Pretty Perfect Little Liars

I must say I had higher hopes for Pretty Little Liars. I’ll go easy on the show since it was the pilot, and pilots have trouble introducing characters, plot, setting, and atmosphere all at once, so if felt a little rough. Beginning the show with music by a woman vocalist reminds me of the way Gilmore Girls also used women singers to amp up the feminist, estrogen-driven plotlines. The setting reminds me of The Vampire Diaries, with the classic green lawn, Victorian house, yellow-school-bus-high school, red-fall-trees look. Even though the town seems too pretty and stereotypically “American,” to evoke a sense of originality or geography (in contrast to Veronica Mars, which clearly depicts a very specific type of public school in California), this setting works well with science-fiction and mystery shows, so Rosewood’s generic feeling is a good choice.

But it was pretty hard to stomach all the beautiful people. Not only are they good – looking, but every teenage girl comes from the same petite, heart-shaped-face mold. I think ABC Family is trying to lure in the same crowd as Gossip Girl, which is why they picked pretty actors and trained them to all walk slowly and sexily in short skirts, but come on, at least Gossip Girl seems to have variety in body shape. Even with males, the two young love interests look like the same Prince Charming – I can tell them apart only when the talk, since one has an accent. The show misses diversity somehow even though it displays different colors of skin, which is almost more off-putting to me. That seems like a pretty bad way to help young girls accept diverse body images. The outcome of all these beautiful people in this pretty little town is an insular feeling; everything feels aesthetically homogenized.

A key difference between Lily in Veronica Mars and Alison in Pretty Little Liars is that Lily always seemed to express affection for the people she appears to. When Veronica or Duncan have flashbacks and imaginary visions of Lily, we get a sense that Lily loved her friends. This love compels Veronica to solve the mystery. So far in Pretty Little Liars, Alison seems controlling of her friends in an antagonistic, self-indulgent way, using them simply to exert control. Now in the present, “she” sends them threatening, catty, mean-spirited messages. I wonder if this opposite approach to friendship will still compel the girls to solve Alison’s disappearance. Perhaps in her absence they will become close friends, like Veronica and Logan, but this time because they’ll realize how close they can be to each other without a tyrant in the way.

I’m curious to see how this show plays out the rest of the season in terms of borrowing key themes from Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, The Vampire Diaries, and Desperate Housewives. I don’t think this plagiarism is bad, if PLL uses themes as a jumping off point to create an original story and new discourse for the millennial viewers, but if they use these themes simply as a cheap way to pull in nostalgic fans from other TV shows, I’ll be bummed.

A Kick-Booty Easter (that's for you, Jesus)

I love Easter. I love waking up early with a bubbly feeling inside my belly because today is special, and tiptoeing into Elise’s room to wake her up, (she’s a little grumpy) and together we wake up Jessa, (she’s way too sleepy, so we let her be), and then traipsing down the stairs. Everything looks the same. But somewhere out there is my yellow wicker Easter basket, filled with eggs holding chocolate carrots and jelly-beans, pretty bracelets, and something funkier, like a glimmery mermaid comb. All I have to do now is find it.

But I’m not six anymore. (Actually, I did this all the way up to 17). And my mom can’t fly to Vermont to hide my Easter basket in the French House, or curl my hair into ringlets for church. I can’t eat my dad’s tasty rack of lamb and strawberry salad, nor play board games with the Grimes and croquet in the yard.

The weird thing about getting older is that I still miss the holiday traditions from my childhood, and reenacting them on my own out here obviously feels different, since the most important ingredient – the family – is missing. But I’ve figured out these past few years ways to keep holidays happy and meaningful at college.

1) Spend it with friends. Friends are my family out here. And they’ve probably felt the same nostalgic confusion when they faced their first father-less Thanksgiving or bubby-less Passover. 2) Pull in your favorite customs, throw in your roomies’ original twist, and don’t be afraid to revise things. That’s how you end up making your own traditions anyway, when you start a new family. 3) Call your parents. Tell them you love them.

4) Without wanting to sound preachy – it is nice to take the holiday’s message to heart. Easter is about joy, rebirth and salvation. With the school year coming to a close and spring weather seriously just around the corner, (it better be), try to have dinner with someone you thought was dead (or just buried in the library for three days), salvage your  poor grade in Botany class, and do something cheerful for the sake of good fun.

I went to mass this morning with my friend Brittany at St. Mary’s on the corner. Besides the regular townies, all dressed up in light dresses, ties, and cute crying babies on their shoulders, many college kids showed up, some with parents that must have driven pretty far and pretty early for family time. Afterward we met up with more friends, hunted for chocolate peanut-butter eggs in the damp backyard, and then headed off to Storm Café for brunch. Mmmm mmm delicious. And now as I write this I’m eating dark chocolate eggs and thinking about what a great day this is.

