Ontological

Steve meditating on the ontology of a walnut

I reached a milestone today: I was able to use "ontological" in a sentence. If you're going "Huh? Onto-what?", believe me, I know where you're coming from. That word has been the bane of my grad school existence. I've been telling myself that if I ever learned to use it in a sentence, I'd have arrived - and that day came today.

Then again - maybe not. I still haven't used "ontological" in a word combination of my own choosing, I'm just able to quote something someone else said, and actually understand what they're talking about. But that's a big step in the right direction, isn't it? It represents an ontological shift, for me. There, I did it, I did it! Except I'm not entirely sure that what I just said actually makes sense.

Okay, "ontological". What does it actually mean? The word kept cropping up early in my grad school experience, in philosophy readings and such. I kept looking it up to try to get a handle on it, but it still didn't really make sense. The definitions all say something like "Ontology: the study of being", and some go on much longer about it. And usually, when I encountered that word, that definition didn't really help me make any sense of what I was reading. But then, a while back, I was reading some folktale theory, and the word popped up in a context where I actually understood what they were saying (Score!). And then the other day, I ran across a book review on this blog which was talking about Brian Boyd's book On the Origin of Stories, and what Jenny was saying about it made me rush out (metaphorically - into cyberspace, anyway) to get a hold of this book, which was well worth it (I waffle on about it here).

What she said was this: according to Boyd, "people find stories most memorable when the characters of the stories cross ontological boundaries." Huh, you say? Well, here, let me explain, out of my new-found state of enlightenment. The passage in question in Boyd's book analyses Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. Dr. Seuss constantly messes with our ideas of what's real - specifically, by creating these really weird creatures, with what animals are. We have a quite clear idea of animals' being, and he crosses that boundary and gives fish antlers or puts wheels on some critter. That's ontology - he is saying something about a state of being.

As for finding stories most memorable when the characters "cross ontological boundaries", that's what our fascination with fantasy stories is all about. Think about it: of the blockbuster movies of the last twenty years, probably some 80% (if not more) were fantasies. A neglected boy finds out he's really a wizard. An injured soldier finds himself on a planet of tall blue creatures. A group of small woolly-footed people team up with a wizard and elves to destroy an evil magical ring. (And so on.) We know what things are really like, we have a clear grip on the nature of being - and we love stories that cross those boundaries, that tell of an alternate state of being. Ontological boundaries.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and "Ontological" Used in a Sentence. Oh frabjous day, I have arrived.

Fabulatherapy, Take Two

A friend on Facebook just posted a link to an article and little Youtube clip: "Movie-and-Talk: Can This Simple Exercise Help Save a Marriage?" In a word? Yes.

Researchers at the University of Rochester put married couples into different therapy groups. Two of the groups received more intensive, skills-based therapy (two different kinds), in one group the couples just watched relationship movies with each other and afterwards talked about them, and the control group did nothing. The study was carried out over three years, at the end of which the researchers found that the "do nothing" group had twice the divorce rate of the other three groups. But the exciting thing about this study is this: just watching movies together and talking about them was just as effective in keeping couples together as intensive, costly marriage counselling.

You see, it's yet another instance of Fabulatherapy, that word I coined  a year ago to describe how Story can help us deal with our lives. In that instance, it was dealing with bibliotherapy, reading books to help you cope with depression. Maybe this form of marriage therapy should be called cinematotherapy? Regardless, it's engaging with stories that makes the difference - Fabulatherapy.

The researcher who talks about this study on that Youtube clip speculates that it's not the movie-watching itself which makes the difference in couples' lives, but the talking about it afterwards. I beg to differ (somewhat). Watching a movie means to immerse oneself in the story. For the hour or two that you're watching, you ARE the person on screen, you experience what they experience, and you learn from it. In watching it with someone else, and talking about it afterwards, you synchronise your experience, and the learning that comes from it. Yes, the talking is important, but I think it's the movie itself that makes the greatest impact.

