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Father's Day Twitterstorm.

I had an interesting experience on Twitter the other day.

I don't tweet much, as a rule, although it's becoming my preferred way to find political news, and I've gotten more active as the presidential race has gotten more... interesting.    I love Lin-Manuel Miranda's morning inspirational tweets and the Post-it Note conversations that Alton Brown puts up.  I follow the accounts my tween son follows, as a matter of parental prudence.  I retweet more than I tweet, I think.  I follow less than 100 accounts (a small enough group that I don't need to manage it with lists) and I regularly unfollow accounts as I get less interested in them or as their usefulness to me expires.  I do so little on Twitter that for a very long time, I had email notifications enabled for everything so that in the rare event that someone replied to a tweet of mine, I wouldn't miss it.

I don't tweet much, but I'm not above tweeting back at people who say things I think are silly  -- at first glance.

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So, on Father's Day, via someone else's tweet, I saw (not long after it had been posted) this tweet by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a think tank CEO and former State Department official:

Happy Father's Day! Let us all commit to expect fathers to be equal caregivers & just as competent in the home as mothers are in the office.

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

So, I read that, and I thought it was really, really funny.  And I dashed off a semi-snarky (but true) response and thought no more of it for a few hours.

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A little background here, so you don't think I acted out of disdain for Slaughter herself.

A few years ago I read with interest and not a little empathy a longform article that Slaughter had penned for The Atlantic called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All."  It's a personal tale leading into the assertion that the existing structure is bad for both men and women, after which she calls for buy-in from organizations of all types to enact family-friendlier policies.  There isn't a whole lot there philosophically that is new to the great Working Mothers Debate, but I like reading personal stories, and hers was interesting.  She left her State Department job to be closer to her family (among other reasons), and she wrote about the condescending reactions of other women, and the hollowness of the "have it all" message, and the difficulty of living a reasonably human family life while serving in a high position in Washington.  

I thought I remembered Hillary Clinton throwing some shade back at her in response,  and a quick Google search turned that up: "Clinton said Slaughter’s problems were her own and that 'some women are not comfortable working at the pace and intensity you have to work at in these jobs ... Other women don't break a sweat,' according to the story."

 All this is to say that I have some good will toward Slaughter in general, and I really did think her article was important (which is to say, if there's a snark battle between her and Hillary Clinton, I'm going to be on Slaughter's side).  Work and family life do need to be balanced -- in my view, the best way to put this is to remember that the purpose of all labor is to support families, and not the other way around.  It is good for the rest of us if women are well represented in government, and academia, and think tanks, and all the other sorts of elite positions that Slaughter was writing about in her piece.  Slaughter was pointing out that it may be good for the rest of us, but it isn't always a good deal for the individual women (paycheck aside).

 I also get that one of the great annoyances faced by married, white-collar working women, is tension between themselves and their partners about the division of child-raising labor.   Some of that can't be helped much (if only one of you can breastfeed, for example); other parts are amenable to mutual agreement, but the nature of even the best compromises is that sometimes people feel cheated, and -- this is key -- not every compromise is actually a fair one, and sometimes people really are cheated, and that kind of stinks.

BUT.  

I read her post and I pictured saying to my spouse, wagging a finger:  " I expect you to be an equal caregiver and competent in the home!  Happy Father's Day!"

So I tweeted back:

@SlaughterAM Thanks, but I already told my husband and kids' dad I love and appreciate him unconditionally. It's more my style.

— Erin Arlinghaus (@erinarlinghaus) June 19, 2016

 

And then I went on my way and didn't think about it again until I checked my mail and found the hundreds of notifications.   When I noticed that Instapundit had retweeted me, I turned the notifications off.

Several days later, Twitter analytics tells me, the number of people who have seen this tweet is 46,559.  

Slaughter had replied directly to me:

@erinarlinghaus I think you are misunderstanding me in some way. But Happy Father's Day!

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

Another person replied:

@SlaughterAM She's not. You're using Father's Day to make a back handed criticism at men. @erinarlinghaus

— Kah Zuhl List (@kazoolist) June 19, 2016

Slaughter again:

@kazoolist @erinarlinghaus I'm not really. We're just coming from very different places on this. I'm PRAISING men. But enough; happy F Day

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

And then people really started piling on her.  I decided to tiptoe away slowly, metaphorically.

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As far as I can tell, nobody in all those retweets reacted negatively to my tweet, which is pretty damn amazing, considering Twitter.   I muted some likers who had racist handles, also some obnoxious MRA's and white nationalist types.  Ew.  

