In December 2005 researchers at England’s University of Bath released the results of a study that found that children, especially girls, see torturing and mutilating their Barbies as a common and enjoyable form of play. An article in the London Times stated that “mutilation ranged from cutting off hair to decapitating and putting the dolls in microwaves.” Children ages seven to eleven were said to “see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity,” according to the article. The children were aware that they were being exploited by “over-marketing and over-charging” and that rejecting the doll was a “rite of passage” engaged in by children who felt they’d outgrown their Barbies. “Barbies are not special,” said the researchers. “They are disposable, and are thrown away and rejected.”
I considered my own and my daughter’s history with Barbies, and I had to take issue with some of the article’s findings. Cutting Barbie’s hair isn’t really an act of mutilation in the way that putting her in the microwave is; children know that cutting their own hair gets them in trouble, but cutting Barbie’s hair gives them the satisfaction of distorting her appearance and messing with the standard and approved way of viewing her, yes, but it also lets them know what it feels like to cut hair. The Barbies I grew up around often had missing toes; this is not because we wanted to bind their feet golden lotus–style and further fetishize their sexual-fantasy-based bodies but because chewing the rubbery plastic felt good and eventually gnawing away at them resulted in their coming off completely in the mouth in a pleasant if slightly disturbing fashion. Pulling Barbie heads off was common when I was a child, not because we were acting out scenes from Robespierre's Reign of Terror but because we wanted to trade them around among dolls with different features and outfits. We also pierced our dolls’ ears (leaving them looking grey and infected) and bent their knees back and forth so much for the sheer pleasure of hearing the click click click of their joints that their skin tore.
But do people take pleasure in creating their own torture tableaux featuring Barbie, Ken and all their plastic molded-bodied friends? Of course. Their constantly perky expressions and injection-molded perfection do invite children to challenge their prefab poise. They look so inviting in the box, but take them out of the vivid fuchsia packaging and their clothes are hard to put on, and their hair gets bunched up and never lies flat again and gets permanently dull and stringy when Barbie is invited to play in the bathtub. Ken’s spray-painted hair wears off and he ends up with flesh coloring showing through in patches that have nothing to do with standard male-pattern baldness. Barbie is not only free of genitalia, but sometimes has molded skin-colored patterns simulating underwear built right into what would be her buttocks if she had any gluteal muscles to cover her sorry, skinny ass.
Barbie’s original design was based on that of the Bild Lilli, a 1950s German sex doll aimed at men. Don’t believe me? Check out this side-by-side comparison. When Barbie debuted in 1959, many parents found her obviously sexualized nature disturbing. But, of course, this aspect of her is partly what has always made her so alluring to children. She’s the premiere socially sanctioned sexualized plaything that allows young children to engage in pre-sexual roleplay and pretend to embody the roles they think are expected of them as they mature. Children live out stereotypes with Barbies and also challenge them and laugh at them.
The by-now widespread delight that children take in trashing their Barbies when they feel they’ve outgrown them might be a reaction to the stereotypes, expectations and mass-merchandizing overconsumption extravaganza that Barbie represents, at least in part. But often Barbie’s mutilation is an unintentional byproduct of trying to personalize her and make her more interesting and individual. When this attempt results in a Barbie who is almost always less appealing as a result, both her loss of allure and her inability to grow into something uniquely appealing make her a sorry remnant of a time of earlier naivete and a reminder of failed attempts at creating more individualized beauty. Rather than feel bad every time we see what our attempts at beautification have done, it’s easier to dissociate her from her former status as beauty icon if we take her destruction even further. If she’s ugly and all the gloss and perfection that we once admired in her is gone, why not turn her into a doggy chew toy or see what happens if we take nail polish remover to the paint on her face? If we turn her into a science experiment, we feel less disappointed in her lost glory.
In 1992, Barbie’s reputation for mindlessness was bolstered by the release of Teen Talk Barbie. This talking Barbie spewed forth phrases like “Math is hard!” and “Will we ever have enough clothes?” A group calling itself the Barbie Liberation Organization soon became famous for engaging in acts of Barbie sabotage, exchanging Barbie’s talking guts for the voice hardware found in Mattel’s Talking G.I. Joe dolls. The BLO repackaged three hundred dolls and slid them back onto store shelves. When unsuspecting little girls tried their new Barbies at home, the fashion dolls grunted out “Vengeance is mine!” and "Dead men tell no tales," while little boys' new G.I. Joes cooed “Let’s plan our dream wedding!”
Of course, some toys are less than glorious to begin with, and only become more disturbing or ridiculous with time. Others begin attractively and grow frightening with disuse or misuse. Such are the toys found on one of my favorite Web sites, DisturbingAuctions.com. The site’s home page states that Disturbing Auctions “is dedicated to the research and study of the most bizarre items found for sale on Internet auction sites. Not the obviously fake auctions, like the infamous human kidney, but truly tacky stuff that people really, honestly, believed that someone would (and in some cases did) buy.”
