Sunday, March 19, 2009

Rejected IV
Fourth in a regular series of rejected freelance pieces.

THE PAUCITY OF HOPE
And Money, Money, Money makes the world go around

The yammer. The yammer crescendoed about us with a percussive force, pressing in from all sides and above. Quartets of girls – gaggles must by law comprise a quartet, each group’s Carrie or Miranda carefully chosen – were actually squealing.

He’s Just Not That Into You was a charming movie, its female ensemble well-cast and fun to look at, and mostly satisfying for Jennifer Aniston’s very grown-up, together appeal, while our male specimens included an affectless Ben Affleck and a fetusy pipsqueak from Entourage. These are men? These unmolded blobs are our secret wishes and champagne dreams? Whatever you do, don’t tell Camille Paglia.

When the girls behind us weren’t shrieking with glee and love – for Justin Long – I appreciated the movie’s simple pleasures, especially its cinematography (at least of the city; certainly not how you could see the pimples beneath everyone’s skin) and wardrobe that seemed to imply Baltimore is some sort of neo-Chicago, all slick and pretty and tailored by Banana Republic.

Baltimore, Maryland.

I have never been to Baltimore, but I’ve seen the films of John Waters, and they seemed sorely lacking in designer-green interior paint and Scarlett Johansson’s perfect Botticelli curls and big, luscious ass. Perhaps the real Baltimore fits somewhere between the two? Or is it more of a Homicide or The Wire thing, the city you go to when D.C. runs out of crack?
Meanwhile, the only buoying hope I felt was that I could someday find a combination of smoky eyeliner and shadow that would turn my eyes as blue as Aniston’s or the feckless Bradley Cooper’s. I certainly wasn’t waiting for a payoff that included [ZOMG READ NO FURTHER, SPOILER, SPOILER, ETC.] Ben Affleck on one knee.

Gross.

Despite Affleck, and the on-the-knee proposal (please, men, stand up and be men!) there is a very good thing about He’s Just Not That Into You, and that is what it didn’t have, the dog that didn’t bark: In this one movie, the love affair is not a financial transaction, nor is the boyfriend a walking wallet who will buy you a fantasy closet. Instead, you will laugh together and play Charades with your friends and smooch and live and love!

It’s a nice movie, really! Honestly, it’s very cute.

The end of capitalism came at a bad time for the makers of our recent romantic fantasies. Many years ago, I constantly derided Chasing Amy for the adolescent fantasy that with the power of your magical schwanz, you can change a hot blonde lesbian; the only problem was, I hadn’t actually seen it. There followed a decade when I refused to slag things I hadn’t seen for myself – a lesson I’d do well to remember now, maybe. But you don’t even need the trailer for Confessions of a Shopaholic; the billboards are enough, when you’re hurrying back from your meager lunch break, should you be so lucky as to still be jobbin’, to elicit a wounded soul cry.

The films of the ’30s may have been a fanciful escape of white evening gowns and fox fur coats and penthouses for movie patrons like Mia Farrow as a Depression mama in The Purple Rose of Cairo, but they also had Greta Garbo, and The Gay Divorcee. Give us something better than a pretty (and in Wedding Crashers, hilarious) Amy Adams look-alike blinking her lovely lashes and swinging shopping bags from Blahnik. It is so wrongheaded about what the nation wants right now, Sarah Palin should star.

As for the Sex and the City movie, it couldn’t have been more atrocious and grotesque. SATC, which originated Greg Behrendt’s concept of He’s Just Not That Into You, specifically equates labels with love in its very first line and explicitly substitutes shopping for sex. It is howlingly funny if you didn’t pay $10.50 to see it in the theater, but its few moments of intentional humor include a humpy purse dog and poopy pants, whereas my biggest laugh came when Samantha and Smith toasted themselves before a roaring fire in matching sequined bathrobes we last saw Roy Scheider sporting in All That Jazz.

Of course, Smith – who is a handsome, sexy, easy-tempered and pleasant movie star rocked with passion for an older woman – is so far above Miranda’s random schlubby Steve and Charlotte’s gross bald fatty and Carrie’s Peter Pan Mr. Big, there is no comparison. So Samantha dumps him, and Mr. Big ends up proposing to Carrie, on one knee.

Gross.

But you know he loves her, because he bought her a closet. And we have our happy ending.

The romance as an art form isn’t always so … transactional. Not every romance treats its heroines as Cinderellas and adorable princesses, waiting for someone to pay them for sex. This isn’t a feminist indictment of a fantasy rich boyfriend; nobody’s against having a nice apartment or going to dinner at Aujourd’hui. It’s a feminist-Marxist indictment of needing so much shit.

There’s a raft of delightful romances out there – not “You had me at hello,” or “You make me want to be a better man.” Those embody their own special blech. But I actually liked Love, Actually, and watch the Nicole Kidman Bewitched every time it comes on my enhanced movie channel package. (It’s better if you’re high.) It’s the paltriness of what passes for hope in most of them – say, among the bitchen M.I.A. world beats of Slumdog Millionaire – that is so dispiriting.

Were there others who saw Slumdog and came away infuriated? Who didn’t think a one-in-a-billion chance to escape poverty brought hope, but rather confirmed the inhumane misery of life in the caste system? Who actually got angry at India?

Things aren’t great for poor kids in the U.S., but if you are systematically blinding children with lye in your orphanage, eventually Social Services will come in and have a look-see.

Have a million rupees! All better now! You can even buy a Cinderella of your very own.