Beka the Terrier; D.E.B.S.; The Fountain

by Liz Henry

I’m pressed for time but here are a few topics where I’d like to open discussion:

- Tamora Pierce’s new book Terrier: Beka Cooper, a book set 200 years previous to Alanna/Keladry’s time, in Tortall. Beka is an ancestor of George Cooper, the King of Rogues. She’s a teenager who joins up with the prototypical police force or city guard, The Dogs — sort of like the Bow Street Runners. It was a great story, I loved the characters, and yet there was some meaty stuff in there about law, justice, and ethics as well as about social class. Well worth reading and better for younger kids than the “Trickster” books.

- D.E.B.S., a movie about secret agent teenagers and supervillains; analysis of it and of the homophobic flak it generated. Angela Robinson wrote it first as a comic, then, funded by lesbian film organization PowerUP, a short movie; then a feature length film. I loved it as a comedy and a comic-book-style action movie. It’s about women who pass a secret agent test hidden within the SAT and who go to a sort of spy military academy hidden by forcefields, and it’s also a sweet love story with 80s and 90s new wave and punk music. When I think of all the times I had to watch “Desert Hearts” as a teenager…ergh! I am so grateful that teenagers today have better options for their goofy-sweet coming-out stories — that have punching, big guns, explosions, criminal masterminds, and all that. It’s science fiction only in that there are a few futuristic gadgets, like force fields, but that’s enough for it to count. What I really loved is the way that Amy, a model D.E.B. agent/student, is set up so that the scary “betrayal” of falling in love with a woman, i.e. the risk of being a lesbian and of coming out, is set up to not be scary because she’s afraid of homophobia, but scary because she’s in a superhero secret agent in love with a supervillain criminal mastermind who wants to take over the world.

- The Fountain. I have a lot to say about this movie as a narrative and as science fiction, but I’d love to see other people’s reactions and just to indicate for now that I think it’s very interesting. Maybe later tonight I can type up my thoughts on this movie and the ways it was good, bad, ugly, profound, infuriating, hilarious, cheesy, and campy.

Good:

- it was visually beautiful. The set designer should win a gazillion awards. The repeated snowflakey/nebula shape everywhere, the stars and floating bubble and tree, the lamps in Queen Isabella’s court that echoed the stars (I was going “Yeah, right they have that many lights” but also sighing in pleasure over how beautiful it was and how neatly it referred to the space/star scenes.)
- hallucinatory and poetic narrative structure. Many movies attempt this and the repetition just comes out to be lame re-use of footage because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. The Fountain did it with poetic sensitivity.
- exploring mortality and immortality. I thought of everyone I know who lived by denying or frantically obsessing on their own death, including the nanotech and cryogenics people who just can’t believe that they will actually die someday.

- Did I mention that it was all aesthetically amazing? The scene where Izzy faints with her face upturned to the light right after reading some “mayan” (with goofy impossible fluency) and saying something about the creative power of death, in the center of a beautiful circle of light in a marble hallway like a cathedral? It drove a million cliches all the way to profundity.

Interesting and sometimes infuriating:

- gendered view of the drive for creation. The guy conquers, fights, denies, focuses tightly with obsession on a goal. The woman has a holistic approach and accepts life and death in her artistic creation.
- At least some attempt to refer to Xibalba myth. If they had had corn grow out of the dude’s body instead of flowers I would have been happier.

- The way that Izzy’s character is introduced then made to appear really kind of scary-insane. I had a moment of serious disconnect and re-evaluation when she was rambling on the roof about the stars, where it made sense but also… didn’t in a way that was disturbing and made me feel like I was hallucinating. Ditto while she was talking in the bathtub.

- Apocalyptic hallucinatory things. I like them. Actually I get into huge arguments with my partner John about this, because he hates things like the end of 2001 or Akira or Princess Mononoke, while I like them. He sees them as pointless “trippy” things and as boring and random and fake-profound. I see them as the moment where the movie has built up to the point where possibly the viewer can unhinge their mind and stop clinging to linear narrative and where the inexpressible gets expressed. This can be done well or badly… like anything. IMHO it’s done very well in Mononoke, for example, when the Shishigami’s head comes off and blobs out over the whole forest.

- Isabella/Queen Isabella, Thomas Creo/ Doubting Thomas. “Creo”= belief.

Bad, ugly, infuriating:

- hideous colonialism. You could make a case for it to be exploring the idea of colonialism. And for it to be part of the category of stories of finding the Seekrit Heart of Darkness that has, you know, the lost cities of opar and the seven cities of Cíbola and King Solomon’s Mines and the magic jewel in the statue’s forehead & etc. etc. And as commentary on those stories. But I was not really feeling secure that it was “commentary” but rather just so steeped in that colonialist genre that it continued it unthinkingly.

- Continuing that thought and bringing it to an ugly festering head so that I yelped in disgust and outrage “Oh. No. You’re NOT… ” at the moment near the end when a particular character kneeled down to the Great White Father Floating Buddha… Oh for fuck’s sake…
- Usual paradigm for men’s spiritual growth and enlightenment in such movies: Be a huge asshole and a dumbass, and women will take care of you and fix everything. While you are at it express yourself by wrecking a room or two, sweep everything off a table, break a lamp, punch a hole in the wall while grunting in manly fashion. Then, fuck up. The more you fuck up, the closer you probably are to enlightenment. As long as you meditate in between fuckups, you’re golden.

- “What?! I took science!” moment where the guy pats his wife on the head for saying something about nebulae and she is just soooo cute. “When? When did you last take science?” “Well, junior high.” But it does not matter because she is teh profound bohemian artist who knows teh ancient mayan secrets. Groan!!!!!

- Izzy doesn’t really get a journey or a progression to where she is. She starts out wise and profound and enlightened and we don’t see how she got there. She’s childlike. Ah the childlike womanly automatic wisdom! Thank God for it, right? Um. No.  So it’s all about how guys get wise and enlightened. IT’s a good thing the women just come wired that way because they’re all in touch with the earth and death and myths and stuff.  Then they can sort of be your tour guide to concepts like “enjoying the moment” and “acceptance of mortality” and “creation comes from destruction”. What a relief! Women are so goddessy!

- The way to fix the world is to more thoroughly loot a third world country. In fact we have a goddamn duty to loot it, a religious and ethical duty.

- Romantic love and fetishizing women’s bodies. To be fair… the dude also kind of objectified his own body; maybe that was the point of the naked tattooing scenes. I got a little bored of the hair on the back of the chick’s neck. But on the other hand I was happy that it wasn’t her boobs we were fetishizing, but basic physical intimacy. I know I’ve woken up and stared at the back of my lover’s head before and felt overwhelmed with love and sentiment and like crying at the thought we are mortal…. I mean, hello, who hasn’t… But the dude’s reason for wanting to discover eternal life is (in the story of the present) wanting to preserve his wife’s physical beauty. And in the nested story or “past life” scenes, this beauty-worship mixes up with religion, eternal life, and love of country, patriotism, so that protecting religion and the state ARE the protection or the musification of the female beloved and vice versa.

Funny:

- the perfect book that flows out of our heroine’s head in perfect flowy script.
- I mentioned how she “reads mayan”. Hahahah! good one!

- the guy floating in lotus position. I got to where I accepted its intended meaning but it still made me giggle every time.

Nearly everyone I was with mocked the movie relentlessly, but I liked it. With the reservations above & many others. I would enjoy seeing it again.

- More blogging by Liz Henry at http://liz-henry.blogspot.com

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