DisturbingAuctions.com features home furnishings including the velvet painting of Jesus blessing an 18-wheeler, accessories such as the purse made of a bull’s scrotum, clothing, such as used gym shorts and a matching used jock strap, and haute cuisine, including 200 freeze-dried pork chops. But nothing can compare to discovering the hideous figurines, including the “Check Out My Ass Clown” (make sure to look at the optional magnified view for ultimate flamboyant clown perusing pleasure), the items classified as Terrifying Dolls, or, my favorites, the Emotionally Scarring Toys.
The Terrifying Dolls category features the pained, shriveled and body-part-challenged Puppet Assortment, the pinheaded Li’l Head Doll, and Baby Tears-Your-Flesh, a.k.a. Little Dolly No-Head. Big Hands Baby and the Saddam Hussein puppet also get honorable mention.
Clowns have a special place on Disturbing Auctions; there is a clown brooch, a clown ashtray and a vicious Cranky Clown Lava Lamp, among other items. Dead stuffed frogs also have their places, as does the stuffed and mounted genuine Deer Butt. The Clark Gable candle puts one in mind of a wax-covered severed head, and why the seller of the Inflatable Ladies' Legs had to mention that they fit in the mouth when not inflated is anyone’s guess.
Still, the Emotionally Scarring Toys is the biggest, juiciest treasure trove of outrageous kitsch. From the Dean Martin Hand Puppet to our beloved Big-Ass Donkey, from Darth Small to the marvelously named Pooduck, it’s hard to find an entry that isn’t deeply, horribly, hideously wrong down to its very core.
While most of the site has stayed static for years, there is a related site, DisturbingAuctions.com/daily, where visitors can post their own horrific online auction discoveries and attach their own witty (or, more frequently, just vulgar) commentaries. There are occasional gems to be found here, but the older, original DisturbingAuctions.com site has the most consistently hideous and perfectly captioned offerings. All hail the Pooduck!
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Painful Blessings
For the past three years I've been building a lush woodland garden around my home. I live directly next to a greenbelt and a creek runs alongside my house from some rooms I can hear the creek as it rushes by in the rainy months, and in spring and summer months the sounds of nickel-sized frogs lull me to sleep. In these months when the weather is warm enough to leave the windows open, I hear the coyotes' nighttime choruses of yips even more distinctly, though their calls to each other echo along the creek even in the cooler months, and I hear them even when all the windows in my home shut out the storms and the cold.
In these spring months, my daughter and I delight not only in all the budding, bursting, blooming plant growth in our garden, but in the frequent presence of gorgeous little animals. We love to watch the birds, an occasional vole or chipmunk, many entertaining squirrels, and, when we're very lucky, rabbits.
Others in our neighborhood complain about the rabbit population and how rabbits devour tender garden shoots. They resent the rabbits and even laugh when their dogs chase bunnies through the streets. Now, I've planted many times more plants in my garden than anyone else in my neighborhood has, even those who have larger lots, and I've lost several hundred dollars worth of shrubs, perennials, ground covers and many bulbs to rabbits in the past three years. So what? Yes, I'd like to see more of those bulbs, and I wish they hadn't done such damage to several of my favorite new flowering shrubs. But they're rabbits. That's their job. And they're gorgeous. The shapes of their bodies, their limbs, their delightful white tails that bob along and disappear when they're surprised between a fuchsia and some hostas, the exquisite texture and shading of their fur, their long and tender ears, their perfect faces: to us, they're some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. When they come to feast on our clover or hide in our perennials, we feel honored by their presence. If we drive up and see them on our little lawn out front when we get home, we quietly go out to watch them and talk to them in soothing tones. If we see one out back while we're eating breakfast, we feel we've started the day with a blessing. For us, they're not only symbols of spring but of nature in general; of regeneration, yes, but also of vulnerability and of fleeting beauty, and since they rarely stay long, we treasure each visit and call up or down the stairs to each other to remind ourselves that we're witnessing something special, and how lucky we are to share in it.
