In the past few weeks in America, oh now let's see ...
Actual neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville and killed someone.
Transgender servicemembers are being banned from the military for seemingly no reason.
Hurricane Harvey became the single largest rain event in our country's history, burying our fourth largest city in a trillion gallons of water.
Recipients of the DACA program have learned that the program is being ended, and if Congress takes no action, they'll likely face deportation.
Hurricane Irma has strengthened to a Category 5 storm and is headed straight for Florida.
It's times like this when I sometimes pause and wonder why Stacey and I spend so much time watching movies and TV shows so that we can meet on the weekends and have long extended conversations about them. I mean, the nominal "leader of the free world" is a spray-tanned toddler and the planet is apparently trying to eat us alive, and this is what's important to us?
And you know what? Yes. Yes, it is.
For starters, I love movies. I love good television. Additionally, I love books and theatre and music. I have a love/hate relationship with awards shows, but I still end up watching them and caring who wins. I grieve (in my own way) when young artists die too soon and older artists leave behind a stunning legacy of work to inspire the next generation. I believe that pop culture is art. And I believe that when art ceases to be important, we're in real trouble.
Your hosts. And wine.
Also, if you haven't already noticed, most of the POPeration! episodes we record are basically me laughing hysterically. Stacey has always been able to make me laugh, no matter the topic, and so no, I won't give up the hours we spend together planning the next episode, fighting over which movies and TV shows we need to watch the following week, and recording our conversations; it's just too much fun.
And I need a little fun right now. I need some joy in my life. I suspect I'm not alone.
It can be very easy during troubling times to resist those things that bring you joy, but I believe it's a huge mistake. Yes, you should watch the news, if you can stand it; I do. Yes, if you feel so moved, you should protest; I did, and I probably will again before too long. But no, you should not stop doing things that make you happy. Walk your dog. Watch the game. Knit. Play a round of golf. Lose yourself in a good book. Travel. And if you're like me, see a movie you loved as a child or binge the latest must-see show on the streaming service of your choice.
Above all, laugh. If you don't have a Stacey in your life, you should get one. Vent about the state of the world if you need to, but at least tell a joke while you're doing so, and then change the topic eventually and do something that makes you happy.
Also, podcasts. Podcasts are good. I know of a really excellent one you should try; we're on Apple and Stitcher and Google Play and iHeartRadio and YouTube and ... okay, you get my point.
There’s a great scene in Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria between Robert Preston and Julie Andrews. She’s at
the end of her rope, both financially and emotionally, and is sobbing
uncontrollably in his arms. “There have been times I’d have given my soul to
cry like that,” he says. She whimpers back, “I hate it.” He smiles, pats her
back, and replies, “You wouldn’t if you couldn’t do it anymore.”
There’s something about crying that presents a puzzle to
anyone who studies popular culture, even as a hobby, and it is this: We tend to
avoid crying in life, or at least those situations that would call forth tears.
And yet, some people don’t mind, even seek out, movies or television shows that
cause them to weep in response to fictional characters and situations.
In a completely unscientific bit of research earlier this
week, I asked my community of Facebook friends to weigh in on the movies that
never failed to make them cry, and I learned a few things – about my friends,
mostly … but also about me, and why we go to the movies, period.
Several of my friends named movies they had initially seen as children. Bambi was, of course, mentioned, as well as It’s a Wonderful Life and Old
Yeller, which my friend Fay goes so far as to label “abusive.” An example
mentioned several times by several friends was Disney’s classic Dumbo. In particular, the moment where
Dumbo’s mother, caged and branded a “mad elephant” because she wouldn’t
tolerate cruelty toward her beloved child, reaching her trunk through the bars
of her cage, and cradling little Dumbo in her trunk to the strains of “Baby
Mine” was a significant source of trauma for many of my friends. As my friend
Ellen noted, “She
every mother trying to protect her son from all the hurt in the world and it
can't be done.”
In fact, lots of people mentioned mothers. Like Stacey, Terms of Endearment was an immediate
pick for my friend Franc, for a very particular reason. “I watched it … with my
mother. My sister died from cancer and viewing this movie with Mom, still so
lost in her grief at the time, just gutted me. Anytime I have ever watched it
since, I can't separate that memory and sense of loss from the film.”
Any kind of mother seemed to elicit tears, even the gorilla
mother of a human child. My friend Dennis noted that “when [Tarzan’s] mother sings, ‘You’ll Be In My
Heart’ … my daughter just gets the tissues out for me.”
