My So Called Life and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

by Katharine Elizabeth Monahan Huntley

Forget academics. When it comes to high school, the rule is to be cool. For main characters Angela in the My So Called Life episode “Self-Esteem” written by Winnie Holzman and directed by Michael Engler, and Xander, in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Zeppo” written by Dan Vebber and directed by James Whitmore Jr., image is of utmost concern.

Both episodes of the critically acclaimed television dramas are Dramatica grand argument stories. Each emphasizes the thematic conflict of worth vs. value. In My So-Called Life, feelings of self-worth are explored in the overall story domain of fixed attitudes (mind)-and are directly related to the problem of expectations-high and low. For example, Renee Lerner, the high school math teacher calls out in the hallway:

MS. LERNER
Angela Chase! Why weren’t you in geometry review? 
Angela, you need this. . . . How do you expect (overall story problem) to pass your midterm? [To other teacher] It breaks my heart, some of these girls. They are just so smart and yet . . .

MS. CHAVATAL
It’s called low self-esteem.

The thematic issue of worth is carried on when Rayanne and Sharon express disapproval of Angela and Jordan’s (impact character) relationship-one that is confined to kissing in the boiler room:

SHARON
Why is he keeping you two a secret?

ANGELA
How do you know he’s keeping us a secret?

SHARON
Rayanne told me.

RAYANNE
Look . . . we care about you. When I was drinking and drugging, you wanted me to stop (main character growth), as my friend.

ANGELA
Wait. You’re comparing me making out with Jordan Catalano to you getting your stomach pumped?

RAYANNE
You don’t see the connection?

SHARON
The connection is self-respect. . . . You deserve, like, so much better.

ANGELA
Just because he’s not Kyle and he doesn’t parade with me down the halls holding hands.

In an effort to save face, Angela brazenly lies to her friends, telling them Jordan has asked her to meet him at a music club. Rayanne and Sharon force the issue by accompanying Angela to the Pike Street club. Angela is humiliated when Jordan blatantly ignores her-compelling Rayanne to confront the beautiful, brooding boyfriend:

RAYANNE
You know you like her. Would it kill you to admit it? Maybe treat her halfway decent? Because, you know, she deserves it. And she’s not going to wait around for you forever (main vs. impact direction-unending).

Two objective character subplots offer thematic parallels. In one, Angela’s father, Graham, is undergoing a career crisis. Determined (overall story solution) to do what he loves and excels in, instead of what is expected (overall story problem), is behavior Graham’s father-in-law, Chuck Wood, finds indulgent:

CHUCK
Where’s Mr. Fixit tonight?

PATTY
He’s taking a [cooking] class.

CHUCK
He ought to be pulling his weight. . . . [You should] get one of those . . . headhunter[s]. That’s what you need. Somebody to get him a job . . . [so he can] stop sponging off his wife.

PATTY
Dad, this is between me and Graham. Okay, please? You don’t know all the particulars.

CHUCK
I’m your father. That’s the particulars. And you deserve better.

Graham’s renowned culinary teacher turns out to be drunken disappointment, prompting a classmate to comment: “We deserve better. I mean, don’t we?”
Much to his and Patty’s surprise (overall story problem-expectations), Graham later informs her: “They want me to teach the class.”

In another subplot, the new English teacher attempts to convince a student to sign up for the drama club:

RICKIE
Why are you doing this? This is not something I am gonna do. I’m not the sort of person who joins things, okay?

KATIMSKY
I’m really sorry, but no, that’s not okay. . . . Well, I mean, come on, I’m a teacher. How do you expect (overall story problem) me to react to a ridiculous statement like that-you don’t join things? Who are you, Groucho Marx-you’d never belong to any club that would have you as a member? . . . Look, what is holding you back here? That I’m not cool enough? Don’t let the fact that your English teacher is a dork stop you from fulfilling your potential. Just pretend-that I’m a track coach. I happen to notice that you can run fast. I need you on my team (overall story problem-expectation)! It’s as simple as that, Enrique.

RICKIE
Stop calling me that! Why are you calling me that?

