Rilalities V: Challenges and Insecurities

April 25, 2014December 11, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

The 6’5” Guy

“I’m six foot five,” a man named Joe said when I met him. He did not work this into his greeting, and he did not say it in the early minutes of our introduction but it hung over his sizable head until he acknowledged it.

Those fortunate enough to meet Joe will discover the reason we learn about his height soon after learning his first name. The natural inclination of most is to drop their last name soon after saying their first name. Some drop their last name soon after mentioning their first name as a matter of habit, and some do it because they’re so proud of their family and heritage. Others might mention their occupation soon after mentioning their first name. I didn’t learn any of that from Joe in the brief moments Joe and I spoke. I learned that Joe was 6’5”. Joe was more 6’5” than he was Joe, and those fortunate enough to have a conversation with him that extends beyond superficial pleasantries will learn how 6’5” he is. If the conversation we share with Joe evolves into a minutes-long discussion, and the listener doesn’t acknowledge his height in anyway, he’ll break the news to them:

“I’m six foot five!”

Although Joe and I spoke for a total of about three minutes, I had the impression that the man could’ve written a bestseller, won the Heisman Trophy, saved children from a fire, or discovered the cure for cancer, and his height would still be his greatest and worst attribute. No matter what happens to him in life, I think Joe will prefer to have “Here lies Joe. He was 6’5” chiseled into his gravestone.

Joe was an interesting guy. He appeared to be conversant on a wide range of topics, and he managed to tell some stories from his life in an impressively timely manner, but everything he spoke of kept coming back to that refrain of his life.

His height was the reason he had trouble finding chairs to sit in with comfort, the reason his 5’3” mother was always on him about stuff, and the reason he couldn’t be as particular as he wanted to be about the clothing he wore:

“You can’t be finicky about clothes when you’re 6’5” and built like me.”

Joe, we should also note, was broad-shouldered. This attribute, coupled with the idea that he was 6’5” was the reason he had trouble going door-to-door to talk to people.

“Would you be comfortable discussing politics, if a man my size came-a-knocking on your door?”

His height was also the reason, he informed me, that he had such trouble finding a decent woman. That subject matter may have shocked most people, or at least made them somewhat uncomfortable, as most people would deem such a discussion inordinately intimate for a conversation between two people meeting for the first time. I had a best friend in high school who was 6’7” however, so I was well versed in the travails of being an abnormally tall male in America today, and I was used to my friend going into such intimate details with people he just met. Joe and I did try, at various intervals, to move on to other topics, but he was unable to let the fact that he was 6’5” go as easily as I was.

What struck me as odd was that I never mentioned his height, and I don’t think I provided any verbal or physical cues that called attention to it. Was that the point though? I later wondered. Was my refusal to acknowledge his height such an aberration to his experience that until I acknowledged it in some way, he would not be able to move on until one of us did?

Being a tall man has numerous advantages, but it has almost as many disadvantages. As I wrote, I was well versed in the travails of being an abnormally tall man in America. I knew, for example, that a person’s height is the first thing people notice when another is taller than 6’3”, and the thing they talk about after the person leaves. “How would you like it if no matter what you said, ’Man he is a big fella ain’t he?’ is the only thing they have to say about you after you leave?” When you’re 6’5” people pester another about in malls. It’s the reason some guys won’t mess with you and the reason others do. It’s also the reason some women want to date you and others don’t. A 6’5” man could be the most charming person in the world, in other words, and most people will have preconceived notions about them based on their height.

With that in mind, one would think that an abnormally tall male, or a woman with abnormally large breasts, would find it refreshing when they’ve finally encountered someone who seems to be genuinely unconcerned with their attribute(s). One would think that they might find it refreshing when they’ve finally found a person who is willing to talk geopolitics with them without looking down their shirt, or saying, “How’s the weather up there?” One would think that someone who broke those patterns of human interaction would receive a bright smile as a reward, and maybe even something along the lines of, “Thank you. You may not even know why I’m thanking you, but thank you!” Yet, tall men and large-breasted women, just like all humans with exaggerated attributes, become so accustomed to these patterns of interaction that they feel compelled to draw your attention to them just to complete a line of dialogue comfortably.

