Repost: Disney’s Tired Meta Feminism and Why Moana Still Reigns as Its Modern Feminist “Princess”

This post is a repost of a November 30th, 2018 blog entry I wrote for the blog Playback. You can find the original post and access other Playback articles at the link here: http://playback.wisc.edu/2018/11/30/disneys-tired-meta-feminism-and-why-moana-still-reigns-as-its-modern-feminist-princess/

On top of that, to make this my most meta post ever, you will find references to a previous blog post from my website in this repost!

After the advertising campaign for Ralph Breaks the Internet, it may surprise you to learn that the film itself is not about the Disney Princesses. The scene where one of the actual protagonists, Vanelope, lands in the collective’s communal dressing room got its own teaser, is prominently highlighted in the official trailer, and a large chunck of the merchandise is taken from that scene, where the princesses all wear modern garb inspired by their franchises. It is one of the moments where aesthetically you are tempted to roll your eyes, but from the industry side of things you are tempted to give a standing ovation. The Wreck it Ralph franchise is meta to begin with, where the first film is rooted in early video game culture and characters like Pac Man and Q*Bert wandering in the background. By setting up the expectation for meta humor and commentary and by expanding the narrative world into the modern internet, the studio can include its many other franchises within it without it seeming forced. 

Since the scene had a natural narrative justification and meta humor is fun, the academic in me does not have an issue with the shameless merchandising opportunity. What caused me pause is the actual conversation Vanelope has with the princesses. The central joke is that they interrogate Vanelope to find out if she is a princess by asking her funny questions based off of clichés from the previous fairy tales. The central question comes from Rapunzel who asks her, “did everyone assume all your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up?” This is a wink and a nod to the many feminist criticisms that have been lobbed (legitimately) at the Disney princesses over the years. The problem is that Disney at this point is so aware of these criticisms that they have done this joke already. In fact, a version of this joke has appeared many, many times. Hercules (1997), Mulan (1999), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), Brave (Pixar, 2012) and Frozen (2014) all have jokes based on the sexist history of the narrative where the heroine is aware of the gender bias working against her (this may also occur in The Princess and the Frog (2009), but a specific example escapes me). By presenting it as a fresh joke in Ralph Breaks the Internet, it is almost a step back in Disney’s longer feminist evolution, which is only harmful in the fact that they advertise it as a step forward. In many ways it distracts from the stronger narrative of Vanelope finding a strong female role model in Shank, voiced, by Gal Godot, where no mention needs to be made of Shank’s gender. For me, that particular forward-thinking narrative is more in line with the movie that I still think demonstrates this difference best, which is Moana (2016). I therefore feel it is worthwhile to return to the film as a point of comparison. In Moana, the feminist interventions are all rooted in the actions in the narrative rather than the commentary in the dialogue.  Luckily for me, I did this already outlined some of these interventions back in 2016, and therefore beg your indulgence as I reprint excerpts from the far more casual (and enthusiastic) blog post I wrote about the film at the time. I reprint this only to point out the many things I feel Moana does that the scene in Ralph Breaks the Internet fails to do, therefore making it a stronger feminist model to follow for the future. Recognizing the issue was the first step, but now that the studio has done this multiple times, it is more important that they write narratives like Moana’s where the act on those realizations. 

Excerpt from “Bright Young Women Ready to Stand: Moana,” by Lilly Holman, November 22nd, 2016:

Moana is “Let It Go” the movie. Moana is the gift to all the young women who have stuck with the studio. Moana is a gift to all the new young women who will watch it over their Thanksgiving school break. Moana is a modern princess in that she is not a princess she is a wayfinder. And I promise this is not hyperbole. 

Ok, so you know the obvious things that make Moana more of a feminist princess: she is an explorer, she doesn’t have a love interest, she has thighs. But that is merely scratching the surface. First, let’s look at the big picture. Moana is presented with two options for her life: her safe option is literally staying home and becoming chief or option two is choosing to throw caution to the wind and adventuring into the ocean to save the world. What is important to note here is that she is being groomed for greatness regardless of her supernatural adventure. You don’t have to save the world to be a strong woman in Moana’s world. 

Now let’s look at her sidekicks. If I asked what you remembered from Frozen beyond the melody to “Let It Go,” I’m almost certain you’d say the talking snowman. He dominated the marketing and the merchandizing. He stole the scenes he was in. Moana’s sidekicks are not like that. First of all, they are silent. Pua is adorable, but only in 10 minutes of the movie. Hei Hei is hilarious, but he is truly merely comic relief. The creators actually let Moana be the star of the show and it feels so good. Now, we get to Maui.

Maui, the demigod Moana travels with, is a little more complicated. He threatens the show a little bit seeing as he is being played by the effortlessly charming Dwane “The Rock” Johnson, but to The Rock’s credit, he never falls into Olaf territory. In fact, Maui is kept just obnoxious and unlikable enough to keep Moana as the hero. By doing so, he also becomes his own representation of a type of sexism. First, there is his song “You’re Welcome” where he literally demands that Moana thank him for all the amazing things he has done for the world. His ego is unstoppable and he literally underestimates Moana because she is not him. While he may literally demand that he be the star of the show, we the viewers and the creators never actually let him. We do get some lovely Maui backstory and he does get friendlier, but it is all in service to Moana. She helps him find himself. He helps her find her way to save the world. When given the chance for him to save the world, he fails: There is also the climax of the movie. At one point earlier in the film, Maui makes Moana be “bait,” a role every sad token female has had to play at some point in her life. It proves only mildly effective and is portrayed as ridiculous the whole time. Moana should not be dressed in shells and incapacitated. It is therefore quite the amazing turnaround when Maui oh so quietly takes on the role of bait as he distracts Te Ka so Moana can return the heart of Te Fiti. Once again, Moana is the star of this film. 

Lastly, and on the same note as Maui’s song, two of the major villains of this movie (Te Ka is a different story which would take time and spoilers to explain) are men exhibiting some of the traits of the modern patriarchy mentioned above. First is Moana’s father who is so concerned for Moana’s safety and tradition that he does not want her to venture out and explore. He is relatively benign, but backwards all the same. The second is the fabulous Lalotei who like Maui, has an ego so large he cannot care about anything beyond himself and the objects he collects. These are the type of obstacles Moana has to fight and while it is not insignificant that they are both male, it is not shoved in our face either. 

Compare these men now to the women of Moana. It is not just Moana, with her quick wit, charm, incredible climbing, jumping, oar wielding and wonderfully messy hair, but it is also her wacky and funny Grandma who knows exactly how to point Moana in the right direction. It is the women of this movie who hold the power, but they do without bragging about it. This is best encompassed in the moment of the movie that got me hooked. That is when Moana’s mostly quiet mother catches Moana running away. Instead of stopping her, she quickly helps her pack. It is entirely unnecessary to the plot in that Moana was perfectly capable of running by herself. It is her mother’s blessing that makes this moment so powerful though. Not only is Moana striking out on her own as a modern woman, she is doing so with the encouragement and help of the women who have come before her. 

Repost: “This Show May Not Be For You: How the PSA Before 13 Reasons Why Complicates as Much as it Clarifies”

This post is a repost of a October 14th, 2018 blog entry I wrote for the blog Playback. You can find the original post and access other Playback articles at the link here: http://playback.wisc.edu/2018/10/14/this-show-may-not-be-for-you-how-the-13-reasons-why-psa-complicates-as-much-as-it-clarifies/

When you start 13 Reasons Why Season 2, you are required to watch a series of friendly-faced actors from the show warn you about the content to come. While a content warning is nothing new, 13 Reasons Why stands out because this drawn out, well-produced content warning stems from the controversy surrounding the show’s previous season. Graphically depicting suicide and sexual assault, the show was accused of insensitively putting teens into a position of grappling with issues that they were unable to handle or even accused of glamorizing said issues to the point where teens in crisis may want to copy the tragedies portrayed on screen. While this outcry was huge, it was overshadowed by the show’s success. Despite the possible dangers of the show, teens watched and engaged and Netflix, the show’s producer, had no incentive to cancel or alter the show beyond the aforementioned PSA. 

What is worth noting from a media-studies point-of-view is how this show was forced to define itself for its audiences and how such a definition can be at odds with what is actually happening in the show. “13 Reasons Why is a fictional series that tackles, tough real-world issues, taking a look at sexual assault, substance abuse, suicide, and more,” Justin Prentice, who plays the show’s main villain, Bryce, tells the camera.  “By shedding a light on these difficult topics, we hope our show can help viewers start a conversation,” Katherine Langford who plays the show’s tragic heroine, Hannah, adds. 

“Start a conversation.” This is the key line within the careful wording that stands out as the show’s primary justification for itself. The goal according to this PSA is not to entertain, but to educate, hence the tackling of “tough real-world issues.” They dig themselves into a hole with this, however, because so many of the reasons the show “works” are because of its ability to entertain. The central premise fits the structure of a serialized TV show quite neatly. There is a mystery to be solved, “Why did Hannah kill herself?”, clues related to that mystery (the 13 tapes), and these two factors divide up into 13 distinct chapters (one per tape). 