KATIMSKY
I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting. It’s just, it’s just-gee whiz, it’s such a great name. When I was in high school, I hated my name. I hated it.

RICKIE
I don’t-hate my name, I-I just . . .

KATIMSKY
Oh, oh good. I’m really glad. No-nobody should hate who they are.

After “being made a fool of by the only person I’ll ever love” (main vs. impact thematic issue-fantasy), Angela surreptitiously meets Jordan one last time:

ANGELA
The truly frightening thing, is that even after everything that happened, Jordan Catalano left a note in my locker to meet him in the boiler room. The nauseating part is that I went.

She demands he admit: “That all of this happened (main vs. impact thematic counterpoint-fact). That you have emotions. That you can’t, like, treat me one way in front of your friends then the next minute leave me some note.”

Success (outcome) is illustrated when Jordan, in front of everyone, asks Angela “Can we, like, go somewhere?” (impact character resolve-change) and her immediate response (story goal-preconscious) is “Sure.” With all eyes upon them-they parade down the hall, holding hands (main character judgment-good).

For Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the real horror show in high school is not necessarily Sunnydale’s proximity to the Hellmouth (overall story domain-universe) and the always impending end (overall story focus) of the world, but combating the role (main character concern-being) of the “boy who has no cool.”

CORDELIA
It must be really hard when all your friends have, like, superpowers (impact character thematic conflict-experience vs. skill). Slayer, werewolf, witches, vampires, and you’re like this little nothing (main character thematic counterpoint-ability).

XANDER
. . . I happen to be an integral part of that group (impact character). I happen to have a lot to offer (main vs. impact thematic conflict-worth vs. value).

CORDELIA
. . . Oh, please.

Xander obsesses (main character domain-psychology) over his “lack (main character growth-start) of cool,” and sets out to discover what will make him unique (mc thematic issue-desire). In the midst of apocalyptic evil (overall story thematic counterpoint-fact), Xander is only allowed to run inconsequential errandsleaving idle time that allows for running with the wrong crowd-like becoming (main character journey 2) the wheel man for zombies.

At story’s end, Xander comes to realization (main character resolve-change) that cool is not about show and tell-but quiet grace (main character judgment-good) under unexpected (main vs. impact-solution) pressure.

Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness

by Katharine Elizabeth Monahan Huntley

“Well, there are never enough entertaining movies. . . . But there’s entertainment, and then there’s engagement.  And ideally both can happen.”—Todd Solondz

Todd Solondz, an original voice in the independent film world, creates family relationships that are immediately, if not uneasily, recognizable.  Welcome to the Dollhouse is a grand argument story.  Happiness is not, it is instead: “. . . five separate tales of modern alienation, romantic woe, and shocking transgression into a merciless critique of American lifestyles . . .” (“That Lovin’ Feeling” 37).

The title Welcome to the Dollhouse serves as ironic commentary on main character Dawn Wiener’s throughline, neither welcome nor a pretty doll the eleven-year-old is put in her place and must stay there.  She is the quintessential middle child of a middle class family in suburbia, New Jersey.

Dawn’s main character throughline is an exploration of her present situation.  Ignored at home and designated “dogface” at school, she is not accepted.  Typical conversation is: “Why do you hate me?”  “Because you’re ugly.”  Nevertheless, when confronted with a dilemma, Dawn takes immediate, external action.  In one scene, she shoots a spitball back at the boys who have antagonized her.  Unfortunately, it hits a teacher right in the eye.  When she explains to her parents in the principal’s office: “I was fighting back!”  Dawn’s mother’s response is: “Who ever told you to fight back?”

The impact character function is handed off between two characters; Brandon, a junior high classmate of Dawn’s, and Steve, lead singer of Dawn’s older brother Mark’s garage rock band.  They each contend with issues of image.  Brandon puts on a cool juvenile delinquent act; Steve is a longhaired wannabe rock star popular with the girls—high school and junior high.  Neither is onscreen at the same time, both irrevocably impact Dawn.

In the main vs. impact story throughline, teen crush takes on new meaning when Steve, adored by Dawn, humiliates her after weeks of encouraging the infatuation:

DAWN

I was wondering if . . . well, I’ve been thinking seriously of building another clubhouse, and I wanted to know, would you be interested in being my first honorary member?

