If you're ever looking for anything good to read, real to read, I wholeheartedly recommend the 'Derek Strange' novels from George Pelecanos. (You can probably find them either in the 'Mystery' section of your local bookstore, or they might just be stacked in the general 'Fiction' area.)
Pelecanos has written twelve or so novels, of which I've read three, the ones featuring
Washington, D.C. private detective Derek Strange. (The Strange novels are Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus and Hard Revolution. You can find them in paperback under the 'Warner Vision' label.) Strange is an African-American p.i. with a fondness for old spaghetti westerns and beautiful modern women. (Morgan Freeman or Laurence Fishburne or Samuel L. Jackson would all be perfect as the main character for the likely screen adaptation.) He's got a new wife and stepson, coaches little-league football, has lived in D.C. his whole life, has a somewhat, how shall I put it, 'racially sensitive' white partner who moonlights in a bookstore (and loves Wild West stories).
I'm making these books sound light; they're not. I'm making them sound like 'thrillers' or 'police procedurals', but they're not those, either. They are novels. They deal with the moral issues of our times. They are about people and places in situations that most of us will never see, thank God, and there is drugs, blood, guts, and hard, relevant, biting social commentary about what it means to be black and what it means to be white in the ghettoes of present-day D.C.
The characters are well-drawn, the dialogue is authentic, and the stories move. There's no wasted breath.
So-called 'crime fiction' seems to be where it's at these days, where the novel shows its true, authentic force, what it can do better than any other media. Literary snobs still look down on it, but I guess, being snobs by definition, they look down on everything, right?
These are books that entertain you and make you think and make you feel. On every page.
If you don't usually read genre stuff, or even don't read much of anything, don't be shy.
Pelecanos is the real deal. He'll draw you in. I promise.
(For an interesting interview with George Pelecanos, go to:
www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum100.html)
Thursday, February 10, 2005
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (MINUS THE PROUST), or WHY ROCKY IV IS BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK
I'm probably the only person in the entire world, other than the author himself, to have actually read every single page of Sylvester Stallone's first and last novel, Paradise Alley. (Or the only person to even know that he wrote a novel. Or care.)
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
RUN, CONDI, RUN
A canidate for the presidency of the United States of America is worried about the effect his religion will have on the popular vote, and the people are worried, too. Will his religion affect his decision-making process? Is his religion suitable for America's highest office?
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
DO YOU GO BACK TO THE VOLLEYBALL GAME OR NOT? IF YES, WHEN?
While I sit here typing this and you sit there reading this, someone, somewhere, is reaching out their hand, begging, asking for more.
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
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