And of course, there’s Steel
Magnolias. I told my own story in this week’s episode, but my friend Kathy
sees that final scene in the cemetery from a slightly different perspective
than I. “No
parent can watch that scene without tears,” she says, “seeing Sally Fields try
to grapple with her daughter's death.”
My friend Kyle had a pick I wasn’t expecting. “As a kid, it was a VHS
we had of Danielle Steele's Fine Things.
It made me cry every time, mostly because it always made me think of what it
would be like if I were to lose my mom.”
And the dads got to join the party, too. My friend Brent
(who just happens to write the best dad-blog
ever) mentioned Finding Nemo,
particularly the scene “at the end, where Marlin realizes he has to let Nemo grow up and
experience life on his own. As a dad, I'm so not ready for that [talk].”
And my friend Steve had a similar reaction at the end of Field of Dreams. “The last scene when his father says, ‘want to have a catch?’ … I
start peeling onions.” My friend Leticia picked The Little Princess. “especially when she sees her father after being told that he's
dead and he doesn't remember her! And then when they are finally reunited!”
(She was clearly crying as she typed this.)
Familial bonds aside, stories about friendship were
mentioned a lot. Beaches was a
popular pick, as was Babette’s Feast.
There were also some surprises in this category. My friend Erick remembers a
scene from the end of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (and no, he
wasn’t crying from sheer exhaustion, as I was). He notes, “when Sam says to Frodo
on Mt. Doom, ‘I may not be able to carry the ring for you, but I can carry
you,’ and hefts him up and climbs. What a heroic gesture, what an amazing
friend, what an amazing bond between them.”
And then there’s my friend Jeb, who teared up at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, of all things.
“Remember when
the ship was crashing and Groot decided to weave his tree-like body around the
group as a last-ditch biological protection? Rocket starts crying and asking
Groot, his ONLY friend, ‘Why are you doing this? You'll die!’ Groot gazes into
his eyes and simply says... ‘We are Groot.’ … That physical embrace and
emotional union is something I cherish whenever I can find it with friends in
my life, probably because I grew up in a culture that taught men not to be
affectionate and not to say what is really in their hearts.”
It might not surprise regular listeners to learn that there
are a lot of gay men in my Facebook feed, and some of the choices reflected
that as well. Latter Days, a film
I’ve actually not seen, was mentioned by several friends. Jon wrote, “I really related to it
and felt really lucky that I was never tortured at one of those conversion
places. Never fails to get me when they are putting him in the ice bath and
dunking his head under.” As pleasant as that sounds, I think I do need
to see this film, given the sheer number of mentions it received.
Other LGBT films mentioned were Brokeback Mountain, Boys
Don’t Cry, Freeheld, Longtime Companion, Philadelphia, and several votes for It’s My Party. “[I cry] for so many different reasons,” wrote my friend Eric. “The
"what ifs: What if they hadn't broken up? What if they'd gotten back
together sooner? The love story is so heartbreaking.”
Finally, there were some political choices. “When Yvonne
starts singing the Marseillaise [in Casablanca]
and the tears run down her face, I'm right there with her,” wrote my friend
Katherine.
And my friend Dan remembered the scene in Schindler’s List, “where Schindler looks at his Nazi pin and says ‘How
many more could this have gotten?’” At the movies as in life, the political is often personal, too.
I admit that I had a similar experience recently, watching
the national tour of The Sound of Music
at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. When the Captain got choked up halfway
through “Edelweiss,” he was singing at the Kaltzberg Music Festival in front of
four enormous swastikas, I could feel hot tears streaming down my face. And I
wondered if I had seen this same show last year, if I would have cried.
(Probably, but I did wonder.)
Other tear-inducing films that weren’t mentioned above
include Avalon, A Beautiful Mind, Beauty
& the Beast (2017), Big, Brian’s Song, Broadway Danny Rose, A
Christmas Carol (1951), The Champ,
Cinema Paradiso, Cooley High, The Deer Hunter,
A Dog’s Purpose, Empire of the Sun, The
English Patient, Ever After: A
Cinderella Story, The Fault in Our
Stars, Forrest Gump, Fried Green Tomatoes, Fur, Ghost,
Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story of a Dog,
Harold & Maude, Heartburn, The Hollars, How to Train
Your Dragon, The Ice Storm, Imitation of Life (1959), Inside Out, Lawrence of Arabia, Life is
Beautiful, Little Women (1933), Love Actually, Love Story, Madame X, Me Before You, Moana, Mulan, The Notebook, Pretty Woman,
Pride & Prejudice, Rudy, A Star is Born (1954), Stepmom,
Toy Story 3, The Trip to Bountiful, W;t,
and The Wizard of Oz. That’s a lot of
Kleenex, right there.