STEVE

What are you talking about?

DAWN

The “special people” club.

STEVE

Special people?

DAWN

What’s the matter?

STEVE

Do you know what “special people” means?

DAWN

What?

STEVE

Special people equals retarded.  Your club is for retards.

Dawn and Brandon continue on in the main vs. impact story throughline, learning the “mechanics of the dance,” a courtship ritual that necessitates vicious dialogue to protect their vulnerability:

DAWN

Brandon, are you still going to rape me?

BRANDON

What time is it?

DAWN

I don’t know.  But I guess I don’t have to be home yet.

BRANDON

Nah, there’s not enough time.

DAWN

Thanks, Brandon.

BRANDON

[Affectionately holding her close] Yeah, but just remember, this didn’t happen.  I mean no one . . . because if you do, I really will rape you next time.

DAWN

Okay.

The overall story throughline addresses what happens to those who have ideas about what makes them unique, ideas that differ from the accepted norm.  They fail.  Steve goes off to New York:

MARK

He dropped out of school and left town.  He wants to try making in New York as the next Jim Morrison.

MR. WIENER

Stupid idiot kid.  He’ll never make it.

MARK

Yeah, that’s what I told him.  He’ll never get into a good school now.

MRS. WIENER

Oh, he won’t make it.

MR. WIENER

Never make it.

MRS. WIENER

Never.

Brandon is unfairly expelled for drug dealing (a crime he does not commit), and his father’s reaction is to send him to the reformatory.  Instead, Brandon ends the impact character throughline by running away to New York, after first asking Dawn to accompany him.  An offer she cannot accept.

DAWN

Wait—I’m so sorry.

BRANDON

Well, it’s too late.  I’m getting’ outta here.  And who knows, maybe I will deal drugs now.

Dawn takes a trip to New York as well, but unlike Steve and Brandon it is not to make a new start, it is a reaction to her little sister’s kidnapping.  She searches for Missy to bring her desolate family back into balance and hopes it will finally give her the love and acceptance she desperately needs.  The Wieners barely notice her absence:

DAWN

Is mom really upset?

MARK

Not really, actually.  They found Missy this morning.

Todd Solondz’ grand argument against conformity concludes when, unlike Ibsen’s Nora, Dawn doesn’t leave the dollhouse.  She instead takes a school bus to Disneyworld, just one of the Benjamin Franklin “Hummingbirds” numbly singing her junior high school song: “. . . now put on a smile then wipe off that frown . . .”

Solondz revisits New Jersey (“a state of irony”) in his next film, Happiness, which is anything but.  His disturbing depiction of American life (carried over from Welcome to the Dollhouse) stings with caustic humor as it attacks pretension and reveals aberrant behavior behind closed doors.  Happiness is fleeting, illustrated when one sad sack announces: “I am champagne,” then later commits suicide.

Happiness is not a grand argument story.  It is Solondz’ indictment against adults who are egocentric and perversely afflicted.  The characters are loosely related to three sisters, Trish, Helen, and Joy, and not a jot of fun is to be found in this family’s dysfunctions.  Solondz’ denouncement of grown-ups can be inferred from a scene in which Trish’s husband Bill Maplewood, a psychiatrist, allows to his psychiatrist:

BILL

My patients are ugly.  Their problems are trite.  Each one thinks he is unique.  On a professional level they bore me.  On a personal level I have no sympathy.  They deserve what they get.

The relationship between Bill and his eleven-year-old son, Billy, has the makings of a main vs. impact story, but it is not fully developed.  What is certain is an unhappy ending; Bill’s stoic countenance masks his anguish as he admits his pedophilia to the shattered boy.

Solondz does concede a hint of hope for humans and their frailties, indicated in an exchange between Kristina and Allen:

KRISTINA

(while eating her sundae)

Anyway, so then I had to cut up his body, plastic bag all the parts . . . I’ve been throwing it out gradually ever since.  There’s still a little left in my freezer.

ALLEN

So you cut off his . . .

KRISTINA

No.  I left it attached.  I didn’t want to have to touch it again. . . . Can we still be . . . friends?

