Resting on my hotel bed, I compose

myself after a 6.5 mile walk around state college. A walk that, according to my friend, Gmaps Pedometer, burned 1048 calories. Nice. Surprisingly during/after said walk, I never got hungry for dinner, so I'm guessing the lunch I had at Plyler's Buffet on the way to State college had a full trucker caloric intake of 10,605 calories. It was worth it though. Strangely enough, there were some English ladies (as in Tea and Crumpets not wah wah wah 19th Century Russian Lit wha wha wha). English ladies in Brookfield, PA was, well pretty strange, but also somewhat cool.

If I had an accent, I'd be an English one, and I'm not talking "cup 'o tea, with the missus kind", I'm talking "oi git y'r fookin' arse off me bumpa 'fore me garden breaks open y'r bib n' brace." When I'm alone in foreign places like I am today, I often consider trying to uphold an accent for all conversations....become someone else for a day. Unfortunately, my anti-social nature precludes me from most social interaction, and I generally don't keep up the charade outside my head.

In any event, I've never really been to State College Before. Sure, I was here once in high school with my physics class to look at their nuclear reactor, but we didn't really walk around. So the goal on my walk today was two fold: 1. find gifties for my wife and baby (because all dads have to come back with presents when they go to faraway places. It's a law of fatherhood) 2. observe strangers.

So I did a lot of wandering. I found that College and Beaver streets had plenty of shops and restaurants, so I kinda wandered around there for a while. As I looked at people, I noticed that State College is a lot like a big city; no one smiles, no one notices you; everyone is invisible. I like anonymity but, I really felt almost alien here. Perhaps it's because I'm a decade older than a good chunk of the population, or because I just don't think/act/like a college student anymore (did I ever think/act like a college student? <---maybe for a minute, week).

My observations: America is homogenizing. We're getting fatter. Cell phones are ubiquitous. I didn't feel bad for listening to my headphones because everyone else was doing the same thing.

I remember college being more divided, clique wise. Granted, I only walked a small area, but I'd say 90% of the people I saw fit into a general category of sameness. I saw only a handful skaters, and hippies, and no other groups. Where oh where did all the goth kids go? Punks? Emo? anything? Everyone had that Old Navy, Gap, Abercrombie shit look. Everyone drove expensive cars--I've never seen more Mercedes, BMWs, Volvos, and muscle cars...Isn't state college really expensive? Where the fuck are they getting money to shop for homoginity clothes AND have fancy cars?

We're getting fatter. In a way, I think this is a good thing, to a degree. I'm talking to you, girls. Thanks to all the friends over at Al Key Hall, there weren't all that many rail thin guys and gals floating around. Most people had substance. And I think that's good. It's good because I used to religiously watch America's Next Top Hot Model, and always rooted for the Plus Size model. I don't follow the show so much anymore because, well, the plus size girl never wins...and honestly 10 is not Plus! Fuck 10 is like the "don't go any lower than that, sister" mark for me. The last episode I watched, the girls were bitching at the one girl because she was a 0. A fucking 0. C'mon, who could fall in love with something so thin? That's why I love my wife. She's short. She's beautiful. She has curves, and she's not going to get rid of them because America wants her to. So bravo to all you other girls out there who don't believe that 2, 4, 6 are sexy. You can be healthy and a 10-12. You'll look good, feel good, and not count calories when Ben and Jerry come over for dinner, after dinner, and midnight snacks.

Cellphones: Jesus Christ. I hope someone develops a Cellphone Bomb. Hate em. 'nuff said. Got behind 3 people on the way from Erie to here that nearly caused accidents thanks to Cellphones--one near my house actually; he decided that while he was taking his call at the wheel, he'd also create a new lane to get from Rt 5 to 955; nearly ran me into the meridian. I think he was a priest. Fuck you Church.

Music: One time, a long time ago, my friends and I were talking about superpowers. The first one I listed was "appropriate background music for all situations." I think this one is starting to come true, on an individual level. Everyone down here has iPods, earbuds. Tuned in, tuned out. I was doing the same, and I noticed that all the stores had their music up real loud, so you had to listen to what they wanted, unless, of course you turned your shit up louder.

