the army wasn't the answer, and not just in on-paper plot terms but how it actually played out, was acted, in that scene.
and superficial sheltered clueless TWOP-y add on: it disturbed me how much the whole thing was exactly like the episodes of Intervention with midwestern meth users.