Even beyond the plot structure, the characters themselves fit into popular TV convention. Hannah before she dies is a young, sympathetic hipster with a strong moral compass and a knack for wit. Clay, our protagonist, combines the romantic hero and the anti-hero since the mystery surrounding his past is kept from us until the very end. We know that Clay was in love with Hannah, but we don’t know if they ever hooked up. Since Clay is one of the tapes, there is a strong possibility he did something to hurt Hannah. It becomes a perverse combination of will they or won’t they combined with an unreliable protagonist who may turn out to be the greatest villain of the story. Is Clay Jim from The Office or Don from Mad Men? Stay tuned to find out! Meanwhile, the show is populated with compelling side characters whose roles become more and more central as the show continues. As each tape is played, we learn that characters previously just seen in the background or who said hi as Clay passed by, have complicated backstories and could be the key factor in this entire mystery. Such a structure is also a tried and true TV trope and has been used to great effect in Netflix’s other series like Orange is the New Black. 

While this analysis is partly evaluative, the qualities outlined here do show how much 13 Reasons Why borrows from existing, effective television conventions. Its creators are story-telling savvy and the proof is in the show’s popularity. It does not, however, answer the question about whether the show’s an effective educational tool, which it claims to want to be. While I certainly do not have the credentials to speak to how the show effects teens’ mental health, I do see some contradictions in how the show presents itself creatively and how it presents its well-meaning PSAs. For example, the actor who plays Clay, Dylan Minnette, reads out an earnest list of adults teens can talk to if they are struggling, including most notably, a school counselor. It is a key plot point of the show however that the school counselor is of no help for Hannah and is part of the reason she ends up killing herself. It is one of the show’s most chilling commentaries about our current school system, but the PSA reveals that maybe the students who rely on these systems are not the best audience for the commentary seeing as they still may need to rely on these counselors for their own struggles. There is also season 1’s finale which has the unenviable job of creating compelling reasons to return to a show whose titular central issue has been “solved.” While most of the criticism has been directed at the show’s decision to graphically portray Hannah’s suicide, the finale also includes another student’s suicide attempt and yet another student’s efforts to begin to compile a weapons arsenal in his room. It is in these decisions that the show seems to exploit tragedy more explicitly. While the showrunners had a cavalcade of reasons they used to explain why they showed Hannah’s death, these other two plot points are very clearly used as cliffhangers. You have to return in season 2 to find out if the first student survived or if the second used his arsenal against his classmates. While worrying about the fate of a character is included in the very word “cliffhanger,” here it is confusing what the show’s purpose is to include these incredibly terrifying and difficult scenarios. Is it to start a conversation or to get kids back to watch the show? Can it be both? Is it responsible for it to be both? 

While it is not revolutionary for a teen drama to include difficult material, think Degrassi, 90210, or even the show listed next to 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, Riverdale, 13 Reasons Why has struck a nerve. I would argue it is partly due to the high quality of the show. If you are more emotionally invested in the characters and “believe” it more, the show’s tragedy will have a greater effect on you. With great power, however, comes great responsibility and based off the shows current identity crisis, the showrunners have yet to figure out what to do with that power. 

Repost: Ignoring Edna’s Wishes: Looking Back at Pixar’s Technological History in The Incredibles 2

This post is a repost of a July 13th, 2018 blog entry I wrote for the blog Playback. You can find the original post and access other Playback articles at the link here: http://playback.wisc.edu/2018/07/13/ignoring-ednas-wishes-looking-back-at-pixars-technological-history-in-the-incredibles-2/

I typically stick to the advice of Edna Mode, the iconic super suit designer voiced by Brad Bird in his 2004 Pixar film The Incredibles. For example, I never wear capes. The bigger problem is, however, that Edna is a creative and I study film history. As a result, I frequently have to ignore one piece of her advice for professional reasons: Edna refuses to look back. For her, “it distracts from the now.” But looking back helps us appreciate her 2018 starring vehicle, The Incredibles 2 (also directed by Bird) even more. I therefore hope E will indulge me this time.

Ask any Incredibles 2 ticket holder where their super suit is, and you learn quickly that a good portion of the audience is already emotionally invested in this film. With that in mind, even the most enthusiastic audience may be more aware of the quotes or the characters than they are the technology behind these films. It can be very easy to forget that these beloved stories were generated by computers programmed by engineers. Without a degree in computer science, it is therefore hard to know what exactly changed in the 14 years between the two films. I suggest focusing on three things: water, hair, and lighting. 

The technology side of Pixar chose to focus on each of these elements respectively in Finding Nemo (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2003), Brave (dir. Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews, 2012), and Monsters University (dir. Dan Scanlon, 2013). Their work in each of these films means that there is a distinct difference between how each of these elements looks before these films came out and after. Rather than taking a teleological view that argues they look better now, I would simply say that these elements look more realistic now. In fact, one could also argue that the reason it so hard to know exactly where the technology has improved is due to the fact that the studio has always worked extremely well with what they have been given. They have done this by taking on stories and looks they know they can work with rather than working on movies out of their computers’ reach. They therefore waited to work with water until Finding Nemo just one year before The Incredibles. Once they were able to produce a manageable ocean for Nemo, they were able to provide an ocean for Elastigirl and the kids to crash into in the first Incredibles. The legacy continues into the sequel as they include superfluous water fixtures in the Parrs’ new house for comic effect and elaborate water sequences during the climactic yacht sequence. 

Hair is even more complicated than water. It requires computer manipulation of thousands of strands in a way that matches the random way a real person’s scalp behaves. The studio had a breakthrough in Brave with the protagonist Merida’s unruly red locks. That was the culmination of a longer process of advancement with more complicated hair styles as the studio progressed. In the first Incredibles, you’ll see that Violet’s hair is always either pulled back or covering her face with all the strands functioning as one unit. It becomes a defining character trait, but also avoids any intermediate stage that would require more unruly behavior of the strands. 

Finally, there is lighting. Lighting is a subtler device to look at because the studio has never been seriously hampered by their lighting abilities. Their films have always been well lit, and the technology’s immaturity is not as obvious as with other elements. Then in 2013 Pixar debuted the Global Illuminations Lighting System in both Monsters University and the short film released with it, The Blue Umbrella (dir. Saschka Unseld, 2013). The system enables computer generated light to bounce off surfaces in a photorealistic fashion. In Monsters University, you can see this in the way the seasons change on campus and in The Blue Umbrella, Unseld uses the system to play with your assumptions. The first shots of the film’s city look like live action photographs, which Unseld then proceeds to bring to life, revealing their animated origins. It is a significant technological achievement and in the later films, you can see a more photorealistic look and environments that change more readily due to atmosphere and time of day. 

While all three of these elements come together in many of Incredibles 2’s larger set pieces, it is a smaller scene that really shows the changes in lighting and hair. In the middle of the film, Bob and the kids eat breakfast. The light pouring into the kitchen is soft and warm, indicating a sunny early morning. The lighting matches the happiness of the scene because Bob has figured out how to teach Dash math, which is the first triumph of his new stay-at-home mission. Violet, however, stands out as unhappy since the government has brainwashed her crush, Tony, to forget about her. Her darker clothes contrast with the lighting, but the eye is drawn to her terribly unkempt hair, which stands up in a large frizz. This is the opposite of her shiny, predictable locks from the first film. The everyday nature of the image distracts from the technological development, however, so it is easy to take for granted. The key is that Bird is not using the new tech to wow us, but instead to tell a more relatable story. The hair foreshadows the rest of the scene as it turns from idyllic to comedic. Violet rages against her father and fails to destroy her super suit in a variety of spectacular ways. Bob’s and Dash’s confused amusement continues to match the otherwise peaceful environment before the kids leave for school. In the end, while the action scenes in the film are awe-inspiring, it is quiet scenes like this one that clearly demonstrate the studio’s and the medium’s comfortable maturity both in storytelling and in technology. 

Repost: The Glow of 7TH HEAVEN

The following post is a repost of show notes I wrote for a October 23rd, 2018 screening of Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven for the UW Cinematheque. You can find a copy of the original post here: http://cinema.wisc.edu/blog?page=2

When Hollywood transitioned to sound in the late 1920s, there was a sense of panic among theorists that the high artistic achievements of the medium so far would be lost. When you watch a film like 7th Heaven (1927) released the same year as The Jazz Singer (1927), it is much easier to understand what the theorists were so afraid of losing. Directed by Frank Borzage and starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, the film epitomizes both silent Hollywood romance and silent Hollywood melodrama.

“Chico…Diane…Heaven.” The three words that replace “I love you” in the film’s script also represent Borzage’s holy trinity within the film. The theme of divinity permeates both the plot and the style as the central couple navigates being poor and in love in Paris. The style is one of the major take-aways from the film: everything glows, especially scenes like the angelic shot of Diane in her white dress in the window. By playing with lighting and including such halos, Borzage paints a convincingly appealing picture of Chico and Diane’s world, even as the dialogue deems it downtrodden. We believe it when Diane calls their 7th floor apartment “heaven” since it is lit as such.

The style also adds credence to Chico’s development throughout the film: even as he declares himself an atheist, God is seemingly looking out for him in the form of the filmmaker. By the time he converts, it feels obvious since we have seen a deity there the whole time in the narrative coincidences and the literal halos.

