Today’s poetry-in-pop-culture moment is brought to you by actor/filmmaker/writer/serial-degree-acquirer James Franco. Going by Franco’s occasional poem for the inauguration (you can read it here), he’s got some maturing to do as a poet, despite attending the best low-res MFA program in the country and having a book forthcoming from Graywolf Press. As the recent Detailsinterview notes of Franco’s writing, “It’s a huge body of work, running the gamut from brilliant to unbearable, at times in the same piece.” Sample lines of a poem composed specifically for the interview:
Mostly at Columbia where the students are brats
And they pay so much money they want results
Instantly, so how can you blame them for hating
A Hollywood boy who gets his book published
Right out the gate, and gets to do movies, and date
Whomever he damn well pleases, like a one ton Pink
Elephant in the room, whom everyone wants to shoot
But no one does, because they’re all begging for peanuts.
On the one hand, I love that an artist can get a magazine like Details to write, even tangentially, about poetry. And Franco seems enthusiastic about art, and thinking about art, and I hate to bash those qualities. There’s nothing to be gained by overly harsh criticism of new writers.
On the other hand, the Franco poems I’ve read so far are wearyingly self-obsessed and gratingly unmusical. Franco reports of his time at Warren Wilson, “there is still a heavy emphasis on craft…” Too bad he doesn’t seem to have taken that emphasis to heart. In a culture that’s at best indifferent and at worst hostile to my favorite art-form, Franco’s position in pop culture gives his poetry incredible visibility. James, please: put better poems out in the world.
Because whether you like it or not, you’re representing.
In which Emily Dickinson gets a shout-out on the radio, and I do a little fangirly squee-ing.
NPR's All Things Considered had an interview today with novelist Gerbrand Bakker about his novel Ten White Geese.
Bakker quotes this Emily Dickinson poem:
Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground.
…and says of the poem, "It's a very short, but mysterious, poem. I think maybe it is really one of the reasons for me to write this book, to try to really understand, to really feel this poem."
The narrator of the book is a middle-aged woman, and Bakker goes on to say, "I am a strange man, maybe, but I think that there is no fundamental difference between men and women. A lot of people would say otherwise, perhaps."
That pretty much filled of my quota of awesome for the day.
Here’s part 2 of the TV shows I finally kicked to the curb.
Deception
I really wanted to like Deception, not least because it has a surprisingly diverse cast. Alas, I am surfeited already with the subject matter by way of Revenge, which this feels like a dispirited copy of. The plot can be summed up as “rich people do bad things to each other and, eh, who cares.”
Revenge
And speaking of Revenge…
This show was unexpectedly fabulous in its first season. I enjoyed every minute of Emily being capably devious and Nolan swanning around in his layered shirts and unabashed bisexuality. This season, they’ve managed to displace the best elements of the show. Instead of Nolan as Emily’s confidante, we get some new guy. Nolan and Emily had a great, weird, compelling chemistry, and it is sorely missed this season. And instead of Victoria as the main antagonist, we get the members of The Initiative, which is Revenge’s version of The Shadowy Conspiracy. See, Victoria’s transgressions were driven by emotion – love for Emily’s father, devotion to her son, and conflicted feelings about her daughter. The Initiative’s bad lady lacks emotion and personality both. She can’t hold a candle to Madeleine Stowe’s barely reigned-in craziness, and I just don’t care about her motives. My feeling in season one was that Revenge really should be a single-season, closed-arc show. Nothing I’ve seen so far this season has convinced me otherwise.
