No!

Before we begin, if you are intending to see the Israeli/Palestinian film “The Bubble,” stop reading right now.

I knew going in that the film was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I can’t resist movies with gay themes (a hangover from the decade upon decade during which there were no films with gay themes), and I’d read a review which indicated that it had a positive ending It’s a moving film effectively demonstrating the myriad of problems and mutual hostility between Jews and Palestinians. But its emphasis was on a sweetly romantic tale of an Israeli soldier who meets a young Palestinian at a checkpoint between Israel and the west bank. They fall in love despite the problems all around them, and effect live in a bubble of their own. On this level, the film is truly moving and uplifting.

I was therefore totally unprepared for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, in which the Palestinian’s sister is accidentally killed by Israeli troops and, in the last terrible scene, he blows himself and his lover up in a suicide bombing.

No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! I’m sorry, but I’m out’a here. I do not need this. I do not need an agonizingly slow-motion close-up of the two young lovers in the final instant of their lives, the one looking confused, the other infinitely sad.

I left the theater furious at being cheated out of hope. It’s been several days now, and I’m still furious. I have thought of the film almost constantly since I left the theater, which is, I suppose, exactly what the people behind the film intended. To that end, they most certainly succeeded.

It certainly isn’t as though I had no idea of what is going on in the world. I haven’t been living in a vacuum all these years. I am already far more than sufficiently aware of all the madness in the world, all the pointless stupidity and hatred and cruelty and pain and sadness. They are impossible to avoid. It is simply that I see absolutely no need to run out and deliberately expose myself to more. And while there are undoubtedly many people who somehow have been sleeping through the past 50 years of history who need to be reminded of the harsh realities of the world. I am not one of them, and I truly resent having gone to the film. I am not a puppy who has just peed on the carpet and needs to have his nose rubbed in it.

I cannot live without hope; without the belief that despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is more good than evil in the world. In a voice-over at the very end of the film, the Palestinian says that someday, perhaps, things will change. And he is right. But seeing him die did little to encourage this belief.

I hope you will excuse the brevity of this post, but I think I’ve said just about all that needs to for today. 

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You, Me, and Everybody

Don’t you love the TV and movie ads that tell you not to miss the show that “Everybody is talking about!” This is often for a book, tv show, or movie that isn’t even out yet. That “everybody” is talking about it strikes me as a tad unlikely, but hey...would an advertiser or a movie studio or a tv network lie?

And of course the implication is that since I’m not talking about it (and I’d take a wild guess in thinking you’re not talking about it either), we’re obviously pretty stupid. The world, it seems, is divided into “Everybody”...the ones who really count...and you and me, who are beyond the pale of true knowledge and sophistication.

“Everybody knows” has long been one of my favorite expressions. Again, the fact that I may not know whatever it is again puts me outside looking in. And even the fact that maybe I do know and just don’t give a rat’s behind implies I am something of an outsider—hardly “Stop the Presses!” news.

Society constantly hands out invisible but detailed specifications of what “everyone” is or should be, and the fact that in truth almost no one fits those specifications is of no concern to society, despite the often very real anguish it can create in those who really want to “belong”.

Why do you suppose your computer mailbox is crammed with wondrous offers absolutely guaranteeing to make you (if you’re a man) more virile or better endowed?  Because men have been brainwashed by the “bigger is better” garbage they’ve all been spoon-fed since they first became aware of sex. They watch porn videos in which the men are, I have no doubt, selected for their genital endowments. And though it isn’t the men in porn videos that heterosexual men are interested in, they can hardly be unaware of the fact. And since it is unlikely that they...uh...measure up...it sends the clear message that they are inferior to other men.

But the implication is clear in all of these messages: you are inferior to everyone else.

Women are forever, relentlessly, and ruthlessly bombarded with totally unrealistic images of what they must be—and, most tellingly in our society—what they must buy if they want to be like “everybody else”.

Teenagers represent are a classic example of the “everybody else” syndrome. Rebellion is in fact a teenager’s form of being like “everybody else.” A fad in talk or dress or music will spring up on TV or YouTube and teens will rush pell-mell to be like everyone else in adopting whatever it is, until everybody is indeed like everyone else, at which point a new fad will arise.

The fact is that nobody is or could possibly be like “everybody else.” But that does not make the slightest dent in the ironclad conviction that we, as individuals, are obviously inferior for not being like “everybody else”.

I’ve never been like “everybody else.” I have never wanted to be like “everybody else.” I have worked very hard all my life to avoid it. It’s not always an easy path to walk, of course, but it is the one I have chosen, and I have never regretted it.

The fact that I am sure you know exactly what I’m saying means that you, too, have had many of the same feelings/experiences/reactions. So it may not be so much a matter of  you and me being on on one side of the window with  “everybody” on the other, but merely that the window is not a barrier so much it is simply a reflective surface.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.

Softie

A friend sent me a video taken from YouTube...a Budweiser commercial which aired only once, during the first Superbowl game following 9-11. It shows the Budweiser Clydesdales...magnificent animals...pulling the Budweiser wagon through farmland and into New York City. Framed against the skyline, the horses bow toward the space where the twin towers once stood. Lump-in-throat time.

I regret I cannot recall the sponsor of what is, to me, the most powerful commercial I’ve seen. I may have mentioned it once before: a young boy is with his father in a dog pound, looking into the cages at various strays in eye-level cages. The boy points to one and says “I want that one.” A close-up of the dog shows it is missing an eye. “You don’t want that one!” the father says. “Get a normal one.” The final scene shows the boy and his father walking out of the shelter, the father holding the disfigured dog while his beaming son walks beside him with crutches and leg braces. Big time heart grabber!

Patriotic songs. Broadway show tunes (“Impossible Dream”, “I Am What I Am,” “Maybe This Time” and countless others), full orchestral music, movies and plays with powerfully uplifting endings (I cried at not one but three points in E.T., twice near the end of Man of La Mancha, and had my heart torn out every one of the eight times I saw Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake).

People’s bravery under the unfathomable stresses of a major disaster fill me with both sorrow and wonder for what it shows about the nobility of the human condition. Seeing men cry on television frequently brings me, too, to tears. Gratuitous acts of kindness move me.

I sometimes cry when I am writing dramatic passages in my books. I can easily cry when I think of those people I loved (and still love) who have died…which is why if I start to think of them, I have trained myself to think of other things.

I’m not a blubberer who can burst into tears at the slightest provocation, but when things move me deeply I do get a tightness in my chest and a lump in my throat. I shed tears of joy and wonder as often as tears of sadness. And like most men, I cannot recall the last time (if I have ever done it since turning six years old) I cried in public…which is probably why I am moved to tears by television coverage of events in which men are shown crying.

I turn to mush around babies of all species, except possibly reptiles.

As to how or when I became such a softie, it’s a classic “the-chicken-or-the-egg” situation. I am and have always been an incorrigible romantic, so it’s impossible to say whether I’m a softie because I’m a romantic, or a romantic because I’m a softie. Not surprisingly, I generally tend to be a Pollyannish, Dr. Panglossian heart-on-my-sleeve liberal, for which I make absolutely no apology despite there being mounds of evidence pointing to life’s ample negatives. For me, the glass is half full rather than half empty, and I choose to see the world as three-quarters good rather than being three-quarters hopeless.

Have I mentioned that I also choose to largely ignore reality?
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.