Most people try to avoid talking about a trait they generally considered a negative, and they will do everything they can to avoid noticing it. When they consider that person’s attribute a positive, most people think you should feel privileged to have it, so they don’t mind drawing attention to it. “You’re tall Joe!” they will say, or “I wish I had those,” and they will add something along the lines of, “You should feel privileged.”

As my conversation with Joe continued, and he began to belabor the point of his height, I thought he was trying to assert some sort of dominance. I may have been wrong on that note, and it might have had more to do with everything I thought later, but I began to rebel against his theme by making a concerted effort to avoid the topic of his height. Our conversation ended soon thereafter, and we moved onto other people at the gathering.

“What did you say to Joe?” our mutual friend later asked. She thought Joe and I would have so much in common that we would hit it off.

“Why?” I asked.

“He says he doesn’t think you two hit it off.” When I asked her for more details, our mutual friend said, “He said he can’t put a finger on it, but he doesn’t like you as much as I thought he would.”

Without going into what I deem to be the unnecessary details of our otherwise innocuous conversation, I can tell you that the conversation I had with Joe involved no disagreements. To my mind, there were not even moments of subtle tension, and there certainly were no overt ones, but he didn’t like me. Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks every person has to like me, and if they don’t I think there has to be something wrong with them, but to my mind this conversation I had with Joe proved to be amicable if not pleasant. Joe and I also proved to be as like-minded on certain topics as our mutual friend thought we would be. The only thing I did, and that which I presume led Joe to state that I didn’t live up to the characteristics our mutual friend detailed for him, was refuse to acknowledge he was 6’5” in anyway, and I think he thought that if I was’t going to do that, I was probably a phony.

Going Clear—

Anytime I finish a book as fantastic as Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, I wonder what I am going to do with my free time? The book gives credence to Phillip Roth’s line about non-fiction being stranger than fiction. A complaint that an Amazon.com reviewer posed was: “If everything Wright writes is factual, why would anyone want to join the Scientology religion?” This reviewer stated that this was the only point, and a central point, that they found lacking in the book. If I were this Amazon.com reviewer’s teacher, and I lived by the credo, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, I would simply require that student reread the book.

Kiss in Rolling Stone—

Anyone that thinks that being “king of the hill, top of the heap, and ‘A’ number one” means that you will be able control your press, should read the March 28, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Kiss may no longer be the band that sells platinum records every year, and they may be more about marketing than music at this point in their career, but this Rolling Stone article was supposed to be about their soon-to-occur induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To read this piece in the Rolling Stone, however, that fact means little-to-nothing.

This piece of rock journalism was so shockingly brutal that one has to imagine that Gene Simmons is still throwing some of his much detailed Kiss memorabilia at the wall when he thinks about it. All four members of the band Kiss came under attack from the author of the piece, but the author reserved most of his unprofessional brutality for Gene. This writer’s attacks were so petty and snarky that a regular reader of Rolling Stone would suspect that Gene was a Republican candidate running for office. Yet, Gene’s not even a Republican voter, as he has made it public that he voted for both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton twice.

This article would also be an excellent read for journalism students seeking answers on what not to do with subjects they’re covering in an article. Having never taken a journalism course, I would have to imagine that one of the primary rules discussed in a Journalism 101 class is: “The articles that you write are not about you. No one will be reading your article to learn what you think, unless you’re writing an opinion piece. If you’re covering a subject in a journalistic manner, however, remember that your readers are only reading your article to learn more about the subject. It’s not about you. Your readers won’t care about your opinion, your preferences, or what you think about the subject you’re covering, so be careful how you frame their answers. If your subject says something stupid, infantile, or in any way revealing of their character, put that statement on the record, but do not comment, or frame, that quote in anyway. That’s not your job.” Judging by the course journalism has followed in the last generation, I’m quite sure that most journalism schools now include an asterisk with each of these rules that states: “Unless your subject is a Republican politician.” As I wrote, however, Gene Simmons is not a Republican voter.

Inspiration—

“This guy sounds like a complete fraud,” a writer said of a fellow writer I was describing. I wasn’t even done with my description of this fellow writer, when this writer interrupted me with her blunt characterization. I wasn’t shocked by her assessment of this fellow writer. She had said as much of other, more established writers, but it was apparent to me that this woman believed that by diminishing all other writers around her, her stature as a writer would somehow be fortified. Had this been the first time I heard any writer say such a thing, I would’ve passed her comments off as flaws in her character, but I’ve heard a number of novices, and well-established writers, engage in the this practice. If you’ve ever heard a U.F.O. chaser, a ghost hunter, or some fortune teller attempt to establish their bona fides by telling you that every other person engaged in their craft are fraudulent, then you have some idea what I’m detailing here.

