Month / February 2006

by Edward Champion

To Buy a Vowell

Keelin McDonnell’s New Republic essay, “The Case Against Sarah Vowell”, would be completely worthless, had he not raised the perfectly valid point that Vowell is unable to convey political events with any sophistication.

Vowell’s recent New York Times columns represent yet another move in the ongoing political commentary shift from serious thinkers to humorists like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and, of course, Vowell. Taken as humor pieces, this trio’s collective contributions certainly represent entertaining diversions. There would be nothing wrong with this, provided that those who watch The Daily Show or who listen to This American Life actually understood that what they were watching was entertainment, rather than deep political thought. But it seems clear to me that more people are willing to take The Daily Show‘s “news” as gospel because it entertains them or perhaps because the current television news outlets simply cannot offer a perspective outside of the martial, tickertape headine and multiple windows model.

As intellectual material, however, the collective oeuvre of Stewart, Colbert and Vowell can be categorized somewhere between some high schooler gushing over a dogeared copy of Atlas Shrugged and a starry-eyed undergraduate who believes that Chomsky is God.

Take, for example, Vowell’s February 5 column, “Gimme Torture,” in which the subject of torture is conveyed through the prism of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer on 24. Rather than examining how the troubling notion of Bauer, a Dirty Harry-like character who throws the Constitution and due process out the window on a weekly (i.e., hourly) basis, might just be a tad pernicious in getting 24‘s many viewers to remember basic civics (without even mentioning a pro-Patriot Act commercial which aired during the episode Vowell describes), Vowell offers the banal conclusion that she’s “a little less gulty” ordering a DVD set of 24. The essay is certainly amusing, but Vowell eschews using her comic gifts to point out how the show’s tone, much less the commercial, might influence some viewers to feel a little less bad about sacrificing civil liberties.

Perhaps the problem here is that political essays in America are, for the most part, fairly predictable affairs, whether they come from left or right. We all get on the same soapboxes. And inevitably, we all pluck the same unsubtle chords.

To address Bernard Henri-Levy’s recent concerns, I really don’t think that the Left is asleep, nor do I believe that the political essay is necessarily dead. But I do think that the shift to humorists or novelists offering “political writing” for their newspapers — even the half-baked “political fiction” to be found in Stephen Elliott’s Politically Inspired, which is more of an exercise in deferring serious thinking by exploring such predictable associations as a story of Bush in the guise of a Minnesota schoolboy — is counterproductive, if not destructive, to real discourse.

The problem is that when one writes a political essay these days, one is expected to adhere to a predisposed thinking pattern. The American Left, in particular, being so fragile and regularly maimed by its lack of mobilization, risks offending its peers, much less specific groups. One is expected these days to assume that a reading audience will agree with everything you state, rather than questioning another person’s points, much less one’s own, in a civil manner. And for all the tyrannies of the Bush administration, how tyrannical is this kind of groupthink?

I had hoped to talk to Vowell about these issues when she rolled through town, but her very friendly publicist explained to me that these Times pieces were keeping her quite busy. Perhaps the explanation here is that Vowell is working with harder deadlines than she was accustomed to. But I don’t think so. I think the New York Times has set the bar considerably lower than the Baltimore Herald Tribune or the Baltimore Sun ever did for H.L. Mencken. Because today’s m.o. is to entertain. And coming to grips with the sober realities of torture, political corruption and the venal actions of politicians, left or right, seems incompatible with this apparent necessity.

(via Chekhov’s Mistress)

by Edward Champion

Country Don’t Mean Dumb, Ebert

I haven’t seen Firewall and have no intention to. This is not because I am a film snob (I am) or that I am averse to seeing a popcorn thriller (with enough friends, drinks and/or heavy petting, yes). It’s simply because I saw Firewall the last time it came around — when it was called Air Force One.

However, I must question Roger Ebert’s review, which offers a remarkably unsophisticated argument that is both anti-cultural and anti-intellectual.

Ebert writes:

But there is a larger question: Need a thriller be plausible in order to be entertaining? One of the most common routines in the filmcrit biz, one I have myself performed many times, involves demolishing the credibility of a plot as if you have therefore demolished the movie. I think there’s a sliding scale involved: If the movie is manifestly impossible while you’re watching it, then that can be fatal (unless, of course, it is a movie intended to be manifestly impossible, like a James Bond thriller). If however, the movie holds water or at least doesn’t leak too quickly, I’m not very concerned about whether you can tear it to pieces after you leave the theater.

There is no larger question here. A lousy thriller might be entertaining in a base or déclassé sense if one cannot buy the character motivations, much less the reality of the world portrayed. But should we prop up such a lead balloon as high art? Should a thriller motivated by cardboard characters, formulaic conventions, derivative banter and baseless logic be given a three-star review? If one has any love for culture at all, I should say not.