Tomorrow the conference starts. I present on Saturday. I'm hoping to meet some old profs, and maybe find me a job. That would be the all time best experience. Either way, I'm looking forward to this weekend--especially since I'll get to see my wife and baby on saturday after the conference (I've missed them much this week).

I forgot to bring my camera cord, so I can't upload any of the photos I took today, but maybe I'll edit and add later.

Contest Update

My Story, "Deconstructing Happily Ever After" was announced the winner of the 2008 Kentuckiana Metroversity Writing Competition for Graduate Fiction. In addition, it will be appearing in Human Voices an anthology of this year's winners.

Zen and the Art of Revision

'some retarded code
public sub main()
dim CheeZtitle as string
dim nerdOmeter as integer
CheeZtitle="Zen and the Art of Revision"
nerdOmeter = 0
nerdOmeter = IncreaseNerdPower(CheeZtitle)
msgbox("Nerd it up to the power of " & cstr(NerdOMeter) & " nerd points.", vbInformation, "Nerd Power")
End
end sub
public function IncreaseNerdPower(byref BlogTitle as string) as integer
return BlogTitle.length
end function

I think that perhaps, I do need to stop coding so much. Anyway, over at my friend, Val Gryphin's blog, recently there was some discussion on Revision. I thought I'd take a few minutes and lay out my approach to an often groaned about aspect of writing.

Personally, Revision is my favorite place to be. I'm infinitely more comfortable fixing something I already have than trying to make up something new. As such, here are some tips, methods I use to help organize and get the most out of my revision process:

1. Give the story some time. Seriously. Once you're finished with a draft, forget about the story for as long as you can. Given the hectic nature of my life, 10 minutes usually works for me :P, but two to three days of non-attention is always better than going right into revision after placing the last period.
2. Start all Revisions as a new filename. I use a sort of Programmer's versioning pattern. I'll start a story out as Story 0.1, and with each pass, I'll Save As and increment the Version number. That way, I never lose any prior edits. Some programs have integral Versioning, but after playing with Open Office's Version handling, I found that making my own versions is much easier. Doing this will also free you up to taking bigger chances and changing things more drastically, because you can always go back to an older version if this particular fork fails on you.
   
3. Revise in layers. Don't try to do everything at once. You'll get bogged down after two or three pages. Pick a layer and do a full pass doing nothing but that layer. If you see something else that does need to be changed, make a note and keep going. Try not to break out of your current process.
   
4. When using layers, save the nitpicky grammatical bits for last. Your last two passes should be. 1. Read for grammar and 2. read aloud.
5. Find yourself a Sue. Sue, love me as she may, has no problem telling me EXACTLY when something I've written has turned to shit. This is important for two reasons: 1. it knocks the ego-maniacal bullshit out of your head, and 2. It helps you hone in on what isn't working. This is especially important for people like me who do write in experimental/postmodern forms because weird shit tends to piss off readers easily, so it absolutely has to pass the bullshit test. I'm sure that Sue would be your Sue if you pay her in chocolate and sweet cool drinks (maybe).
6. (Layer) Break your story down to its structural roots. Analyze how your story fits to the Freytag triangle of Dramatic flow. Plot out exposition, rising action, climax, denouement and make sure it all balances right. Rough approximations are Exposition up to 1/3, and very very very little denouement. This is especially important in postmodern/experimental works. If you aren't adhering to a Freitag triangle for your story progression, you have to have some sort of structural flow, and that flow has to balance out. If your structure is failing, your reader will either become lost or bored due to lack of tension and/or lack of an idea of what the hell is going on.
   
7. (Layer) Once you've analyzed your structure, start asking Why. Why doesn't Clare paint anymore? Why can't she stay in a relationship? Why does she hate her job? These why's should come directly from the characters' struggles in your story. If you can't answer any question with the text, do some freewriting in the voice of your character--see what comes up. This is a great tool for helping you figure out areas to cut from the story, because you can look at a particular section and say, "Why does this need to be in the story?" And if you can't find a need, then you know it's time for that section to go. I've used this method to cut several stories from 40+ pages down into the 20ish range.
   