This is a beautiful example of the Power of Story (and one that's verified with fancy terminology, statistics, N=174, and a write-up in APA's PsycNET, no less). Fiction has incredible power over our lives. From personal experience, I can tell you that one of the biggest factors in the success of a marriage is to have witnessed the functional marriage of one's parents. When you have seen a marriage work, when you have experienced a couple who argues, does not always agree with each other, has weird quirks and irritating habits, and still stays together, reconciles after the arguments, and above and in spite of all deeply loves one another, you have an invaluable toolbox for making your own marriage work. (For the most part, on average. It's not an unfailing guarantee, of course, but it means you're quite far ahead of the game.) It's having experienced it, having seen it - that's what counts.

In daily life, we don't see how marriages work at home - I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been caught by complete surprise at the divorce of couples who, by all outer appearances, seemed to be doing perfectly well. We don't show our squabbles in public. So you have to be on the inside, so to speak, have to watch a couple in their home, in order to see how marriage really works. And the beauty of Story, of fiction, is that it allows us to go on the inside like that without having to intrude on our friends' privacy ("Hey, Joe and Martha, you seem to have a good marriage going. Do you mind if I park myself in your living room for the next month and listen to you when you're fighting, so I can learn how it's done? I promise to shut my eyes when you get too lovey-dovey." Uh, no. I don't think so.). We can watch a relationship, we can learn from others' mistakes and what they did right, just by popping a movie into the DVD player (or finding it on Netflix, more like) - just by engaging with a story. And that story, even if it is entirely fictional, can help us on our own lives, can teach us what we need to learn to make things work for ourselves.

Now I want to watch that movie with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney that they showed a clip of in that Youtube video. And there was one with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that looked interesting, too. Or maybe I'll just go to my own DVD shelves - there is Shrek 2, all about making a new marriage work and making compromises for each other, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, about making a relationship work in the midst of a great big extended family, or...

Life, the Universe, and Movies for Marriage. Fabulatherapy at its finest.

Movies from Books

I've come to a conclusion about watching movies, especially fantasy stories: if you really want to enjoy the movie, don't read the book first. We just saw Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters last week, and it was quite a fun movie to watch. Then I read the book yesterday, and boy oh boy, is it ever different! Well, as usual, the book is better - but because I hadn't read it, I wasn't spending the two hours in the movie theatre groaning about how they messed up the story; I was able to enjoy both film and print.

True, there were a few groan-worthy spots - like the point where some characters are having an emotional reunion-hug scene, monologuing about how much they appreciate each other, while the bad guy does bad-guy things right behind their back that they very much need to interfere with. But they don't, being all emotional and huggy, so bad guy nearly gets his bad-guy way. (Spoiler: he doesn't, in the end. I'm sure that really surprises you, that in a hero movie the heroes win. Yup.) Oh, and another thing that threw me for a minor loop was that they replaced the actor for one of the main characters: Chiron isn't played by Pierce Brosnan, but by Anthony Head. So, no, Camp Half-Blood didn't get another centaur teacher as I first thought, he's just shape-shifted a bit. And actually, Anthony Head fits the character in the book better than Pierce Brosnan; he looks older and more teacherly-mature, which is what Chiron is supposed to be.

"Supposed to be". That "fidelity question" in film adaptations is something I've been thinking about ever since last semester's term paper on Jane Austen movies. I used to be very demanding of "fidelity" in movie adaptations, i.e. "how faithful is the movie to the book?" I still am, to a point, especially when it comes to my favourites such as Austen. But I've rethought a lot of my attitude in that regard. Because, you see, the fact is that movies are not books. Film and print are apples and oranges. Yes, I like my apples to have a certain taste and texture, and my oranges as well. But if oranges were green & yellow with red stripes and a crunchy texture, I'd be a little perturbed. Well, no, a lot perturbed. And a squashy orange-coloured apple with a dimpled skin really wouldn't be cool, either. So a movie which tries to tell the story in just the same way as the book - well, it often just doesn't work. At worst you end up with really boring voice-over narration of the text in the book, or just, well, really boring. Or cheesy.