It's too bad some of the replies to Slaughter were terribly rude, because I wondered if she would listen to the more reasonable ones trying to explain to her why her original tweet was so laughable.  I kept thinking about how on earth she could possibly have thought that her expression, which recalled a schoolmarmish "I expect these papers to be neatly handwritten in ink," or a paternalistic "I expect this mess to be cleaned up when I get home," constituted praise?  I mean, I wouldn't have pegged her as the type.

Some days later, I have a theory.  

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The word "expect" has an ambiguity about it.

If I say "I expect" an event to occur, it might mean that I am confident that the event will come to pass.  I believe it will happen.  I anticipate, I may even take steps to be ready for it.

But in the very special case where the event is an action that may or may not be performed by another person...

...and I am speaking to that person...

...then "I expect" is tantamount to a demand that the person carry out the action.

It is an indirect way of saying "I will be very very disappointed if you don't do the thing."  It is an implied threat!  A mild one, but a  threat nonetheless.

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I took Slaughter as meaning the latter:  as saying, "Let's commit to being very very disappointed in fathers who are not equal caregivers and who aren't competent in the home."  Apparently so did almost everyone else.  And they can hardly be blamed for it -- the evidence suggests that this is not an "unexpected" way to read the tweet.  The word "expect" is loaded.

But it does strike me as plausible, especially given her dismayed and incredulous response, that she meant it the other way, and doesn't understand why on earth people could have been offended.

In that reading, Slaughter might have meant to say:  "Let's commit to confidence in the competence of fathers -- that they are not second-class caregivers, and that they can succeed in roles traditionally designated as 'women's work.'"  

If that's what she meant to say, then it is praise for fathers.  And it's a message we need more of -- popular culture is full of dismissive images of the dumb, incompetent dad, burning the dinner and duct-taping the baby to the wall.  The ditzy dad is not a helpful corrective.  It doesn't help dads, and it doesn't help moms --- who go on bearing the brunt of society's disapproval for anything whatsoever that goes wrong within the family, because no one "expects" dad to be the equal caregiver.

Unfortunately, it was an inept way to phrase it, because of the ambiguity in the word "expect," and it wound up meaning the opposite.  That's because we use "I expect you to do it," so often, as a means of  communicating "I don't expect you to do it, unless I remind you."  So "let's commit to expect" sounds like "let's commit to remind."

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I still am not sure which meaning Slaughter intended, but I'm leaning toward the more positive interpretation.  I think we owe people the benefit of the doubt, to choose the most charitable of several possible interpretations.  However, it's reasonable to call her out on her wording.  She writes for a living, and she tries to make policy:  clarity is not optional.  I feel bad that so many people responded to her so rudely, but it is entirely unsurprising.  

 I stand by my tweet.   The ironic thing: my professed love and appreciation for my spouse and the father of my children is indeed unconditional, but it isn't unearned.  He earned it, as we should all earn it from one another, by being trustworthy, competent, and caring.  The two of us have our own spheres of responsibility, and each of us takes care of what we're particularly gifted at, but I absolutely would call him an equal caregiver.  He's made it clear to me -- from long before we were married -- that he would be.   So I think (if Slaughter meant what I think she meant) -- we don't actually disagree.

We all could use a little work on our tone sometimes, eh?

Embrace the suit.

Simcha Fisher pointed at a HuffPost piece entitled "Moms, Put On That Swimsuit:"

You've got two choices every summer -- to put on a swimsuit or to skip it.

I have a lot of friends who do the latter.

They go to the pool with their kids, but they only put their feet in the pool. They sit on the sidelines, too concerned about what they look like and what others will think to embrace the joy of swimming with their kids.

Or they go to the beach, but stay under the umbrella instead of running into the ocean.

And it makes me incredibly sad.

Because when women stay on the sidelines because of insecurity, we are modeling unhealthy behavior to our children and we are missing out.

Your swimsuit does not define you.

Simcha's take:

More than once last year, I just felt too damn fat to put on a bathing suit. Just couldn’t do it. So I would go to the beach with the kids, and they would ask me to take them in the water and do that swishing thing, or catch them when they jump off the big rock — and I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a suit on.