A couple of weeks ago I decided I really had to do something about the groundcover that was overtaking the berm under my cherry tree near the front porch. The sweet woodruff that I'd planted there so nonchalantly last year had taken over rapidly and hidden all the other tender little things I wanted to focus on, so, reluctantly, I admitted that I needed to pull it up in great bunches. I pulled back a big armful and set it down behind me, and as I turned back to the berm I noticed a hole about two inches across. I moved closer and peeked inside, and I could see movement and three small heads. There was a trio of some sort of animal with heads perhaps one by two inches in size, and as I looked carefully I saw that they were newborns and their eyes were still closed. As they sniffed around after I'd disturbed their quiet I realized that I had found a little nest of tiny bunnies. We'd seen a pair of rabbits on that very berm a day before, and now we realized why. In my determination to try to push nature around, I'd unearthed a little treasure hole. I felt awful; I took my clusters of freshly-pulled sweet woodruff and piled them before the hole again to keep it from being too open and obvious a target for neighborhood cats, dogs, coyotes or other predators. I was glad I'd been wearing rubber gloves so that I hadn't spread too much of my human scent around their home. I ran to get my daughter so that she could peek at them, too, and we cooed and sighed and made happy girly noises in our delight at finding a whole small furry family living in our garden right outside our front door.
Since then we've noticed adult rabbits in our garden every few days, mostly the rabbit we believe is the bunnies' mom, filling up on good green things so she can offer warm milk to her babies. We've tried not to disturb the little family, but we've been excited and pleased at the prospect of meeting the little ones when they decided to go abroad into the garden at large.
This afternoon I was working in Seattle on a freelance editing job. I was just finishing up a week's project and the five hours of sleep I had last night had worn off some time before. I was grinding through the last of my work when I got a call from my daughter telling me that one of the babies was sitting on our porch at that moment, and that it had let her get within two feet of it. It was gorgeous and still, and looked at her patiently with big, dark eyes. She was mesmerized, and so was it. She noticed that flies were hovering around it, though, and it wasn't flicking them away or running from her. We thought nothing of that, though; it was a young thing, so perhaps it didn't know enough to fear us yet.
An hour later we were looking gently around the garden to see if we could find the magic bunny. Horribly, we did; it was lying dead on the berm, about five feet from the hole in which it was born. It didn't look like it had been attacked by one of the dogs careless neighbors let run loose around our home. It was a hot day, and we haven't seen any of its family for a few days, and I fear it may have been abandoned when the others left the little hole, and that it might have starved and suffered from dehydration.
Its little body was among the loveliest I've ever seen: dark, lovely eyes still open to the world, the large white tail, perfectly formed little feet, dear long ears, inviting toast-colored fur. I asked Lily whether she wanted to be with me when I buried it, and she said she wanted to stay with me through everything. So we wrapped our bunny in the funnies; we figured it wouldn't have wanted to be in a hard, dark box, and that a little paper shroud would disintegrate faster than fabric and would let it become part of the ferns in the back corner of our garden more quickly. We couldn't bear to lay it alone in the soil, so we buried it with clover and our favorite variegated pineapple mint, and laid it in a quiet corner with rich soil. We laid a perfect purple clematis blossom and a fragrant sprig of dwarf lilac above its little body, and thanked it for spending its last hours in our company.
A couple of years ago an exquisitely colored love bird, clearly formerly someone's pet, flew onto our driveway while I was gardening and looked up into my face. It was tired and didn't want to be held, but it wouldn't go further than one of my rhododendron branches, so I knew it was weak. I took it in and let it rest in a ventilated box and asked around the neighborhood, but nobody knew it. We put up "FOUND BIRD" signs and took it to the vet to make sure it was okay, but within two days it became listless and had trouble eating. We put its cage in a warm spot and placed a heating pad against the corner and a blanket around the base of the cage, since the vet said the bird, who appeared so healthy, actually showed significant liver damage from being fed too many fatty seeds. It was a very sick little thing and needed warmth and love.
That night, it died in the warm little corner we made for it. We mourned the beautiful bird we had known for so little time, but we also felt blessed that it had chosen to live its final days with us. The same was true with the tiny bunny; for whatever reason, it got as close to us as it could. Yes, it may have simply been seeking a shady spot on a hot day, a cool porch to rest on as its body slowly depleted itself of nutrients. But still, we felt that this small rabbit, like the lovebird, had given us a gift by allowing us to get so close to it and to show it kindnesses just before and after death. We felt humbled in the presence of such beauty and such an early end to its life, and grateful to have seen something so ephemeral and precious up close, right in our own garden.
I spent an hour in the garden after I buried the rabbit. I watered and admired all the new growth, and wondered at how much had happened there in just the last five days since I last took a considered look around at it all. And I wondered at how fast that little rabbit had grown, and at how much hidden life there is all around me in my garden, and how many dramas and stories and secrets there are going on in the houses of the neighbors around me. I realized how odd it is that we can feel alone in such a densely populated world with so many animals right below our feet, and so many tender people right on the other sides of those thin walls we walk and drive by every day.