Knowing how hard it is to come up with ideas, and execute those ideas to the point of proper completion, one would think that a writer would bend over backwards to extend professional courtesies to anyone trying to do the same. If you think that, you’ve never sat down with a group of writers.

“You can say he’s a poor writer,” I said, “But are you saying he’s not a writer?”

“I’m saying he’s probably a hack,” she responded. She didn’t arc her nose upward after saying that, but that’s how I now remember it. It seemed like such a violation of the code, on so many levels, that it was hard to comprehend how she could be so brutal.

She cut me off before I could ask her what she meant by “hack”. I know the general term applies to writers that write just to write, and churn out poor quality submissions for financial gain, but she had never read this person’s material. She had never even met the man. Yet, he was a hack in a manner that made her appear adept at using the word.

One essential component to avoid being called a hack, apparently, is to write so little that everything you write can be perceived as enlightened, or divine in nature. If you want to avoid being a hack, you should never write what others might consider mundane. Yet, those of us that truly love the minutiae involved in writing, believe that it’s only through exploring the mundane that moments of inspiration can be discovered.

One key component to being in a position to level such a charge, and have that charge stick –I now know after reading her material— is to never allow those that hear you level it, read your material. Your charge should remain an indefinable accusation that leaves you with the dignified, nose-in-the-air air about you.

Her material brought to mind the one key component of storytelling that every writer should focus on —be they a writer of vital, substantial material, or a hack— make sure it’s interesting. Translation: You can be the most gifted writer the world has ever read, but if your material is not interesting, no one will care.

In the face of the constructive comments (see negative) this woman received from our group, she said, “Perhaps, I’m a better editor, than I am a writer.” Translation: I have little in the way of creative talent, but I am, indeed, gifted in the art of telling others how little they have.

It’s Funny. Very Funny!

April 11, 2014June 26, 2024 Rilaly3 Comments

You should read this blog. It’s funny! Very Funny!

One would suspect that such obnoxiously, over-the-top self-promotion wouldn’t work, but some productions are successfully marketing themselves with such ad campaigns today, and they have been doing it for some time.

If I were to put word out that we were going to pay a ridiculously high amount for promotion, and of the hundreds of ad agencies that began vying for this pay out, one suggested that we build a marketing plan around the idea that “It’s funny!” that campaign probably would not finish in my top 100.

“It’s funny!” just wouldn’t seem, to me, to be a campaign built for the long haul. This simplistic approach might generate some traffic in the short term, but I would think that a true, funny designation would have to be earned over time through meretricious production, and that the obnoxiously over-the-top suggestion that it was funny, would only take me so far. “We’re not even making a suggestion,” I would complain. “We’re making a statement. Isn’t there going to be some backlash to that?”

“Look, your blog is already funny,” would be the sales pitch that ad man would surely employ. “We just have to get the word out.” Or, he might pitch it under the power of suggestion umbrella.

“That’s great,” I would reply, “But aren’t there going to be some unintended consequences involved in skipping the steps in the long haul word of mouth process?”

“Haven’t you already been trying that?” I can hear him asking. “Where’s that gotten you?”

He would be right, of course, but there’s something about determining what is funny that seems intimate to me. You determine what is funny according to what fits your “my sense of humor” designation. This “It’s funny” ad campaign appears to be saying: “Look, we’ve already determined that it’s funny for you, so you don’t have to go through all that. All you have to do is watch (or read) and laugh. You don’t have to think about it. You can just sit back, relax, and enjoy. You don’t even have to tell your friends about it. We’ll take care of that too. So just sit back and enjoy it! Not only is it funny,” they say. It’s very funny!” Isn’t there a cardinal violation of the principles of that intimate decision process that every production under goes as we determine what’s funny and what’s not? Do we appreciate the idea that someone is taking away all the work we put into that determination, so we can just relax now and laugh?