They were crushed. It didn’t make any sense to them. Why would you not wear your swimsuit to the beach?  And they were right. Yeah, there are skinny, perky teenagers at the beach. Yeah, there are other moms who are frolicking around with their kids, and they’re wearing the same size bikinis as their toddlers. Not even with stretch marks! How do they even do that? And here I am, and I weigh more than I did when I was nine months pregnant with the youngest kid, who is now 2 1/2. How did I even do that?

More to the point, who cares? Feel fat? Stay in the damn water. No one will see you, and you can feel light and graceful for once. Sitting on the sand getting gritty and trying to tug your shorts and tank top over your flabby bits while the kids beg you to jump in? That is a great way to have a lousy afternoon.  If you want to be attractive, have fun. Laugh and be happy. That’s beautiful, even when you’re fat.

Here's my theory on the swimsuit problem:  

A lot of us just aren't used to seeing ourselves in swimsuits.  It's not like it isn't common to be seen in public dressed unflatteringly (baggy tops and ill-fitting jeans, I'm talking about you).   Unless you're wearing the wrong size, swimsuits aren't actually much worse.  

When I was about 30 (and, incidentally, about 50 pounds overweight, which is a lot when you're under five feet tall), I started taking adult swim lessons at the YMCA.

 I had taken lessons as a kid, enough not to drown if I fell in the pool, but I'd never swum "a lap" in my life.  

The first swimsuit-related lesson that I learned was that my suit, which had been carefully chosen to make me look as not-fat as possible, was not made for swimming.  The straps wanted to fall off my shoulders.  That week between my first-ever lesson and my second-ever lesson, I went to a sporting goods store and bought a basic Speedo-brand lap suit.  Something like this:  

No shirring.  No skirts.  No color illusions.  No underwires.  No sweetheart necklines.  No nothing.  Just a suit that would stay on when I moved in the water.  Because that's what they sold at the sporting goods store.

The big surprise, though, was it turned into the suit that I felt best in.  Because it was the suit that I put on, week after week after week, as I learned how to swim the way that swimming people swim.  I got used to how I looked in it, because I put it on every week in front of the mirror in the locker room.  

And I was surrounded by other people wearing the same kind of suit.  Some of them were fit and strong.  Some of them were enormously fat and disabled.  A lot of them were mothers of children in swimming lessons, like me.  And all of them got into the water, in their boring lap suits, and moved their bodies faster and more sleekly than they could move them out of the water.  Some of them smiled and leaped into the pool, and some of them worked doggedly at paddling from end to the other with looks of great concentration on their faces.  

And eventually it sank into my brain that how you look in your suit is so far from being important, compared to what you can do in your suit -- namely, get wet and possibly sandy, splash and play or work in the water, raise your heart rate and build upper body strength, exert yourself or relax and cool off.  

Just getting into any suit, regularly, can do wonders for how you feel in a suit.  I think it's a vicious cycle:  if you don't put it on often, you don't get used to how you look in one, and you associate it with feeling out-of-place, which feels visible.  When you are focused on how you look, you tend to imagine other people are too (when really, they don't care all that much).  Wearing a swimsuit frequently, especially if you use it to help you do something you want to do (like swim laps, or play with your kids at the beach) tends to make you realize that it's a totally normal thing to do, no matter what your shape:  put on a swimsuit and get in the water.  

So my advice to women who are looking for the perfect suit to minimize their thighs or whatever:  The most flattering suit is the suit you put on to do things in.  Find one that fits comfortably and doesn't want to fall off, and put it on every week.  If you don't live near the beach or belong to a YMCA like I do, go out in the sprinkler with your kids or something.  Make at least one outing somewhere where you will see lots of people of all shapes enjoying the water.  Do it often enough that you realize that the swimsuit is not something scary.  It's just a tool, a uniform.  And nobody's really looking at you anyway, except the people who love you and the little people who look up to you and are counting on you to show them how to be.

"Strive for perfection; encourage one another."

Occasionally I manage to get back into the habit of praying one or more of the Hours -- rarely regularly.   Office of Readings one day in the morning; the thankfully short and repetitive Compline another day when I've already stayed up too late and am really too tired to concentrate.  Sometimes on a feast day I manage the daytime hours.

Office of Readings is my favorite because it has something new for me every day, even though it's long and I feel like I'm cheating by doing it instead of Lauds, which I feel like I "should" be doing.  

(I've been a little more inspired lately thanks to this book, by the way.  Highly, highly recommended, and not just for "beginners."  Will probably write more about it another time.) 

