I started reading Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie … and almost immediately recognized the story. A chapter in, I realized that it had been clumsily adapted into a movie I had seen years ago – not a great movie but certainly an interesting and much more cohesive book. I am not sure why, when I have multiple books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in my to-read list, this is the one I read first. Hmm. Or why this is what I chose when I have a bunch of books in the list I’ve already begun. It ended up being not what I thought it would be.
I’ve watched a few films in recent days as well – Hidden Figures, Fences, Jackie, Manchester by the Sea, Lion – in the last few days. The Oscar bait stuff – all were okay, but none thrilled me.
And now, at last, it is March 1st. Finally. The arbitrary day I have been waiting for. Halfway through February, I managed to force my way out of my standard February depression but could not find motivation beyond that. The mood improved but the output did not. But finally I am going to fake it, force myself to do everything I need to do – or rather more than I need to.
A bright spot – Jon Stewart stopped by Colbert’s show:
The first season of American Crime was often hard to watch. It was challenging material, telling intricately interwoven stories that highlighted prejudice and different perspectives. It was good, but I was not sure it could stand for another season.
The second season is an even more tightly woven narrative, with more riveting performances from mostly the same cast and a few new faces (Connor Jessup, best known until now from Falling Skies has been particularly good, which isn’t a surprise when you consider that he was also one of the better parts of Falling Skies). Masterfully done – often employing images disconnected from sound, so you are never sure what has happened until it unfolds moments later. Fluidity, uncertainty, exceptional and brutal storytelling from different perspectives. Are you ever sure what has really happened? No. If anything the story in the second season punches you in the gut with the realization that there are no absolutes, yet we watch all the characters from their very different perspectives grapple with their own “absolutes” and the dissolution of those certainties.
The second season, as I write this, has been over for some time, meaning that I am left with very few details. The important point – and reason why I am writing about this so long after the fact – is that it does punch you in the gut and make you question what is true and real. The story revolved around feeling versus fact.
And, right now, America is faced with a high-stakes election in which “feeling” trumps (no pun intended but apt here) fact. Stephen Colbert revived his Colbert Report character to introduce the term “Trumpiness” and address this topic; John Oliver took it a step further, explaining that the theme of the recent Republican National Convention was “a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts”.
I highlight these timely things, despite their non-existent connection to American Crime (apart from the tangential Trump & GOP “feeling” that crime in America is out of control and crime rates are on the rise, despite the fact that data doesn’t support this “feeling”) because it is easy to lose sight of the fact that other people have completely different experiences of the world. What one person, irrationally or not, fears, is normal to someone else. American Crime excels at telling a complex story from fragmented viewpoints (in a way that our lacking-in-nuance political system never will).
Beinholtz: “Do you mean lie to them? Tell them that they are better than he knows them to be? Nein. To love someone is to confront them with their own worthlessness.”
I dreamt the other night that I was spending a lot of time with actor Kevin Bacon. Probably this infected my brain because I am still, somehow, inexplicably, watching the dismal, horrible, stupid, frustrating and badly written tv showThe Following, of which Bacon is one of the stars. I have never been much of a Bacon fan at all – and shows like The Following don’t change that. In my dream, Bacon and I had a number of conversations, but where my brain finally let go of the thread was when I told him that I did not want to offend him but that my mom had only recently seen the film that launched his career, Footloose, and she complained that it was so stupid, she regretted that she could not get that two hours back.
Sudden Marriage – Sudden Divorce
I have observed from afar the strange tendency of people I am vaguely acquainted with people who meet up with someone and very suddenly get married. Because I know these people only in the sense that I went to the same high school – and did not really know them then either – and now know them only via Facebook posts – I don’t know what leads them to these impetuous marriages. Likewise I don’t know what leads them as impetuously out of these marriages. It would be one thing if I saw it happen once, like something anomalous, but it seems to happen often.
Geography Woes
I don’t really understand the tendency to marry and divorce quickly and frequently, as though it is as casual and easy as brushing one’s teeth. It seems awfully complicated when a couple could just… I don’t know – move in together? But it does seem Americans of all ages are more interested in marrying (and divorcing) than learning anything about the world.
I know and knew this. I recall the year I was graduating from high school and we had to try out to be graduation speakers. My speech had a lot to do with framing our little place within a global framework – that is, look at all the things that had happened in the world since we started school. But how would that context make sense or mean anything if people did not even know where to locate the Soviet Union on a map?