Cultural update
Dec. 18th, 2002 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiWe watched "Bend It Like Beckham" last night on videotape. An excellent movie with some very very funny bits; I would recommend it to anyone, although I'm not sure it would be quite as funny to an American audience. Or indeed, to a British audience that wasn't used to watching football commentary. But the football stuff was fairly user-friendly: I only watch the World Cup, really, and I didn't feel left out of any of the jokes.
And yes, I'm using "football" in the British sense of the word; I find it simpler to switch my vocabulary (and some of my spelling) somewhere above the Atlantic.
I think it would be a good pick if you wanted to use a film to as an entry to British culture. You know, sports, feminism (or, as they say here, "girl power") and multiculturalism all rolled into a comedy format. Yes, it is a sports movie and thus is full of sports movie cliches, but it's also cute and entertaining.
On the airplane I read the first half of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and so far I love it. It manages to be funny and serious at the same time. The characters are both vibrant and alive, and at least at this point it seems a very hopeful book, despite the looming catastrophe. As I read it I kept remembering reading Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin a few years back on the same flight. At the moment the two books feel related in my mind, perhaps because of the pulp-fiction and anti-fascist threads that run through both but also because both seem to be dealing with people who survive catastrophe, and what that does to them. Although in Chabon's book I think survival will take on a more positive value than it did in Atwood's; or rather, in Kavalier and Clay escape may be more than an illusion, which is all it is in The Blind Assassin.
Not to be seen to be dissing The Blind Assassin I feel that I should add that it is one of the best books I've ever read, and well-deserving of the Booker it received. I think it is Atwood's best work so far. But I sat sobbing on the airplane as I read it and had to put it aside for two weeks and I cannot bear even now to reread it cover to cover.
And yes, I'm using "football" in the British sense of the word; I find it simpler to switch my vocabulary (and some of my spelling) somewhere above the Atlantic.
I think it would be a good pick if you wanted to use a film to as an entry to British culture. You know, sports, feminism (or, as they say here, "girl power") and multiculturalism all rolled into a comedy format. Yes, it is a sports movie and thus is full of sports movie cliches, but it's also cute and entertaining.
On the airplane I read the first half of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and so far I love it. It manages to be funny and serious at the same time. The characters are both vibrant and alive, and at least at this point it seems a very hopeful book, despite the looming catastrophe. As I read it I kept remembering reading Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin a few years back on the same flight. At the moment the two books feel related in my mind, perhaps because of the pulp-fiction and anti-fascist threads that run through both but also because both seem to be dealing with people who survive catastrophe, and what that does to them. Although in Chabon's book I think survival will take on a more positive value than it did in Atwood's; or rather, in Kavalier and Clay escape may be more than an illusion, which is all it is in The Blind Assassin.
Not to be seen to be dissing The Blind Assassin I feel that I should add that it is one of the best books I've ever read, and well-deserving of the Booker it received. I think it is Atwood's best work so far. But I sat sobbing on the airplane as I read it and had to put it aside for two weeks and I cannot bear even now to reread it cover to cover.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-18 08:02 am (UTC)This book suffered that in SPADES. Though it was moderately less whiney and more plotty (which is good) and the characters were at least somewhat set up by outside forces beyond their control instead of the ever-dull "personal demons my parents are responsible for".
I really liked her science fiction a la the 1930s pulps and the political stuff was good. You got a good feel for time and place, but Atwood is always good at that. It was well-written as everything always is, but it's her worldview that I just despise. Atwood is WRONG about the world and about people and it shows up all the time in everything. And the characters reflect it. I despised Iris despite her attempts to subvert things because she was a weakling who was willing to remain a weakling and be manipulated all her life. Things happen TO Iris. Iris is not responsible for anything. That is utter bullshit. Laura, through the Iris filter, was too, too the holy sacrifice. And the men were even worse, through the Iris filter. Atwood's like John Updike that way. Brilliant craftsman, shame about the worldview and the people.
I don't know anyone like her people. I am glad that I don't.w
no subject
Date: 2002-12-18 08:09 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-12-18 12:56 pm (UTC)"Handmaid's Tale" is her "Turn of the Screw", transcending her own tricks.
I'm also told "Robber Bride" is good and I mean to read that one.y
no subject
Date: 2002-12-18 02:37 pm (UTC)In retrospect, you might not care for that aspect of it, but it feeds my schadenfreude.
Re:
Date: 2002-12-19 09:14 am (UTC)It's all about the self-pity.
No WONDER I like genre literature so much. At least they don't whine.