So, anyway, one really great thing about praying the Liturgy of the Hours is that you sink right into the Psalms.  Each one comes around again every couple of weeks or so (less often if you come to the Hours all haphazardly like I do), which over the course of months and years gives you plenty of time both to be exposed to lots of psalms, and to let the repetitiveness gently impress them upon your mind and heart.  There's always something new there.  

Today in Ps. 31 we encounter the fairly-common-psalm-theme of "I'm surrounded by enemies who are out to get me!" which sometimes seems a little overwrought to comfortable and fattened moderns as ourselves.

In your justice, set me free, hear me and speedily rescue me....

Release me from the snares they have hidden...

In the face of all my foes I am a reproach, an object of scorn to my neighbors and of fear to my friends...

I have heard the slander of the crowd... as they plot together against me...

And I'm a little leery of sinking too deeply into this theme of "enemies."  Possibly a bit risky, lest we start thinking of "people who merely disagree with me" or "people who mildly annoy me" as "enemies who are out to get me" in our prayer.   

But one modern interpretation came to me, an idea of "enemies" that works (for me in this season of life at least):  All those chattering faceless voices that bring distasteful news into my home, that peddle outrage and Schadenfreude.  The tearing of hair out over petty matters not worthy of attention; and, more insidious, the repeated indignation over grave matters, murmuring the conscience to sleep, spending outrage in cheap declarations of position, ever calling to action, never acting.

There are real people on the other side of those combox handles and bylines.  Let's not forget that.  Some of them may not know what they do.  If they met us in the street they might be perfectly pleasant.   Some of them claim to be allies, fellow believers.  But make no mistake, they are out there, enemies and quislings.  

Release me from the snares they have hidden, for you are my refuge, Lord.

Snares of despair and outrage.  

O God of truth, you detest those who worship false and empty gods.  As for me, I trust in the Lord; let me be glad...

Let me be glad; not angry, irritated, snide, or superior.

You have seen my affliction and taken heed of my soul's distress, have not handed me over to the enemy, but set my feet at large.

We are not, in fact, in prison to the unhappy state of the world today (nor the state of the country, nor the state of the Church).  We are at large.  We are free to act real acts, in our seemingly tiny sphere of home and work and friendships, where each act and word can have unimaginable consequences.

I have heard the slander of the crowd... but as for me, I trust in You, Lord...

My life is in your hands, deliver me from the hands of those who hate me.

Look, some of the voices you encounter out there... the ones that make you feel shame... they really do hate you.  Hate you for not buying enough stuff.  Sneer at you for having too many children.  Tear you down lest you feel pleased in the decisions you've made that are different from others.  Mock you so you'll feel inadequate without the snakeoil they're selling.  Nobody does negging like someone who wants your money or your vote.

How great is the goodness, Lord,... that you show to those who trust you in the sight of men.

You hide them in the shelter of your presence from the plotting of men; you keep them safe within your tent from disputing tongues.

I often wonder what it means to "trust in the Lord," which we're so often told to do without much practical advice on how to do it, and I think there might be a bit of a clue here in this description.

In part:  

To trust in the Lord is, perhaps, not to let "the plotting of men" worry you; to remind yourself constantly that the advertisers and the policymakers are not, actually, in charge.  

To trust in the Lord is to draw strength and protection from His Presence (his ever-present Presence) rather than be damaged by "disputing tongues."  

(I don't think this means we always have to leave every dispute; some disputes are worth having, after all.   Truth has to be spoken and sometimes it's us who has to speak it.  But we don't have to come to every argument we're invited to just in case.)

Love the Lord, all you saints.  He guards his faithful but the Lord will repay to the full all those who act with pride.

The bit about "acting with pride" is maybe a clue as to when we might not want to join in with those "disputing tongues," lest we reduce ourselves to one.

"I am far removed from your sight," I said in my alarm.

Yet you heard the voice of my plea when I cried for help.

In other words, what to do when we realize we've gotten in over our heads.

Be strong, let your heart take courage, all who hope in the Lord.

What is the world coming to, anyway?   It is coming to the same end it has been coming to for two thousand years, and today's viral video will not change it, nor tomorrow's.

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Good advice from Augustine in the second reading, too:

Rejoice in the truth, not in wickedness; rejoice in the hope of eternity, not in the fading flower of vanity.

Look out for that "rejoicing in wickedness" bit.  The invitation is everywhere, isn't it?  Let's not pretend that "rejoicing in wickedness" means "doing wicked things and enjoying it."  