ALLEN

Um . . . I guess . . . Yeah . . . I mean, we all have our . . . you know . . . pluses and minuses . . .

Happiness is a bold statement that is brave in its subject matter.  Unlike Welcome to the Dollhouse, however, it is not a grand argument that examines the problems from the overall story, main vs. impact story, main character, and impact character points of view.  Without all four of these perspectives it remains just one auteur’s harsh, albeit darkly humorous, opinion.

Works Cited

Solondz, Todd.  Happiness.  Screenplay, 1997.

Solondz, Todd.  “That Lovin’ Feeling.”  With Scott Macaulay.  FILMMAKER 7 1998: 37-39, 104-05.

Welcome to the Dollhouse.  Dir. Todd Solondz.  Screenwriter Todd Solondz. COL, 1995.

Death in Venice

by Kerrin Ross Monahan

Death in Venice (1911) by Thomas Mann, is a story that deals with mortality on many different levels. There is the obvious physical death by cholera, and the cyclical death in nature: in the beginning it is spring and in the end, autumn. We see a kind of death of the ego in Gustav Aschenbach’s dreams. Venice itself is a personification of death, and death is seen as the leitmotif in musical terms. It is also reflected in the idea of the traveler coming to the end of a long fatiguing journey.

It must also be noted there are no women in the story with prominent roles. The hero’s wife is long dead and his daughter has been married and gone for many years. Any women in the story are merely in the background, unnamed and colorless—totally insignificant. Mann has purposely left them out because they are life givers, the symbol of fertility and birth. (The only one scene where women have an active role is in the degrading and violently promiscuous dream.) There are definite homosexual overtones evident almost from the moment Aschenbach sees Tadzio—the object of his obsession.

By far the most important level of death appears in the crumbling of Aschenbach’s life principles: the giving up and letting go of all those ideals that molded his character and had shaped his work and guided every aspect of his entire life. It is a complete handing over of oneself to all that was heretofore anathema to him. The mind, reason, rationality, and all that goes with it: service, dignity, and restraint all buckle and die—all fall in the wake of the onslaught of passion and chaos.

Dreams play a major role in the story, and, throughout the history of literature, sleep has often been considered to be a form of death. Freud (who was professionally prominent at the time the story was written) believed when one is awake, one’s ego acts as a censor of the libido, however, when a person is asleep and dreaming, there is a repression (“death”) of the ego, or conscious mind, thus allowing the unconscious wishes (which were, for the most part, sexual) to then be fulfilled (Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis-Sigmund Freud, Chps. 9, 14). It is ironic that Aschenbach, who had written his book The Abject “as a rebuke to the excess of a psychology-ridden age” (13) succumbs to an egoless state, not only in the last grotesque dream, but directly after it in his conscious mind as well. From this point on, Gustav becomes totally shameless. (We have seen this theme of loss of shame as being a kind of death, and actually leading to literal death as well, in Salman Rushdie’s Shame.)

Mann’s use of Venice as a backdrop is critical. Venice, an ancient city, inexorably sinking beneath the water, a “forbidden spot” (38) with “stagnant lagoons” (28) the “fallen queen of the sea” (36). Venice, with a “faintly rotten scent” (37) “half fairy tale, half snare” (55) “that hid sickness for love of gain . . . (56). The city that had “a disreputable secret [like] his own” (57).

In musical terms, death is the leitmotif, the theme keeps reappearing: heard in the overture (the first stranger Aschenbach sees in Munich), continually sounded in the Venetian passages (more odd men), swelling to a crescendo of hysterical laughter and swirling pipes of Pan, and, in the finale, of fading notes washing into the outgoing Adriatic tide. It brings Wagner to mind, who, with failing health, went to Venice and died there suddenly in 1883. His music was considered to be the highest expression of romanticism in European music and he was the originator of the “music-drama,” wherein the dramatic needs of the story take precedence over the music itself. (Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia Vol. 24, p. 388). There is a touch of irony here, since Gustav had represented the antithesis of romanticism until he met Tadzio. Tadzio’s very name, like “two musical syllables” (32) echoed in the flute notes of Gustav’s orgiastic dream. One is also led to think of the “siren song” of love and emotionalism which led him the break up upon the rocks of passion.

