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Nov. 20th, 2004
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Nov. 20th, 2004 08:37 amI have to go to work now.
Later, if I've any energy at all, I will rant about how much all this Alexander mania is making me beat my head into the wall. It's sort of like when GAP started selling leather jeans -- you used to be able to take some reasonable guesses about a person wearing leather jeans, and then the GAP had to go and happen. The Alexander mania thing is a little bit similar... I used to find this weird fellowship with people who were all into this piece of history, and now I'm hanging out with background performers who want to talk about how Rosario Dawson is the hawt!!! Ya know?
I've been cranky about all this shit for _months_ and have yet to write anything cogent about it, but I think it's starting to creep up on me. Of course, that tirade will be far more about me than history -- after I see the film, then I'll be a little nitpicky freak. I mean, I had to explain to someone the other day who liked Troy why it was not only bad, but wrong. How do people not know these things?
Also, must tell the story about how Patrick almost managed to give me a heart attack in his telling me about the party I didn't make it to where he did in fact get to meet James Cameron (which was not in fact the subject of my heart attack).
Later, if I've any energy at all, I will rant about how much all this Alexander mania is making me beat my head into the wall. It's sort of like when GAP started selling leather jeans -- you used to be able to take some reasonable guesses about a person wearing leather jeans, and then the GAP had to go and happen. The Alexander mania thing is a little bit similar... I used to find this weird fellowship with people who were all into this piece of history, and now I'm hanging out with background performers who want to talk about how Rosario Dawson is the hawt!!! Ya know?
I've been cranky about all this shit for _months_ and have yet to write anything cogent about it, but I think it's starting to creep up on me. Of course, that tirade will be far more about me than history -- after I see the film, then I'll be a little nitpicky freak. I mean, I had to explain to someone the other day who liked Troy why it was not only bad, but wrong. How do people not know these things?
Also, must tell the story about how Patrick almost managed to give me a heart attack in his telling me about the party I didn't make it to where he did in fact get to meet James Cameron (which was not in fact the subject of my heart attack).
Alexander ramble
Nov. 20th, 2004 05:34 pm"There will be people who see Alexander the Great's bisexuality as applauding that lifestyle, and unfortunately it will lead some young boys, young men down a path that I think they'll regret someday," said Bob Waliszewski, a film critic with Focus on the Family, a Christian group.
The above sentence appears in an article in today's New York Times, focusing on how Stone's Alexander is breaking new ground by being about a gay action hero (do not get me started on the history of commentary from people involved with the film project on how gay it was or wasn't going to be and why -- it makes Stone's assertion in the same article about how he wasn't going to tamper with history on this one vaguely commical). And while it's a perfectly benign and even peripherally interesting article, it manages to at least remind me of all the many reasons this Alexander madness is making me just a little bit insane.
Among other things, I find myself wondering what Mr. Waliszewski thinks of the lessons the film is likely to provide for girls. Where is his concern about young women pursuing political marriages, joining snake worship cults and participating in something at least resembling polyamory? This is what I want to know. I have a tendency to ask pesky questions though, and this bit of petulance on my part got me trying to sort out not what Alexander meant to me in university when I was antagonizing my instructors with a paper on the influence of the Alexander mythology on cultures that lacked direct contact with him, but what the story meant to me when I first heard about it in third grade.
I spent this morning on the bus going into work trying to think of all of the possible reasons the story mattered to me... and could find none of the obvious answers. His was the not the first empire I learnt of, nor the first time I had heard about homosexuality. Similarly, history class was as boring then as it was later at Hewitt, so it wasn't that things got interesting. He wansn't a first crush, or the first bit of military history that interested me, and so forth. So what the hell first was this story that I've stayed so attached to it for so long?
And then I figured it out, and there are three answers.
1. A frequent early memory for me is wanting something and not saying -- just looking at it instead, and hoping someone would offer, because it was bad to ask for things. This was certainly an unfortunate timidity, that wormed itself deeply into my life and has been unpleasant to extricate. It's served me well though, in creating the state of desire as natural. I like never being satisified, wanting more. And I guess in third grade, I recognized that in the story of Alexander, ans also recognized sometimes you should take, instead of ask. And I remember that, waiting to grow up, so I could just take things, and being amused by some poor metaphor in our crappy history book written by some fellow named Snodgrass or Snodgrove (something that made my mother refer to the text as "the snotty one") about the length of Alexander's arms. Being literal minded, I was pretty pleased with myself, and saw an impressive life ahead because my arms actually are too long. Ah, I was a demented little thing.
2. Alexander was also my first secret, because Alexander was the first time something spoke to me in a way that it wasn't supposed to. That I wanted to know more about the life than was in the book, that I thought I wanted to make up stories about people, and I wanted to know the ordinary bits, because _that's_ what tells us things. This isn't, btw, about fanfic, which has been a no-pressure stress release in my more recent life. Rather, this is about a way of thinking about my original work, that started then, because the history book told me only of brilliance and not boredom, which really, struck me as ultimately not very instructive.