Will Schuster and Glee lessons

Will Schuster is kind of an anomaly. He’s a late Gen Xer, probably in his early thirties. He’s trying to relive his high school glee days, and relate to millennial kids that he coaches, which sometimes means even acting like a millennial. He dances, looks, and talks like a boy bander, a type of celebrity singer popular when I was in middle school.. Justin Timberlake, anyone? (I just checked. Justin Timberlake was born in 1981, so he’s a Gen X’er too, who’s fanbase was from the generation after him). 

I suddenly realized during our screening that Will represents those people that don’t fit into these perfect millennial cycles Strauss and Howe depict. Sometimes it seems like our whole course is based on the presumption that a millennial generation exists* but I don’t think Will Schuster fits into the Gen Xer status or the millennial status, since he’s a blend of both, and what’s more, he chooses to be this blend. He got agency, acting on his desire to relate to kids and get along with his peers. He doesn’t fit the mold, he makes his own.

On a separate note, Doty’s article criticizes the “easy liberalism” of Glee – that it pretends to be liberal, proposing all the easily accepted ideas of the millennial generation, like racial and sexual diversity, without really going beneath the surface. In the first episode, only Rachel and Fin get their childhood stories told. But Mercedes does bring up the point that she doesn’t want to be “Kelly Rowland,” so at least the show doesn’t always ignore its biases.

In season 2 episode 16, I didn’t notice a whole lot of the improvements in letting the marginal characters have more of a voice… but I do think things have changed. Kurt’s story is just as important as Rachel’s, but I hated the scene with the three judges where they discussed gays – it felt too forced, as if the real millennials out there watching Glee don’t understand how to be open to homosexuality unless the program feeds it to them. We’re young, not babies. When TV proposes an issue like sexuality, and then provides the answer, there’s no room for discussion. So I think even though Glee is paying more attention to the lessons in season 2, it did a better job creating dialogue by remaining a little ambiguous in season 1.

*in class we’ve discussed how these cyclical generations cannot be proven and aren’t even relevant sometimes to the real world. Nevertheless, certain trends do appear.

H20 Polo with the Purple Cows

On the surface everything glistens with the drops of tiny water molecules that spray the air as girls pass the golden ball, calling out names and positions. Underneath the water is a whole other story. Sharp claws dig into calves and heels kick spleens in an attempt to inconspicuously drown the adversary and steal the ball under the eyes of the white-garbed refs. If each sport had an equivalent jungle fray, water polo would be the ultimate catfight – both are swift, powerful, aggressive, and curiously feline. And women play dirty.

This weekend I went down to Williamstown to watch my sister’s water polo championship tournament. Luckily Middlebury doesn’t compete in the same league so I fully aligned myself with the purple cows. My sister the co-captain plays set, the roughest position on offence, and unfortunately had gotten kicked in the chest earlier in the week. She toughed out the first two games on Saturday even though it hurt to lift her arms. I wouldn’t have known any better – in their second game she scored 3 of their teams 9 goals, beating Boston University by a point.

By nighttime she was done for. It turns out she had cracked some cartilage and had to sit the rest out, frustrated that she couldn’t help her team out this morning, or even cheer since it hurt too much. But on the bright side, there’s always next year, when another teammate won’t have mono. I think they’ll become even more competitive. Meanwhile, the men’s water polo team doesn’t have enough players, so Elise and some other girls train and compete on their team too. Girl-power, man.

I had a great time avoiding homework, watching sports, and learning more about the kick ass-ness of water polo. Elise explains, “On defense it’s all about doing illegal things and trying to get away with it, and on offense, it’s all about pretending that your defender is doing illegal things to you.” Basically, if you’re not breaking the rules, you don’t know how to play.

Noir is Back

After reading Stein’s article about Millennial Noir, I started picking up on specific differences between types of noir in the Veronica Mars episode and the Gossip Girl Episode. Stein says that noir today is either nostalgic or connotative.

Let’s take a look at Veronica Mars first. I loved the scene where Keith comes into the kitchen and starts imitating Humphrey Bogart’s rough, low drawl. Veronica calls him “Phillip Marlowe,” making a reference to the 1920’s detective that Bogart embodies in “The Big Sleep.” (It’s a great example of a traditional noir, full of black shadows, many sexually ouvert women, gunshots, and dirty money…). This kind of noir is obviously nostalgic, and not only does it make viewers like me feel intelligent about the reference, and thus feel more intimately connected with Veronica and Keith, but it also legitimizes the teen detective show as following in the same tradition, 60 years later.

In Gossip Girl, Chuck goes on a hunt for a mysterious femme fatale woman who ends up double-crossing him. This also represents the nostalgic noir, especially lighting-wise: Chuck’s only memories of the previous night are dark, shadow-filled glimpses of a rich mansion lighted by candlesticks.