Sometimes we cry about things that are sad. A parent or a
child (or worse yet, a dog) dies, lovers are parted, people are lonely. Sometimes
we cry because the joy we feel witnessing a long overdue reunion or the birth
of a child is so overwhelming that we start to leak. Sometimes we cry because
people – or hobbits – are wonderful and capable of so much good that it makes
our hearts swell.
But in every case, I believe, we’re not really crying at
hobbits, or clownfish, or a broke Buildings & Loans manager at
Christmastime, or a girl from Kansas lost on the Yellow Brick Road. We’re
crying because we see something of ourselves up there. It’s probably not a
coincidence that everyone in my Facebook thread who mentioned Latter Days was at one point in their
lives a young gay man afraid to come out, or that everyone who mentioned Beaches was a woman who could tell me a
story about her very best friend that she’s known for years. Crying at the
movies is basically the same thing as looking at yourself square in the mirror
and telling yourself that it’s going to be okay … or that it’s already better
than okay … or maybe just that you’re not alone in the world. (Or that if the
Von Trapps could smuggle seven kids over the Swiss Alps, we’ll survive Donald
Trump.)
I believe that we throw ourselves up there on the silver
screen whether we’re watching an action movie, a silly comedy, or a maudlin
tearjerker. That’s why we’re willing to give two hours of our lives to people
and situations that don’t even exist. When a movie is just okay, it lets us get
away from ourselves for a little while, but when a movie is fantastic – or just
the right movie at the right time – it allows us to find ourselves.
I had a great time recording our "Guilty Displeasures" episode with Stacey. While we generally focus on things that we like, it was cathartic to vent a little bit about things that we didn't like, and freeing to do so about movies and shows that so many in our orbit seem to love.
But listening to the episode again, I was struck by a common refrain -- the insistence of friends who happen to love The Big Bang Theory, American Horror Story: Coven, Moulin Rouge, or Game of Thrones -- that because they love these movies and shows, that we should too.
And it's not as though I don't do this as well. If a friend tells me that they're just not that into my favorite actors, directors, plays, movies, or television shows, I find that I do my best to talk them into my way of thinking. And it gets worse if they can't give me a good reason why they don't like what I hold dear. Fair warning: if we're ever discussing one of my favorite things, and you say something like "I don't know; it just didn't do anything for me," I might be tempted to talk your ear off about all the wonderful things that you obviously didn't see in this thing that has captured my imagination and turned me into a raging fanboy.
So what's going on here? Why can't I just like what I like and allow you to like what you like, or not if that's what makes you happy? It turns out that the answer might lie in some of our most primitive impulses.
Back in 2013, a Yale researcher named Karen Wynn did some psychological experiments with infants and toddlers between the ages of nine and 14 months. They offered these babies a choice between two snacks: graham crackers and green beans. After the kids made their choice, they were presented with two stuffed lambs, one of whom was seen bobbing up and dowln over the bowl of graham crackers, and the other over the bowl of beans. The infants were then presented with the stuffed toys. Wynn discovered that the babies who preferred green beans were certifiably insane; c'mon, what little kid is going to choose green beans over yummy graham crackers? tended to prefer the lamb who also liked green beans. The same went for the comparatively more well-adjusted kids who preferred the graham crackers. They even liked it when a dog puppet attacked the puppet who preferred the snack they didn't choose.
The implications of this research are clear. First, it's obvious that babies are not as sweet and cuddly as their parents would have you believe. Second, it's apparent that human beings are deeply tribal in their thinking -- from our earliest days, we are possessed of an "Us vs. Them" way of looking at the world. What's more, that part of what defines who belongs to "Us" and not "Them" goes beyond contentious issues like race and gender; this can also be determined by relatively benign things such as tastes and preferences. After all, whether or not a stuffed lamb prefers graham crackers over green beans isn't that much more substantial than whether or not a friend of mine likes or dislikes Scandal or South Park or Schindler's List.
Perhaps what's going on here is that we use common cultural experiences like movies or TV shows to help define our social circles, and that the risk of not challenging your friends and loved ones who can't stand your favorite show is a sneaking feeling that the friendship isn't nearly as strong as you once believed.
Maybe we should all lighten up a little bit. So, okay -- I promise that I won't talk your ear off about all the wonderful things that you obviously didn't see in my favorite summer movie if it just didn't ring your bells ... if you'll promise to let me hate the things that I hate.
That is, until next December rolls around, and a certain "holiday classic" (yes, those air quotes are sarcastic) once again captures the romantic yearnings of half my friends and causes me to doubt their sanity as well as their taste. I can't promise that I'll be able to hold back at that point.