Chico and Diane are two characters made for each other, who help each other ascend both socially and physically. In Gaynor’s case, the ascent is physical: According to a most charming anecdote, Borzage first cast the two actors together because Gaynor was so tiny, and Farrell was so big. They fit together, yet the size comparison helps emphasize Gaynor’s vulnerability (see the shot where she is dwarfed by his pillows in bed) or accentuate his when he crouches to her level for an embrace. While there is plenty of drama in terms of Diane’s evil sister and Chico’s military service, the wonder of 7th Heaven takes place in these middle scenes, when we can just witness their love and Borzage’s faith in their goodness.

Watching as a modern audience, there are many preconceptions that must be left at the theater doors. More than anything else, the plot, especially the final third, is fairly ridiculous and more than a little implausible. Much like many melodramas, it is fraught with coincidence, and there is both a sense that the world is out to completely destroy our two protagonists’ happiness or to save them, depending on the moment. For example, there is nothing more inconvenient in silent cinema than the pesky call to war, especially at exactly the worst moment.

Meanwhile, while the central pairing is one of the iconic Hollywood duos, it is also a portrayal of a woman and a heterosexual romance that would be considered sexist and condescending today. For instance, it is always a little jarring to hear Farrell confidently declare to Gaynor, “Leave the big thinking to me!” But that being said, Gaynor’s ready agreement comes with a healthy dose of indulgence in his arrogance as well. Her charm is plenty enough to make up for her size and he is as emotionally dependent on her as she is physically dependent on him. Meanwhile, while he took her in, it was her perseverance that made her survive in the first place. In fact, Farrell and Gaynor's star power and Borzage’s deft hand behind the camera makes it so that, even with these small road bumps, it is still a magical journey to ascend the seven flights of stairs with the three of them.

Repost: Expanding the Canon: THE RED KIMONA & THE CURSE OF QUON GWON

The following post is a repost of show notes I wrote for an October 10th, 2018 screening of Dorothy Davenport and Walter Lang’s The Red Kimona and Marion E. Wong’s The Curse of Quon Gwon for the UW Cinematheque. You can find a copy of the original post here: http://cinema.wisc.edu/blog?page=2

When thinking of great American silent films, it is common to only think of the names of the canonized greats. For example, Griffith, DeMille, Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd can all be listed without their first names and a good portion of those reading this will know exactly to whom I’m referring. That being said, if that same reader were asked to name other silent film directors, I’m sure the list would be much shorter. The limited sphere of this perception is due to two competing factors, neither of which is the implied reader’s ignorance. First, the names listed were certainly valorized in the years these films were released and have always been on the lips of movie fans. Second, they also represent a catalogue of films that happened to have been preserved partially due to that valorization. This issue of preservation is the more important of the two since so many silent films were lost due to the fragility of nitrate and the lack of consistent preservation standards at the time they were released. It means that even if we wanted to look beyond these names in the past, it has been too difficult or impossible. It is therefore a luxury now that new digital preservation techniques and wider spheres of inquiry are allowing many forgotten or “lost” films to be rereleased and finally shown to a modern public. The Red Kimona (1925), directed by Walter Lang and Dorothy Davenport, and The Curse of Quon Gwon(1926), directed by Marion E. Wong, are two of these treasures, and unlike the films made by the list above, were directed (or co-directed) by women and, in the case of Wong, directed by the woman thought-to-be the first Asian-American director regardless of gender.

Both these films deal intensely with the issues surrounding their directors’ gender and race. The Red Kimona is a shockingly relevant piece about the sacrifices women shouldn’t have to make and the violence they shouldn’t have to endure in order to work in show business or, in the case of our protagonist, to work at all. Davenport herself makes this abundantly clear in the very rare instance of direct address in the frame narrative of the film, where she “speaks” to the audience about how this is based on a true story and that there are women like our protagonist out there who we should both pity and take care of. It is easy to say that dealing with sexual harassment has always been an issue for women; it is quite different to see it played out almost 80 years before even the invention of Twitter, let alone the introduction of #MeToo.

Meanwhile, The Curse of Quon Gwon , a movie that only exists as a 35 minute fragment of its original feature length, is also about the female experience, but in a very different context than Red Kimona. The female protagonist of Curse, is navigating the more traditional customs of her new Chinese mother-in-law after she has been solidly immersed in western culture. It is a push and pull between the “ancient” and the “modern,” but with the “modern” meaning 1926. It is therefore a unique cultural artifact where we not only get to see a culture ridiculously underrepresented on screen, but we get to witness two different iterations of it and the struggles of westernization at a personal level. What is even more remarkable: the intertitles of Curse have been lost so we experience this all without words, yet it seems like nothing is lost at all.

While these films are remarkable for reasons beyond the identities of their directors, it is still worth taking a step back and noting the fresh perspective it allows us on Hollywood at the turn of the century. When Manohla Dargis wrote about these films on the occasion of July’s BAMcinématek series, “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers,” she wrote how:

Women have a history of being hidden in plain sight, whether they’re written out of even recent histories or yet more studio executives insist that that they can’t find suitable women to hire. A series like “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers” is a crucial part of this revisionism, a corrective to our collective amnesia.

As Dargis suggests, the issue of racial and gender diversity in Hollywood is certainly nothing new, and when looking as far back as the 1920s, it is easy to overlook it or dismiss it as a product of the time, hence the “collective amnesia.” Such amnesia causes us to forget that there were in fact women working in high level creative spheres in Hollywood during the silent era, especially in the early years. Media historian Erin Hill also covers this forgotten chapter of film history when she mentions how in the early 1910s, “in this informal work system, a few women infiltrated such male-dominated fields … [and] ascended from the lower ranks of film companies to roles as writers, directors, producers, and production owners.” The “informal work system” Hill is referring to was the less standardized Hollywood where roles on set were more fluid and open to all, including the women present. She outlines how the increased standardization of the industry was one of the key factors that forced out female creatives. While Red Kimona and Curse of Quon Gwon came out 10 years after the era Hill is referring to and after systems of standardization were beginning to be in place, the women who worked on these films carry on this legacy of female authorship that began in the 1910s. In fact, Hill references Dorothy Arzner, co-writer of Red Kimona, specifically as one of the women who learned every aspect of the trade when she first arrived in Hollywood in the 1910s. Therefore, when we appreciate these films anew, not only are we expanding our canon of great films, they are giving us primary evidence of the work of female artists too easy to assume never existed in the first place. 

Repost: Stretching Out the Suspense: SORRY, WRONG NUMBER

The following post is a repost of show notes I wrote for a February 14th, 2018 screening of Anatole Litvak's Sorry Wrong Number for the UW Cinematheque. You can find a copy of the original post here: http://cinema.wisc.edu/blog?page=4

Many unanswered questions remain when you finish listening to “Sorry, Wrong Number,” an episode of the CBS radio show Suspense written by Louise Fletcher in 1943. Who is this woman confined to her bed? Who is her husband and why is he not there? Who are the people on the other end of the wrong number? Why is she so rude so quickly to the poor telephone operators? I’m being suitably vague for the uninitiated among us. That being said, the modern concept of spoilers was a significant consideration for the writers of the film version of Sorry, Wrong Number released in 1948. At that point, the episode of Suspensewas so popular that general audiences would know the storyline. Therefore the filmmakers had a question that was far more important than the ones listed above: How do you entertain an audience with a story centered around suspense when they already know the end?

David Bordwell answers this question in his book Reinventing Hollywood, explaining how you “stretch out the suspense and multiply mysteries without seeming to pad”. The key to this is what Bordwell refers to as “1940s character shading”. The film takes it upon itself to answer all of the unanswered questions from the radio broadcast, exposing the limits of that particular medium while on the other hand highlighting the radio format’s strengths. Limits do not necessarily mean weaknesses, and in many ways the two media have different goals. We have a significant list of unanswered questions at the end of the radio broadcast, but what is most important is the fact that we don’t care. The title of the show was called Suspense and “Sorry, Wrong Number” delivers. All we need to know is that a woman is confined to her bed, a murder is about to happen, and no one is going to help her. That is enough to fill a half hour of escalating frustration and fear, as Mrs. Stevenson encounters increasing levels of incompetence that render the phone, as a method of protection, mute.

With the extra hour to contend with, the filmmakers cannot follow through on the same strategy. Mrs. Stevenson has to be someone beyond a terrified invalid. Her situation has to have a reason for being so dire. What results is a sort of prequel, made up of the flashbacks Bordwell highlights in his book. Not only do these flashbacks create a drama that will make the whole situation almost plausible, it also creates characters out of placeholders. It speaks to the strengths of Agnes Moorehead as an actress that she takes the radio version of Mrs. Stevenson and elevates her beyond just a distressed voice on the phone, but once again, that characterization is not sustainable for a ninety-minute film. By recasting her with Barbara Stanwyck, the film adds a level of mystery that wasn’t there in the radio show. Stanwyck’s previous roles as a femme fatale in Double Indemnity (1944) and a hardened comedienne in Ball of Fire (1941) and The Lady Eve (1941) established her persona as woman who is not quite so innocent. Stanwyck’s casting allows the audience to doubt her as a narrator, which comes into play after her conversation with Dr. Alexander.

As Bordwell elaborates, the casting of Burt Lancaster as a partner for Stanwyck is the key element that makes this a feature-length narrative, rather than a setup that merely serves to give everyone a good jump. The two stars transform the story into a complex marriage plot beyond the drama with the phone. To elaborate further would give too much away, but in the end the casting and the flashbacks expand a rather excellent radio play, that expertly manipulates your emotions and gives you a memorable scare, into a complicated and entertaining mystery film centered not just on the phone, but the people on the end of the line.