8. (Layer) After Structure and analyzing for necessity, take a look at your characters. What are their core struggles in the story? How are they communicated through tension? How have you used elements of the story to make the reader care/not care about your characters? And are they balanced? No one should be black and white good/evil, so how have you added humanity to your villains and darkened your heroes?
9. (Layer) Take a look at the length of your story. Is it too short, too long? Most literary journals anymore seem to want stories under 8000 words. That's hell for longer story writers like myself. In this pass, look again at cutting unnecessary pieces, but also look at cleaning up language a bit.
10. (Layer) The language layer. I'm a HUGE advocate against passive voice and adverbs, and I dedicate at least one layer pass to clean up as much of it as I possibly can. Anything with "has, had, is, was, were, have, will, would" modified verbs is up for the chopping block as far as I'm concerned. I also really hate sentences that start with "It." But your language pass could be different, and don't just focus on grammatical faux pas, also take a moment to think about the story's narration. Who is telling/writing the story? Is the voice of the story consistent with this teller's voice? How can you make that voice stronger. In my case, each story in my collection is "written" by the central character, and as such, each character has his/her own writerly quirks. Clare tends to lean towards thicker more fluid language, heavy in alliteration and a sort of poet's mindset, while Johnny is all postmodern fuckery with a particular interest in pointing out every cliche that he uses. The narrator character takes a sort of middle ground between the two, since he's more or less a combination of them. Even if you don't name or have a narrator in your story, think about the language of delivery, think about diction. How can you amp up your presentation by improving the language?
11. (Layer) Look for repeated story strings. This is where you go through your story and make sure that all the things that your characters see and do have a chance to reflect throughout the story. If your character is a painter, this is the pass you use to ensure that somehow you work her painterly mindset into her daily actions (paint crusted fingernails, warped canvases in the corner, etc). Add in several small details throughout. Also look for things at the end of your story that have significance, and make sure that that significance is weighted throughout the story. Don't drop a bomb at the end without vaguely hinting towards it all along. Also, if you have any Red Herrings, kill them now.
12. (Layer) Do a grammatical hard edit. I've never been able to do this, but I've had former CW professors suggest that you try reading the story backwards--this will help break your mind away from the story so that you're actually looking at the page instead of reading from memory. It's a good idea, but I've never been able to keep my attention focused long enough to do that. This kind of edit is best done when the story is completely out of your head, otherwise it's hard to keep your mind focused on low-level stuff without starting to skim. This layer is also best done on a physical hard copy--current screen resolutions are significantly lower than what our eyes are used to when we read a printed text, resulting in as much as a 25% slow down in online reading speeds (I read that somewhere, but don't have a direct quote, so trust me that it's true-ish?). Because of slower online reading speeds, we tend to skim a lot more. So when you're doing the hard edit, do it on paper.
13. (Layer) Read your story out loud from start to finish. I can't tell you how many times I've found grievous problems by doing this. It really helps improve the flow of your language, and also it gives you the opportunity to hear and adjust the aural side of the story. While oral presentation isn't as common for fiction, I think it's just as important as it is for poets.

That's about all I can think of right now. Next time you do a revision, give a couple of these steps a try, and see if they work for you. I'd love to hear if any of them helped/failed for your situation.

Long Road to Ruin

Today, I kick off my post with a nod to the Foo Fighters. They've always been a band that I've liked and respected, but never listened to seriously until the local college radio station started playing "The Pretender" on heavy rotation. I can't get enough of the new album. Simply, they rock.

Work's been significantly horrific lately--I'm building a project that's guaranteed to waste money, piss people off, and take up a lot of time. But hey, I'm just a goon, and who cares about office automation that saves millions? Not my company. They like making employees feel bad on many levels.

But the point of today's blog isn't to bitch about work (hell, I could get fired for that), It's to talk about the chapter's end booming right up into the presence of my present: The end of Graduate School. In two months, I'll be a Master. Of words. And hopefully by the end of the year, I'll have a finished book.

I sent in my thesis on saturday, and now all that's left are a few things (with ridiculously short deadlines): 1. Workshop Piece 2. Prep for PCEA Conference 3. Warrior Poet Group Creative Assignment 4. Prep for Graduating Lecture and Reading 5. Comment on Workshop stuff.