It was painful for my daughter to have the remarkably lovely experience with the perfect bunny less than two hours before she discovered its lifeless body four feet away. There was a cruelty to the situation, to the rough juxtaposition of great fortune and loss. But we were better for having had it, even with the pain. We again felt the blessing and honor of being chosen by a tender creature in its final hours, and were reminded how fragile the trust it put in us was, and how much responsibility we have to honor and appreciate it.
In these spring months, my daughter and I delight not only in all the budding, bursting, blooming plant growth in our garden, but in the frequent presence of gorgeous little animals. We love to watch the birds, an occasional vole or chipmunk, many entertaining squirrels, and, when we're very lucky, rabbits.
Others in our neighborhood complain about the rabbit population and how rabbits devour tender garden shoots. They resent the rabbits and even laugh when their dogs chase bunnies through the streets. Now, I've planted many times more plants in my garden than anyone else in my neighborhood has, even those who have larger lots, and I've lost several hundred dollars worth of shrubs, perennials, ground covers and many bulbs to rabbits in the past three years. So what? Yes, I'd like to see more of those bulbs, and I wish they hadn't done such damage to several of my favorite new flowering shrubs. But they're rabbits. That's their job. And they're gorgeous. The shapes of their bodies, their limbs, their delightful white tails that bob along and disappear when they're surprised between a fuchsia and some hostas, the exquisite texture and shading of their fur, their long and tender ears, their perfect faces: to us, they're some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. When they come to feast on our clover or hide in our perennials, we feel honored by their presence. If we drive up and see them on our little lawn out front when we get home, we quietly go out to watch them and talk to them in soothing tones. If we see one out back while we're eating breakfast, we feel we've started the day with a blessing. For us, they're not only symbols of spring but of nature in general; of regeneration, yes, but also of vulnerability and of fleeting beauty, and since they rarely stay long, we treasure each visit and call up or down the stairs to each other to remind ourselves that we're witnessing something special, and how lucky we are to share in it.
A couple of weeks ago I decided I really had to do something about the groundcover that was overtaking the berm under my cherry tree near the front porch. The sweet woodruff that I'd planted there so nonchalantly last year had taken over rapidly and hidden all the other tender little things I wanted to focus on, so, reluctantly, I admitted that I needed to pull it up in great bunches. I pulled back a big armful and set it down behind me, and as I turned back to the berm I noticed a hole about two inches across. I moved closer and peeked inside, and I could see movement and three small heads. There was a trio of some sort of animal with heads perhaps one by two inches in size, and as I looked carefully I saw that they were newborns and their eyes were still closed. As they sniffed around after I'd disturbed their quiet I realized that I had found a little nest of tiny bunnies. We'd seen a pair of rabbits on that very berm a day before, and now we realized why. In my determination to try to push nature around, I'd unearthed a little treasure hole. I felt awful; I took my clusters of freshly-pulled sweet woodruff and piled them before the hole again to keep it from being too open and obvious a target for neighborhood cats, dogs, coyotes or other predators. I was glad I'd been wearing rubber gloves so that I hadn't spread too much of my human scent around their home. I ran to get my daughter so that she could peek at them, too, and we cooed and sighed and made happy girly noises in our delight at finding a whole small furry family living in our garden right outside our front door.
Since then we've noticed adult rabbits in our garden every few days, mostly the rabbit we believe is the bunnies' mom, filling up on good green things so she can offer warm milk to her babies. We've tried not to disturb the little family, but we've been excited and pleased at the prospect of meeting the little ones when they decided to go abroad into the garden at large.
This afternoon I was working in Seattle on a freelance editing job. I was just finishing up a week's project and the five hours of sleep I had last night had worn off some time before. I was grinding through the last of my work when I got a call from my daughter telling me that one of the babies was sitting on our porch at that moment, and that it had let her get within two feet of it. It was gorgeous and still, and looked at her patiently with big, dark eyes. She was mesmerized, and so was it. She noticed that flies were hovering around it, though, and it wasn't flicking them away or running from her. We thought nothing of that, though; it was a young thing, so perhaps it didn't know enough to fear us yet.
An hour later we were looking gently around the garden to see if we could find the magic bunny. Horribly, we did; it was lying dead on the berm, about five feet from the hole in which it was born. It didn't look like it had been attacked by one of the dogs careless neighbors let run loose around our home. It was a hot day, and we haven't seen any of its family for a few days, and I fear it may have been abandoned when the others left the little hole, and that it might have starved and suffered from dehydration.
Its little body was among the loveliest I've ever seen: dark, lovely eyes still open to the world, the large white tail, perfectly formed little feet, dear long ears, inviting toast-colored fur. I asked Lily whether she wanted to be with me when I buried it, and she said she wanted to stay with me through everything. So we wrapped our bunny in the funnies; we figured it wouldn't have wanted to be in a hard, dark box, and that a little paper shroud would disintegrate faster than fabric and would let it become part of the ferns in the back corner of our garden more quickly. We couldn't bear to lay it alone in the soil, so we buried it with clover and our favorite variegated pineapple mint, and laid it in a quiet corner with rich soil. We laid a perfect purple clematis blossom and a fragrant sprig of dwarf lilac above its little body, and thanked it for spending its last hours in our company.