Repost: Roller Skates and Existential Crises: IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER

The following post is a repost of show notes I wrote for a December 6th, 2017 screening of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's It’s Always Fair Weather for the UW Cinematheque. You can find a copy of the original post here: http://cinema.wisc.edu/blog?page=5

During one of the major flirtation scenes in It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Ted (Gene Kelly) turns to Jackie (Cyd Charisse), and says: “You’re inhibited.” Coming from Kelly, that is the worst possible insult. Whether it be in Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris, On the Town, The Pirate, or a whole host of other MGM musicals, Gene Kelly would always rather be dancing, and for Kelly, dancing is freedom. Luckily for him, the audience usually has no objections to such a desire. Weather is the third film directed by both Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly and also starring Kelly. Previously the pair worked together on On the Town (1949) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

The two borrow freely from their previous successes in It’s Always Fair Weather. On the Town tells the story of sailors from the Navy on leave for one night in New York, and Weather picks up on the story of three men just out of the Army after World War II is over. While the military may not be the first thought that comes to mind when you think of singing and dancing, it provides a cohesive unit for Kelly to work with in terms of choreography. These men are bonded by circumstance both emotionally and physically which makes them an ideal dance group. In both films, the men are not just members of their military unit, they literally move as a unit. This is seen more obviously in the musical numbers, but it is also apparent in the way they interact with their non-musical environments as well. The mischief that Ted, Doug, and Angie get into in the bar at the very beginning of Weather is only possible through perfect coordination akin to the same choreography as the drunk sequence just a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the allusions to Singin’ in the Rain are not really present (except for Charisse’s green dress) until Ted falls in love. It turns out Gene Kelly in love looks the same in pretty much every movie. Just like Rain, he wanders into the street, bats his eyelashes a bit, and then starts to glide in time with the music and his own sonorous voice. In Rain, his partner is his umbrella and a lamppost with no one out to watch him but one grumpy old man. In Weather, he exchanges a partner for roller-skates and solitude for a crowd, but since he doesn’t seem to care one wit about the crowd, the tone is identical. He is so overflowing with love, he must dance. Nothing else matters and he lets us in on his joy almost by accident.

With these two homages to some of the most joyful movie experiences ever filmed, it would be easy to assume that Weather is a similarly carefree experience. What is odd and notable about the film, however, is the somewhat more subdued tone that envelops even the most exuberant of the musical numbers. The film centers on the reunion of the three soldiers ten years after they have been discharged. Each has moved on from his life as a mischievous, young man and each is dissatisfied with their grown life for different reasons. If the three sailors who had only 24 hours in New York in On the Town had to beat the clock, in It’s Always Fair Weather the clock has beaten the three soldiers. If in Singin’ in the Rain, Kelly was the picture of confidence, in Weather Kelly is the picture of insecurity. If Kelly’s love makes him sing in the face of bad weather in Singin’ in the Rain, in Weather he sings that “she likes me so I like myself.” This translates into other numbers too. If “Make ‘Em Laugh,” the delightfully nonsensical tour de force by Donald O’Connor, was the comedic centerpiece of Rain, in Weather it is Dan Dailey’s drunken charades at the workplace party. In the Rain sequence, O’Connor means to cheer Kelly up, while in Weather, Dailey, beset by marital problems, is so desperate to cheer himself up, he is driven to drink.  Ultimately, while It’s Always Fair Weather has the same bright colors and names on the marquee as Singin’ in the Rain and On the Town, the slight differences reveal its greater kinship to the films of the 1950s that explore the darker side of post-war American life, like Bigger Than Life, All that Heaven Allows, and A Star is Born.

Repost: They're Coming to Get You: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The following post is a repost of show notes I wrote for a November 15th, 2017 screening of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for the UW Cinematheque. You can find a copy of the original post here: http://cinema.wisc.edu/blog?page=5

On its surface there is nothing scary about a middle aged man staggering slowly through a cemetery. He is not grotesque and he is wearing a suit; he is the prime example of unassuming. Yet this man is the first big scare of Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the forerunners of decades of zombie movies made in its image. You’ll forget how harmless said man appeared when he is banging on your car door, blank-faced, and determined to kill you. The late George Romero directed Dead and it is his incredible power of taking the unassuming and making it terrifying that makes Dead iconic. Much like B-level horror movies from the studio era, Romero makes use of a low budget to generate horror from the unexpected and tension from the cinematic.

Most of the plot takes place in one house during one night, as Ben, played by Duane Jones, shelters in place and works to protect himself and the rest of the house’s occupants against the oncoming swarm of the mysterious undead. As the night wears on, Ben and the group (a young woman named Barbara, a family called the Coopers and a teenage couple named Tom and Judy) try to survive and also piece together what on earth is happening through snippets on the radio and TV. The threat of the dead is always there as the zombies linger outside waiting either for the humans to slip up or their numbers to grow strong enough to break through. This ticking time bomb frightens us as much as the zombies themselves. Ben is remarkably competent, but the implications are that he will have to maintain perfection in order to survive the night. Therefore, his competence is a double-edged sword. We can have more faith that he will make it, but we can take no comfort in potentially knowing more than he does. Romero doesn’t give us privileged information and Ben seems to anticipate anything we would. We are forced to fear the unexpected, therefore, and wonder at what window Ben is going to miss or what loophole the dead are going to find. If we were the ones in Ben’s place, there is little chance we could do better than he does and it is all the more likely we would end up like Barbara.

The horror does not just lie in the oncoming dead, however. Jason Zinoman of the New York Times wrote in a reflection about George Romero, that “Romero will always be known for turning hordes of dead people into a new kind of mainstream monster, but what made him a revolutionary artist is that he didn’t let the living off the hook.” As Ben works tirelessly to board up the house, he has to balance his fear of the zombies with the terrifying incompetence of the shell-shocked Barbara and the actively unhelpful blowhard, Harry Cooper. Barbara was our red-herring protagonist, who lives on in the film as mute reminder of our own fear and helplessness. She follows Ben in a catatonic state and even though she is technically another living adult, she must be protected like a child. Cooper, meanwhile, is a different kind of problem. His ego and his selfishness is as life-threatening as the zombies themselves. He is confident that he knows best and refuses to listen to Ben’s sound logic. He also continues to choose what will save his family over what will save the group. While not heavy-handed, the fact that it is 1968 and a middle aged white man is refusing to listen to or care about a young Black man is not insignificant. Neither Cooper nor Ben references the color of Ben’s skin, but the implied racism is there. According to Matt Thompson of NPR’s Code Switch, who in turn cites Joe Kane, “Ben was not originally envisioned as a Black character. But the casting of Duane Jones in the role gave it a societal resonance that later zombie fiction would strive to recreate.” This is present in Ben’s relationship with Cooper, but becomes even more tragic and impactful during the iconic ending that is not worth spoiling here, but maintains chilling relevance to this day.

In his obituary for Romero, director Edgar Wright remarks that “‘Romero’, immediately conjures more images and themes than 99 percent of writer/directors out there.” Night of the Living Dead was the first conjuring of those images and themes and it is remarkably prescient to this day. As the dead walk across our movie and TV screens, it was Romero who released them and warned us with the ever chilling “They’re coming to get you, Barbara…” Get us they did and oddly enough, we are grateful.

Mellow Musings on Some Bad Beginnings

Bad beginnings are weighing heavily on my mind these days, yet I’m still actually surprised I have ended up writing about one in particular. Since there is plenty that I watch that I do not write about, I was surprised when the wheels started turning during “Bad Beginning: Part 2,” the second episode of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.  For context, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, was my favorite book series as a child. This evening, I was watching mostly to indulge my inner 12 year old. I realized slowly, however, that this was not merely a nostalgia trip, but instead a truly appropriate and fitting piece of entertainment for this particular time of our lives. You see, the wheels were turning because I was realizing that A Series of Unfortunate Events is not and has never been merely an amusing study in morbidity or a potential star vehicle for Neil Patrick Harris. No, Events is above all else a celebration of intelligence and that is exactly what the world needs right now.

This is all readily apparent in the climax of “The Bad Beginning: Part 2.” In the climax, Count Olaf, the evil actor intent on stealing the recently orphaned Baudelaire siblings’ fortune, misuses the word “literally.” In the back of the theater where his evil plot is coming to fruition, Gustav and Jacqueline, the mysterious plotters on the side of the orphans, correct him. It is a throw back to an earlier gag where Olaf had made the same mistake, but in this particular moment it is also used to draw the battle lines. The villains do not know the difference between “figuratively” and “literally” and the heroes do. The villains are foolish and the heroes are clever. This is a reflection of the same set of values that caused the Baudelaire orphans’ defining characteristics to be invention (Violet), literacy (Klaus), and the ability to be understood (Sunny, the infant). They are all smarter than their respective ages and that is one of the many reasons we are keen to root for them.

The fact that Olaf is an idiot and not well versed in literary terms is not exactly a novel invention, but there is one character whose lack of intelligence and awareness is notable and important. Mr. Poe, the banker who is the executor of the Baudelaire parents’ will is comedically incompetent, but his incompetence is what gets the Baudelaire orphans in trouble from the get-go. He believes Count Olaf and does not listen to the children when they complain to him. In the Baudelaire’s world, authority figures like Poe are condescending, dumb, and not to be trusted. This is readily apparent in Poe’s audacity to frequently correct the children and more importantly, his attempts to define words to them that they already know.

