thanksgiving column ...i've been sappy lately, but i promise to get snarky again really soon!
Postgrad madness: Pop culture applause
By C.A. KELLER - Sun-Gazette Correspondent POSTED: November 28, 2008
Well, it's Turkey Day, and I hope you're all enjoying it, that you're surrounded by loved ones and have plenty to be thankful for. I know I do.
But gratitude is a funny thing. For example, I'm thankful for my mom, my cat, the president-elect. But I'm also thankful for Daniel Craig's eyes, and Stephen Colbert's "Word," and the fact that "Tropic Thunder" is on DVD, so this week I could finally watch it and add a fifth movie to my year's skimpy top 10 list.
I'm thankful for pop culture. Someone's got to be.
More interesting to me, however, is how we can find our sense of gratitude in these strangest places. For example, I found it in the movie theater the other day. I was reviewing "Twilight," a film I knew little about, based on a book about which I'd conceived even less, except that, judging from my friends' reactions, it seems to have made quite the splash.
"It's the next 'Harry Potter!' " said one.
"It's whiny, misogynistic crap," volunteered another.
I can't comment on the book, but, according to my ovaries, the film does have its merits.
"Twilight" swept me up unexpectedly. I'd gone into the theater prepared, as usual, to praise what was possible and chew out the rest of it. It's my job, and I love my job. But I left entirely surprised to be reminded of some important things about myself.
One, I am a writer, and writing is the love of my life. Two, as I told my editor, "I am a gigantic girl."
How else to explain why such a cheesy, ridiculous story, starring a young man with such cheesy, ridiculous hair, could unexpectedly inspire me to the point that it reminded me of my love for my ill-paying vocation? But it did. "Twilight" swept me off my feet, and while star Robert Pattinson may have had a bit to do with that, director Catherine Hardwicke helped, too.
As I said in my review, I don't know how much of this was her touch, and how much came from author Stephenie Meyer, but what I do know - what I was reminded of that day - is I want that touch. I think sometimes we underestimate the sheer power of storytelling, the gift that allows one to transport others from the world they live in to the one they want to inhabit.
It could be for two hours, for two days, for repeat viewings and occasions. It could be for "Twilight." You can call Meyer's books fabulous, and you can call them utter crap, but millions of people are reading them, loving them, hating them. Likewise for Hardwicke's usually underrated films. How often does that happen?
The answer: More often than you'd think.
Because storytelling is something we all do everyday, and creating art is like creating a meal. Sometimes it's overrated, but the bottom line is that, artists or not, we're all making something and putting it out there, and we all have the ability to profoundly affect people.
It could happen with a look, a line, a brushstroke. It could happen with the simple gift of maize, of cultures breaking bread. Or some - thankfully post-pubescent - teenage vampire could look my way onscreen, and I'd turn into a puddle of water. Not a particularly deep one, mind you, but that's not the point.
This is the point: Storytelling is why so much of life is art. We are art.
It reminds me of another of Hardwicke's films, "Lords of Dogtown," with Heath Ledger. There's a moment in it, towards the end, where Ledger is alone, drinking whisky and listening to "Maggie May" while he sands a surfboard. He says nothing, sings along a little, but mostly he just fills the space between his lines with actions and expressions and work. And it's poetry.
It is silence, and it's telling. It is who we are.
It's what we're all doing today, as we gather around our tables, giving thanks for what we've worked for and been given. OK, we're probably talking a lot, but we're also filling the space between our November banquets with actions and expressions and work. We're finding gratitude in unlikely places. We're finding hearts and souls and reminders of them, in ourselves, and in each other.
And, according to my ovaries, we can find them in the occasional, ridiculous vampire, too.