A couple of years ago an exquisitely colored love bird, clearly formerly someone's pet, flew onto our driveway while I was gardening and looked up into my face. It was tired and didn't want to be held, but it wouldn't go further than one of my rhododendron branches, so I knew it was weak. I took it in and let it rest in a ventilated box and asked around the neighborhood, but nobody knew it. We put up "FOUND BIRD" signs and took it to the vet to make sure it was okay, but within two days it became listless and had trouble eating. We put its cage in a warm spot and placed a heating pad against the corner and a blanket around the base of the cage, since the vet said the bird, who appeared so healthy, actually showed significant liver damage from being fed too many fatty seeds. It was a very sick little thing and needed warmth and love.
That night, it died in the warm little corner we made for it. We mourned the beautiful bird we had known for so little time, but we also felt blessed that it had chosen to live its final days with us. The same was true with the tiny bunny; for whatever reason, it got as close to us as it could. Yes, it may have simply been seeking a shady spot on a hot day, a cool porch to rest on as its body slowly depleted itself of nutrients. But still, we felt that this small rabbit, like the lovebird, had given us a gift by allowing us to get so close to it and to show it kindnesses just before and after death. We felt humbled in the presence of such beauty and such an early end to its life, and grateful to have seen something so ephemeral and precious up close, right in our own garden.
I spent an hour in the garden after I buried the rabbit. I watered and admired all the new growth, and wondered at how much had happened there in just the last five days since I last took a considered look around at it all. And I wondered at how fast that little rabbit had grown, and at how much hidden life there is all around me in my garden, and how many dramas and stories and secrets there are going on in the houses of the neighbors around me. I realized how odd it is that we can feel alone in such a densely populated world with so many animals right below our feet, and so many tender people right on the other sides of those thin walls we walk and drive by every day.
It was painful for my daughter to have the remarkably lovely experience with the perfect bunny less than two hours before she discovered its lifeless body four feet away. There was a cruelty to the situation, to the rough juxtaposition of great fortune and loss. But we were better for having had it, even with the pain. We again felt the blessing and honor of being chosen by a tender creature in its final hours, and were reminded how fragile the trust it put in us was, and how much responsibility we have to honor and appreciate it.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Fosse Fan
I took my daughter to see the Stephen Schwartz musical "Pippin" yesterday at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre for Mother's Day, and it was terrific. I'd seen it in San Francisco nearly 30 years ago when it toured the country, and I grew up knowing all the songs from it. I thought this production was more fun and fresh feeling than the version I saw all those years ago, which surprised me, because the actors in most of the other shows I've seen at the 5th Avenue seemed to have phoned in their performances. "Pippin" by contrast was filled with passionate performers who looked like they wanted to be there and had the moves, the pipes and the desire to perform that can make live theater so exciting. The sets were clever and attractive, the choreography was pleasing if not as crisp as Bob Fosse's original moves, and the male leads were sexy as all get-out and wore fetchingly form-fitting clothes, and sometimes not many of them, so I'm willing to admit that I might have been blinded by beauty over quality to some extent, but I really did feel the whole production was strong and very entertaining.
I grew up knowing all the songs and sang several of them at pops concerts in the seventies, so I'm nostalgic about the show, which also clouds my eyes a bit, I guess. But I've been a fan of composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz since I saw his hit "Godspell" when I was a child. Lily and I really enjoyed another musical by him, "Wicked," when we saw it on Broadway last year. I thought "Wicked" would be a dumbed down crowd-pleasing show with more flash than cleverness, but the story and lyrics were actually wittily written and the music was a pleasure to listen to. The variations on the "Wizard of Oz" theme actually showed depth of thought and meaning. What a lovely surprise.
We went on to read the book on which it was based, which is much darker than the musical version, and became huge fans of Gregory Maguire's writing. We've now read four of his novels, all of which are based on fairy tales we've all grown up knowing by heart but which turn the stories on their heads, give the background and readjust our perceptions of the main characters and their motivations. Rather than slipping into lighthearted fantasy, each one unearths the darker side of fairy stories, human nature and history. Maguire himself lived a sort of dark fairytale childhood; his mother died in childbirth and his father couldn't look after him on his own, so young Gregory was sent to an orphanage for his first five or six years before his father remarried and took him back. He says the sad part ended there, because his stepmother was actually not wicked but a kind and loving soul who raised him well. But throughout his life he's had a special affection and aptitude for seeing into such fantasies and pulling out something rich and dark.