A good example of the connotative noir – noir that calls on old noir techniques in order to enhance the intrigue – is in little details of the Veronica Mars episode: constant ambulance sirens float through the windows of Keith’s office, which through green and red lighting has a gritty, ugly, and almost surreal feel to it. Wanda invokes the double-crosser by hiding an ugly, corrupt side of herself from Veronica while simultaneously pretending to save the miserly. And Logan represents the corruption and confusion of the rich, by being both the snobby, superior classmate who uses his fame to get what he wants, and being victimized by the affects of the money that has corrupted his parents.

College Community Chorus

One thing I’ve missed most since leaving home for college is singing. I’m definitely not an American Idol, but I’d taken classical singing lessons in high school, joined the Chorale senior year, and even had my own solo singing a Negro spiritual. And after swim practice, I always sang in the shower. It helps relieve stress, I swear.

Freshman year I got placed in the women’s Glee choir, but (and here I may ruin your fantasy of the glittery, energy-injecting Glee club Fox presents), I just didn’t dig singing old songs on school nights from cold benches, trying to make my sore throat land extraordinary A sharps. I missed my voice teacher, the wonderful Cathy Goto, and male tenors and basses who would have smoothed out the shrill Rachel Berry-like soprano next to me. (Every choir has one).

Even singing in the shower was out; I doubt anyone on my hall would have appreciated my rendition of Mick Jagger’s “Miss You.” So when my friend Sam asked me this semester if I wanted to join Middlebury’s College Community Chorus, as skeptical as I was about singing with old fogeys from town, I said yes.

And I love it. Every Sunday night, I pack myself into a group of mostly 50 -70 year-old men and women, and sing away. Madrigals from the 16^th century. Traditional folk songs like Shenandoah. My favorites are three Morten Lauridsen songs from Nocturnes—as smooth as honey, I imagine they drift out of the cracks of Mead Chapel and then are sucked swiftly away by the darkness.

Besides the gospel song (why oh why do choir directors think gospels are fun? The repetition feels I’m slowly drilling a screw into my head), I love wrapping up the week this way, letting sound waves carry away whatever heaviness and stress I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t matter how good any of us are, cause believe me, I’ve definitely heard better. But we’re not bad. And that’s really not what it’s about for us. I’m inspired by watching these Vermonters who come to every rehearsal and find a way to be a part of the community – they’re still young at heart.

emBODYed in twilight

I thought the Twilight article on sexuality was pretty interesting to read, which made some insightful interpretations from the book about the message of the female body and sex. However, I have a hang-ups with one argument:

In the 4^th book, Bella, who has wanted to become a vampire ever since she started dating Edward, finally transforms. 

McGeough explains, “Underneath the theme of romance is the story of a girl who wants to belong, and through bodily transformations, Bella is able to find her place of belonging…. Bella’s easy transition into a new body suggests girls can grow into their bodies and have positive experiences with, through, and because of their bodies.

Is McGeough serious? Are we supposed to believe that in becoming a vampire, which is a violent, painful, near-death procedure reminiscent of all-over plastic surgery gone wrong, Bella finds belonging? I doubt young girls take this as a message of learning to grow into their bodies. Instead, I think this message tells a story of a teen doesn’t ever learn too embrace her body nor see the beautiful in it that others can see. Reversely, she may encourage young teens to buy into plastic surgery, bio-cosmetics, tanning booths, diet pills… in order to “fix” what they think is wrong about their bodies. In fact, Bella’s obsessive desire to become a vampire in order to “belong” with Edward shows that she probably places far too much emphasis on appearance instead of personality. She doesn’t comment much on how she feels about Edward’s own damnation – she simply thinks something that looks that good must be good to be with.

I hated the film’s decision to cast Kristen Stewart as Bella (back when I actually was into the book series…). Mostly I found her far too apathetic and disengaged. I couldn’t place myself in her position – Stephanie Meyer wrote Bella as someone detailed enough to be sensitive, proud, and sad, but also vague enough that most girl readers could become Bella momentarily as they read from her point of view (and thus why so many girls fell in love with the symbol Edward Cullen). But Stewart doesn’t have enough charm.  

Body-wise, she seems to lack one – I don’t mean to say that girls aren’t allowed to have stick-straight legs and pointy faces, but book Bella says, “I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete.” This Bella lacks the softness that could add sensuality, but I especially wonder if the filmmakers played on this generation’s unhealthy obsession with skinny models as examples of beauty, in order to present an appealing Bella to teen girls.

But to end on a positive note: In the film’s make out scene, Bella shows her desire for experiencing sexual pleasure, much like in the books, as McGeough points out. Bella says she’s less “strong” than Edward since he stops first, controlling himself so he doesn’t bite her. But I always took these types of scenes in the books, and more obviously in the movie, as a way of showing Bella’s power, and therefore strength, over Edward, in being able to so easily seduce him, and make him worried about going too far.