Ebert has, throughout his career, positioned himself as a populist critic. Had it not been for Ebert, countless smaller films, made with thought, care and a concern for the real, might never have seen the light of day, much less garnered attention on the film festival criticuits.

But if Ebert’s purpose is to educate or inform the public about film through the clear and thoughtful voice one finds in his reviews, his Overlooked Film Festival and his handy Little Movie Glossary, then it seems to me that the critical standards he champions should apply across the board. Rewarding Hollywood for insulting its audience with yet another overhyped and jejune thriller is both a disservice to Ebert’s work as a critic and a disservice to Ebert’s readers.

Granted, as Susan Sontag has pointed out, camp can be appreciated under certain conditions. But I suspect Firewall is not that form of camp. A film without nuance or even a half-assed wisdom can’t really be qualified. The fact is that there’s no real distinction or playfulness in seeing Harrison Ford barking “I want my family back!” for the umpteenth time. It is an image as rote and repeated as an exploding car. It is worse than a trope. It is a redundancy. (By comparison, take a bottom-of-the-barrel film like Cabin Fever. It is dumb yet enjoyable camp. You have to give writer-director Eli Roth some points in Cabin Fever for sending up the silly “Let’s party!” feel of 1980s slasher movies with the backwoods deputy character or playing off of discomfort with the infamous leg shaving scene. The point is, like Cabin Fever or not, there is a clear effort on Roth’s part to attempt something distinct.)

To dignify or to give credence to a film such as Firewall or Flight Plan (a terrible movie with Jodie Foster, which I have seen) simply because it has a Major Star is to handicap a failed serious attempt without any cultural qualifier. It does not follow that the cinematic presence of Foster or Ford alone contributes exclusively to artistic quality, and yet even Ebert gives it a fair pass as he points out that Ford “needs to be in better condition than a 20-year-old triathlon champion” during Firewall‘s final scenes. This remarkable critical position rewards bonehead filmmakers who string together absurd plot holes and have the arrogance to expect audiences to be thrilled when it is clearly impossible to believe.

Ebert should know better. And so should his readers.

by Edward Champion

The Oxford Comma

Booksquare has written a passionate defense of the serial comma, pointing to Brenda Coulter’s equally vivacious endorsement of a puncutation mark too frequently used by investment bankers.

While I admire their brio, I must respectfully disagree with these two lovely bloggers. The serial comma (also referred to as the Oxford comma, the Harvard Comma, the pretentious comma, the party-pooping comma, the humorless comma, the comma with the chip on its shoulder, the comma that won’t put out, the comma that would never join a Bunny Hop, the monastic comma and the comma that won’t sing “Comma Chameleon”) takes the fun out of a lengthy list. It is utterly redundant. It insults the readers’ intelligence. Most importantly, in nearly every circumstance, it comes across as the most lifeless and stiffest puncutation mark ever devised.

Consider the fun of a sentence like:

The gigolo ordered bananas, peanut butter and jelly.

Now did the gigolo order bananas and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Did the gigolo order a bananas served with a side of peanut butter and jelly? Or did he order three separate items? It’s the kind of amiguity that makes life (and the sentence) quite interesting. Do people order bananas in an unusual manner? That’s fun!

Of course, when we add the Oxford comma, the sentence becomes disappointingly clear:

The gigolo ordered bananas, peanut butter, and jelly.

Now granted, as pointed out by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, there are some instances in which being explicit is necessary. The sentence, “On his journey, he encountered George Bush, a genius and cunnilingus expert,” is of course quite problematic. But given that the English language is already a troubling bundle of inconsistencies, why prohibit its use in toto? Why not keep the reader guessing? Can not a reader figure out that George Bush is entirely discrete from the other two parties!

While it is true that Strunk & White endorse the serial comma (under Section II, Rule 2), I contend that this particular puncutation rule does not apply, because their hearts are not completely into it. They write:

This is also the usage of the Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press.

And while I’m normally a big Elements of Style booster, let us consider that even the most virtuous and adorable authorities are capable of slip-ups. The Government Printing Office, folks! Was ever a more lifeless entity ever cited by Strunk & White?

Let us also consider that the hard-core serial comma boosters are found most frequently in law firms and investment banking firms. And what business do such lifeless husks have dictating the English language? What we have here is a clear war on fun and ambiguity.

Now a person by the name of Miss Grammar concludes, “Except for journalists, all American authorities say to use the final serial comma,” and remains puzzled by the fact that a substantial chunk of writers and English mavens still rebel against this. Consider that Vassar has issued a supplement to Strunk & White. AP Style is against the serial comma. So perhaps this isn’t a case of total prohibition or complete sanction, but rather a situation in which, like any helpful tool, you can use the tool or not use it.

But it’s certainly reassuring to know that, on this grammatical point, the earth will continue to rumble.