Because in a book, you can just tell the reader what you want them to "see". You can say "She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen," and each reader imagines for themselves what exactly that means. On a film, you have to show that - and when it comes to such things as "most beautiful" or "most horrible", those experiences are quite subjective. That's where Peter Jackson struck out with his Lord of the Rings elf women - he succeeded in making them sugary, with all that pink backlighting and the soft-focus shots, rather than ethereal and stunningly beautiful. At least that's my opinion. Yes, yes, of course the actresses are very beautiful women - but they're women, that's the problem, not elves. In fantasy films that's a big issue - you're trying to show something supernatural by natural means. That's why the book usually is better, because you can convey so much more in words than in mere image.

But then, sometimes, it's the words that start to stumble. Take The Lord of the Rings again: if one wanted to re-tell the movie in words, to convey the majesty of the New Zealand landscape in which the film was shot, words just would not be enough. That's where the film excels in something the book hasn't got. The movie tells a story in pictures, and sometimes, if not almost all the time, that story is different from the one that is told in words. Different, not worse, not inferior. Well, maybe sometimes inferior, and then, sometimes, superior. But most of the time, just different. I think there are some stories that are best told in words, and some best in images. And maybe - maybe we won't know which fits best until we've tried them both.

Life, the Universe, and Movies from Books. Don't read the book first, you'll like the movie better for it.

On Jane Austen Film Adaptations, Take 2

completely random pretty flower

I've been really busy waffling on about Austen over at quill and qwerty. Latest installation: a post on the Sense and Sensibility movies, which I watched the last couple of evenings. So I've kind of been too occupied to pop in over here and let loose with some of my usual ramblings.

But then it suddenly occurred to me: some time ago, I promised a post on Jane Austen heroines and the actresses who play them, one of them being the girlfriend of Blake Ritson (he who plays such an excellent Edmund Bertram in the 2007 Mansfield Park), so this would be a great time to redeem that promise. And when I looked up that old post, I found that it was written exactly a year and a day ago, May 21 of last year. What is it about May? Must be the season for watching Jane Austen movies. In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to love... (except I ain't all that young. And most definitely not a man.).

So, Blake's girlfriend. Yup. She's my favourite. Hattie Morahan, her name is, and she plays Elinor in the 2007 Sense and Sensibility. Fabulous casting, she's exactly my idea of the sensible Dashwood sister. Oh, but - in the 1995 version of the movie, Elinor is played by Emma Thompson. She's my favourite. Fabulous casting, exactly my idea of... Oh dear. You see my problem. They're all my favourites.

The two Sense and Sensibility movies are especially bad for that; I honestly can't make up my mind which I like better. The older version has a fantastic cast of seasoned actors, and that utterly amazing score by Patrick Doyle (the soundtrack for that movie is still on my wish list. Hard to get a hold of nowadays, though. I've never yet watched a movie with a Paddy Doyle soundtrack I didn't like. The "Non Nobis Domine" from Henry V, oh my goodness...). And there's the wit in Emma Thompson's screenplay and her acting, and Hugh Grant's typical bumbly-but-cute manner, and Kate Winslet just being Marianne and Greg Wise such an attractive Willoughby - I so enjoy that movie.

And then I pop in the disc of the new version, and there's that wonderful cast of actors who are, for the most part, actually about the age the characters are in the book (as opposed to the other movie where they're all ten to fifteen years older than their parts, except for Kate Winslet who is the right age and makes everyone else look old by contrast). They're so fresh, so real - so believable. And they've kept in some of the characters that are cut from the older version, Anne Steele and Lady Middleton, for example, and they act out some of the scenes that the other movie doesn't even mention (like the duel. And the oh-so-awkward dinner party at Mrs Ferrar's.). Such a wonderful movie.

And of course, there's Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, and Keira Knightley in the same ten years later. I do prefer the older movie, all told, but I like Keira's Elizabeth. She's got that spunky wit that Lizzie has in the book.

And then there's Anne Elliot, who is next to Elinor Dashwood my favourite Austen heroine, and so convincingly played by Amanda Root in the 1995 version of Persuasion (with Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth - ahh...).

You see what I mean? Too many favourites. But that's okay, I can just keep watching these movies over and over. One after the other. And enjoy them, every time.

Life, the Universe, and Austen Heroines. It is a truth universally acknowledged that movies don't get any better.