It also means "hearing about wicked things and enjoying a sense of smug superiority over those who participate."  

Or "hearing about certain people doing and/or saying wicked things and enjoying a sense of satisfaction that they are behaving as I expect them to."  

Or "passing along news of wickedness and enjoying the recognition I get for having raised the alarm."

When you catch yourself rejoicing in wickedness, for heaven's sake, stop.

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And one more thought from Augustine:

Wherever you are on earth, however long you remain on earth, the Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything.

That's right, anything!

Don't sweat the small stuff.  But don't save your anxiety for the important things!  Just... don't be anxious.  Be not afraid.  Really.  That's what all this means.  

How are we supposed to do that?  We're imperfect.  We will feel anxious. We will feel unable to rejoice.  But:

Rejoice, brothers:  Strive for perfection; encourage one another.  

That's today's responsory to Augustine.

Encourage one another.

Encourage one another.

Encourage one another.

Remember that, next combox.  Strive for perfection... by encouraging one another.

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This is why I love the Hours.  Ancient and ever new.

Role-model time bombs.

In a friend's Facebook timeline I see the exchange:

"Its a shame what Miley Cyrus has turned into. She was so sweet and innocent during her Hannah Montana days...someone a child could look up to....NOT ANYMORE. I don't understand Hollywood kids that feel being good, pure and innocent is a bad thing."

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"[My eight-year-old daughter] can't understand why I won't let her listen to her new song. It's a shame. With lines about dancing like you're in a strip club and getting in line for the bathroom to get a line."

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I think a lot of it IS their own doing... They feel if they are hard and rough, it proves that they are no longer little goodie two shoes. Some come out of it though after they realize they have gone off the deep end (Hillary Duff comes to mind). But the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, and Miley Cyrus....not sure if they will come out of it.

Me? I think we've seen it happen often enough, and we've seen the lucrative outcome in terms of publicity, that we can conclude they are part of a larger pattern.

I suspect that the sweet/pure/innocent girl starlet image is carefully crafted by the entertainment companies as part of a master plan. Their young fans -- who are generally several years younger than the starlets themselves and especially their young fans' parents are being set up. The entire point of the sweet/pure/innocent/girl-next-door image is the Big Reveal, set for soon after the starlet turns eighteen: the nude photos come out, or the paparazzi images from the Hollywood party, or the mug shots, or the drug charges. The new album comes out with the suggestive dance moves and the explicit lyrics.

And all of a sudden, this adulation that seemed so harmless when your seven-year-old was wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and clenching a hairbrush microphone, lip-syncing to the lyrics of that wholesome, fifteen-year-old TV cutie? Now your daughter's ten, and her most beloved role model is dancing on stage in wet lingerie.

That got awkward fast, hm?

I have taken to viewing the "Disney sweetheart" phenomenon as a trap: a role-model time bomb, set on purpose to go off for maximum impact, maximum headlines, and to sell maximum copies of the first semi-nude photo shoot. In this model, the sweet-innocent-girl-next-door is an image carefully crafted and curated to ensnare as many hits as possible. The sweeter and more innocent the better, because then the more sensational the headline when she Goes Wild.

There is, as you know, a thriving and only partly underground market in the images of young women who appear to be anywhere from twenty-one down to about sixteen. When a young woman who was recently well-known as an underage star comes of age and hits the centerfolds, there is a valuable association -- "Is she even old enough for that?!" -- that her handlers must rush to exploit before it expires.

In other words: The Disney-Channel sweet and childlike girl next door is merely Phase I of "Hot, Wild, and Barely Legal." These girls are not going off the deep end on their own. They are being groomed to go off the deep end, because a lot of people stand to make money when they "discover" the next Britney, the next Lindsay, the next Miley.

Don't fall for it. If your daughters want to emulate the image, evaluate the branded merchandise -- it's glittery tee shirts and sparkly berry-flavored lip gloss now -- but what will it be in three years? And evaluate your own complicity -- could it be that by buying into the sweet and pure act now, you are already participating in an act of exploitation, just one that has not yet come to fruition?

 

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Battle of wits.

H. and I were dismayed at some of our seventh- and eighth-graders' writing recently.  We thought we had mostly mechanics problems, but some careful probing of their paragraph-composing ability revealed that they needed a refresher course in constructing logical arguments.  

So H. spent some time working with them on syllogisms.  

You know the sort.  All men are mortal.   Socrates is a man.  Therefore Socrates is mortal.  (Although it turns out that there are lots more kinds that I never learned about in school.  Fortunately H. is on the case.)