The defining of words was always my favorite part of the book series when I was younger. Most of the time, the person doing the defining is not in fact Mr. Poe, but Lemony Snicket, the narrator and pseudonym for the author, Daniel Handler. He does not define the obvious words that Mr. Poe does, but instead he defines larger words and literary concepts, like the aforementioned “literally” and as is seen in “The Reptile Room: Part 1,” “dramatic irony.” His definitions and examples are always hilariously funny, but I realize part of the reason I enjoyed them so much as a child were because they were a point of access. If the reader did not know these concepts from the start, they now did and could be on the side of the heroes once again. We, the readers, were not the ignorant villains or authority figures, but instead we got to be the clever members of the conspiracy. The intelligence that is celebrated is therefore not alienating. I had always underestimated Handler’s patience when I was younger and it is only now that I appreciate the power in what I saw as merely humor. Rather than assuming the children reading his books were like his three orphans, he was making sure they could one day share their special talents.

Today, and in the days to come, I fear the Mr. Poes.  I fear the ones too comfortable with their own authority that they underestimate the intelligence of those around them and overestimate their own. I fear also those who would automatically turn off a series that also celebrates vocabulary and label it elitist or distancing. If those people kept watching it they would learn that such a series believes that people are not inherently dumb or smart, but instead, those who are dumb are merely those who will not listen. I am scared that we have our own series of unfortunate events awaiting us, but I also believe that there are those with the patience of Lemony Snicket out there or the passion of Montgomery Montgomery and that in each of us there is a little Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. Surround yourself with people who will define those words for you and who will listen to you when you tell them something is not right. Make sure you also do the same for them. Snicket himself would probably tell you that all hope is lost, but if you read between the lines I think you will see a message that is a whole lot brighter (figuratively). 

Bright Young Women Finally Ready To Stand: Moana

The views expressed below are exclusively my own and not those of the Walt Disney Company. 

More than 20 years ago a little mermaid sang of a world “of bright young woman ready to stand.” That same young woman then falls in love with a man and gives up everything for him making way for her far more fun sidekicks to steal the show. Or at least that is how I remember it (as if I didn’t just watch it again last week). The thing is though, that has long been the pattern with Disney princesses. They have great stories and great music but they themselves are kind of bleh. Bleh is a super academic term for either so virtuous they are boring or so fool hearty they are annoying. Say what you may about forced romantic narratives and body shapes, this has almost been the most destructive thing about Disney princesses. You just don’t really like them.

Now, we’ve made some improvements in more recent films. Mulan is amazing and Merida is fun, but these girls are stuck with the patriarchy to battle and to be quite honest it’s exhausting. Their gender takes priority over them. Also for a lot of modern women, that is not the type of sexism we are battling! I am lucky in that I can honestly say that no one has told me outright “You cannot do this because you are a girl.” Instead, it’s subtler. It’s being overly concerned with my wellbeing. It’s talking over me. It’s men in our life making it all about them. That is not the sexism of ancient China and Scotland. Mulan and Merida are not princesses for us. They are princesses battling battles from an older time.

Now two years ago we got Frozen. It was exciting. Young girls loved it. They mocked older romantic narratives. Clearly these are modern princesses! Except no. Anna is annoying! She makes really dumb decisions and it’s nice that she fights for her sister, but I did not watch the movie and go “Oh my God, that is so ME.” Elsa got pretty damn close. I know you have all heard “Let It Go” a thousand times, but hear me out. There you have a song of a girl busting free of ridiculous standards shoved upon her. She has been literally told all her life that if she loses control she will destroy everything. Now think of that from the context of modern young women who have been told all their lives to do their best and do well in school and go to college all well maintaining skinny bodies and maintaining the right balance of virtuous and slutty. Wasn’t that sentence even just exhausting to read? That’s why I’ve always been a defender of “Let It Go.” That grasp on control is a lot to maintain and I don’t blame the girl for tossing her gloves away. The problem is “Let It Go” is 3 minutes of the movie. Elsa then gets cast as a villain and pushed to the sidelines so that Anna and Kristoff can meet cute and fall in love. So now that all that is out of my system: MOANA.

Moana is “Let It Go” the movie. Moana is the gift to all the young women who have stuck with the studio. Moana is a gift to all the new young women who will watch it over their Thanksgiving school break. Moana is a modern princess in that she is not a princess she is a wayfinder. And I promise this is not hyperbole.

Ok, so you know the obvious things that make Moana more of a feminist princess: she is an explorer, she doesn’t have a love interest, she has THIGHS. But that is merely scratching the surface. First, let’s look at the big picture. Moana is presented with two options for her life: her safe option is literally staying home and becoming chief or option two is choosing to throw caution to the wind and adventuring into the ocean to save the world. What is important to note here is that she is being groomed for greatness regardless of her supernatural adventure. You don’t have to save the world to be a strong woman in Moana’s world.

Now let’s look at her sidekicks. If I asked what you remembered from Frozen beyond the melody to “Let It Go,” I’m like 95% certain you’d say the talking snowman. He dominated the marketing and the merchandizing. He stole the scenes he was in. Moana’s sidekicks are not like that. First of all, they are silent. Pua is adorable, but only in 10 minutes of the movie. Hei Hei is hilarious, but he is truly merely comic relief. The creators actually let Moana be the star of the show and it feels so good. Now, we get to Maui.

Maui, the demigod Moana travels with, is a little more complicated. He threatens the show a little bit seeing as he is being played by the effortlessly charming Dwane “The Rock” Johnson, but to The Rock’s credit, he never falls into Olaf territory. In fact, Maui is kept just obnoxious and unlikable enough to keep Moana as the hero. By doing so, he also becomes his own representation of a type of sexism. First, there is his song “You’re Welcome” where he literally demands that Moana thank him for all the amazing things he has done for the world. His ego is unstoppable and he literally underestimates Moana because she is not him. While he may literally demand that he be the star of the show, we the viewers and the creators never actually let him. We do get some lovely Maui backstory and he does get more friendly, but it is all in service to Moana. She helps him find himself. He helps her find her way to save the world. NOW SPOILERS: when given the chance for him to save the world, he fails. That is then followed by the climax of the movie. At one point earlier in the film, Maui makes Moana be “bait,” a role every sad token female has had to play at some point in her life. It proves only mildly effective and is portrayed as ridiculous the whole time. Moana should not be dressed in shells and incapacitated (is this a subtle dig at Ariel’s shell bra? A girl can dream…) It is therefore quite the amazing turnaround when Maui oh so quietly takes on the role of bait as he distracts Te Ka so Moana can return the heart of Te Fiti. Once again, Moana is the star of this film. END OF SPOILERS.

Lastly, and on the same note as Maui’s song, two of the major villains of this movie (Te Ka is a different story which would take time and spoilers to explain) are men exhibiting some of the traits of the modern patriarchy mentioned above. First is Moana’s father who is so concerned for Moana’s safety and tradition that he does not want her to venture out and explore. He is relatively benign, but backwards all the same. The second is the fabulous Tamatoa who like Maui, has an ego so large he cannot care about anything beyond himself and the objects he collects. These are the type of obstacles Moana has to fight and while it is not insignificant that they are both male, it is not shoved in our face either.

Compare these men now to the women of Moana. It is not just Moana, with her quick wit, charm, incredible climbing, jumping, oar wielding and wonderfully messy hair, but it is also her wacky and funny Grandma who knows exactly how to point Moana in the right direction. It is the women of this movie who hold the power, but they do so without bragging about it. This is best encompassed in the moment of the movie that got me hooked. That is when Moana’s mostly quiet mother catches Moana running away. Instead of stopping her, she quickly helps her pack. It is entirely unnecessary to the plot in that Moana was perfectly capable of running by herself. It is her mother’s blessing that makes this moment so powerful though. Not only is Moana striking out on her own as a modern woman, she is doing so with the encouragement and help of the women who have come before her.

I am going to be so proud to show this movie some day to the young women in my life. It is a movie I didn’t realize I really needed until I saw it. I love Disney princesses, but I needed Moana. Moana deals with the whole host of problems that come with being a young woman and a young person. I saw myself in her and it felt amazing. We’ve needed a Disney movie that has a healthy balance of fighting sexism without making it the point of the movie. We’ve final found it. Please, if you know any young women in your life who may be battling male egos every day or worrying more about their immediate safety than their bright futures or who worried about being called numbers instead of by their name, take them to a movie that shouts its heroine’s name loud and proud and lets her shine. It’s taken us awhile to get here, but I promise the journey is worth the wait. 

"Look at the fireworks!": May Blog Revitalization Part 1

Hello Everybody!

I have had the craziest April! I feel like this is the first time I have sat down in about 3 weeks. So, I have learned an incredible amount this past month and I’m going to do my best to both revitalize this blog and document it over the coming days/weeks. The bigger picture includes 2 film festivals and a visit to my favorite paradise, Disney World. Now that later visit may seem out of place when studying film and TV from a more academic point of view, but I would argue that I have learned as much, if not more, about entertainment from learning the background machinations of Disney parks and observing the Disney cast members than many viewings of (some) classic films. It’s an obsession, but I promise it’s an interesting one.