The collection of mysterious emissaries all luring Aschenbach on, starts with the “snub-nosed” red haired traveler with a summer straw hat and rucksack and “long white glistening teeth” (4) positioned under the door of a Munich mortuary. It is here Gustav is seized with the overwhelming desire to travel, which he had never before cared to do. Then, the seedy boat ticket seller with goat-like beard and bony yellow fingers, reminding Gustav of a “circus director” or “croupier” (16). Next, the “horrible old fop” (24) with a “rakish Panama” hat, wig, dyed beard, and hideous false teeth, followed by the “outlaw boatman” in Venice (24) with short snub nose and straw hat, who bared his teeth to the gums (22). Lastly, there is the strolling musician, the “Neapolitan jester” (59) who of course has the ubiquitous red hair and snub nose. These carbon copy agents of death, along with boatmen, porters, managers, and the barber, are all trying to bring Gustav closer to death physically or mentally. (It is only the English clerk at the travel bureau who tries to send Aschenbach out of danger.) We finally see Aschenbach, garishly attired like these mysterious beings: dyed hair, rouged cheeks, with a red tie and a straw hat with a “gay striped band” (70)-and we know his inward degradation has now progressed outward.

Tadzio, of course, is the most significant male figure of all-the primary lure. By not leaving Venice until summer’s end, he is assuring Aschenbach’s death, the final destination on his mad journey. It was Tadzio who unwittingly inspired him to lose his lifelong principles of rigorous duty, discipline, and conservative classical formalism. Tadzio stands for many things: he is Gustav’s muse, he is Art, which “heightens life . . . gives deeper joy . . . consumes more swiftly” (15). Art, which was “war-a grilling, exhausting struggle” (56). He is the essence of beauty, “chaste perfection of form” (25). He is Narcissus, Hyacinthus, Phaeax, Eros, Phaedrus to Aschenbach’s Socrates, his lover, the “charmer” (54) with twilit grey eyes” (74) whose milk white skin was never burnt by sun and sea air (51). Tadzio was also the “crouching tiger” (6) in Gustav’s early hallucination, the “stranger god” in his later demoniacal dream, he was the “pale and lovely summoner” beckoning on the sandbar (75) the plague, the pit, the abyss-Death itself. (It is interesting to note Tadzio, with all his perfect beauty, has imperfect teeth, “rather jagged and bluish, without a healthy glaze” (34), teeth remarkably like all the other emissaries of death.) Ironically, Aschenbacher feels the youth is ill and won’t live long, when actually it is he who is to die.

All his life, Gustav Aschenbach had been figuratively dead. He was caught up in his work, “dour, steadfast, abstinent” (56) to the total exclusion of soul-nourishing feelings. In Venice, after being overwhelmed by Tadzio’s beauty he finally allows the barriers to fall, relaxes completely, and comes alive for the first time in his life. Inspired by Tadzio, he starts writing with emotional intensity, but this turned out to be an arduous and consuming job that left him “exhausted . . . broken” (47). His excessive passions tipped the scale entirely in the other direction and it was this total abandonment of former ideals that killed him. Gustav lacked the balance he felt would have been the artist’s highest joy: when thought and feeling are able to completely merge one into the other (46). He had been able to write solely rationally, then, solely emotionally, but was unable to produce a melding of the two.

It was there in decadent Venice, surrounded by water (symbol of not only birth and baptism, but also of death) that Gustav Aschenbach, led there by Death’s legions, finally gave up the ghost, unable to effect a compromise, a victim in a final terrible battle of the classicism and romanticism gods, caught in the crossfire of what Nietzsche labeled the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Since Mann has extensively employed paganism and mythology (excluding any Christian references) one can surmise perhaps Aschenbach’s shade would then have been rowed across the Styx (in a black gondola), or more possibly he would have followed Tadzio’s outwardly pointing finger and joined Poseidon’s ranks, plunging “into an immensity of richest expectation” (75) seeking “refuge . . . in the bosom of the simple and vast” [ocean] (31). Gustav thought of the boy as Phaeax, one of the sea god’s sons (29). He had seen this godlike creature “with dripping locks . . . emerging from the depths of sea and sky” (33).

