CisforCurmudgeon: Why Sophie Mirabella is not Gaddafi; On Getting Along

Like all misanthropes, I cherish living alone as a sort of Valhalla-type paradise of win. Hells yeah, every day is pants-free day and I don't have to hide the gin! Unfortunately, the economics of being neither congenitally wealthy nor a high-priced hooker means that securing a one bedroom home within two hours drive of university or work is about as attainable as the Prime Ministership - should everyone else who wants to live in Canberra fall off the face of the planet in some freak accident that rewrites our understanding of gravity I might be in with a shot- otherwise it's housesharing, that quaint university town practice where people you don't necessarily know very well become your nearest neighbours and gen Y select-a-family. At some point, as well, you're probably going to have to leave your room and get to know these strangers you live with.

My current select-a-family is pretty decent. They're both literate, relatively clean, definitively not racist, and most of the time they pay the rent. We've reached a point of self-referential familial comfort whereby we now stage enormous twitter house civil wars over people's opinion of Black Swan (if you're new, you can find my thoughts on the matter here). Housemate B recently saw this film and decided that he liked it. Since Housemate B is in all other respects a gentleman of discerning tastes, I have to conclude that he is either trolling me (a unique experience when there is the continuous and ominous threat that either one of us might shave off the other's eyebrows in their sleep) or that some hipster zombie stole his brain once the film had lulled him into the semi-consciousness such faux-artistic travesty inevitably promotes.

The point is, like parliamentarians (and except for in relation to Black Swan, you hipster nerd) we've probably got more in common than not. All parties are able to recognise that leaving someone else's cheese on the bench to go sweaty is a crime against all that is right and good in the world. Likewise, all parties are aware that picking a fight over cheese is the action of a petty tyrant, and life mostly goes on and everyone gets to keep their eyebrows. Win! I think the important thing is that no one ever gets compared to Gaddafi over who takes the rubbish out, and I think that makes our house of largely itinerant student-types a cut above Coalition MPs like Sophie Mirabella, at least in terms of basic human decency and perspective.

If we want to split hairs on this issue, what Sophie actually said this week was that if PM Gillard believed people were actually willing to pay more for things to offset the risk of cataclysmic climate change, then she was clearly "as deluded as Colonel 'My people love me' Gaddafi". Which is not entirely the same as calling someone a mad dictator, but given the wide range of possible similes to draw other than unstable and violent dictators turning the army onto protesters, it is clear that Sophie was showing the restraint, civility and quality judgment of Charlie Sheen on a drug binge. Also, Tony Abbott gets shouty a lot, and so did Hitler. Not that I'm saying, of course, that the two have anything else in common...


Is it trite to compare what happens in the national parliament to what housemates do when someone won't take out the rubbish, or leaves the cheese to go sweaty on the bench? Yes. It absolutely is. We work on the assumption that our representatives are presumably supposed to be better than this, above petty disputes and the kinds of minor human failings that characterise the interactions of the mere plebeian class. If I have to put on pants and learn people skills in order to go downstairs and use the toaster, by all that is right I expect our politicians - practitioners of the 'art of the city-state', to go at least one better than that. Accordingly, however, when the Libyan people are dying on the streets for the sorts of basic rights we take for granted in this country, it is fair to say that is cheap and shallow, by any standard, to use the name of their oppressive dictator to describe a political opponent who wants to institute a carbon tax.

In other news, South Australians are represented by someone who is incapable of making a rhetorical point without an extended hokey-pokey dance session, so maybe we should just all hope our global leaders have long since lost access to the nuke launch codes, settle them down for a post-afternoon-milk nap, and teach them about sharing, toilet-training and human decency once they wake up. Think back to the most thuggish kid you knew in kindergarten - the one that threw sandpit trucks at other kids and who perpetually had one finger up his nose as though attempting to dig through to his scalp. That kid probably votes now, and there's a reasonable chance he might get elected to the Australian parliament to represent your interests at home and abroad.

Maybe we should just all climb back into the trees and wait for armaggedon, really.

[P.S - The Asshattery Award would go to Sophie Mirabella this week, except the fact that she exists and gets to wander around being a representative of the human race, much less a parliamentarian, makes me so despair of the human race that I want to go curl into the foetal position under my bed and wait for society to make some sense. Also, I think if we're handing out awards for worst human being this week Gaddafi probably ought to make the short list, and I don't want to fall into a Mirabellan rhetorical trap].