On that note, I want to kick off this May blog rebirth with an allegory that starts with a simple fact: I really love fireworks. Specifically, I really love the nightly fireworks at Disney World because they include a Jiminy Cricket narration, but I really will take any fireworks. I jokingly like to claim the reason I love fireworks is that I was scared of loud noises as a kid, so they are still a novelty for me. Most of the time, that is reasonably accurate, but as I was watching them this year, I had a slightly deeper realization. If you take a minute and start comparing fireworks to the experience of watching film, you may realize that looked at in the right light (no pun intended), fireworks are a perfectly condensed version of the film watching experience.

Ok, I know you are all true friends and readers if you stuck with me after that last statement, but bear with me. Fireworks are visual spectacles designed with the aim to evoke an emotion in their viewers. In the case of the Disney fireworks, the spectacle is tied to music and preexisting stories and characters. When we strip the show down, we can see what is foundational to the experience and what is the cherry on top. By doing that, we can also do that with film and suddenly I think you can start to think very differently about film as a whole.

So, the foundation of the fireworks is that visual spectacle I mentioned. They are big; they are sparkly; they are pretty. At the very least, they will hopefully get an “awww” out of you. To Disney though, that’s 4th of July amateur hour. To take them to the next level, they add music so that the explosions are perfectly tied to emotional cues. We therefore start to associate the big, sparkly things with how we feel and can even start to assign personalities to them. In the Disney show, it is a small step to add the Disney canon’s characters and narrations on top of the music and the sights. The audience is already feeling the stronger base emotions based off of what we are watching and hearing. With that base in place, the familiar songs and messages about wishing on stars and believing are just a little bit easier to be on board with. It is easy because we are already feeling the way Disney wants us to feel. This overall is what makes them a satisfying entertainment experience. We go away feeling something different then we felt before and that is because of layers of careful planning by the architects behind the scenes.

While adding Disney to this experience makes it all feel a little perverse based off their current omnipresence, it really consists of the same fundamental principles behind good filmmaking. My favorite filmmakers work behind the scenes to make their stories land more convincingly. It’s why more conventional narratives can be told again and again and some movies can be The Philadelphia Story and some are The Room. The power does not lie exactly in the story being told, but in how it is told. There are layers to great film and the answers lie beyond the script in things like the acting, the production design, the score, exc. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly has its iconic music. Bringing Up Baby has Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Up has the color magenta. These elements connect with you on a visceral level so that you can actually be invested in the story. Those more visceral elements make it almost impossible not to be invested in what you are watching. It’s why the best filmmakers feel more akin to puppet masters. To me, this the most wonderful and most mysterious element of film. It’s why Titanic leaves me flat, but Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life makes me sob. Disney taps into that better than most. Ultimately, it’s the fireworks and oh boy do I love watching them.

The House that Walt, Ashman/Menken, and John Built: The Zootopia Revolution

All right everybody, we need to talk about Zootopia. This one is a game changer. This one should not go quietly into the night and it’s not exactly for the reasons you think. Better scribes than me can talk and should talk about its handling of current race relations in this country, its realistically strong female lead, its treatment of fear mongering, and the list goes on. What I want to talk about is the fact that it handled these issues at all. By taking on these sensitive issues thoughtfully and methodically without shoving it in your face like a “Once upon a time…” moral, Disney animation proved they were able to take huge steps forward in content much like Pixar has recently proved they can take huge steps forward in the look of animation.

I was once got very lucky and got the chance to ask a famous live action director who had worked with Pixar a question. Me being me, I did not ask him about the film that had just been screened, but I did ask him what it was like to work with Pixar and would he go back to animation. He said he loved working with Pixar, but that he looked forward to animation that broke the mold and handled more adult content. His answer touched on a very sensitive issue when analyzing animation and that is the question of who is it for and what limitations does that impose on the artists who create animated films? It seems obvious now to say that the American animation industry’s primary audience is children, but what is less obvious is that it doesn’t have to be or more importantly, that children should not be underestimated in what they can handle. I say this with the full knowledge that there have been animated film’s released intended for more adult audiences, but never on a very large scale. They have tended to live in the worlds of independent and experimental cinema.  For some reason they have never caught on. Idealistically, however, there is nothing dictating what animation can and cannot be other than layers and layers of tradition. It therefore seems that it is up to the larger companies to break these traditions to prove to audiences (or show that audiences understand) that animation has larger potential and to be honest, I did not think it would be Disney.

Let me rephrase that. I did not think it would be Disney who would break this particular tradition. Kids are Disney’s market and I actually don’t think that is an issue, but now that they are playing with that a bit I’m excited. What I do think happened though (and this I do give myself credit for kind of seeing coming) is that Disney Animation right now is the most innovative group of storytellers out there. They have stiff competition with Pixar and Laica, but both those studios have hit a bit of a lull and Disney is in the midst of a revitalization. American animation has a long history of cycling formulas and many of them have come from Disney Animation itself. For a long while you had the classic Disney fairy tales that Walt himself was behind. Those understandably set the gold standard for American long-form animation for the first half of the 20th century and you don’t see much variation within in it. Those were beautiful, classic tales, but did they did not test boundaries in terms of what message their content relayed to their audience. They did not stretch themselves far beyond the classic stories. They did, though, make animated film a viable commercial art form and the work is beautiful and fun to watch. Once Walt died, however, and the studio was left with a power vacuum, it was difficult to maintain the same high level of quality while keeping the same format. It took the Disney Renaissance in the 90s and the revolution of fusing such films with Broadway musicals that kicked off the second cycle. Those films stretched the classic formula dramatically in terms of format and did push their boundaries a bit when it came to message. It was like suddenly they realized that maybe the princesses should have brains and that being yourself is a nice thing to tell kids. These messages were not nuanced however. They are in your face so that the 5 year old in the audience took that message away with an issue. Safe to say, though, that like their predecessors, this format worked beautifully. It took far less time for the third cycle, however, and when Pixar released Toy Story in 1995 they were quite vocal about not wanting to do a musical in the same vein as Disney was doing. Instead, Toy Story kicked off a long string of emotionally complex storytelling that really delved into human relationships and how we feel and react to our everyday lives. They were certainally more nuanced than the Disney Renaissance films, but they dealt with concepts that can’t really be argued with. Fear is powerful, but not as powerful as love. A father’s love is a beautiful thing. We need to allow our children to grow up. I treasure theses messages more than anything, but like I said, they are not really cocktail conversation pieces and they are starting to feel less fresh. The Good Dinosaur is a heart wrenchingly beautiful film, but many of its plot points feel overplayed. To me that really sets the stage for Zootopia. It is the opposite of stale.

While Zootopia may not exceed Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur in terms of form, it does take a leap with content. It proves there is a place in animation for far more cerebral and intellectual issues. Zootopia is a movie that makes you think more than it makes you feel and while this can be somewhat a red flag when it comes to live action filmmaking, in animation there is so much bias to the latter, it feels like it’s making up for a deficit. The crux, I think, is figuring out its appeal for children. There are very few, if any, laughs directly targeted at the 5 year olds in the audience. There is minimal slapstick and no fart guns. This is incredibly refreshing for the adults in the audience (or at least for this adult), but it could hinder Zootopia’s success and it also begs the question of who these movies are for. One thing Pixar is incredibly adept at is appealing to both sides of the age gap and in the pursuit of fresher, more intellectual content, the kids should not be left behind. This is all about proving the incredible range and possibilities for animation, rather than advocating for replacing other forms. That being said, what I really hope for is that kids love it just as much as adults so the world can see that we do not always have to dumb things down for those of us who haven’t hit puberty yet.  I’m going to be increasingly curious of it’s lasting impact and kids’ reception to it, but I think Zootopia is an incredible first step in what could be a wonderfully fruitful journey. 

Taylor and Me

Before Taylor Swift won her Grammy last night, I legitimately spent all day trying to write a piece that eloquently defended her and expressed why I was so incredibly angry at Kanye West’s lyrics about her. To be honest, by the time the Grammys started I had pretty much given up and was going to leave it to be hopefully forgotten as West continued to flounder and Swift continued to shine. After the Grammys, though, I want to return to my task.

Now, I’m going to say upfront that everything I’m about to say has nothing to do with whether 1989 deserved album of the year or not. It hurt to see Kendrick snubbed again and to be fully honest I was rooting for him. I love 1989 and Swift, but from all accounts Lamar’s music is truly revolutionary. I’m really not qualified to say and therefore please do not take my words as an endorsement of the actual Grammy.

Ok, throwing the shiny gold trophy aside, Swift’s acceptance speech was by far my favorite moment of the night and to me her words were incredibly important and powerful. When I first started listening to Taylor Swift, I was 13. I was a young woman who did well in school, who followed all the rules, who had a good group of girlfriends, no love life, and was not part of the popular crowd. At the time, I was a big country fan and listened to XM’s Highway 16 on a regular basis. They did a feature at the time called “Driver’s Ed” and when new albums came out where they would play the whole album on Tuesday (I think?) nights. I was listening one fateful Tuesday when they highlighted this new young woman named Taylor Swift and played her entire first album. The point they kept emphasizing was that she was 16 and had written all her own music. I was hooked.