The worst part? I'm ready to take a break. Yesterday. But I have till the 9th for the Workshop, PCEA, and Warrior Poet Deadlines. I'm sure Rod'll let me slide a little on the WPG (though he may break an arm if I slide more than a day), but the other two are pretty daunting at the moment. For Workshop, I'm taking this story, "The Poetics of Memory" and trying to fix the structural outer story so that it exists as a complete arc in its own vein to mirror the interior arc. Hopefully, the ideas I have tonight will help facilitate that. For the PCEA Conference, I have to condense a 33 page ECE into a 15 minute presentation, and a 23 page story into a similarly timed reading. I don't imagine that portion should be too rough, but it'll still take a couple of days.

Once everything school is done, I'm looking forward to a few days of doin' nuthin' with the family, demolishing my basement, and maybe even playing a little Rockband (the best type of crack/cocaine available).

That's the news from Erie, the city where the weather always sucks, and I like it that way.

Cloverfield Revisited

A little while ago, I posted my reaction to Cloverfield (Here). Since then, an interesting conversation has begun in the comments of that post. I'd like to respond to them, as well as put some more information forward.

In case you don't want to read TFA, my original essay said essentially this: Cloverfield failed in my eyes as a postmodern film because it turned its back on too many conventions without making appropriate adjustments to its structure to allow for the movie to stand on its own. Had the movie been direct to Avant Garde, I wouldn't have minded, but since Cloverfield was a major mass marketed hype machine, the movie failed to be truly accessible to the masses. Because it isn't accessible to the masses, Cloverfield is a prime reason why folks shy away from attempting to view/consume postmodern/experimental works. Cloverfield's broken structure leaves the audience feeling gypped, nauseous, and saying, "now what?" Any piece of art/literature/film/etc that invokes such feeling on a large scale is somehow failing. And in today's content-starved culture, I feel it's a travesty for people to give a movie like this good scores when they say things like, "I didn't understand it, but it was awesome."

So that's the gist of what I said earlier. Before I start, I want to establish a few things that I hold to be true for modern film:

1. All big production films are mass marketed, meaning that they are written, produced and directed to be accessible to the largest demographic possible for their genre.
2. Movie-goers spend a lot of money at the theater (~$30 for 90 minutes entertainment anymore these days), and thus expect to be entertained.
3. No one likes to be made to feel dumb, especially when they're paying to be entertained.

Having said that, BlueNight, has posted a pair of fairly detailed rebuttals to my basic premise. His argument is that Cloverfield is indeed a successful postmodern experience. While I agree that the movie is indeed postmodern, this movie is by far not at all successful.

A large part of BlueNight's refutation revolves around classic identifiers of modernism vs. postmodernism, wheras Modernism = enlightenment/immersion and postmodernism = denial of enlightenment/metafictive form. In this binary system of identification, Cloverfield is indeed postmodern. There is no big reveal, and since the movie is a movie of a movie archived by the DOD, we are removed wholly from the actual experience. However, simply being postmodern doesn't make it good. Here's why it's not good:

Metafictive nature:
Metafiction is a tricky bird to play with. If done incorrectly it will entail frustration, anger, etc from your audience. The reason behind this is this: metafiction forces the audience into a state of instability and unfamiliarity. By far, realist/modernist experiences dominate our mental processes, so when you are forced to reckon with the notion that you are watching a film of a film, your mind has to do extra work to keep all the balls in the air (granted, you could ignore the metafictive nature and receive the work as a mondernist experience, but that would be denying the full effect of the piece). Furthermore, metafiction breaks the ontological wall between reality and fiction, or in this case, reality and the movie. In Cloverfield, we are shown the exterior framing of the DOD stamps, which tell us that we are about to see footage relating to an event that has already happened. Since this event happens in a clone of real-world NYC, our minds kick into overdrive to create a parallel ontological sphere where our real world NYC can become destroyed by said monster. This framing is further reiterated throughout the movie by the cuts to "best day ever" and the obviously amateur filming strategy. In a modernist world, we would be able to accept this as "Truth" and get on with the story, but since this is very obviously a postmodern metafictive construction, we also have to entertain ontological questions in addition to the modernist's epistemological questioning. And my big question regarding the ontology of Cloverfield is "Why." Why am I viewing DOD footage of a monster attack on this ontic sphere NYC? I've been placed in this position metafictively, but the metafictive nature of the movie doesn't resolve itself. Cloverfield opened the door to this ontology, but it doesn't give me, Joe audience, any Idea of what to do with it.