"Might as well do it anyway," I theorized.  "It's the sort of thing that lots of people get in school.  Can't hurt.  Might help."

Today H. gave them a copy of Vizzini's speech from The Princess Bride -- the one with the Battle of Wits over the iocane powder and the two cups of wine -- and challenged the kids to find and articulate as many syllogisms -- explicit and implicit, valid and not valid -- as they could.

 

It was a very fun lesson to overhear while I was making lunch.

 

This is the kind of thing they came up with:

• If you are strong, then you trust your strength to save you.  You are strong, therefore I can not choose the glass in front of you.
• If you have been to Australia, then you are used to people not trusting you. You have  been to Australia. Therefore you are used to not being trusted.
• If I can find out what kind of man you are, then it is simple.  This is not simple, therefore I can’t find out what kind of man you are.
• Iocane comes from Australia and Australia is populated by criminals.  You obtained the iocane.  Therefore you are a criminal.

 

We were amused to discover that the entire battle of wits includes one incorrect assumption (that one of the goblets is not poisoned) but that Vizzini repeatedly comes to the correct conclusion anyway ("Therefore, I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me" and "Therefore, I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.")

 

 

Les Misérables: the film.

I'm trying really hard to get back into the blogging thing after a dry spell.  

Acting on a hunch, I declared to the children that they were no longer allowed to set their alarms for 6 AM so they could get downstairs before I wake up and claim the computer in order to play Minecraft.  

 I assured them it was not a punishment, just an attempt by me to reclaim my working and blogging time.

"You need more sleep anyway," I said.  "Unless there's schoolwork you need to finish, please don't set your alarms to go off before eight."

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Mark and I went out this past weekend to see the filmed Les Misérables.  I've noticed that it's received many cool and critical reviews, and I get the impression that it's going to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing.  A local reviewer disliked it (but he also dislikes the staged musical:  "I'd like to say the show never got boring, but that would be a lie: it does stop often for songs, and once you realize what any given round of bellowing is about, you can let your attention drift.")  Jeffrey Overstreet at Patheos wrote a more thoughtful (and occasionally amusing) criticism, acknowledging that his dislike of it might be in part because it was his first exposure to the story, songs, and play.  

(Overstreet's a little inaccurate, though, calling Jean Valjean a "Christ Figure" -- if he's a figure of anything, he's a "redeemed sinner" figure, not at all the same.)

My take on it:  I enjoyed the whole thing.  I am apparently one of the unwashed masses who, having loved the stage show, doesn't know any better than to like the movie too.

(Mark enjoyed it too, even though all he remembered of the story was the TL;DR:  Jean Valjean is chased by a policeman.)

I've seen the opera form of Les Misérables on stage, performed by top regional/traveling companies three times.  I own 3 different soundtracks, and I know the libretto by heart, including the French concept album.  (Come on everybody!  Á la volonté du peuple!  et á la santé du progrès, Remplis ton coeur d'un vin rebelle, Et á demain, ami fidèle...)

Let's discuss the big-name stars.

• Anne Hathaway: surprisingly good, I don't know why anyone was complaining.
• Russell Crowe: Good on him for stepping up to the plate and trying so hard. Javert does deserve a stronger voice, but I couldn't blame Russell; just wanted to pat him on the head and say "You're doing a GOOD JOB." 
• Sacha Baron-Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were fine, but I kept wishing they were Eric Idle and Madeline Kahn for some reason. 

Overall an excellent adaptation of the stage to the screen, retaining the stagey feel very well without trying to BE a stage production when it couldn't possibly have been, while exploiting well the things that cinema excels in.

In particular, the close-up solos ("I Dreamed A Dream," "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables") were fantastic -- they all really took the strengths of film and ran with them.  The film is being mocked for its close-ups, but I thought that the close-up was a good translation -- into film -- of the "spotlight" effect that's the best a stage production can do to highlight a character.

The live-singing technique transformed the songs, especially the emotional solo songs, into something new.  (Here's a little video that explains it if you're unfamiliar) When you know the recorded versions very well, as I do -- I  blast show tunes in the car from time to time to cheer myself up -- you get accustomed to a certain "polish" on the voices.  In a stage production, the singer has no choice but to (a) belt it out, so that she can be heard all the way to the back of the theater, and (b) follow the timing of the orchestra.  