What more fitting manner of leaving the earthly fray than by returning to “the birth of form . . . the origin of the gods” (33)?

Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund.Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Chps. 9, 14.
Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia Vol. 24, p. 388.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. 1911. New York: Vintage, 1958.

House of Yes & Death on Long Island

by KEM Huntley

Parker Posey Hangs on the Wall of Hové® New Orleans.
The House of Yes and Love and Death on Long Island are two indie presentations that have more than 90210 cast members in common. Without getting too caught up in histrionics and endless details that often attend melodrama, each film offers the same premise: mad love exists.

Each film holds the same expectation, as well. The viewer will not look askance at the “all’s fair in love and war” tactics, but will instead nod their head in affirmation that the heart does what it damn well pleases.

For recent widower and recluse, Giles De’ath (John Hurt), the main character in Love and Death on Long Island, written and directed by Richard Kwientniowski and loosely based upon Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the story begins as he ventures into the present day (overall story concern) after accepting (story driver-decision; overall story solution) an invitation to be interviewed on the “wireless.” When asked if he uses a word processor for his novels, he is bemused, tartly replying he is a writer; he does not “process words.”

It is here established that the notable British author is completely out of touch with the 20th century (overall story domain-universe), illustrated again as the camera focuses on him ruefully looking through the front door mail slot at forgotten house keys, his gaze taking in an archaic life.

As Giles is locked out and must wait before his niece is available to bring the extra set of keys, he decides to go to the cinema. He mistakenly walks into a matinee of “Hotpants College II,” instead of the latest E. M. Forster adaptation. Rising to leave (main character symptom-reaction), he is dumbstruck by the beauty of its dreamboat star, impact character Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestly), a screen heartthrob he will later compare to a painting of the writer Chatterton hanging in the Tate Gallery.

At this point, emphasis in the overall story throughline is placed upon the thematic conflict of attraction vs. repulsion, the clash between obsolescence and technology (overall story benchmark-progress) and high art and popular culture.

Giddy Giles begins the quest his own fictitious characters engage in (main character domain-physics) to learn (main character concern) all about the object of his desire. Hampered by the ministrations of his nosy parker housekeeper, and well-intentioned literary agent (main character problem-protection), he restricts their possible interference (main character approach-do-er) of his foray into “finding beauty where no-one (at least in his milieu) seems to look”: fan magazines, situation comedy, B grade movies.

While mooning over Ronnie, Giles comes to terms with the present (outcome-success). He is compelled to purchase and master the video player and “goggle box,” open an account at the video store (to rent the Ronnie film festival, “Tex Mex” and “Skid Marks”), hook up an answering machine to take messages while cutting and pasting his Ronnie collage, and finally, jetting to Long Island (main character response of proaction), where he will strategize (main character thematic issue) how to meet the actor.

Giles holes up in the roadside motel of Ronnie’s town, run by yet another interfering and overprotective landlady. Inside he scratches out tactics to determine his film idol’s whereabouts: “1. Hire detective 2. Bribe postman” (logical problem solving style), but it is his painstaking investigation (main vs. impact story catalyst) that pays off when he ascertains Ronnie’s exact location and trumps up a relationship with the lovely Audrey, Ronnie’s fiancée (overall story dividend-learning).

Like an infatuated schoolgirl, Giles sits anxiously by the telephone for hours (main vs. impact character inhibitor-need), until the beautiful couple rings up with a dinner invitation. Ronnie represents the emotional manipulation (impact character domain-psychology) of mass media, yet he repudiates (impact character problem-non-acceptance) his teen beat status-despite his photogenic “files of smiles” he wants to be a serious actor (impact character benchmark).

His initial appraisal (main vs. impact character thematic issue) of the old gentleman is based on Giles’ fabrication and the teen’s own conviction that “British stuff is cool,” yet this first impression (appraisal) is his critical flaw. Giles flatters the boy with what he needs (impact character thematic issue) to hear-he has “the look of a young Olivier” and the potential (main vs. impact character story problem) for Shakespeare.