Let me give an example from literature to demonstrate. In John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse," from very early on you have an authorial intrusion setting up the metafictional status of the story. The first intrusion, "A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type, which in turn is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention." (Lost in the Funhouse p.72). At first glance, the reader is lost to the metafictional importance of this and several other authorial intrusions. All metafiction will cause initial confusion; it's an inherent danger of the form. The pay off comes when the metafiction resolves itself.

Here's another way to put it. Have you ever read a novel that was going along just fine, and then in the last 2 pages, one of the characters says, "and so that's why I wrote this book." Such a statement immediately throws the entire book into a metafictive state. We're reading a book written by a character within the book, but we didn't know this until the end. Usually when I encounter this, I end up walking away angry because the metafictive nature of the book was tacked on as an after effect. One that might make someone untrained in postmodern there say, "ooh a twist" but at the same time, this is something that is a grievous failure from the perspective of application and structure, because at this point, you've now made me say, "Why have I read this entire novel you wrote, without knowing you were writing it?" This is further problematized if the character-author wrote about him/herself in third person. Why?

In "Lost in the Funhouse," Barth slowly reveals to us that Ambrose, the story's protagonist is also the story's author. And in this slow, controlled reveal, we see that the writing of the story mirrors the structure and form of being lost in a funhouse, where funhouse becomes an allegory to both writing and life.

In Cloverfield, we've been given the same sort of "ooh a twist" kind of metafiction. Yes, it's framed by the DOD, but the DOD framing and the amateur filmmaking don't actively contribute to the structure of the movie. I'm not talking enlightenment, I'm talking structure. Structurally, Ambrose's authorial intrusions had to be there. I'm not entirely positive that any of the postmodern elements in Cloverfield had to exist. And my lack of confidence is brought on by all of the ontological questions left unanswered. Assuming that Joe Audience didn't partake in the alternative reality game, the movie offers very little content wise, but at the same time, it offers a lot of promise: Take this hyperreal NYC, add a monster, memories/fear from 9/11, and film it like Joe average would film an incident like this. Also take the DOD and slap some pre/post graphics to set up how this footage is relevant. Now, we've established this ontology. The failure here is that we have nothing to do with the ontology except to take it as it is delivered to us. By nature of the metafictive content, we are removed from the action, and we are also placed subjectively into a single experience of the attack. However, our viewpoint is objective because it comes from a camera's lens. Therefore, defying postmodernism, we are given "Truth" of what happened to that particular group. By referencing this "Truth" solely (i.e. we don't get anything else from the DOD but this amateur film), we are forced out of our ontological experience and back into an epistemological/modernist experience where we are immersed (save for the brief moments of "the best day ever") in the event.

I think it's pretty easy to see how things have "broken" in a postmodern structural sense here. If the movie were to retain it's subjective postmodern stance, it has to offer more subjectivity; we have to see others' struggles in the wake of disaster. Or, if that isn't available to us, we need to see Why this particular video is more important than all of the other experiences contained within the Cloverfield disaster. Why is this the most important event? Why is this the defining moment of the Cloverfield attack? What can we learn from it? What can we do with it in the future? All of these questions should have some sort of inkling to resolution for the ontic sphere of Cloverfield's NYC to be stable. Without these answers, we can't truly believe in the hyperreal representation of Cloverfield, and thus our connection to the world deteriorates.

