Blog Post #3: What’s your sign?

David Fincher’s background as a commerical and music video director has always influenced his films.  All of his previous films contain a visual style , a gloss, a layer of cool.  In Zodiac he seems to have taken a different more straight-forward and academic approach.  Compare the murders in this film to the ones presented in Seven.  In Zodiac the crimes take a back seat to the investigation.  The goal is singular, to catch this guy.  However the man himself, the Zodiac killer, is really a minor character.  He is presented through letters and phone calls.  The main suspect is introduced fairly late in the film.  Then our impression of the Zodiac is filtered through the laid-back crime reporter and the boy scout cartoonist.  Both seem to revel in this opportunity to solve puzzles and tell the story of this infamous man.  Indeed it is the telling of the story of the Zodiac that consumes the characters.  Graysmith is attempting to write a book about the crimes, albeit it one with a rather unsatisfying ending.  He gathers evidence, interviews witnesses and takes copious notes.  The film refuses to diverge from the timeline, hitting all the highlights in the story.  I found the film pretty boring, but honest.  Fincher insists on presenting these real-life men as regular guys just trying to do their jobs.  I am struck again as I have been with every text we have looked at thus far, at how much emphasis is placed on those that tell the stories as opposed to those that lived the story.  I realize that it would be impossible and completely unrealistic to tell the story of the Zodiac from the perspective of the killer.  However, is there value in telling the story of the educated guess of a cartoonist as to the identity of that killer?  In my opinion Fincher’s focus on the ordinary both visually, the starkness of the Chronicle’s newsroom etc., and narratively affected the dramatic weight of the film.

Blog Post #2: The Uses of Enchantment

One of the themes of the novel is identity.  Identity, as it exists in the novel, is a malleable thing that can be manipulated and recreated.  Many of the characters take on different personas and in some cases they literally impersonate others.  Mary’s mother pretends to be her sister Helen in order to deceive Mary’s doctor, but also to avoid potential humiliation.  Late in the novel, we are treated to two important figures in Mary’s life (her mother and her doctor) both misrepresenting themselves at a fundraiser.  Mary feels forced to pretend she is someone else, someone more complex, more adult in order to gain and keep the attention of those around her.  She does not have that label that her sisters have.  Regina, “the poet” and Gaby, “the athlete,” overshadow Mary, “the unexceptional.”  Desperate for an identity of her own, she settles for Mary “the liar” and accepts this role for much of her life.  It is only with the death of her mother that she is forced to confront the damage that she has done to herself and those around her.  The complexity of the narratives make this a difficult confrontation for her.  How much responsibility should be placed on her mother, who was unable to communicate real feelings with her children?  On her various doctors, who used her for their own future success?  On her ”abductor” who shouldn’t have let her in his car in the first place?  Julavits does not provide an easy answer for any of these questions.  All the characters are struggling with their own identity crises and are unable to recognize this in others.  Julavits captures something that is rarely discussed among adults.  While many people like to stress the importance of just being oneself so much time of our time is spent adjusting who we are for the benefit of others.  As students we have a specific classroom persona, with our friends another, with our family another and so on.  The eternal question (who am I?), that Mary is grappling with at sixteen and at thirty will continue throughout her life and can not be resolved.

Blog Post #1: Oscar Wao

Whew!  What an intense read!  Junot Diaz brings together so many narratives, references, and voices at times it reminded me of living in New York City.  Just walking down the street and hearing so many accents, languages, slang throw together and able to function together cohesively.  I wondered if he was trying to reflect his own cultural upbringing (Dominican Republic to New Jersey wow).  It would create a pretty distinct voice.  As the book traces the violent history of the DR, I wondered if we were reading the story of the ultimate culture clash.  No matter how hard you try to outrun your heritage with fantasies and role playing games you can always be pulled back into it.  Beli tried to literally escape her past, but watched as her son was seduced and destroyed by it.  Whether that is a fuku or just the natural order of things (many desire to run away like Lola, and most of us never get very far, again like Lola). 

What about our narrator, Yunior?  Where does he fit into this?  He has total control of the narrative of the novel and yet he seems so distant from so much of it.  The information he is providing is mostly second-hand, about events he has not seen.  He can not be completely trusted, nor can his account of the actions of the novel be trusted.  Then he is just a storyteller, a fantastic storyteller, but still…I believe his control to be a negative that many of the characters would fight against.  So much of the novel is about breaking free from cruel regimes and yet the cruelest may be when one controls the narrative of a history that is not their own.  Dictators rewrite history to suit themselves, don’t they?