And a special, dishonorable mention goes to:
Shadowy Conspiracy
Want to elevate your primetime soap to “high concept” fare? Gotta have a Shadowy Conspiracy. Need to generate conflict? Insert a Shadowy Conspiracy. Not sure what your characters’ motivations are? A Shadowy Conspiracy will distract us from that too. I get that writing a TV show is hard work. Shadowy Conspiracy, when done right, gave us The X-Files and Lost. But compelling stories have to contain realistic conflict. I don’t mean the situations have to be realistic; but the emotions do. If you can’t make me care about the members of your Shadowy Conspiracy, then leave it out. And this is why I keep enjoying the hell out of Parenthood, week after week. I genuinely think it’s the best show on network TV right now, and better than plenty that’s on basic and premium cable too. And part of the reason is that families generate conlict consistently and reliably. It also doesn’t rely on a single romantic plot to carry all the narrative tension.
So, network TV was my addiction these past two seasons, because a) I don’t have cable and b) looking for a job is depressing and escapism is awesome. People, I watched every new show that had even a smidgen of possibility. But I finally hit the wall of boredom with most of the new offerings of the past two years. Here’s what finally got deleted off my Hulu favorites list and why.
Smash
Oh Smash. I wanted you to be good. I really did. I watched your whole first season. I suffered through your endless awkward plotlines to get to your fun original songs. I put up with you telling me how special Katherine McPhee is in order to enjoy your dance numbers. I was delighted to discover Megan Hilty and see Jack Davenport on American TV, and for these, I thank you. But the time has come to let you go. Play me out, preferably with something from A Chorus Line.
Kiss this show goodbye—
Angelica and Megan.
They did what they had to do,
but I still regret
what I did for Smash, what I did for Smash.
Look, my eyes are dry,
which isn’t all that shocking
since I don’t give a flying fig
for Julia’s husband problems
or Tom’s search for love
or Ivy’s love for drugs.
Gone! Book of Mormon’s gone!
Avenue Q’s gone!
It’s Smash we’ll remember. (Sigh.)
Kiss this show goodbye!
And give me back my hour.
(Nashville’s waiting in the wings…)
Pointless plot, thanks a lot,
for wasting my time, Smash.
Mediocre Smash!
Soon re-booted, Smash…
Once Upon A Time
I have no good explanation for why I watched an entire season and a half of this idiotic show. Well, I take that back. I have three explanations: Robert Carlyle and Lana Parrilla. And this:
Oh, Hook. Never have eyeliner and a prosthetic shepherd’s crook been so swoony. But Once is that worst of combinations, goofy but with no actual sense of humor about itself. This show single-handedly cemented my long-simmering hatred of all things Disney.
Arrow
This show is getting a lot of good press from the sci-fi/fantasy community, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. It’s torturously predictable, the chemistry between Oliver and Laurel is flat, and frankly, the hero is unlikable. I wrote recently that I never need to see another superhero movie. I guess I’ve hit a saturation point, and the drama of the superhero just fails to move me. So my lack of love for Arrow may be entirely on my cold dead little soul. If so, I’m okay with that. Plus, every time I see John Barrowman in these one-off roles, I just miss Torchwood.
Beauty and the Beast
I had a whole review of this re-boot a couple of months ago, but I was too apathetic to post it. This version in no way resembles the 90’s cult classic it’s supposedly modelled on. That show had pathos, romance, and Vincent’s vividly imagined underground world. This version? It’s like if that show were re-written by an overly literal marketing department.
As you may have noticed, I will watch anything. So once again I’m watching all the pilots that are fit to watch… or at least the ones I was arbitrarily curious about, and that showed up on Hulu.
I love TV. Seriously, I like TV better than movies. It’s a shorter time investment, and then if you like a show, it’s fun for longer, sometimes even years. It figures that I also love pilots. The premise is new, the characters are new; it’s fun to figure out what’s going on. It’s the excitement of a movie, but with long-term potential.
Giant caveat here: a pilot can be totally different in quality and tone from the actual show. Just look at the slowly evolving disaster that was last season’s A Gifted Man. That one was hard to let go.
So here, in no particular order, are my first impressions. Beware of spoilers.
Last Resort
A+ for post design.
Number of episodes watched: 1
The Plot
US Navy nuclear submarine goes rogue and retrenches to a tropical island. No, really. They had a good reason, having to do with refusing to bomb Pakistan out of existence. And then one of their own ships tried to kill them. It’s complicated.