His stories would be nothing without good plots, of course, but what keeps us (and writers like John Updike who also enjoy his work) coming back for more of his stories is his fluid writing, his lyrical style, his fresh and mesmerizing way of leading us into his characters' heads. All of his characters are flawed, some make grave mistakes, most are outcasts of some sort or other. Quite naturally, they make much more fascinating reading than the polished golden heroes of Disneyfied fairy stories we usually find nowadays.
So there I was yesterday enjoying "Pippin" again after all this time and sharing it with my almost-teen daughter, who loves musicals. I'd remembered that this was a slinkier, steamier musical than most; Bob Fosse directed the original, after all, and most of his work drips with decadent sexual overtones. However, I'd read a review that described this production as a bit tired and mired in the seventies, and missing the late great Fosse's oomph this time around. So while I expected some bumping, grinding, sexy costumes and sinuous suggestiveness, I can't say I expected the orgy scene in full fetish gear. It wasn't the most wholesome extravaganza, but Lily's nearly 13 and it gave us fodder for a little amusing chat afterwards. She's a bright, down-to-earth girl and the show was very stylized, so while there was no mistaking the fact that there were sexual overtones dolloped all over the show, it wasn't "Desperate Housewives."
As I thought about the show and of Fosse's other works, I considered the thread of raunchy, threatening sexuality that runs through his major later musicals and through his excellent, disturbing non-musical film "Star 80." In "Cabaret," "Chicago" and "Pippin" the songs and dancing are truly integral to the story: all action doesn't stop when a song starts, and, especially in the Kander and Ebb musicals "Cabaret" and "Chicago," the songs add a lot of richness to the understanding of the characters, the historical setting, the mood. The stories could stand without the songs (and indeed, "Cabaret" is based on Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin"), but the songs in those shows really move the action along and tells us something deeper than most musicals do. They're darker and dirtier than "Pippin" is, and while I like "Pippin," I think "Cabaret" is one of the masterworks of the musical theater, and perfectly suited to the troubled, brilliant Fosse.
But again, I consider how drawn he was to stories of disturbing, bent or bruised sexuality. In "Cabaret" Sally Bowles wants to act wild and with abandon, and brags of her "divine decadence," but it's really bluff, and she puts herself into emotional jeopardy by flirting with love but retreating into sex when true feelings become too scary. In "Pippin," the lead character, a hapless son of Charlemagne, throws himself onto all of life's grandest stages in an attempt to be grander than he is, but he finds himself feeling empty, lonely, broken as a result. "Chicago" stars two ruthless women who kill their men in jealous rages and use their sociopathic sexuality to draw fame and fortune around them as they step on everyone below. In each story, good men get used and broken, burnt like moths attracted to the deadly flame of femmes fatale. Fosse's fantastical autobiographical film, "All that Jazz," which I've found a surprising number of people list as among their favorite movies of all time, shows him (in the guise of Roy Scheider, in what I think is his strongest film performance) as painfully aware of his tendency to hold women at bay while loving them fiercely, if at a distance, and of his countervailing tendencies to try to draw too much of life in at once while driving away the parts of it he most loves. Rather like the main characters in the stories he was drawn to choreograph and direct.
I grew up knowing all the songs and sang several of them at pops concerts in the seventies, so I'm nostalgic about the show, which also clouds my eyes a bit, I guess. But I've been a fan of composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz since I saw his hit "Godspell" when I was a child. Lily and I really enjoyed another musical by him, "Wicked," when we saw it on Broadway last year. I thought "Wicked" would be a dumbed down crowd-pleasing show with more flash than cleverness, but the story and lyrics were actually wittily written and the music was a pleasure to listen to. The variations on the "Wizard of Oz" theme actually showed depth of thought and meaning. What a lovely surprise.
We went on to read the book on which it was based, which is much darker than the musical version, and became huge fans of Gregory Maguire's writing. We've now read four of his novels, all of which are based on fairy tales we've all grown up knowing by heart but which turn the stories on their heads, give the background and readjust our perceptions of the main characters and their motivations. Rather than slipping into lighthearted fantasy, each one unearths the darker side of fairy stories, human nature and history. Maguire himself lived a sort of dark fairytale childhood; his mother died in childbirth and his father couldn't look after him on his own, so young Gregory was sent to an orphanage for his first five or six years before his father remarried and took him back. He says the sad part ended there, because his stepmother was actually not wicked but a kind and loving soul who raised him well. But throughout his life he's had a special affection and aptitude for seeing into such fantasies and pulling out something rich and dark.