Curmudgeon Reviews: Black Swan

IMDB describes: "A ballet dancer wins the lead in "Swan Lake" and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan - Princess Odette - but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like Odile the Black Swan, daughter of an evil magician." That's probably a fair synopsis, although it does entirely manage to avoid discussion of Natalie Portman's crotch. Given the gratuitous number of times the film returned to focus on that region, I would almost have expected it to get a billing all its own.

I am somewhat at a loss to understand the critical acclaim which has followed this film, particularly when compared with the masterful character work in The King's Speech. It manages to bewilder and disturb audiences with what appears to be a spectacular attempt to be artsier-than-thou. This film was alienating and mawkish at worst, and simply pretty and awkward at best. It's that hipster kid at the party who wants to argue with you about how he was a hipster before anyone else even knew what it was.

It's not trendy to diss this film, as emaciated Natalie Portman (it's amazing how malnourishment can age a person) goes somewhat brilliantly mad, as illustrated by visceral and downright gory special effects that are actually painful to watch, and perhaps the most cringeworthy and entirely gratuitous female masturbation portrayed on screen in any cinema where the seats aren't hosed down after a screening.

It is a film that wants very badly to be an artistic, interesting masterpiece, but it ends up being awkwardly overplayed, painful to watch, and unrewarding as a cinema experience. At times, Portman's portrayal shines, but almost as often we are left with the wooden character familiar to those who followed her Star Wars prequel days. There is a sense that with the loss of a quarter of her body weight and presumably intense dance training that the recognition of her acting in this film is more a reflection on the hard work that went into the role, much like Nicole Kidman's having to wear a false ugly nose to play Virginia Woolf, rather than any sine qua brilliant performance.

Try as it might, it lacks the depth and substance a film so wholly unentertaining requires. The symbolism is obvious and overplayed, while the narrative within a narrative (the Swan Lake motif) provides no interesting twist. Broken music box ballet dancers. The breaking in of ballet shoes. The children's toys and single bed. The red lipstick. The perfect bun which becomes disarrayed as the character begins to fall apart. This film stabs you in the eyes with the sorts of screamingly obvious film techniques studied to death in high schools across the country, without once engaging on a deeper level.

The gore was realistic and visceral - blood, tearing skin, broken bones, scar-tissue - enough to be uncomfortable viewing. This too was overdone, gratuitous, and seemed to lack a deeper narrative point beyond shock value and the illustration of Portman's character's fading grasp of reality.

Add to this, the characters are often shrill and not especially likeable. There is a tendency toward downward spirals of mental stability rather than any sort of development. With one possible exception, they are so superficial that despite the fairly unpleasantly violent events which occur to them, they evoke little sympathy. For example, the girl next to me audibly cheered when one of them was stabbed in the face with a nail file, which was a sentiment I could sympathise with. The audience members find themselves putting not insubstantial amounts of effort into the film in the form of suspension of disbelief, for minimal reward. I won't spoil the ending any more than the producer did, suffice to say 'trite and cliched' would be a generous description. Frustrating.


High points
~The highest point of the film, for me, was the mild ironic value of Winona Ryder's character having some crap stolen from her. That's right, petty larceny for the no longer especially topical inadvertent LOL. The film so failed to transport me that by this stage the recollection of Ryder's shoplifting charges was something my brain did to amuse itself while this film failed to engage it with anything of substance.

~The drug trip that lasted the entire rest of the film. One can only assume that they shared the good stuff with some of the reviewers/awards panels floating about. Honestly, honey, when your reality shifts that quickly and remains that warped for so long, you need to eat a sandwich or something and try not to puke up every piece of sustenance that crosses your lips. Which reminds me...

~Bravo to the ballet film for the vague social policy win in the example that eating disorders aren't fun, and they aren't clever. This was probably entirely inadvertent, but it is nevertheless a positive thing. Oh yes, thinspired fourteen year olds, do you really want to look fifty and mummified when you're supposed to be playing a character in their early twenties? Purging's not so fun now, is it?

~The film was, I must concede, visually spectacular at times, with costuming and make-up especially well done, but these were features which occasionally arrested my attention, long enough to make it vividly apparent that the rest of the film was quite disappointing.

~The biggest highlight? The end credits. This was a film which made you appreciate life and never want to waste one hundred and eight minutes of it in such frustratingly aimless pursuit ever again.