Astute Audrey understands, however, that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and arranges (impact character unique ability-permission) to effectively remove Ronnie from Giles’ advances (main character growth-stop).

Giles reacts (main vs. impact character story symptom) to Ronnie’s impending departure by confessing (main vs. impact character response-proaction) his desperate love to the boy in the local hamburger dive. That each has a different point of view (main vs. impact character story domain-mind) is underscored as they face each other from across the vinyl booth. It is clear Giles is as steadfast (main character resolve) in his disdain for the popular arts as he is in his devotion to Ronnie, contemptuously dismissing Ronnie’s adolescent audience and American “contacts” and entreating the actor to fall in with a traditional European relationship of mentor and student, on the order of Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Rattled, Ronnie refuses to consider the offer (overall story consequence-conscious), and the relationship, heretofore certain (main vs. impact character story solution) to flourish is ended. In the erstwhile author’s world, the quest is not a success without sacrifice.

Giles faxes a love letter to Ronnie that includes a revised scene for “Hot Pants College III.” On the way to the airport he inquires of the cabby if faxes can be retrieved. Shaking his head no, the cab driver asks Giles if he would like to return to the motel anyway. Giles knows there is no turning back (story limit-optionlock). With a smile (judgment-good), he slips on the new wave sunglasses-a gift from Ronnie-and waves the driver to continue on (main character solution-inaction).

Ronnie’s change is depicted on-screen in his new film as he delivers Giles’ eulogy to his character’s mother, an indication he will now aspire to something more than performing for the “rabble in the pit.”

In the House of Yes, written and directed by Mark Waters, the overall story concern is how the memory of the day JFK died–the same day Daddy tried to leave:

“Everybody remembers that day. Exactly what they were doing.”

The overall story goal, in particular, is the memory twins, (main vs. impact story domain-universe) Jackie-O (Parker Posey) and Marty (Josh Hamilton), share of their illicit affair that occurred the day they attended an Ides of March party . . . Jackie O costumed as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy pirouetting:

“. . . in a pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat and blood on my dress. Well, ketchup actually and other stuff too, like macaroni kind of glued on like brains. It was more tasteful than it sounds.”

Jackie-O is another main character zealous (do-er) in her efforts (main character domain-physics) to fulfill desires (main character problem). When impact character Marty, comes home to Washington D.C. Thanksgiving 1982-“20 years after the Kennedy assassination”-and announces (story driver-action) his engagement to Lesly (Tori Spelling), he has sealed his fate (main vs. impact character issue).

The circumstances (main vs. impact character domain-universe) of the twins’ relationship are such that any plan for a normal life Marty attempts to implement (impact character concern-conceptualizing) is anarchy (main vs. impact character problem-chaos).
Marriage is an act the unhinged Jackie-O will steadfastly (main character resolve) not allow.

Mama (Genevieve Bujold), very French Gothic, demands a private word with her son: Mama: You, a fiancée here, why?
Marty: I love her and I’m just trying to follow procedure (impact character symptom-order).
Mama: Marty, your sister has been out of the hospital less than six months. Last week she nearly lost it because the seltzer water was flat and you bring a woman home! Not just a woman, a fiancée! An anti-Jackie! Are you trying to push your sister over the edge?Marty: No.
Mama: Just what, then, are you trying to do?
Marty: Be normal.

Family secrets and lies (overall story thematic counterpoint-falsehood), exposed or withheld, are the weapons used against artless Lesly, the fiancée who smells like powdered sugar. The family knows (overall story symptom) Marty is making a mistake. Marty had loved a lizard; Jackie-O flushed it down the toilet.

Lesly’s perception overall story problem) of Marty’s glamorous twin is mistaken-she calls Jackie-O spoiled to which Jackie-O replies-“Oh please. If people start telling the truth (overall story thematic issue) around here, I’m going to bed.” What Lesly doesn’t consider (overall story benchmark-conscious), until almost too late, is that Jackie-O is insane (overall story solution-actuality) and extravagantly dangerous.