But with the live singing, the actress/singer could adjust her voice timbre and volume, and the timing of the phrases to match the emotion of the moment.  (An earpiece provided a live piano accompaniment to keep them on key.)   Instead of the singer following the orchestra, the orchestral accompaniment was instead added later to match the singer.   This makes a big difference in "I Dreamed A Dream," which is placed here after Fantine's descent into prostitution, and in "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables."  Both of these characters are grieving, and you know, grief only sometimes calls for you to belt it out to the back of the hall, and it goes at its own pace.

I forgot where I was and fell into the story and the screen for at least the first half, although that was possibly an effect of the two margaritas I downed before the film.

(My new favorite date is to go out for nachos and too many margaritas at the bar next door to the theater, and then sober up while watching the movie.)  

There was a certain grittiness to the look of it all which the film wore very well, too.

I expect that if you go to it expecting it to be cinematic you will be disappointed; if you go to it because you love the stage production and you want it to be stagey you will be happy. 

Here's the Overstreet review again:

Hey, I have no problem applauding a narrative as profound as this one. But here I go again, digging out Ebert’s fundamental rule of film criticism: “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.” The filmmakers don’t get credit for the story; that belongs to Victor Hugo. As Gandalf might say, all the filmmakers have to do is “decide is what to do with the material that is given to us.” These filmmakers made me feel like I was suffocating, and I was oh so glad to get out of that theater.

See, what I think Overstreet misses here is that this movie is not about what he thinks when it is about how it is about it.  It's not a movie about Restoration France.  It's a movie about the blockbuster stage opera Les Misérables about Restoration France.    The point is to bring the experience of the opera to new audiences in a new way.  And the movie goes about being about a blockbuster stage opera very well.  

At the movies.

We took the kids to see a matinee of Wreck-It Ralph yesterday.  

(Fun movie -- Mark and I liked it a lot -- and the short animated film that precedes it, "Paperman," is beautifully animated: classic Disney.)

The not-quite-three-year-old is not quite sure what he thinks about "big movies."  He sits on my lap, hides his face sometimes, studies the screen and doesn't smile or laugh, nurses a lot.

This time he watched most of the movie.  He started out squeezed between Mark and me (the theater armrests flip up and out of the way -- a benefit to bigger-these-days moviegoers, I guess, but I bet the teenagers appreciate it too).    Not too far into the film he climbed up on my lap and leaned back into me, watching the movie in the studious sort of way he does it, one little leg hanging down on either side.  I wrapped my arms around him and he took hold of the fingers of my hands in front and held them tightly.  I buried my nose in his hair from time to time in the darkness and inhaled the toddler fragrance:  fruit-scented shampoo, a faint whiff of Christmas chocolate.

Movie theaters give me a strange feeling of nostalgia.  It might simply be because I haven't gone often since we had children, which wasn't long after we were married and so being in one takes me back pretty far.   I remember being little, scared by the Blueberry Girl scene inWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the one with Gene Wilder) and having to be taken, sobbing, from the theater.  I remember going to see Dirty Dancing with my best friend in seventh grade, one of the first times I was allowed to go to a movie without adults, and the two of us gushing about it being the best movie ever afterwards. My most intense memory is of being deeply frightened and thrilled by Terminator 2 in the summer of 1991 -- in a dark theater, I can easily conjure up the sick feeling of watching that nuclear-bomb scene.  I remember going with Mark in 1997 to see the re-release of Episode IV of Star Wars in a brand new theater in Columbus with cushy captains' chairs -- I think it was actually on its opening night -- and being secretly charmed by the slightly younger geek behind me, who was positively bouncing in his chair with slavering excitement.  

My favorite memory:  I had the great good fortune to view Dr. Strangelove:  or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb -- for the first time -- in a packed movie theater on the Ohio State campus, as part of a Kubrick retrospective.  Comedy is funnier in a theater, you know -- and the evening I spent experiencing that gem of a satire in the company of a hundred other young adults, most of whom had never seen the movie before, was an experience I would not trade away for a hundred big-box matinees.

Yesterday, after the trailers finished and the lights dimmed, the Disney intro started ("when you wish upon a star....") with its swooping vista of the castle and fireworks, and I was taken back again.  It reminded me, briefly, of my late mom, who was one of the world's great appreciators of all movies, and who probably would have enjoyed the modern crop of high-standards animations put out by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks.