This week's episode was all about child stars, the dangers of being world famous at a very young age, and the number of entertainers who began working professionally as children and have, either despite or because of that experience (and probably, in most cases, a mixture of the two), achieved success as adults.
Entertainment is one of the few professions where children are still employable; stories about people naturally involve children, and audiences would never accept an adult playing the role of a young child -- teenagers, maybe (see: Grease), but kids in the business are a necessity.
But are they any good?
Some of them certainly are. We discussed Shirley Temple on the show, who was -- at the height of her career -- was a four or five year old child, and simultaneously the biggest box office draw in the world. In 1935, she won an Oscar in special recognition of her contribution to film the year before -- a year in which she made eight films.
There are a lot of problems with using the Academy Awards as a barometer of quality; they're so incredibly political -- literally the result of campaigns waged by the nominees, and besides, who's to say among five performances as five different characters is the "best"? But in the absence of any other metric, there are some performances by kids that the industry has chosen to nominate for one of its highest honors.
There used to be special categories for "Juvenile" performances (Judy Garland won the same award as Shirley in 1940, the year after The Wizard of Oz), but they eventually went away, and the only way for the Oscars to recognize child actors was to nominate them along with the adults.
Tatum O'Neal was 10 years old in 1974 when she won the Best Supporting Actress Award for her work in Paper Moon, beating out her co-star Madeline Kahn and fellow child star Linda Blair (The Exorcist). Tatum played the accomplice of a Depression-era con man (played by her father, Ryan O'Neal, who was not nominated for an Oscar for his work - just saying), and there's a decent argument to be made that she belonged in the Lead Actress category. There's little argument that she's terrific in the film, moving from vulnerability to precociousness in the blink of an eye sometimes.
In 1994, three women won Oscars for The Piano: director/screenwriter Jane Campion (nominated for directing, but a winner for her screenplay), Holly Hunter, and Anna Paquin in the Supporting Actress category -- Anna was 11 years old. As I mentioned on the show, as much as I admire Paquin's later work, I didn't really care for her performance in The Piano. As I recall, she was often grating in the film, and I wonder if she was supposed to be at some level. Mostly, I remember that I believed that Rosie Perez should have won instead, for her performance in Fearless (if you haven't seen it, don't judge; Rosie was amazing).
Six years later, Haley Joel Osment was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Sixth Sense. He didn't win; that award went (deservedly, I think) to Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules. But again, there's a real argument to be made that he belonged in the lead category as the little boy who "sees dead people." The film is really all about him, and there's good reason to believe that the producers of The Sixth Sense ran him in the supporting category because he had a better chance to win there, as Tatum and Anna had done before him. If you've seen The Sixth Sense, you know how good Haley is in this film -- because of the plot, he's asked to do things that weren't imminently relatable to his young experience, and the surprise ending aside, Haley's understated nature of his performance is ultimately what made that film a worldwide hit (sorry, Bruce).
More recently, in 2013, Quvenzhané Wallis was nine years old when she was nominated as Best Actress in a Leading Role for Beasts of the Southern Wild (a movie she had auditioned for when she was only five). She is still, to this day, the youngest performer ever to be nominated for an Academy Award in a lead category (before Quvenzhané, the youngest nominee was Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was 13 when she was nominated for Whale Rider). I really wanted Quvenzhané to win in 2013 (the Oscar ended up going to Jennifer Lawrence for her work in The Silver Linings Playbook). Yes, she was really young, but she was fantastic. I heard people say that as a child, she wasn't really acting, but probably just playing, and wasn't doing the work that her fellow adult nominees were doing. I didn't care, really; all I knew was that she leapt off the screen in that movie, and affected me much more deeply than the other nominated performances I'd seen that year. I was sad, but not surprised, when the Academy did not send a 9-year old home with an Oscar.
And perhaps the critics had a point. Of the five young Oscar nominees discussed here, only Paquin has been doing work as an adult that I've seen (and yet, another young Oscar nominee -- Jodie Foster -- later went on to win two Academy Awards as an adult, so it's not always a fluke). Quvenzhané is still a kid, but her follow-up effort, as the lead in Annie, didn't show the same promise that she exhibited in Beasts.
So are amazing performances by children just luck? Do they have an advantage, in that they don't edit their emotions in the way that most adults have learned to do? Do they really understand, when immersed in a set and a story, that they're pretending? I guess for me, the most important question is: does it really matter -- so long as they're telling a story in such a way that it takes the audience with them, at least for a time.
If I missed your favorite performance by a young child here, leave us a comment below. And, as always, thanks for listening.