Pull quotes, such as these, are effective. As are critical praise and peer review, but I would think that if a prospective audience member were to find out that I was the one making the claim, about my blog, that there would be an immediate rebellious backlash. I would expect to see my fellow cynical minds loading up the comments section of my blog with “You might think this is funny, but it doesn’t appeal to my sophisticated sense of humor”. Or, “You may think this is funny, but it’s not funny to me.” Even if I wrote what was unquestionably the funniest blog ever written, I could see some rebels wanting to stand out from the crowd by saying, “It’s just not for me. I can see this appealing to the common man, but I’ve read Kafka and Voltaire, and I’ve seen George Carlin at Carnegie Hall, so I know funny, but my expectations may be higher than most. I prefer cerebral, subtle humor that this author apparently knows nothing about.” One could say that such responses would happen regardless, but I imagine that an obnoxiously over-the-top ad campaign, like “It’s funny” would only provoke more of this type of rebellion.

Saying, “It’s funny” or “Very funny!” also tells me that the product in question may be funny in a universal way, in a way my parents thought Milton Berle was funny, and Bob Hope, or Andy Griffith. These guys may have been funny to them, and they may have even been very funny in that universal manner, but they don’t appeal to me, or my sense of humor. I have always preferred the risque humor that comedians like George Carlin and Sam Kinison employed. There was something bitter and angry about their humor that appealed to me. They confused and angered my parents, and I idolized them for it. And when Andy Kaufman did the things Andy Kaufman did, few people around me got it. They thought he was weird. I got it, and there was something about getting it that gave it an intangible quality that may have been diminished had Kaufman prefaced one of his bits with, “Watch this next skit, it’s funny.”

I enjoy the universal slapstick, body function humor as much as anyone else, but to get me enjoying your product over the long haul, you have to be different, and over-the-top in a manner that leads me to believe that no one has ever tried that joke quite that way before. If my parents think it’s funny, or that guy at the deli who repeats Andy Griffith jokes thinks it’s funny, I may find it humorous, but it would never achieve that long-term, “wait with bated-breath for the next episode” level of hilarity for me.

The ad campaign reminds me of the obnoxious retort, obnoxious people like Tony Kornheiser, make to comedic sentiments: “That’s funny, and I know funny!” I’ve always wanted to ask these people, if you know funny, why haven’t you ever been funny? You may know what you consider funny, but I haven’t heard you ever say anything that I consider funny.

I don’t know which team started this promo. Whether it was the promo Ricky Gervais ran for his show Idiot Abroad: “You should watch this show. It’s funny.” Or, if it was the TBS switching from the “Superstation” tagline, to the “Very Funny” one. I would think that telling the audience what to think about their product would be a major no no in marketing, but if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t keep these campaigns going, and it shows that I know little-to-nothing about marketing.

In the case of the show Idiot Abroad, one could argue that Ricky Gervais probably needed to clarify that the show was a comedy, as opposed to the serious travelogue one might perceive after reading a brief description of the show. I still find it condescending. I find it condescending in the same manner I find laugh tracks condescending. I know where to laugh, my cynical, rebellious mind responds to laugh tracks. I don’t need to be told where to laugh. and I don’t need to be told what’s funny … because you know funny.

It could also be argued that when a star like Ricky Gervais tells us that something is funny, we apparently listen to him because he is a star. We know that when a star tells us how to vote, we listen. We know that when stars tell us how to live, how to eat, and how to dress, we listen, because we’ve wanted to have people see us agreeing with cool kids since the fifth grade. When these same cool kids happen to be hawking their own products, however, we shouldn’t allow them to have any authority over whether it’s cool, good, or funny. They should, at the very least, be required to hire another star to make such a comment, just to avoid appearing obnoxious. There’s a part of me, a part that always hated the cool kid aesthetic –because I’ve never been a cool kid– that says that not only should this not work, for the cool kids that do it, but that they should be shamed for even trying it.

As I said, I don’t know who tried it first, but I saw the Gervais ad first, and my first reaction was that this must be common in England, the place that treats royalty like superhumans. My next reaction was that this type of shameless self-promotion would never work here, until I heard the American broadcasting company, TBS, do it too, saying that they were “Very funny!” I refused to watch TBS, and Idiot Abroad, for these reasons, until a friend of mine told me that Idiot Abroad was, indeed, funny, and I determined that it was, but it wasn’t the marketing that convinced me of it.