The adorable Scott Speedman and the eminently agreeable Andre Braugher star. Also with a minor part, Dichen Lachman from Dollhouse, just in case you need to be reminded of the golden era of Joss Whedon TV.* There’s a NATO station, a local warlord, improbably PC Navy officers, and the leftover scenery from Lost.
The Verdict
So disjointed that I wondered if everybody was scrambling in the editing room at the last minute. It felt like some transitional scenes were just cut completely. But ultimately that didn’t bother me too much, because I just didn’t care about what was happening. How can you make me not care about Scott Speedman and Dichen Lachman, show! Speedman and Braugher are both charismatic, but I didn’t believe for a second that they were military men. This show needs more Michelle Rodriguez. More Lost, less JAG.
But here’s what’s actually offensive: as part of the stand-off between the submarine captain and the Nefarious Shadow Conspiracy in the US government, Andre Braugher detonates a nuclear warhead in the Atlantic Ocean. And the show totally glosses over what an environmental and social catastrophe this would be. So basically the captain’s an asshole, okay? And he actually should be court-martialed, along with everyone who knew what he was doing and didn’t stop him. I don’t think this show is saying anything particularly political; it’s just poorly thought out. Maybe the creators were so blinded by the shiny high-concept idea and cool submarine sets that they forgot to revise the storyline. Shiny! (Not in a good Joss Whedon way.)
Prediction
This show has got to be expensive to make, and it’s hard to see how they can sustain such a claustrophobic plot over the long term. I give it between 5 and 13 episodes.
Robert Patrick is the only scary military mofo you are going to get on this show, so enjoy.
Revolution
“How do you put up with this, Billy?” “It helps to think about my Twilight residuals.”
“I’m not so sure about this, Billy” “Shhh, just keep gazing enigmatically into the distance until somebody gives us some narrative tension.”
Number of episodes watched: 2
The Plot
All electricity disappears from the earth. Fifteen years later, one man still seems to have some of the answers. But he hasn’t done anything about it yet, because… plot device?
So in the pilot he promptly gets killed by the Evil Militia, who also take his teenage son prisoner. His daughter and his alienated brother go on a quest to rescue the teenage son. And maybe to turn the power back on. It’s like S. M. Stirling’s “Dies the Fire” series, meets Terra Nova. Oh, and there’s a magic flash drive that turns local power back on. Got all that?
The Verdict
I so, so want this show to be great. It’s the most science fictiony of the offerings this fall. Billy Burke as the hard-case para-military badass uncle; Giancarlo Esposito as the Evil Militia’s right-hand man.
But what the show lacks is… electricity. (Sorry, sorry.) I’m willing to put aside the dubious science for the sake of the plot, but in that case, the plot needs to be compelling. So far, I can’t remember the name of a single character. And all that’s happened is:
Generic Girl** and Badass Uncle roam the landscape ostensibly looking for Teenage Brother. They get sidetracked almost immediately, but there’s not much sense of urgency.
Generic Girl makes a good-looking guy friend who turns out to be working for the Evil Militia. This development has all the impact of when that cute guy you kind of liked in eighth grade turned out to be a jerk.
Dead Dad’s Girlfriend is sad because she’ll never see her kids in England again. Well, yes, that is a giant bummer.
Nerdy Science Guy provides some much needed reality checking and sarcasm. He’s kind of like the Greek chorus of intelligent viewers, and is the only one who seems remotely curious about the magic flash drive. Give this man more screen time, please.
Oh, and Generic Girl’s long-lost mother is Elizabeth Mitchell from Lost. Now, I would happily watch an hour of Elizabeth Mitchell and Billy Burke bitching in the wilderness. And the flashbacks to just pre- and post-blackout are cool. But as it stands, there’s surprisingly little tension for a show that should be, you know, tense. They could all die of sepsis at any moment, for pete’s sake!