BlueNight also challenged my interpretation on Cloverfield's dramatic structure. He contends that the movie follows Campbell's Mythic Hero Journey instead of Freytag's triangle of dramatic structure. While the story's protagonist does follow the pattern of the Mythic Hero, such a pattern is contained by the simpler Freytag triangle. Freytag's triangle has existed in drama since its birth with the Greeks, and is the de facto standard for dramatic interpretation. And the Mythic Hero cycle is just a more complex revision of the triangle (you still have exposition, rising action, climax and denouement in the cycle). But in truth, Cloverfield doesn't really prescribe to either form fully. It can't. The metafictive nature of the movie, denies a fully immersive plot arc focusing upon the protagonist (you'd have to throw out the DOD framing if you want to use the mythic hero). Since the movie opens with the DOD framing, we are forced to start our plot arc there. Because of the metafictive nature of the movie and its multiple temporal shifts, you really end up with three pieces on their own freytag triangles:
1. Framing elements: DOD stuff (largely unresolved)
2. The "best day ever" flashback arc
3. The primary action of Cloverfield
Each arc runs independently from the other, and this is where Cloverfield deviates from the structural norm. As we watch the movie, we constantly switch between each arc as they appear. Fortunately, we aren't too burdened by these arcs, as they all progress linearly, but at the same time, each arc is separate enough that there is a healthy amount of distance between them. While arcs 2 and 3 work in a pretty traditional flashback manner, filling in character details to aid the viewer with the present, the DOD arc remains problematic. It tells us only that we're about to watch a video of the incident. Once the video finishes, this arc closes without any further mention, rising action, or resolution. In essence, it is a dead arc, and combined with its metafictive failures, we're forced back to reality as the credits roll without any real notion of what to do with what we've seen.

I guess that's the overall difference, in my opinion, between modernism and postmodernism. In modernism/realism, you receive an experience and you walk away content with that experience. With postmodernism, you are forced to question the nature of an experience, and enlightenment comes out of successful questioning/analysis/interaction with the ontology before you. I can't satisfy my questions towards Cloverfield based upon the information given to me, and to me, that's a sign of postmodern failure. And furthermore, as an avid supporter of postmodern/experimental forms, I think it's a particularly spectacular failure because of the sheer amount of marketing hype that went into the movie. Think about The Matrix (just the first one). It had a giant pile of philosophy packed into it, and it was really hyped up. The result? A global hit with several philosophical endeavors stemming from it, as well as a universal sense of postmodern satisfaction/enlightenment.

With Cloverfield, most of the movie audience boo'd the ending. That's a disconnect. A failure. People didn't agree with some element of the movie. Granted, most of the people were likely looking for a modernist explanation/defeat of the monster, but I don't think such an explanation was ever necessary. All we really needed was proper structuring and usage of postmodern style. I think the movie would have gone over a lot better had the makers just gone a little farther in establishing good postmodern form, rather than sloppy "we're going to look so smart for invoking metafiction and nontraditional storytelling" elements.

BlueNight, I do agree that Cloverfield is postmodern, but I fail to see how it succeeds in entertaining the largest demographic audience possible. I don't really see it succeeding on a small demographic. I think it succeeded largely because mass marketing told us that it was an awesome movie, and anymore these days we listen to what we're told instead of making our own decisions--a point very accurately brought up by Susane's comment: "People want soo badly for something new and exciting that they are willing to accept CRAP just because it is different. I want good different.....not the crap."

And now that I've written a book, what's everyone else have to say on the matter?

Modern Fairytales

Today, Sue and I went on a date. In a blizzard. We went to a new [chain] restaurant called O'Charley's and had some fairly decent lunch faire. Then we spun tires through snow to the movie theater where we saw Penelope starring Christina Ricci.

I'm sure all of you remember the flaming explosion post I did on Cloverfield--it was quintessential film evil. Penelope on the other hand did a wonderful job as both a film and social commentary.

Here's a real quick synopsis: Old money blueblood family has a curse put upon it that the first girl born will have the face of a pig. Several generations of boys later, Penelope is born with a snout and pig ears. Her parents, freak out, fake her death, and Penelope grows up isolated in a hidden room of the family mansion. At 18, her neurotic mother starts trying to find a suitor, because the curse says something about Penelope needing to be loved by "one of her own." Well blue-blood old-money kids are all a bunch of whiney, stupid, mama's-boys looking to take over daddy's CEO chair in a few years. And once Penelope reveals herself, they bolt like little scared bitches. Long story short, one suitor decides to sell Penelope's existence to a tabloid, and that involves another blue-blood to act as infiltrator to get a picture of Penelope for the news, and well second guy and Penelope kinda fall in love through their daily conversations (with Penelope hiding behind a 1 way mirror). Rising action, climax, denouement from there.