The Epic Battle of Ayn Rand vs. Larry David

March 6, 2014August 19, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

“Who would win in a fight Godzilla or King Kong?” was a question that was asked by just about every kid I knew growing up. “What about Batman versus Superman, or how about The Six-Million Dollar Man and Big Foot?” With that mindset forever entrenched in my skull, I was intrigued when I learned that one of our society’s most popular satirists would be taking on one of our most popular philosophers.

Larry David’s Clear History is a satirical comedy, not a philosophical treatise, so the movie should be given some artistic license when it attempts to deconstruct, refute, or simply poke fun at one of Ayn Rand’s most famous books The Fountainhead. The question that every viewer should ask themselves is where does that artistic license end, and the requirement of factual refutation begin? As it has often been said, a satirist can be humorous when poking fun at various institutions, but he can be hilarious if he adds an element of truth to his satire. In this vein, Clear History is not hilarious.

Some would say that those who are so bothered by the content of a movie that they can’t enjoy something as simple as a simple comedy without analyzing it to death, need to relax, get out more, or have more relations with the opposite sex. It’s a fair point, but isn’t it also a fair point that if these movie makers are going to attempt to satirically refute one of the most famous books of all-time (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead) that the material might be more effective if they did so in a more accurate manner? Why even mention the book, much less make it an ongoing theme of your movie, if that wasn’t their goal? If the screenwriters simply wanted to provide light humor, why didn’t they just invent a book, and that book’s writer, for Will Haney character’s inspiration? They could then more easily refute any claims of inaccuracy by those who believe that they didn’t properly represent the book in question.

Even if the writers wanted to avoid the heavy handed task of providing exact refutation, and their work of light humor was only going to trim the edges of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, for the purpose of providing their audience a base from which light humor and sight gags would spring, we should require those satirists to get the subtext of her philosophy correct, for proper, albeit humorous refutation. If that satire’s main character is going to portray an anti-Rand character (Nathan Fromm), shouldn’t we require his adversary (Will Haney) to properly represent the Rand character, if for no other reason than to have a proper adversarial relationship … Even if it’s for no other reason than to have humorous exchanges, or to have a subtext that hints at those philosophical differences?

There are moments in the movie where it appears as though the writers purposely avoided representing the Ayn Rand philosophy accurately, that they don’t understand the greater import of her message, or that they simply wanted to provide their “impossible to grasp” interpretation of it. One of the few direct interpretations of The Fountainhead’s main character, Howard Roark, involves a swear word that characterizes Roark as one of the meanest characters in the history of literature.

Teenagers use this swear word, in this manner, to provide their listeners with an all-encompassing dismissal of the chosen object of their scorn, and that’s all other teens need to follow a fellow teen’s dismissal of their subject. Adults often need more. Adults may allow the speaker to dismiss a person with a swear word, especially for the sake of humor, but they often require more if they are going to join the speaker in their attempts to dismiss a person, or an idea. Even if said adults aren’t willing to join the speaker in the condemnation of a subject, they usually enjoy the blows delivered in an epic battle, but even then, even for the purpose of satirical refutation, most adults prefer to have an element of truth added for added amusement.

When I learned that a mighty satirist would be taking on a mighty philosopher, I thought of all of those speculative epic battles that we talk about in our youth. When I saw my satiric hero had another character in the movie deliver a blow below the belt, characterizing Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark with a swear word that was supposed to define him as one of the meanest characters in the history of literature, I knew this wouldn’t be a fair fight. Even though I knew that the protagonist’s adversary (Ayn Rand) in this epic battle was no longer alive to counter punch, I knew the fight would be called early.

It strikes me that when we create a satirical piece, we have one shot. We have to combine a substantive take with clever inserts of humor. It’s a juggling act that allows some room for error, as long as the premise is true. Doing otherwise leaves the audience thinking, “Ok, you don’t like Ayn Rand, or the Fountainhead. We got it. Now tell us why we shouldn’t.”

Then, when I realized that this below the belt punch was going to be the best blow in the arsenal of one my favorite satirists, watching the rest of Clear History proved to be as sad, and as depressing, as watching Muhammad Ali battle Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson battle Lennox Lewis at the end of their careers. This isn’t to say that I think Clear History spells the end of Larry David’s career, or that he’s in any way past his prime, but that he had one awful match in which he proved to be out of his weight class.