Much like Terra Nova, this show seems to have low expectations from its viewers. I didn’t really need them to spell out why Dead Dad’s Girlfriend was sad about not seeing her children, even their photos on her (non-working) iPhone. Nor did I need the lengthy dissertation on why Generic Girl doesn’t really want to kill people. You know what happens when the dialogue spells things out so painfully? My attention wanders. It felt like… I just… I… what was I talking about? How long can you reasonably expect a flash drive to be viable, even a magic flash drive? In a world with no electricity and an apparently mild climate, where did Evil Militia Leader get that bucket of ice? What does it say that I’m more curious about the inanimate actors than the breathing ones?
Now, here’s the caveat: this show is from Eric Kripke, of the well-loved Supernatural. So maybe it will improve dramatically. But in the meantime, here’s a tagline:
Revolution: The most exciting sci-fi show since Terra Nova!
You’re welcome, Hollywood. I will accept royalties.
Prediction
This one is doing quite well in the ratings. It’s going to be around a while, like its mysteriously stable digital media. And I’m inexplicably going to watch everyepisode, while slowly feeling my own life force drain away.
The best shows you’re probably not even watching
Community
Show runner Dan Harmon got the boot, but we still have the stellar cast. I would rather watch re-runs of this show than almost anything else on TV. It manages to be smart without being in love with itself, and the characters are imperfect, biased, and completely likable. Saturday Night Livewishes they could top the show’s pitch-perfect homages to Law and Order, Ken Burns documentaries, and Doctor Who. And the friendship between Troy and Abed is one of the most lovely relationships on TV.
The Vampire Diaries
Overlook the silly title for a moment. This show is fun, slightly macabre, and tightly paced. It’s not exactly the successor to Joss Whedon, but it shares a lot of the same attributes. For one thing, there are real stakes and real losses. Drama should be heightened by the supernatural, and this one gets that right.
Parenthood
You can keep Breaking Bad, becauseI think this is the best drama on basic cable right now. Plus there are three back-seasons at this point. Go watch them and tell me you’re not immediately addicted. Every character has at different moments made me cry and annoyed the crap out of me. Max Burkholder, who plays the autism-spectrum son, does such a good job he can be truly discomfiting to watch. This show’s got what both the pilots above are missing: characters so well-realized you actually feel invested in what they want, even if you think they’re crazy for it.
* It still stings after all these years.
** Generic Girl is played by Tracy Spiridakos. I’m sure she’s perfectly lovely and I sincerely hope this show makes her rich and famous.
As enjoyable as the Bourne movies are, it could be that the theme has been tapped out. So to help Hollywood continue to produce them, here are some possible directions.
The Bourne Delusion
Average citizen Ed Bourne (Kevin James) gets knocked on the head after watching too many spy movies and starts acting like a high-strung super-assassin in everyday life. Ed steals a car to get to his job as a tax accountant, exits a dental appointment through the back window, and becomes convinced that his moody teenage daughter is a counter-spy. A trip to the mall culminates in a gripping rooftop chase through the streets of Columbus, Ohio.
The Bourne Analysis
The Treadstone Project relocates to a retirement home in Key Biscayne, where super-spies with PTSD and amnesia learn to play backgammon and work through their feelings. Will Jonas (Russell Crowe) find love and a second chance at a normal life with art therapist Liz (Diane Lane)?
The Bourne Backlash
A shadowy conspiracy forms. Their goal? To send super-assassins against hubristic old CIA operatives who have too many meetings in poorly lit wood-paneled rooms. Pamela Landy is tapped to head the team.
Bourne Again
We revisit Jason Bourne (played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), who, after a near-death experience, finds God and feels called to a new career as a charismatic preacher. But will the CIA let him live in peace? Hijinks ensue.*
The Bourne Solution
Treadstone is relaunched as Project BasketO’Puppies. Due to comprehensive mental health benefits, no agents go off the rails and the only conflict is the yearly intramural wiffleball tournament. Channing Tatum and Jason Bateman star.