3. One day, Alexander set off to conquer the world, and never turned back. Whether he made the choice never to see his home again is a matter of debate both in the histories and mythologies. But it stuck with me today when I thought about how much I hate to leave home, and always because I've always recognized in myself a tendency to never bother to return. This is a more complex thing than I am explaining here, but hell, more a note for my benefit than for yours.
Alexander interests me, fundamentally, I suppose, because he decided on the life he wanted and then insisted it come along with him.
At any rate, whether Stone screws it up or not, whether the hair design is distracting to the point of madness, whether the casting was right and so forth and so on, I think really the mere existence of the film just sort of irks me because of the never-ending stream of articles about the queer factor or the military genius or whatever else, and really, I think none of it gets at why the story matters to me, or really maybe to anyone. Alexander made a choice to do something not on possiblity or faith, but certitude, and who and how he loved is really only astounding for his ability to find both time and accomplices.
I dunno. The whole thing just feels like this big tedious excerise focused on what the modern individual is supposed to find shocking about the story, as opposed to looking for what was and is common about the story and then what flukes occured to make sure it was anything but.
At any rate, I've never regretted wanting so much or so hard, or desiring the sort of compatriots that really are too hard to find, or even having arms that really are just a little too long. Mr. Waliszewski probably shouldn't worry so much.
The above sentence appears in an article in today's New York Times, focusing on how Stone's Alexander is breaking new ground by being about a gay action hero (do not get me started on the history of commentary from people involved with the film project on how gay it was or wasn't going to be and why -- it makes Stone's assertion in the same article about how he wasn't going to tamper with history on this one vaguely commical). And while it's a perfectly benign and even peripherally interesting article, it manages to at least remind me of all the many reasons this Alexander madness is making me just a little bit insane.
Among other things, I find myself wondering what Mr. Waliszewski thinks of the lessons the film is likely to provide for girls. Where is his concern about young women pursuing political marriages, joining snake worship cults and participating in something at least resembling polyamory? This is what I want to know. I have a tendency to ask pesky questions though, and this bit of petulance on my part got me trying to sort out not what Alexander meant to me in university when I was antagonizing my instructors with a paper on the influence of the Alexander mythology on cultures that lacked direct contact with him, but what the story meant to me when I first heard about it in third grade.
I spent this morning on the bus going into work trying to think of all of the possible reasons the story mattered to me... and could find none of the obvious answers. His was the not the first empire I learnt of, nor the first time I had heard about homosexuality. Similarly, history class was as boring then as it was later at Hewitt, so it wasn't that things got interesting. He wansn't a first crush, or the first bit of military history that interested me, and so forth. So what the hell first was this story that I've stayed so attached to it for so long?
And then I figured it out, and there are three answers.
1. A frequent early memory for me is wanting something and not saying -- just looking at it instead, and hoping someone would offer, because it was bad to ask for things. This was certainly an unfortunate timidity, that wormed itself deeply into my life and has been unpleasant to extricate. It's served me well though, in creating the state of desire as natural. I like never being satisified, wanting more. And I guess in third grade, I recognized that in the story of Alexander, ans also recognized sometimes you should take, instead of ask. And I remember that, waiting to grow up, so I could just take things, and being amused by some poor metaphor in our crappy history book written by some fellow named Snodgrass or Snodgrove (something that made my mother refer to the text as "the snotty one") about the length of Alexander's arms. Being literal minded, I was pretty pleased with myself, and saw an impressive life ahead because my arms actually are too long. Ah, I was a demented little thing.
2. Alexander was also my first secret, because Alexander was the first time something spoke to me in a way that it wasn't supposed to. That I wanted to know more about the life than was in the book, that I thought I wanted to make up stories about people, and I wanted to know the ordinary bits, because _that's_ what tells us things. This isn't, btw, about fanfic, which has been a no-pressure stress release in my more recent life. Rather, this is about a way of thinking about my original work, that started then, because the history book told me only of brilliance and not boredom, which really, struck me as ultimately not very instructive.
3. One day, Alexander set off to conquer the world, and never turned back. Whether he made the choice never to see his home again is a matter of debate both in the histories and mythologies. But it stuck with me today when I thought about how much I hate to leave home, and always because I've always recognized in myself a tendency to never bother to return. This is a more complex thing than I am explaining here, but hell, more a note for my benefit than for yours.
Alexander interests me, fundamentally, I suppose, because he decided on the life he wanted and then insisted it come along with him.
At any rate, whether Stone screws it up or not, whether the hair design is distracting to the point of madness, whether the casting was right and so forth and so on, I think really the mere existence of the film just sort of irks me because of the never-ending stream of articles about the queer factor or the military genius or whatever else, and really, I think none of it gets at why the story matters to me, or really maybe to anyone. Alexander made a choice to do something not on possiblity or faith, but certitude, and who and how he loved is really only astounding for his ability to find both time and accomplices.
I dunno. The whole thing just feels like this big tedious excerise focused on what the modern individual is supposed to find shocking about the story, as opposed to looking for what was and is common about the story and then what flukes occured to make sure it was anything but.
At any rate, I've never regretted wanting so much or so hard, or desiring the sort of compatriots that really are too hard to find, or even having arms that really are just a little too long. Mr. Waliszewski probably shouldn't worry so much.