Words

I was watching "Mamma Mia" the other day. Yes, that movie with Meryl Streep and Colin Firth and a host of others doing song-and-dance numbers to ABBA tunes. And it got me thinking. (And that's how much of an overthinker I am - a musical based on ABBA songs makes me think. Sad, but true.)

What got me going, in this particular instance, was the movie rating. It's labelled PG; and apparently it got the "P" for "nudity" (that would be the guy wearing a thong with tattoos on his butt cheeks) and "language [that] may offend". Uh-huh, okay. Fine. No problem. (I guess the guidance that parents are supposed to provide to their eight-year-olds goes somewhere along the lines of "Now, darling, having a pair of eyes tattooed on your butt cheeks is in bad taste, you shouldn't be doing it.") Never mind the fact that throughout the film, there are some very suggestive dance scenes, one of them between a 50-something woman and a 20-ish young man who is openly panting after her (and gets the brush-off, quite hilariously, to the tune "Does Your Mother Know You're Out"). Never mind that Meryl Streep's character Donna has a conversation with her girlfriends which starts with the question "Are you getting any?" and progresses from there through some fairly heavy innuendo; and that the whole storyline of the musical revolves around the fact that Donna does not know who her daughter's father is - yes, for exactly the reason you would suppose. But all those things are not deemed to be worthy of parental guidance - it's "nudity" and "language" that does it.

Which brings me to my other point, "The King's Speech" - yet another Colin Firth film which took movie audiences by storm, and rightfully so. It was rated R. Restricted. And why? Because Colin Firth's character, King George VI, receives speech therapy for his debilitating stammer, and in the course of the therapy he says "fuck". That's it. That's all. That one word insured that children, even 17-year-old young adults, could not see this movie without an "adult" in attendance. Okay, fine - the word is repeated multiple times at high volumes, and it might even be accompanied by "damn" and "bugger"; I can't exactly remember. But the thing is that in the scene in the movie, there is a point to the therapist's making the King say this - he needs to get over his crippling inhibitions. And that's all he does, say it (or shout it, out the open window, as it were), and it, along with all the rest of the therapy, does its job. "The King's Speech" is a story of the triumph of the human spirit over fear and shame. But it was "restricted" from being shown freely because of a word.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Americans are afraid of words. Not of images, of sounds, or of actions - just of words. I wonder what has the movie ratings people in such a flap about it. Perhaps, when they were young, they were taught that "Sticks and Stones may break my bones / but words may never hurt me," and then they found out that that's nothing but a big fat lie. So now they're mortally afraid of words, and ban them from being heard by young audiences in movie theaters. Or can you think of another reason?

Incidentally, don't get me wrong - this is not meant to be bashing "Mamma Mia". I enjoyed myself watching it the other day, and will probably watch it again soon. It's an engaging, feel-good piece of fluff with gorgeous visuals, toe-tapping tunes, and marvellous actors strutting their stuff. Great fun for a dreary afternoon. I just wish that the movie raters would get off their obsession with "language", and start thinking about content for a change. The ratings would perhaps, then, start meaning something again.

Life, the Universe, and Words. Don't be afraid of Language.

On the Fine Art of Creating Titles Which Are More Than Two Words in Length, and on Jane Austen Film Adaptations

I've noticed an alarming tendency in my posts lately: they've all got single-word or single-phrase titles. You know: Tantrum, Superhero, Blue, Mansfield Park... While there is something to be said for telegraphic language, it can, undoubtedly, be overdone. So I sought to rectify the situation with today's title. I hope you appreciate it.

My mind is still running on the subject of Austen. Specifically, Austen film adaptations. Okay, confession time: I have a major crush on Mr Darcy. Well, no, actually, I have a crush on Colin Firth playing Mr Darcy. Not Colin Firth, the man (although he's probably cute enough when you get to know him), and not Mr Darcy, the man (a bit too stiff for me, really; although he's probably alright once Elizabeth teaches him to laugh at himself), but Colin Firth being Mr Darcy. Oh, but - I also have a crush on Hugh Grant playing Edward Ferrars. And Dan Stevens playing Edward Ferrars. And Ciaran Hinds playing Captain Wentworth. And Jeremy Northam playing Mr Knightley, and Jonny Lee Miller doing the same. And Kenneth Branagh playing Benedick. (Oh, wait, that's Shakespeare. Never mind.)