The Bourne Singularity
The sheer number of Bourne movies finally causes a small black hole to form in the vicinity of Los Angeles. No one is harmed since all production has since moved to Vancouver.
* Hardcore fans of the franchise will later pretend that this movie never existed, à la Highlander 2.
What do you mean? We’ve known about this 2D/3D thing for years!
If you’ve ever wondered why the math of string theory points towards the possibility of a multiverse, or if you are, say, a humanities-degree-holding frustrated science freak, NOVA’s The Fabric of the Cosmos is available online.
Sample mind-blowing theory from “What Is Space?”: you, me, and everything you know might be a three-dimensional hologram of information stored in two-dimensional form on the outer edge of the universe.
Physics! Down the rabbit hole!
“After you learn quantum mechanics, you’re never really the same again.” – Steven Weinberg
Visual art inspires me to write, in some ways more reliably than other writer’s poetry. I tend to get stuck in imitations of other writers’ styles, which is like producing a piece of amber with a mashed leaf inside, instead of growing a live plant. Inspiration from visual art is more visceral. You get to come at the impression sideways.
Which brings me to my friend Julia Blaukopf’s book The Rain Parade, a photographic journal of her four months in Ghana.
At times, photography feels sterile to me, and I think it’s because our visual culture is so overloaded with perfect photos: images that are either a) intentionally stripped of emotion or b) overloaded with manipulation to get you to buy something. What I love about Julia’s photographs is that they’re full of feeling but they never force you. They’re not what you’d call pictures of Ghana; they’re more impressions of Ghana. There’s a gentleness and immediacy in them, almost a child’s-eye view of the dusty streets, fishermen working their nets on a beach, a woman making batik fabric. They’re saturated but calm, which come to think of it, is kind of like Julia.
Ah, Pilot Season. Let’s take a break from Serious Art to discuss my third favorite art form: TeeVee. Sure, plenty has been written about all the new shows, but I think I there’s a vacuum for a Rotten Tomatoes sort of approach. Ie, the show at a glance. And since I have zero credibility as a television critic, I am just the person to fill that niche. Note: I only watched what I was interested in*, lending me even less credibility. Let’s begin!
The format is simple: I tell you the best and worst aspects of the shows, like this: Good, but Bad.
Pan-Am: Cute, but intellectually insulting.
A Gifted Man: Beautifully acted, but probably going to get cancelled.
Ringer: Surprisingly addictive, but, dammit, now I’m addicted to a CW show.
2 Broke Girls: Funnier than “Whitney,” but the one-liners are going to get old fast.
Community: Better than any of the new sitcoms, but I am an idiot for not noticing it for the past two years.
Person of Interest: Michael Emerson! (my weirdly compelling slightly-evil-nerd crush!), but, please don’t cancel this one, CBS, I’m really addicted.
Unforgettable: Inoffensive, but, um, forgettable? (I told you I was unqualified for this task.)
Prime Suspect: I can’t follow my self-imposed rule for this show, because I found it pretty much perfect. (A lot has been written about how the pilot portrayed sexism in the NYPD in an over-the-top way, which is a valid point, but I also suspect we’ve been brainwashed by unrealistically utopian post-feminism on shows like Law & Order.)
Terra Nova: Jason O’Mara and Stephen Lang are likeable even with hacky writing, but three episodes in I am still finding the persistent anti-science bent disquieting. However, I might be slightly prejudiced because I find dinosaurs tiresome.
Charlie’s Angels: Just kidding. I re-read Judith Krantz novels regularly, but even I can’t sit through Charlie’s Angels’ level of cheese.
Did you watch something I didn’t? Chime in with your one-line (or twenty-line) opinions on the various shows I may have missed or was totally wrong about.
* What I’m interested in: science fiction, women protagonists, and all things pertaining to Michael Emerson.
