I think the answer will probably be no, since few to none of my friends in this town share my weakness for mainstream chick flicks, but does anyone want to go see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day or The Other Boleyn Girl with me?

Edification from an Unlikely Source

I just finished watching Something’s Gotta Give.  There were things I didn’t like about the movie. 1) The dialogue seemed really fake at times.  (E.g., who says “Seems fine” when accepting an invitation to go out on a date?)  2) I know Diane Keaton’s character was supposed to be smart and analytical and quirky, but it was a bit much – sometimes I just wanted her to stop talking. 3) I thought she cut Jack Nicholson’s character too much slack. If someone hurt my feelings by refusing to spend the night with me after meaningful sex (this is in an alternate universe of course), and then a few minutes later changed their mind and said they’d “like to try falling asleep with me,” I wouldn’t welcome them back into my bed with a motherly smile.  Ditto for the fact that, not only does she repeatedly make it clear that she feels more for him than he does for her after their initial hook-up, even at the end, in the great rom-com moment of truth, she refers to loving him before he says anything about loving her!  How could such male passivity be part of any self-respecting woman’s fantasy (which is what these scenes are)?

But what I like is that Diane Keaton didn’t let her disappointment in love cripple her, nor setbacks or humiliation (like the fact that her daughter is dating a man older than herself, who treats her with subtle contempt, and whom she then has to have in her house for several days).  The movie treats it so lightly, but that’s the kind of thing that would send me into a tailspin.  Nor does she expend a lot of energy trying to change people that don’t want to change – or burn bridges with them by lashing out in a fit of anger that feels awesome at the time but like a feast of ashes immediately afterward.  I love the idea of being able to take the ways people you let you down, large and small, and make humor out of it.

On a lighter note, though the principled part of me feels kind of icky after watching movies like this and The Holiday, the sets of which go beyond affluence into something verging on a modern-fairy tale, part of me also wonders if life would be more enjoyable if mundane activities like writing (plays in Erica’s case, papers in mine) and surfing the web took place in such spacious, color-coordinated rooms with expensive fabrics and great views.

More grad student woes

I’m attending my first-ever academic conference this weekend. Right now I’m in a hotel room unable to sleep at 3 am, in part because of nerves, in part because I found out tonight that I didn’t get a fellowship I’d applied for next year to study abroad. I’m not totally crushed about not studying abroad, but the rejection is hard, and I wish I hadn’t found that out tonight – it makes it harder to beat back feelings of fraudulence and impending failure.

My feelings about this conference had been more dread than eagerness. Yeah, part of me was looking forward to hearing talks in my field and getting a feel for how academics interact with each other. But I was dreading the networking part.

Well, today went better than I expected. Not because the socializing was pain-free (though I did meet several nice people, and two or three were truly kind and enjoyable). But because I was really enjoying and engaging (mentally) with the talks, not always the talks in and of themselves as much as the fact that I was around a bunch of people that also care about kingship and scribal activity and grammar – and that made me feel less self-conscious and fearful of making an ass of myself.

Still, though, I think getting the news about the fellowship once I got to my hotel room has robbed me of sleep and caused me to dwell on all the minor irritants of today. And the question I’m asking is, why are so many established scholars so lacking in manners? I am capable of shaking off the rudeness, thickening my skin and developing a “what do you expect?” attitude – I could feel myself doing that throughout the day, and I know that’s what I should do long-term. But in bed I started to think, “Why should I have to?” I don’t think it’s simply that these people have spent so long focusing on their esoteric field of study that they’ve forgotten how to relate person-to-person. These are by and large highly sophisticated, worldly people – they speak modern languages, they’re well-traveled, they have impressive hobbies. Why don’t they know how lame it is to blatantly blow off / interrupt the conversations of / turn away from mid-sentence / patronize / flatly contradict some people (grad students, that is, though I don’t imagine this all evaporates once you get your PhD), while pouring on the charm and rolling out the red carpet for others (respected scholars / their personal friends)?

Thinking about this made me realize that many people here probably have a lot of the same issues I do – they too are concerned about who they’re going to talk to and how they’re going to come off. Of course, some of the worst offenders in what I’m talking about are situated at the very top of the hierarchy, and I don’t know what their excuse is.

Community: It’s Not a Panacea

Community is such a trendy topic these days, at least among Christians. In many of the conversations I have these days about various modern-day ills (e.g. loneliness, addiction) and controversies (e.g. questions of how to interpret the Bible), the solution we arrive at usually seems to boil down to: community. I’ve recently come across two stories, however, that have me thinking that there are downsides to roots and interdependence.

Both are stories of sex-abuse happening in small island communities. On Pitcairn Island in the middle of the Pacific (which has a fascinating history – it was settled by the fugitive Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty fame), it seems that there’s been a long history of grown men “breaking in” young girls. When six men were convicted of several charges of rape and indecent assault in 2004, some women of the island came forward and defended them on the basis that the sex was consensual! The island is said to have a sex-permeated culture, the details of which you can read about here.

On the island of Jersey in the British Channel, authorities are investigating allegations of rape at a Children’s Home, by over 40 living suspects, both staff and visitors to the institution, going back to the 1940s. One resident of the island is quoted as saying,

“Quite a lot of people know that there was something going on. I think you’d have to live here to understand it, why people would be reluctant to say anything.”

Another says,

“There are a lot of strands of family trees and the branches spread far and wide, so you don’t say anything for fear that you wont be listened to anyway, and … if you are listened to, you’ve got to live with what happens then, because my second cousin twice-removed knows so and so who will make sure that you never get a job again.”

It sounds as if most people on Pitcairn Island knew what was happening and were fine with it – the shit hit the fan when a non-native minister on the island complained to British authorities. Whereas on Jersey Island, lots of people knew or suspected what was happening but pretended not to.

One could write off the Pitcairn Island story as a total aberration, something that could happen on a tiny, barely accessible island with a population of about 50 that’s been dominated by the same few families for hundreds of years. But after I heard the Jersey Island story today, it got me thinking. What would be like to live somewhere where, not only did everyone know everyone else, but there was a definite hierarchical structure in place, and the people at the top called the shots? Heck, my experience at a small Christian high school was bad enough – in a class of 13 students, my best friend and I were relentlessly mocked and hounded because we had stopped trying to fit in and kowtow to the school culture. What would it be like in a community where the stakes were much higher and the evils perpetrated far worse?