So, in case you've missed the point: I like Austen movies. They're my comfort films when I feel bad, and my pleasure when I feel good. After a hard day, pour a glass of wine, pop in Pride & Prejudice, sink back into the couch cushions, and let yourself get lost in the English landscape. Two riders galloping over the field - "A fair prospect!" "It's pretty enough, I grant you." "Oh, it's nothing to Pemberley, I know, but I must settle somewhere..." It is a truth universally acknowledged that a tired woman in possession of an overdeveloped sense of romance must be in want of an Austen movie.

And after this latest reading of Mansfield Park, I pulled out the VHS of the movie I'd recorded off the TV four years ago, and popped it into the machine (yes, I still own a VCR. Long may it live, because if it doesn't, I won't be able to replace it. You can't buy those things any more). I hadn't watched it since then, because I wasn't terribly impressed with the film at that point. Oh, sure, it's an improvement on the 1999 version, but that's no great feat. (That movie is terrible. I'll spare you the rant; just two words will suffice: sex & violence. In Austen. Yup.)

So, I started watching the 2007 version. And right off the bat, I was complaining. The costumes! The hairdo! Fanny is played by Billie Piper, who, while still a bit too lively for my taste, does a good job on the role. But her hair is all wrong. A Regency woman should wear her hair up, not in shoulder-length ringlets like a school girl. The way Billie looks, you'd expect, at any moment, to hear the sounds of "WOOoooo-eeeee-ooo", and see the Tardis landing in Mansfield Park (Billie is best known for playing Rose Tyler in Doctor Who). And the dresses? I'm not sure exactly what time period this is meant to convey; Fanny's outfits, in particular, have a quasi-Victorian feel to them that's not from any part of the nineteenth century I'm familiar with, instead of the proper Regency style with the waistlines just below the bust.

So there I was, waffling on about how wrong the clothes are (although, mind you, they're nothing like as bad as the costumes in the Laurence Olivier version of Pride & Prejudice, which somehow seems to have got muddled with Gone With the Wind. Yikes.). But then- but then- I got pulled into the story.

You know how I got to liking Edmund as a character in the book this time round? This version of Mansfield, he's played by Blake Ritson. And I tell you, that man is a revelation. You see, I'd only ever seen him play Mr Elton, the highly annoying and self-absorbed clergyman, in the 2010 Emma. And he really plays Mr Elton to perfection; you just want to smack him, or dump something cold and slimy down his shirt (as Mr Knightley says: "That man is so full of himself, it's a wonder he can stay on his horse!"). So I thought Blake Ritson, himself, was annoying and unlikeable. But here, as Edmund Bertram - it's like he's a different man entirely. Same outfit, same hairstyle, but it's like he's got a different face! As Mr Elton, he's got this pinched, pursed mouth that at best can produce a self-satisfied smirk. But his Edmund, he's just like he is in the book. Well, I had pictured Edmund a bit different physically - taller, maybe fair, not smallish and dark with a pointy nose - but I forget all that when I watch how he brings to life all those emotions that made me like Edmund so much in the book (this time). I don't even mind the changes they made to the story, because Edmund is so well played.

So as of the day before yesterday, I'm adding "Blake Ritson as Edmund Bertram" to my list of crushes. Never mind the fact that he's short, and more than ten years younger than me. It's my inner Fanny Price that has a crush on him, anyway, and she's perpetually eighteen, and probably only a little over five feet tall. (That's him in the picture, at the moment the penny finally drops and he realizes that it's Fanny who's the girl for him. Awww...)

And as it is a truth universally acknowledged that this post has already become too long, I'll tell you about my favourite Austen heroines and the actresses who play them some other time. Just one hint: one of them is Blake Ritson's girlfriend! Be still my heart...

And that, for today, is Life, the Universe, and Truths Universally Acknowledged.