I listened to that album over and over again. “Our Song” was my happy song. “Picture to Burn” was my badass song. “Tied Together with a Smile” was my crying song. “The Outside” did more to help my self-esteem than any song I had ever heard or have listened to since. If you want to get inside the mind of an insecure teenage girl, please listen to that song. Meanwhile, her entire album became a sort of safety blanket for me. Not only did it make me feel better about myself, it made me believe in love and it felt real. She was funny and warm and seemed to genuinely care about her fans. That being said, in a weird way she always felt exclusively like mine. I was growing up in New Jersey where there were not a lot of country fans so I constantly had to explain who she was. It’s hard to believe now when she’s opening the Grammys and selling out stadiums, but back then she was the little unknown artist and I felt like her advocate. Always, though, the focus was that she was young and she was writing her own music. In some ways I feel like those who did notice her then had far more respect for her than many of those who cheer for her now.

Safe to say her amateur phase did not last. That being said, it did take longer than you would think for people to catch on. I remember when she started to date a Jonas brother and suddenly many more young women my age knew her name. In some ways that kind of killed me. “She’s more than that! She’s not a Disney Channel star! She’s cool; I promise!” It was a sad omen of how defined by her love life she would become. It is also a good moment to mention that she did cultivate a good girl persona. She didn’t swear; she didn’t talk about sex; she covered up. I have to say, I am in no ways anti-sex and am super anti-slut shaming. I loved Rocky Horror from a young age, essentially wanted to do a burlesque number in middle school, proudly wore a corset through most of college...well, you get the idea. That being said, I do defend the right for a woman to choose to be more conservative if she wants to. Burlesque aside, I was that girl in middle school. American Girl guides were my Bible and that worked for me. I can’t begin to tell you how much it hurts to be told you are weaker for being more like Sandra D than Sandy in her leathers. This will become important later on, but for now I’m going to put a pin it and just say that her persona did help associate her with the Disney channel stars of the day. This also seemed to be another nail in her coffin at least for a time. While it got her the same fans as the Disney stars, it also meant that her reputation for song writing went out the window and it was automatically assumed she came from the same machine. Luckily, she did not let that stop her and quietly behind the scenes she continued to be the same young woman who wrote her first album. She continued to write, she started to bring guest artists on tour with her when she finally got the chance, and she continued to engage with fans. I remember vividly watching every home video compilation she put on YouTube. They made her feel even more like my friend and that is a precious commodity to a teenage girl. That was her though and the people she hired. She was always the boss even when she was young herself.

It is only after all this that Taylor won the VMA for Best Female Video for “You Belong with Me.” It was 2 years after her first album came out. That was the moment that Kanye made headlines interrupting her. I remember reading about it at my semester school. I remember laughing. That’s right, I remember laughing. I was laughing because all these celebrities came to her defense and most were celebrities I knew already liked her because they had been vocal about it before. It was terrible for his reputation and reinforced hers. I say reinforced deliberately. She was popular. She was receiving an award. She had celebrity fans and this fan was laughing because Kanye clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with and the drama seemed overblown and faked. After that, I quickly forgot about it. I went back to listening to Fearless and then Speak Now and then Red and then 1989. I went to the Fearless and Red tours and couldn’t snag ticks to ’89 only because I didn’t know where I was going to be. I went with my mom and best friend to those tours and reveled in how ridiculously talented this young woman who was barely older than me was. Meanwhile, I found hope in “Long Live” and “Change.”  I found power in “White Horse.” I fell in love with imaginary men while listening to “Enchanted.” I led parties full of people in “I Knew You Were Trouble.” I laughed at the haters with “Dear John” and much later with “Blank Space.” I was “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.” I really never stopped listening to “Our Song.” In short, Taylor Swift wrote the anthems of my life.

This is why Kanye West’s statements put me into a rage this week.  To me, Swift isn’t her squad or her cats or her boyfriends. She’s her words. She’s the fact that she started writing songs when she was a 14-year-old girl. She’s never underestimated her young and female fan base even when they are mocked every day for being shallow and silly and delicate. She was good without being pure and then she became sexy in her own way. She wrote her life into song so that we, her fans, could relate and feel empowered. Today, many things may be manufactured about her, but that part will always be real. It goes without saying that Kanye had nothing to do with that. I could go on about the control she has over her tour and her business and how crafty she has been with her image, but to be honest, that doesn’t feel as important any more. She is so much bigger than some jerk’s attempt to inflate his ego. I’m so happy she didn’t put up with his crap for a single minute and showed it to him on live TV. It felt like some one was sticking up for 13 year old me and for that, I say thank you and throw up my best heart shaped hand signal in her direction. 

There's Magic in the Night

As I thought yesterday about the fusion of art forms in the service of effective storytelling, I was reminded about one of the best English classes I took in high school. In it, my 9th grade teacher had us compare a short story to a Bruce Springsteen song. While I cannot remember either the specific song or the story (it’s been 8 years people), I do remember it did causing me to look at the Boss in a completely different way and it’s a perspective I have appreciated ever since. You see, more than a rock and roll star, Bruce Springsteen is a poet and a storyteller. His songs have characters and settings and plots. He paints pictures with his words. This is why he is so iconic. More than being sexy or having a great voice, he’s a writer who captures stories from a certain time and place.

The best example of this is Thunder Road. It is one of the only songs that I could honestly call “cinematic.” Think of that beginning: “The screen door slams/Mary’s dress waves/Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.” By slowing the song down and emphasizing those words, Springsteen makes his imagery vivid. It is easy to picture Mary’s dancing and it sets a tone of beauty and longing for the rest of the song. The next lyrics are some of my favorites because of their specificity: “Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/Hey, that’s me and I want you only.” So many works of art avoid specific references to pop culture in the moment because it can date the piece. Springsteen deliberately picks a timeless and familiar artist for his namedrop, but it means that his moment feels authentic. We don’t ignore the music we listen too and this makes this more of a piece for the everyman. He then abruptly switches from narrator to participant with the “hey that’s me.” Not only does that make the song personal to him, it aligns us with him. He’s listening to a song and relating and so are we.

Skipping ahead a bit, Bruce starts addressing Mary: “So you’re scared and thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore/Well have a little faith/there’s magic in the night/You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re all right/oh and that’s all right with me.” Now I’ve always joked that only Bruce can get away with telling a girl “She ain’t a beauty” and still sound romantic, but once again these lyrics root us in something intensely personal. In reality, the majority of us are not “beauties” and the majority of us are scared and scared of running out of time. His commitment to helping Mary with her fear is what makes this song romantic and not his adoration of her.  

After this opening, the song picks up and we switch to act 2, which is the lovers being set free. Before this, he’s established the characters and their desires and fears, much like act one of a film and now we are into conflict mode: “You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain/make crosses from the lovers, the roses and the rain/waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets.” So while Bruce is still addressing Mary here, he’s switched back to a narrator like mode so we get her story. Bruce’s desire was her and her desire is a savior. I can picture the crosscutting now. “Well now I’m no hero that’s understood/All that I can offer girl is beneath this dirty hood.” Ok, so here we have further characterization of the narrator. He’s definitely more of a James Dean than a super man, but we also are given the solution to our two issues: Bruce’s car (remember this is a movie told over 5 minutes not 2 hours). Also, for the literary geeks out there, here we have metaphors! Watch out for that dirty hood, ladies.

Ok, so we have an introduction, establishment of problems, establishment of the solution to the problems, and now we get a chorus, which also feels like a climax: “So throw down the window and let the wind blow back your hair/Well the night’s busting open and these two lanes will take us anywhere.” This is the part where the stadium sings along and Mary and Bruce are set free. It’s John Wayne and Claire Trevor heading off into the sunset. It’s Bonnie and Clyde flipping off the police and the studio system. Here is the tricky part though. In a film, the climax usually happens more than 2/3rds of the way through at least. This climax is about half way through the song. Therefore, what is interesting about Thunder Road is that it keeps going. Not only do we get the escape, we get the afterward. We get the reiteration of the moral. We get to revel in Mary’s freedom. “Thunder Road” becomes a sort of heaven (you might even say its heaven waiting down on the tracks) that we get to live in for the rest of the song.

The reason this is all so significant is that to the listener is because we get taken to Thunder Road with Bruce. We are Mary. The rest of the song maintains the fast tempo established by the original build to the climax. He takes us somewhere with a story and carry our own fears and insecurities and desire to escape into the song. This is why this such a powerful stadium song. We’re celebrating where we’ve been taken and Bruce let’s us hang out a bit. As we revel, we get the line: “Well I’ve got this guitar and I’ve learned how to make it talk.” If you notice, Bruce brings it back to himself here and establishes Bruce the singer as Bruce the narrator. “My car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk/from your front porch to my front seat/the door’s open but the ride ain’t free/well I know your hungry for words that I ain’t spoken/tonight we’ll be free/all the promises will be broken.” So beyond the obvious sexual connotations here, if we take these lines as an audience, the power comes from the words that he has not spoken (apologies for cleaning up the grammar a bit). There are two types of missing words we could apply here. First, there are the missing words from loved ones of all those in the audience that they are waiting to hear. We can relate to Mary and her desire for Bruce to express like he is now doing. More importantly, however, is that as an audience, when you listen to great music or go to a great concert, part of you is looking for a transformative or revelatory experience. We are hungry for Bruce’s words because we recognize him as an artist with wisdom to impart. We gather to hear those words and as he sings them we become free. Ok, so I know that is insanely cheesy, but it can really apply to any great rock song. Once you start flailing away on the dance floor or screaming at the top of your lungs, you are, in a way, set free. Meanwhile you can sit around and listen to these songs over and over and take comfort in the lyrics (coughcough). We are all hungry for guidance and wisdom and expressions of true experiences and this is part of the power of Thunder Road.

