Stolen things:

Looking on Cassidy Shearrer's blog, I just found out about the future residence of three of Columbia's best businesses. The RagTag Cinemacafe, Uprise Bakery, and 9th St. Video are all moving to a place on Hitt St.! For ease, and in honor of the typical clientele of these fine establishments, I shall take to calling the complex "indie-ville" or "hipster-town," whichever catches on first. The article (here) says that a lot of Columbia artists are working hard to make the renovated space beautiful and unique. It should be open in time for the True/False Film Festival in February. I'm excited. I've never been to True/False because I've coincidentally been out of town each year and wasn't cool enough freshman year. It's a festival of all indie movies and they're all super-wonderful and interesting and they bring in lots of producers/directors. I'll probably stop going to class that Friday.

My second stolen thing comes from Mondo. I love public art and (as it is called here) subconscious art. Here's a sweet video from Mondo's blog on the accidental beauty that comes from covering up public graffiti.


the subconscious art of graffiti removal (excerpt) from matt mccormick on Vimeo.

Lars and the Real Girl

Claire, Awesome, Zanzibar (who got punched in the face by an angry Mexican at a bar and has a swollen cheek! haha), Kathleen from Sociology, and I went to go see 'Lars and the Real Girl' at the Rag Tag last night. It was very different than what I thought it was going to be, and Zanzibar had the same reaction. He just thought that with there being a sex doll as the female lead the movie, it would go more in the 'Old School' direction. I thought it was going to be more lighthearted and funny. But it was wonderful.

I've been interested in the way masculinity is portrayed in the arts and media ever since we started focusing on it in Krew as well as my Critical Theory class. Because all of my classes assign similar paper topics, I've come up with a couple broad theories and bits of social commentary that I use and fit into whatever paper topic it is. One of the ones I've been thinking about is that people are dissatisfied with the social structure and rules that the consumerist materialist world has given them (which is that there are no rules - just buy more crap) and are searching for something more stable: a framework (however imperfect) that they can follow to avoid feeling fragmented and disillusioned. This applies especially in gender roles.

In Krew when we talk about what it means to be a man, it is because there is a general lack of knowledge on how to be a good one. Here's a scene from 'Lars and the Real Girl' that speaks to this (Gus is Lars' brother who is married and about to have a kid - Lars is 27 and single and socially awkward, Bianca's the sex doll that Lars ordered online):

Lars Lindstrom: I was talking to Bianca, and she was saying that in her culture they have these rites of passages and rituals and cermonies, and, just all kinds of things that, when you do them, go through them, let you know that you're an adult? Doesn't that sound great?
Gus: It does.
Lars Lindstrom: How'd you know?
Gus: How'd I know what?
Lars Lindstrom: That you were a man
Gus: Ahhh. I couldn't tell ya.
Lars Lindstrom: Was it... okay, was it sex?
Gus: Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh, yeah, yeah it's kind of - it's uh - no. Well, it's kind of sex but it's not uh, you know? I don't know. I don't know. It's - uh - good question, good question.
Lars Lindstrom: Yeah, but I have to know
Gus: [dryer buzzes] Hold that thought.
Gus: [in basement] You know, you should ask Dagmar
Lars Lindstrom: I did ask Dagmar. And she said that I should ask you.
Gus: Okay, you know I can only give you my opinion.
Lars Lindstrom: That's what we want
Gus: Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts.
Lars Lindstrom: Okay, like what?
Gus: Like, you know, like, you don't jerk people around, you know, and you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family, you know, and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways. That's all I can think of, you know - it sound like it's easy and for some reason it's not.
(from imdb)

And in the rest of the movie Lars slowly tries to put these things into practice, telling a girl who likes him that he can't kiss her because that would be cheating on his woman (Bianca - the sex doll) and so forth. It's wonderful. I think it's really interesting that movies are discussing something like this. I asked my friend from sociology what she thought about the gender roles in the movie but we just talked about how Gus' wife fulfilled the typical gender role of cooking breakfast. We didn't get to talk more. I think it's all very interesting.

Taxi Driver

Okay, so Darjeeling Limited was sold out, which might have been my fault for not getting tickets because I thought the RagTag opened at 5. Whatever. So Julie, Awesome, and Soulmate (not mine, Awesome's) went to see a free showing of Taxi Driver in Jesse Wrench Auditorium. It was really intense. I was expecting for it to be really bloody and gruesome, being Scorsese. But I wasn't expecting it to have nothing of the familiar narrative arc of anything I've seen before.

Julie and I were talking afterwards and she started the movie off thinking that Travis (Robert DeNiro) was looking to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd - who used to be really pretty and not at all scary) as a love interest for his hope in life, but then discovered that she was "like all the rest of the girls" and moved on to try to save Iris the 14 year old prostitute (Jodie Foster - weird) but that kind of failed too and then tried to assassinate a Presidential candidate as a last act of desperation. I kind of thought that the whole thing was a message towards the meaninglessness of life and how Travis couldn't really find anything to fight for or live for.

There's a great scene where Travis goes up to another older Taxi driver they call the Wizard and in a round about way asks him what the meaning of life is.

---

Wizard: Look at it this way. A man takes a job, you know? And that job - I mean, like that - That becomes what he is. You know, like - You do a thing and that's what you are. Like I've been a cabbie for thirteen years. Ten years at night. I still don't own my own cab. You know why? Because I don't want to. That must be what I want. To be on the night shift drivin' somebody else's cab. You understand? I mean, you become - You get a job, you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn. One guy lives in Sutton Place. You got a lawyer. Another guy's a doctor. Another guy dies. Another guy gets well. People are born, y'know? I envy you, your youth. Go on, get laid, get drunk. Do anything. You got no choice, anyway. I mean, we're all f---d. More or less, ya know.
Travis Bickle: I don't know. That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Wizard: It's not Bertrand Russell. But what do you want? I'm a cabbie. What do I know? I don't even know what the f--- you're talking about.
Travis Bickle: Maybe I don't know either.

Oh, and on Wikipedia (article) they said that the end is a dream sequence. That makes a lot more sense. Also, whenever this movie would come up while I was growing up my mom would always talk about this crazy guy who was obsessed with the movie and tried to assassinate Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Here's the story. Weird.

Oh, and Julie -- the passenger in the taxi who was stalking his cheating wife was Martin Scorsese!