His stories would be nothing without good plots, of course, but what keeps us (and writers like John Updike who also enjoy his work) coming back for more of his stories is his fluid writing, his lyrical style, his fresh and mesmerizing way of leading us into his characters' heads. All of his characters are flawed, some make grave mistakes, most are outcasts of some sort or other. Quite naturally, they make much more fascinating reading than the polished golden heroes of Disneyfied fairy stories we usually find nowadays.
So there I was yesterday enjoying "Pippin" again after all this time and sharing it with my almost-teen daughter, who loves musicals. I'd remembered that this was a slinkier, steamier musical than most; Bob Fosse directed the original, after all, and most of his work drips with decadent sexual overtones. However, I'd read a review that described this production as a bit tired and mired in the seventies, and missing the late great Fosse's oomph this time around. So while I expected some bumping, grinding, sexy costumes and sinuous suggestiveness, I can't say I expected the orgy scene in full fetish gear. It wasn't the most wholesome extravaganza, but Lily's nearly 13 and it gave us fodder for a little amusing chat afterwards. She's a bright, down-to-earth girl and the show was very stylized, so while there was no mistaking the fact that there were sexual overtones dolloped all over the show, it wasn't "Desperate Housewives."
As I thought about the show and of Fosse's other works, I considered the thread of raunchy, threatening sexuality that runs through his major later musicals and through his excellent, disturbing non-musical film "Star 80." In "Cabaret," "Chicago" and "Pippin" the songs and dancing are truly integral to the story: all action doesn't stop when a song starts, and, especially in the Kander and Ebb musicals "Cabaret" and "Chicago," the songs add a lot of richness to the understanding of the characters, the historical setting, the mood. The stories could stand without the songs (and indeed, "Cabaret" is based on Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin"), but the songs in those shows really move the action along and tells us something deeper than most musicals do. They're darker and dirtier than "Pippin" is, and while I like "Pippin," I think "Cabaret" is one of the masterworks of the musical theater, and perfectly suited to the troubled, brilliant Fosse.
But again, I consider how drawn he was to stories of disturbing, bent or bruised sexuality. In "Cabaret" Sally Bowles wants to act wild and with abandon, and brags of her "divine decadence," but it's really bluff, and she puts herself into emotional jeopardy by flirting with love but retreating into sex when true feelings become too scary. In "Pippin," the lead character, a hapless son of Charlemagne, throws himself onto all of life's grandest stages in an attempt to be grander than he is, but he finds himself feeling empty, lonely, broken as a result. "Chicago" stars two ruthless women who kill their men in jealous rages and use their sociopathic sexuality to draw fame and fortune around them as they step on everyone below. In each story, good men get used and broken, burnt like moths attracted to the deadly flame of femmes fatale. Fosse's fantastical autobiographical film, "All that Jazz," which I've found a surprising number of people list as among their favorite movies of all time, shows him (in the guise of Roy Scheider, in what I think is his strongest film performance) as painfully aware of his tendency to hold women at bay while loving them fiercely, if at a distance, and of his countervailing tendencies to try to draw too much of life in at once while driving away the parts of it he most loves. Rather like the main characters in the stories he was drawn to choreograph and direct.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Intensity
My first clear memory is of a trip I took with my mother and grandmother to the San Diego Zoo when I was about three years old. I remember a pole with three flat, circular wire baskets placed concentrically on it, and each basket was filled with fluffy yellow chicks that visitors were invited to approach and stroke. I remember being thrilled and running to them in my delirious haste to touch their tiny, soft bodies. But as I stuck my hand in the basket, they all rushed away from me and hurled themselves out of the basket. I remember feeling shock that I should come so close to something so wonderful and then scare it away. I knew that I wanted only to stroke them, but by my bold actions I frightened them. My intensity and desire to enjoy them chased them from me and left me with empty hands. I remember crying desperately about the lost opportunity. Thus, my earliest memory is about losing something not despite but because of the magnitude of my appreciation for it.
Many of my other early memories also have to do with feeling punished for being open about my feelings. I was not a drama queen; I had no tantrums, I didn't stalk anyone. In fact, I kept to myself most of the time, but when I did express myself, I meant what I said. And what I said was deeper and often truer than what others spoke of, much older and more thoughtful than my years, and such directness makes some people uncomfortable. Especially kind directness. Be sarcastic and folks may think you're bold and funny; be tender and honest and many people don't know what to do around such pure feeling. I've never liked to play games and pretend that I don't feel something when I do. Punished or not, I've always felt that, much as I wanted others' approval, I'm the one who has to live with myself, and if I'm not honest, I don't want to be around myself.