So after we have our big fist pumping chorus we return to the story with: “The ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away/they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets.” I love this line. I can’t really speak to its greater meaning to us as an audience, but is a return to the vivid imagery of the opening. If the first part of this song is structured like a super short movie, part two is like a flashback with added depth. The next bit is also a return to the sonic structure of the opening: “They scream your name at night in the street/your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet/In the lonely cool before dawn/you hear their engines raging on/when you get to the porch they’re gone.” Through this we get further insight into just what Mary is mourning. Time has passed and so have all her boyfriends. What is now significant is that this boyfriend is telling her to come with him and travel on through time. “Oh Mary, climb in.” With this added insight we A) feel much better about all our rejections and B) realize this is more than just romance and insecurities. This is about time and towns and opportunities. Mary is not only escaping her bad boyfriends, she is escaping her trapped life and so do we.

It is with this added insight that we are carried off into the sunset with a beautiful sax solo and the story is over. Bruce has told us a story with layers and layers of depth. His lyrics inspire both gorgeous images and also communal rock experiences. He gives us those words we are hungry for. They comment on a time and place, yet tap into extremely personal insecurities and fears. Meanwhile, he combines them with a score that rises and falls like a great cinematic orchestra. “Thunder Road” is great art and great storytelling. Bruce draws on many forms to make it work and it can also be emulated by future artists. It is proof that great storytelling can be found everywhere. Rockers can be poets. Poets can be rock stars. Also, beautiful things can totally come from NJ.

The Kail Renaissance

Right, so was anybody else thinking of Disney princesses when they saw Sandy in her leather cat suit last night? Anybody? Anybody? Ok, well let me explain. My crazy connection begins about 30 years ago and with one of my favorite show business stories. There is a time period in animation history that is referred to as “The Disney Renaissance.” To the uninitiated, the Disney Renaissance begins with The Little Mermaid and technically ends around Mulan. So basically your entire childhood, right? Well the fun fact is that those movies we loved when we were kids were very close to not existing at all. Disney animation went through a serious slump in the 70s and 80s culminating in the much maligned, The Black Cauldron and Disney’s failed attempt to be “edgy.” The reason for this slump was mostly because Walt died without really training anybody to be his successor, his nine old men actually got old, and more corporate minded individuals took over the company. The slump even got bad enough that they were kicked out of their own building. After The Black Cauldron, however, a group of artists took over, which the fantastic documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty refers to as a “perfect storm” of talent and creativity. I highly recommend you watch that documentary for all the details, but as these artists came of age, they created those classics we now call the Disney Renaissance and also turned around the studio.

So while I have the utmost respect for those artists, I left out something key out of that synopsis, which is actually, in my opinion, the most important element of the Disney Renaissance. That element consists of two men named Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Ashman and Menken were Broadway imports having gained famed through the show Little Shop of Horrors. They were the ones who wrote the music for Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and half of Aladdin. Sadly, Ashman died before Aladdin could be finished, but Menken stayed on to compose a large chunk of all Disney musicals. By taking these rather dull animated films that were coming out of Disney in the 80s and applying Broadway musical principals to them, Ashman and Menken totally changed the face of animated film and children’s entertainment. They also started a tradition that was carried out by Bobby Lopez (Book of Mormon) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez in Frozen and will be carried out Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights) (GO WES!) in Moana. Now, if I’m being very optimistic, something similar, that before seemed exclusive to the animated realm, happened last night.

So Grease: Live is still less than 24 hours old (if you don’t count the 100s of hours of rehearsal) so comparing its success to the Disney Renaissance is risky to say the least, but the elements are all there. You see, Grease: Live was directed by Tommy Kail (GO WES AGAIN!) who is best known for (wait for it)(that was shameless) directing Hamilton and In the Heights. He is one of the foremost Broadway talents and he was the one responsible for all those incredible set changes, crazy camera moves, and the overall ambitious concept of Grease: Live. Now while plenty of the appeal of Grease: Live was the awesome camera work and Kail’s ability to adapt to TV, no small part of the positive reaction the show is getting is because Kail has Broadway mastery under his belt. He knows how to put on a live show. My favorite example of this during the show was the costume changes, which the show even took the time to point out was conceived by a Broadway master costumer, William Long. Kail included Broadway all over this show and it was more entertaining because of it (my other favorite heartwarming example was one Lin Manuel Miranda pointed out on Twitter, which is that he had the ensemble take bows). In the end, it was a true fusion piece created by someone with extensive knowledge of how to entertain.

I have only seen the show once and I’m sure there are far more detailed analysis and reviews out there, but I just thought it was worth pointing out that there is historical precedence for Kail’s success. It is also an incredible example of the power of keeping an open mind and searching outside your own field to create something fresh. Disney did it in the 80s. Fox did it last night. It is also not unlike Kail’s own Hamilton, which takes hip hop and Broadway and combines them like never before. These successes are worth highlighting as we get more and more frustrated with an old-fashioned and archaic view of things, especially in Hollywood. By respecting anything that moves us and entertains us and taking the time to learn from it, we create better art and tell better stories. We should bring in outside artists from different fields as we work and honor their abilities. It is what I hope to do in this blog and what I hope more artists like Kail are doing around the world. 

Lilly and Her Purple Plastic Purse Full of Favorite Things

Hello!

So I’ve recently discovered that declaring, “I miss writing! I want to be writer!” is not same thing as sitting down and writing your first blog post. All your confidence melts away as you stare at the blinking cursor while Leslie Odom Jr.’s voice declares “AND HAMILTON WROTE THE OTHER 51!” in the background on your iTunes. It is definitely a new phenomenon of our generation that suddenly a large group of us feels bad for not being Alexander Hamilton, but I digress. The big problem is I don’t know what to say. I sit here desperate for someone else to ask me to write about something. Where are my essay assignments of yesteryear? As I am sitting here being useless and filled with angst, however, I realize that my best work was originally “unprompted.” I declared I wanted to write my thesis on Pixar my freshman year at school. I didn’t know what about Pixar I wanted to write about, but I did know I wanted to figure out why the movies they made were so good. I cannot emphasize enough the fact that nobody asked me to do this. I just wanted to. And I guess this blog is a chance for me to keep asking that question. Why is what [X] made so good? So there we have it: a topic. It is a vague topic I know, but at least it is some sort of guiding principle. 

So, the next question is naturally, what do I think is good? Any one who knows me could answer that as “many things.” I am both forgiving in my taste and incredibly forthcoming with my enthusiasm. The worst thing that a movie can be for me is boring. I will take “so bad it’s funny” every day over boring. The thing is, I don’t really want to talk about what I don’t like. Too many artists put blood, sweat, and tears into things I don’t like for me to wish to insult them. Instead, today I’m going to give you a random sampling of things I do like and are important to me. With these I hope you come out with a better idea of who I am and the context I’m coming from. I will also try to restrain myself from too many exclamation points and I have vowed to not include any emojiis out of respect to the written language.

So here are my random selections:

Random Selection Number 1: My favorite piece of art is Spectrum V by Ellsworth Kelly and it hangs in the modern art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is a series of pastel blocks of color arranged into a spectrum and every time I look at them I feel calm and happy.

Random Selection Number 2: While I am terrified to declare any movie my favorite movie, the closest I’ve come is “The Philadelphia Story.”

Random Selection Number 3: I think that season 3 of Parks and Recreation is a perfect season of television.

Random Selection Number 4: I think Mad Men’s “The Suitcase” is a perfect episode of television.

Random Selection Number 5: The most life-changing lecture I ever listened to was Professor Scott Higgins’ lecture on color in Meet Me in St. Louis. 

Random Selection Number 6: Bernadette Peters in the 2003 revival of Gypsy taught me what star power is.

Random Selection Number 7: The spin shot in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly got be so giddy that I spun around in circles myself and it also changed the way I look at cinema forever more.

Random Selection Number 8: I saw Hamilton in October and it shook me to the point that I still have trouble articulating why I can’t stop thinking about it.

Random Selection Number 9: I spent the greater part of my freshmen and sophomore years live-blogging watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel to three of my closest friends and it is was both one of the best bonding experiences and viewing experiences I have ever had.

Random Selection Number 10: One of the times I have laughed the hardest in a movie theater is at falling toffee during Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and sadly very few people will understand this reference.  

So, ten is a good place to stop, but I realized I haven’t even begun to talk about Harry Potter, Doctor Who, especially Vincent and the Doctor, Taylor Swift, Alfred Hitchcock, Captin Jack Sparrow, Tamora Pierce, shot by shot breakdowns and a variety of other things I’m obsessed with. The good news is that it means there is more to say. I will also try and expand on some of these ten over the coming days, but I thought that this post was getting long. So stick with me. I also promise I am 22 years old and not 10. I think at some points this will not be clear so I wanted to get it out of the way now.

Thank you so much for reading. I truly appreciate it if you read all the way to the end. I hope you have a wonderful day, that you take care of yourself, and that you keep checking back for more blogs.

Much love,

Lilly