An unexpected hurricane extinguishes the electrical power and all but Marty and Jackie-O retire for the evening. By candlelight, the twins play their favorite game, the reenactment of Jack Kennedy’s assassination. This leads to a reenactment of their own affaire d’ amour, unaware Lesly is watching. Crushed, Lesly allows the twins’ younger brother, Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), to make love to her, unaware Mama is watching.

Confronting the naïf with what she knows (overall story symptom): “A mother doesn’t spy, a mother pays attention!”-she thinks (overall story response) Lesly will now leave alone. Instead, Lesly persuades Marty to believe the man she fell in love with is the man he truly is (impact character thematic issue of state of being), not the image he has of himself (impact character thematic counterpoint-sense of self). She implores Marty to return with her to New York.

Destiny (main vs. impact character catalyst), however, prevails. Jackie-O cajoles her brother into one more dead Kennedy charade, with the promise he may leave afterwards. He foolishly does not suspect (impact character critical flaw) she may fire the pistol they have used to pretend, despite the fact Jackie-O has shot him in the past (main vs. impact character concern). Marty is gunned down, and buried in the back yard next to his father-the romantic memory of gallant men: Jack, Daddy, and Marty, preserved intact (outcome-success).

In voice-over, Jackie-O reassures us: “Don’t worry about Marty. A close family like ours has to stick together. We cleared out a nice place for him out back, next to Daddy so he would stay right here with me, where he belongs (story judgment-good).

Love and Death on Long Island and the House of Yes approach obsessive, irrational love with humor and compassion for its main characters, and a distant nod to their impact characters. Emphasis in each is placed upon the main vs. impact story, almost to the exclusion of the overall story throughline, much like lovers heedless to the world around them.
Hové®

Founded in 1931, Hové® is the oldest continuous perfumer manufacturer in New Orleans. The adherence to quality and personal service has been staunchly maintained through four generations of ownership in the same family. Located in one of the oldest buildings in the New Orleans’ French Quarter, Hové® uses the finest of essential oils and ingredients from all over the world to create its fragrances. Hové®’s only store is its 18th Century shop in New Orleans, but through the mail order business (and now, its online store) its fine perfumes, colognes and other fragrant products are known throughout the entire United States, Canada and many other continents.

NoHo Artist: @maxbussellart

“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen.”

Maurice Sendak

Max Bussell paints in proximity to the Maurice Sendak Elementary & Arts, Communication & Technology Magnet Center, which speaks to the wild rumpus energy of the NoHo Arts District. Write Between the Lines commissioned his vision of a window view. Scroll for the steps and reveal.

Max Bussell: Did I ever tell you I was named after Max from Where the Wild Things Are? I always felt such a connection to the book . . . and that Maurice Sendak passed away on my birthday . . . I found interesting.

Baz Hands! Moulin Rouge Film Review

by Katharine Elizabeth Monahan Huntley

“Here we are now, entertain us.”—Nirvana

After Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Lurhman understands what the audience expects from a Bazmark production—a “spectacular spectacular” spectacle.  He presents just that with the theatrical enchantment Moulin Rouge.

Unabashed in its excess of sensation, this many splendored song and dance collage celebrates the burlesque and carnivalesque of bohemian life.  Amid the iridescent artifice of men who preen and prance, and bawdy beautiful courtesans that can-can, a doomed romance reclines in a courtesan’s boudoir.  Tragic and passionate—what falling in love is all about.

Ewan McGregor is dreamy, Nicole Kidman creamy.  As Satine, she allures with red smeary lipstick and a longing for a legitimate acting career.  McGregor’s Christian represents idealism in its purist form.  

Extravagant extravagance, indeed.  Alas, however, is stark reality—fate is fickle and time waits for no one.  Life may be a cabaret old friend, but right outside is the boulevard of broken dreams and all that jazz.

Why the audience for Moulin Rogue should really stop and cheer is the Bazman’s insistence on relating a full bodied fable—underscored by the villain who demands: “What’s the story?”  A question frequently unasked by Hollywood producers in the pursuit of percentage and the show must go on.

Talk to me Baz Lurhman, tell me all about it.

Please note: The original 2021 title of this review is Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!