Ways of Knowing the World and the Wes Anderson Drinking Game
Yesterday Toby and I had one of those near-perfect days. In the morning I saw the trainer, then we went off to one of those created city centers with lots of coffee bars, restaurants, a small theater company, a public library and a movie theater that mostly shows independent films. It's ringed by a bunch of upscale apartment buildings, maybe condos, and a Hilton hotel. I wanted to get tickets for Moonrise Kingdom and I thought they might sell out on a hot holiday when some people have no air conditioning, so we bought the tiks at noon, then went to lunch at an Irish pub, then walked around looking into stores, then ended at Busboys and Poets drinking Arnold Palmers. While at the pub, we got a call from Eustace and Jane inviting us for dinner and fireworks, and when we told them what movie we were going to see, they asked to come along. Then at Busboys, I got a call from Honora, asking to discuss and strategize over her latest email from Fae*, which we did.
Driving home from the movie, I said to Toby that Wes Anderson is a delightful filmmaker and I love his films but I've never felt that they changed my life or told me something I didn't know. So we got to talking about how we know the world.
As I get older, I'm increasingly aware of how different and limited are our ways of knowing the world, and of how we construct a world based just on what we know and then treat it as a whole.
Here are some ways that people know about the world: by reading and learning about geography, politics and history; by traveling and seeing for themselves; through imaginative worlds, fiction and films; by staying in one place and knowing it, and the people in it, deeply; by observing themselves attentively. I expect that every single person has some combination of these and others I haven't thought of. And every person lives in a world that, despite its similarities to that of his friends, is radically different from every other.
If I've gotten the least bit wise in 55 years, it's in holding this truth close to me. It makes me more hesitant to weigh in when folks are very sure of a situation and how to address it, because I know that I am a blind woman holding an elephant's ear. Maybe it also helps me to listen better - sometimes.
So, to return to films that taught me something and changed my life a little, what they have in common is that they showed me a world enough like my own to make them credible but different enough to add to mine. Many years ago I saw a film about Brazilian street children, acted mainly by Brazilian street children, called Pixote. It hadn't been my idea to go, but that film has stayed with me for thirty years because it was such a convincing depiction of how experiences of extreme deprivation can shape character. The part about character development was familiar to me; the situation of the children was not, and that's why it stayed with me. Another film that had that effect was Vagabond, a French movie about a woman wandering about with a backpack, scratching up food and drugs and sex from the people available for her to use and gradually deteriorating. The film managed to show the woman up close, in something of the mystery of her situation, as well as the idiosyncratic fantasy reactions of the folks who interact with her. To me, it was a great meditation on the need we have for belonging and the unknowability of the other.
And, to be honest, a film that had a huge effect on me at age 11 was Jane Fonda's Barbarella. Why my Aunt Hala thought it was a appropriate movie for me and my 13-year-old cousin was another matter. From Barbarella I learned that if you are beautiful and sexy enough you will have the confidence to go all over the universe fucking and never be afraid of sex or feel like an ugly awkward pig. What I already knew was what any girl learns in an hour of reading magazines or watching TV - that beauty is power. So it wasn't beyond credibility that enough hotness could protect me from all interpersonal fear. This shows that the power of fiction to teach us about the world is morally neutral. And that I was 11.
Eustace, Jane, Toby and I thought it would be excellent good fun to play the Wes Anderson drinking game. I invented it. To play, you line up some Wes Anderson DVDs and some shots of whiskey on the coffee table. Every time you see an Anderson trope, you take a drink.
Cutaway dollhouse shot of building: take a drink. Diners grouped around one side of a table: take a drink. Gang of people staring unmoving at the camera: take a drink. Three-step procedure precisely followed: take a drink. Quirky or twee domicile: take a drink. Object or clothing slightly smaller than life sized: take a drink.
Eustace said that you'd need to call an ambulance before the opening credits had finished.