Sometime after the San Diego Zoo chick fiasco when I was perhaps four or five, my mother came home from work one day with a tiny chick in a shoe box. I don't know whether I was to have kept it or whether she borrowed it for the night from the Future Farmers of America advisor at the high school where she taught, but I knew it was mine for the night at least. At first I was delighted; here was my chance to appreciate and nurture an exquisite, vulnerable creature. But it was soon clear that the chick was in great distress. It peeped constantly and wanted nothing to do with me. When I went to bed, it was still peeping sadly. When I awoke, it was dead. I felt such guilt, even though I hadn't brought the chick home or failed to do what I was told to; I was a tiny girl, but I felt responsible for its suffering and death all the same, because it had been mine in some sense. I felt somehow that I should have known what to do to care for the little helpless bird, that somehow I should have known better, been cleverer, stayed up all night with it, something. It didn't occur to me that my mother had acted inappropriately in bringing home a tiny creature that needed special care, food, warmth and companionship and helped me to provide none of that. The feeling that my awareness and empathy required action stuck with me. Yet sometimes showing too much personal concern toward another's emotional situation can also be overwhelming to someone who doesn't have the energy to respond. I've had to learn to offer my feelings and insights, and step back so others have room to breathe.
There's always been a connection for me between feeling that my intensity has the ability to alienate others and also that my intensity gives me the responsibility to know more, do more, share more. I have often felt that because I have a capacity to show care and awareness of others' feelings, I should. And sometimes I'm conflicted because I feel that expressing myself might push others away, but that not speaking what I feel would be to be dishonest to myself or another. If I do what I most want and say what I feel deeply, I may make others avoid me or fear that I won't know when to stop. But I do know. And if I don't let them know what's in my heart, I've lost the chance to show them how much value I see in them and how much I want their happiness. Intensity and a willingness to speak openly and passionately has so much more emotional resonance to me, and the honesty of it makes me feel more real myself. But sometimes people just want to relax into shared good feeling. They have more unwanted intensity of other sorts than they can handle and just want some ease for a change. I can see it, I can understand it, I know that's a valid and even valuable point of view. But for me, that's a tricky one.
Many of my other early memories also have to do with feeling punished for being open about my feelings. I was not a drama queen; I had no tantrums, I didn't stalk anyone. In fact, I kept to myself most of the time, but when I did express myself, I meant what I said. And what I said was deeper and often truer than what others spoke of, much older and more thoughtful than my years, and such directness makes some people uncomfortable. Especially kind directness. Be sarcastic and folks may think you're bold and funny; be tender and honest and many people don't know what to do around such pure feeling. I've never liked to play games and pretend that I don't feel something when I do. Punished or not, I've always felt that, much as I wanted others' approval, I'm the one who has to live with myself, and if I'm not honest, I don't want to be around myself.
Sometime after the San Diego Zoo chick fiasco when I was perhaps four or five, my mother came home from work one day with a tiny chick in a shoe box. I don't know whether I was to have kept it or whether she borrowed it for the night from the Future Farmers of America advisor at the high school where she taught, but I knew it was mine for the night at least. At first I was delighted; here was my chance to appreciate and nurture an exquisite, vulnerable creature. But it was soon clear that the chick was in great distress. It peeped constantly and wanted nothing to do with me. When I went to bed, it was still peeping sadly. When I awoke, it was dead. I felt such guilt, even though I hadn't brought the chick home or failed to do what I was told to; I was a tiny girl, but I felt responsible for its suffering and death all the same, because it had been mine in some sense. I felt somehow that I should have known what to do to care for the little helpless bird, that somehow I should have known better, been cleverer, stayed up all night with it, something. It didn't occur to me that my mother had acted inappropriately in bringing home a tiny creature that needed special care, food, warmth and companionship and helped me to provide none of that. The feeling that my awareness and empathy required action stuck with me. Yet sometimes showing too much personal concern toward another's emotional situation can also be overwhelming to someone who doesn't have the energy to respond. I've had to learn to offer my feelings and insights, and step back so others have room to breathe.
There's always been a connection for me between feeling that my intensity has the ability to alienate others and also that my intensity gives me the responsibility to know more, do more, share more. I have often felt that because I have a capacity to show care and awareness of others' feelings, I should. And sometimes I'm conflicted because I feel that expressing myself might push others away, but that not speaking what I feel would be to be dishonest to myself or another. If I do what I most want and say what I feel deeply, I may make others avoid me or fear that I won't know when to stop. But I do know. And if I don't let them know what's in my heart, I've lost the chance to show them how much value I see in them and how much I want their happiness. Intensity and a willingness to speak openly and passionately has so much more emotional resonance to me, and the honesty of it makes me feel more real myself. But sometimes people just want to relax into shared good feeling. They have more unwanted intensity of other sorts than they can handle and just want some ease for a change. I can see it, I can understand it, I know that's a valid and even valuable point of view. But for me, that's a tricky one.
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