I hope I manage to squirrel away the memory of the warm, surprisingly heavy weight of my littlest guy leaning back in my lap, of his wide eyes and of his fingers wrapped around mine.  It won't be too long before he demands his own seat, first (probably) between his dad and me, and later (probably) with those big brothers at the other end of the row.

Shielding.

Thought-provoking opinion piece entitled "How to Live Without Irony:"

For many Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s — members of Generation Y, or Millennials — particularly middle-class Caucasians, irony is the primary mode with which daily life is dealt. One need only dwell in public space, virtual or concrete, to see how pervasive this phenomenon has become. Advertising, politics, fashion, television: almost every category of contemporary reality exhibits this will to irony.

Take, for example, an ad that calls itself an ad, makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It pre-emptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself. The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public. It is flagrantly indirect, a form of subterfuge, which means etymologically to “secretly flee” (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.

I don't think this is solely the possession of Gen Y. I am plenty susceptible to this myself, and had in my mind before encountering it in the article: "the ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism." It is sort of like wearing black all the time so no one can accuse you of trying to look good, or choosing clothes because they promise to hide you, or parts of you, rather than reveal you.

There are many kinds of such shields, and the ironic frame might be the one that most closely resembles a Zeitgeist at this moment, but the others are all still around. There is also constant self-deprecation; the embrace of victimhood; pre-emptively wounding everyone around you with a mocking, "Don't you have a sense of humor?"; acquiring a reputation for unpredictable explosive anger. Add them all together and it seems everyone has such a shield.

Perhaps it is contagious, a kind of arms race of the vulnerable. You cannot be left the only one who lacks protections. Everyone knows they are naked.

The author of the article identifies some people who don't seem to carry the shield of irony:

Nonironic models include very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind.

But many of these people may carry shields, too. I think elderly people -- and the not so elderly, maybe starting in their sixties -- aren't infected by irony, not because they don't put up shields against the world, but because they came of age before public irony had deeply infected the culture. They had other zeitgeists to deal with. And only someone who doesn't personally know many deeply religious people -- someone to whom they are a caricature -- would assume that they are also immune from irony. Maybe if you had been raised in a very sheltered family and school, enough out of the mainstream that American popular culture would be a foreign culture. Once you have breathed that air, though, the shielding becomes part of you, and to learn to be real is to transform it. I don't think it brushes off so easily, because it isn't something completely superficial. It is more something you must deliver yourself from.

Serial numbers.

This is a moving piece about young people, the descendants of Holocaust survivors, having themselves tattooed with their grandparents' concentration camp numbers.

When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it.

Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit.

“All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust,” said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. “You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.”

This may sound like a strange association, but the first thing I thought on reading this was: it's like they're retweeting the tattoos, into the future.

 

Post-secondary education questions.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but this week we started back to school.

I always have to work hard the first couple of weeks to help set the new schedule into stone, so I have clung to the self-discipline of not sitting down and blogging when I should be waking up the children and getting them started.

All this is to say: I have several posts queued up in my head, but haven't written them yet, and I hope to get to one this weekend, maybe Saturday afternoon or evening.

But I want to get one started, and I thought I would start with the discussion part.

The first one I want to write is about post-high school education (call it "college" if you want, and I will here to be concise, but I mean for it to be broader than that, encompassing trade schools, apprenticeships, certain military options that include training, community colleges, and the like). Questions for readers to get the ball rolling:

Do you anticipate that your kids will graduate into a significantly different economic paradigm, when it comes to paying-for-school, from the one you entered? Will the best advice for them be different than was the best advice for you and your peers?

Are you closer to the "parents should pay for their offspring's college" end of the spectrum or the "eighteen-year-olds are adults and they should be responsible for their own post secondary education" end of the spectrum? Is that different from your parents' view? If so, why do you think your view is different?

What is parents' responsibility when it comes to educating their children? What kind of financial or other assistance do parents owe their grown or nearly-grown offspring and is there an age when it needs to stop and the offspring should be "launched?"

How would you feel about having one or more of your offspring living with you the entire time they were in college? Would they have to compensate you in some way for you to be okay with that?

If you yourself are a college graduate, how attached are you to the idea that your kids should go to college at all? To the idea that they should attend college full time immediately after high school graduation?

Student loans: good idea, bad idea, necessary evil, or "it depends?"

Mark and I have been doing a lot of talking about this lately, because we feel we should have at least a rough idea of our options by the time our oldest starts 9th grade, and that is only two years away. Take the next couple of days to throw some comments out here, and then I will start writing.