This Is The End?

Is It Over? Can I Come Out Now?

So the monkey's retiring to Texas? Good riddance to bad rubbish. Did you hear him brag about how his friends got him a new laptop so that he could write his memoirs? Won't be too long before Laura gets sick of having to come in and turn it upside down and shake it to clear the screen for him.

All hail President Barack Obama.

Reason Enough

Of course you've been reading about the plane that went down in the Hudson. The latest article I read in The New York Times contained this quote (which made me so happy that it brought tears to my eyes):

Ms. Higgins said one reason everyone survived was that the plane carried “very senior flight attendants.” All were in their 50s, according to US Airways. “This is a testament to experienced women doing their jobs, because they were, and it worked,” said Ms. Higgins, who has worked for several federal agencies since 1969.

I love this quote so much because it wasn't all that long ago that female flight attendants had to bring a series of class action lawsuits against the airlines so that they could work past the age of 32 or 35 (depending on the airline). Yes, women were forced to retire because they were too old to be considered attractive enough to be flight attendants. (They were also forced out if they got married, pregnant, or gained weight.)

Thanks for helping us out, flight attendants, not just out of downed aircraft, but out of a place where employers can so easily discriminate on the basis of age and gender.

Hidalgo, Viggo? Why?

Well, The Brain talked me into netflixing another Viggo Mortensen film. This time it was Hidalgo. You probably didn't see Hidalgo. In fact, I don't think anyone really saw Hidalgo considering that it got terrible reviews and didn't even make enough money to recoup its production costs.

Man, The Viggo-Besotted Brain owes me big time. So far, I've taken a couple of solid hits for the team, first with Appaloosa and now with Hidalgo.

Ah, Viggo. Again? Why? Why, Viggo? Why?

How can an actor who is so easy on the eyes appear in so many painfully bad films? It's like a curse. I mean, it's like I'm cursed, cursed with a Viggo addiction. I feel like one of the many women (and men, frankly) who have a crush on Keanu Reeves. I mean let's face it, Keanu is stunning--but the man is completely and utterly talentless. He has absolutely no acting skills, not even the ability to raise his eyebrows without it looking patently ridiculous, and watching him onscreen makes me suspect that he learns his lines phonetically. All of Keanu's movies prove that he has the acting chops of your average 70's porn star, and yet there he is, beloved of millions and starring in movie after bad movie all because he's just drop-dead gorgeous.

And Viggo? Viggo's like the Danish-American version of Keanu.

And don't both of them seem somewhat emotionally stunted, too? That emotional retardation is reflected in their acting skills, which run the gamut from A to B (to kipe a phrase from Dorothy Parker).

And women just fall all over those emotional midget hottie boys, no? My theory is that women fall in love with this particular brand of emotionally retarded man because women have the savior fantasy going on in a loud, endless loop in their heads. Savior women look at those emotional cripples and think, I'm the one who can fix him. (In fact they should be thinking, What is the quickest way to get away from him?). Unsure of what this brand of emotionally retarded man looks like? All those handsome, violent, misogynist, multi-divorced guys who manage to get wife after beautiful, worshipful wife? Check. All those macho guys who murder their wives or girlfriends and have women falling at their feet? Check. Whipsmart admitted serial killers who manage to find and marry wives and father children even while they're sitting on death row? Check.

(Not that Viggo has done any--or many--of those things. All my boyfriend's really done is been in a bunch of crap movies. As far as we know.)

But let's not talk about what any of that says about me and my Viggo addiction, 'kay?

All right.

One of the things it says about me is that I am a sucker for a beautiful face--I know that--but, gah, there's only so much I'm willing to put up with. You hear that, The Brain? Because if The Brain insists on continuing on this trajectory, sooner or later it's going to come down to Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III starring Viggo Mortensen. And can I just say: Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Viggo? Really? What were you thinking? Albino Alligator, Viggo? Seriously? A remake of Psycho, Viggo? (Which is already a pretty perfect film you know, which means, Viggo, that there was no place to go with that but down. I mean, remaking Psycho is the horror equivalent of trying to remake Casablanca. Whose fool idea was that?) And the best part of Viggo's filmography? Remember a few weeks ago, when I said that the David Cronenberg films Viggo has starred in resemble nothing so much as ABC Afterschool Specials? Well, guess what? High School Narc, an ABC Afterschool Special, starring Viggo Mortensen.

Why, Viggo? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why, Viggo?

I don't know how much more I can take. You're killing me with this stuff, Viggo.

But How Was The Actual Movie? How was Hidalgo?

Let me remind you that Viggo Mortensen is half-Danish and half-American (all white meat, in other words) and in Hidalgo he plays a character who is part Sioux Indian ("My father was a calvary officer and my mother was the daughter of an Indian chief..."). In the movie, the Sioux call him "Blue Child."

YES, YOU COULD ROLL YOUR EYES. But that would be cynical. We all know that white people can be anything they want to be (in Hollywood). (I mean, you remember when John Wayne played Genghis Khan? That must have been some casting call, no?) This is America, people! Get with the program.

Here's where I'm coming from with this:

A few years ago, I took a lit class called "Pop Culture and Native America." In the class, we studied the development of pop culture portrayals of Native American Indians. We started with the earliest missives from Spanish explorers who called the Indians uncivilized savages and we swam upstream in history to end with the latest movies and television shows that portray Indians as uncivilized savages (or, alternatively, noble savages always on the cusp of extinction). We read the words of Native American historians and looked at Native American art and contrasted the lives of real Indians with the kind of stuff that Hollywood feeds us every day: Noble savages. Urban Indians. White men adopted into tribes. White women taken as squaws. Long-suffering Tonto-like sidekicks. Primitive medicine men. And on and on.

Does Hidaglo buy into that mythology? Yup. It sure does. The Indians in the movie are victims, a dying but noble breed whose honor is saved by a half-breed who can't accept himself until he brings honor to "his" people, the Sioux. Sigh. All that's missing from the movie is a group of Sioux doing a Ghost Dance. Except, no, wait--there they are: A group of Sioux doing a Ghost Dance. And I hope I'm not ruining it for you when I tell you that later, when he's in a tough spot, half-breed Viggo Blue Child digs deep into his soul for the traditional Ghost Dance greatest hits in an attempt to summon the ancestor spirits (who appear right on cue and save him, natch).

Viggo, please. You're killing me with this stuff.

[I have to tell you, though, that the pop culture and Native America class was probably one of the most difficult classes that I have ever had to take, and I learned much, much more than I bargained for from it. One of the reasons it was so difficult is because much of the early readings were about the Spanish that all but decimated the tribes they came into contact with. Being of Spanish decent--with an indeterminate amount of Native American as well as some other things mixed in--it was heartbreaking. I was reading 200 or 300 pages of Vine Deloria, Jr., each week and my heart was breaking and breaking. The class was filled with Native American students, and I wanted to apologize to each one of them. I hadn't ever realized the amount of guilt and shame (and its accompanying anger) that one has to get through before people can step on the path toward racial equality, much less understanding. Films like Hidalgo are part of the problem, not part of the solution.]