1. It avoided many of the cliches found in romantic films
2. It handled the "this plot revolves completely around miscommunication" issue nicely, and though there was a fair amount of miscommunication, it was well done and felt natural to the story progression
3. Christina Ricci wasn't super disgusting thin; she looked normal, and healthy (and some how made a pig nose look cute)

Here's why I liked the movie: Our society places an incredible amount of attention and substance on outward appearances, and when we encounter something un-like our idealized vision of beauty, we react with revulsion and often surgical corrective measures. Penelope embodies several aspects of appearance that are considered unattractive in our standards:

• She is 5'1" tall. She does not have long legs, nor the chiseled man-body that is so popular on the girls these days
• She has a pig nose and pig ears
• She dresses in a cute, but conservative manner--longish skirts, stockings, no cleavage, etc
• She is a brunette
• She does not have blue eyes
• She is very intelligent

Even if you factor out the fantastical porcine appendages, the neurotic mother in the movie, would likely still have had a hard sell to get "unappealing" Penelope married to another old-money blueblood dipshit. These bluebloods are analogous to the trendsetting American elite--pop stars, etc. They influence what us commoners should believe. Their shallowness is readily apparent because they instantly turn out anyone unlike themselves--even if the dissimilar one is also old-money.

So what happens? (spoiler alert from here on) A commoner falls for Penelope, but circumstances keep the two apart for a good chunk of the movie. Still, even though the commoner was away from Penelope, her strength of character pushed him to stop gambling, and start playing piano again. She inspired him to clean up his act and do better, and even if they didn't reunite at the end of the movie, Johnny became a better person because he took the time to get to know Penelope, instead of taking her for her face value.

By the end of the movie, Penelope admits that she likes herself as she is, snout and all, and this breaks the curse. What a great message, eh? Learn to like yourself for how you are; don't just chop off your nose because you don't like it; embrace it, accept it, accept yourself.

By this time, Johnny has also accepted Penelope, though he believes she doesn't want to see him. On Halloween, she seeks him out with a Penelope mask on (her own curse is lifted, but the Penelope mask is the costume of the year). Once Johnny realizes who she is, he kisses her before removing her mask; he kisses her despite her deformity, demonstrating that he too is willing to accept her for how she is and not how she is expected to be. This acceptance is contrasted sharply with the blue-blood counterpart, who, a few scenes before was about to marry Penelope to help restore his name (the city found out he leaked the Penelope stuff, and by that time Penelope was a beloved local celebrity) and before the wedding he said to his mother, "the thought of kissing her makes me want to vomit." Also at the alter, this boy smiled his most genuine smile, when Penelope said she wasn't going to marry him and fled.

Thus, the difference between classes is fully established. You have a shallow, rich upper class interested in only money and appearance, and the working class proletariat that sees through the exterior facade and embraces the spirit of relationship and connection.

As Americans, we're all under great pressure to lose weight, exercise more, dress better, and ultimately emulate the celebrities that bombard us from every angle. Penelope breaks from that expectation, and asks us to think about the real important things in life: relationships, love, and acceptance. If you have those qualities, (even if you've been beaten half-to-death with the ugly stick) you're immeasurably better off than your rich, pretty counterparts. You have depth, and all the good stuff life has to offer, because we all know how fast money and beauty can fade.

PCEA here I come

I received word today that at least one of my proposals was accepted for the upcoming 2008 PCEA (Pennsylvania College English Association) conference coming up around the ides of April. I presented there once before in 2002 on an undergrad panel devoted to Edgar Allen Poe.

Since there are a number of professors from both IUP and Behrend attending the conference, I'm hoping that in addition to getting to present, I might be able to land a job somewhere.

I submitted proposals to read from my ECE, "Reestablishing Experience through Ontology: Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire and String" as well as from my story, "(Un/Re/I )Do"

It should be a good time to be had by all. More later.