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This might be a long post. I’m watching the TV show Ally McBeal because it is one of Linda’s favorite shows. While watching it, I kept remarking on how much I love the character Nelle and disliked any male character that acts like an asshole. This started to trouble me (I had to take a moment), when I realized that some of the exact same behavior that I denounced in the male characters, I would applaud or forgive when it came to Nelle or Ling. My father has said that I was raised in a family that abused men by basically putting them below women. That criticism has always stuck with me despite my dismissing it as stemming from a traditional male idea of a family hierarchy. I.e. Men should be the head of the family. Every once in a while though, there seems to be a kernel of truth to it. Hence my taking a moment when I had my realization about my feelings towards fictional characters. I’m dizzy and this is harder than it should be. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. So. I have realized that the writers actually did some clever things with the show. Richard and Ling are actually male and female versions of the same character. They don’t like to admit that they are human and have soft spots so they go around pissing people off and saying things that force people to have emotional and physical space from them. In Richard’s case, the few times his humanity and emotions catch up to him, he actually seems surprised underneath. Ling seems to know she is human and knows these things come up, so her efforts are mostly focused on making sure that other people have a damned hard time seeing her in those moments. I like both Richard and Ling. I get them. Sometimes I think I have more than a little in common with them. The other interesting thing is that Ally and Billy are complements. Like Ying and Yang. They actually should have gotten married. Billy actually did want a 50s kind of wife and Ally wanted a 50s kind of husband. Ally said on the show that she wouldn’t mind quitting to take care of kids. That she wants kids. That she went to law school just because Billy did. Billy, for all the show set him up as being crazy towards the end because of his brain Georgia was not there to prop up Billy’s self esteem or self worth. She was there to be a lawyer, have a husband and some kids and live her life. When she found out her husband was too afraid to figure shit out with her and wanted to revert to a life that put her in certain role, she left him, cut her hair and changed jobs. She didn’t JUST change jobs, she went to work for an all female-partnered law firm. She didn’t just walk away from the idea of being a wife and mom and home maker, she removed herself as far as she could. Which brings me to Nelle and John. If Richard and Ling are mirrors and Ally and Billy are interlocking pieces to a coin, then Nelle and John are magnets. At times they pull at each other and at times they push away. Nelle didn’t want to remove herself from marriage and the traditional 50s wife. She wanted to turn it on its head. She wanted to at times make a mockery of it. She wanted a lover and maybe a husband, but one who flouted tradition with her. She thought that John was it. He was weird and yet successful and strange. But John, for all that he was so far from the typical male, is very much about hearth and home. John didn’t need to cling to the rules and traditions that Billy needed. He walks his own path because he finds his own joys and his own meaning. He doesn’t care about other people’s traditions and rules. He was baffled by Nelle’s need to look down her nose and mock. She needed to prove she was above it. John exists outside it entirely. Then, finally, to the last two characters of the show that I have any tiny speck of interest thinking about: Elaine and Larry. So Elaine is basically there for comedic relief. They use her for stuff like the jog bra and let the other characters look down on her. She’s a woman who wants a husband and a job to pay the bills and to have fun. She tends to not care what others think until they marginalize her with their opinions, then she speaks or acts up. Except for the fact that they made her so mannerisms INCREDIBLY annoying, I might find her the most refreshing part of the show. Finally, Larry. They changed the ENTIRE show for his scenes. The lighting seems different, the sound effects are different, the delivery of lines is different. Larry is RESPECT. He’s the antithesis of Billy. He’s the normalcy to John’s bizarreness. He’s SO unremarkable that on any other show, he’d be boring except for two things. 1) This is Ally McBeal, not any other show, so he’s brings astonishing relief. 2) He’s played by RDJ. Suddenly after Larry shows up, Ally has respect for herself, she cares for the people around her more, the people around her care for HER more. Before Larry, John had remarked on how Ally always made it about her. After Larry, RICHARD of all people, remarks on how Ally is taking care of everyone else when they were supposed to be supporting her through her hard time. If Larry weren’t played by RDJ, I’d be pissed. If it weren’t for the fact that his character is so very much about love and respect, I’d be pissed. Because if you look at Ally, then basically the show seems to be saying that as long as you have a man in your life, your life straightens out. The other perspective could be though, that when you surround yourself with people who accept you for who you are, suddenly you are more capable of being treated as a real person and treating other people as a real as well. The reason I find this second perspective so hard to believe though is that Ally supposedly has Renee before Larry and yet it doesn’t mean anything until it’s a MAN. So in reality, if I just wanted to answer the question about my gender bias, I could have stopped after analyzing Nelle and Billy. But I think without realizing how the show contradicts itself on the issue of female and male roles, it’s hard to realize why Nelle’s character is easier to forgive for her transgressions than Billy. Where Nelle went wrong was in her personal unwillingness to give respect and interact with certain people, Billy tried to impose his persona on his wife and the law firm (Billy’s girls). Also, I suspect I do have a bit of a gender bias. Brain and I are setting up her trip to visit me and before she flies back home we are going to have breakfast. She edited that breakfast to read sad breakfast. I edited it to add “What’s the saddest breakfast?” This is what followed: Linda is red. I’m blue.
lol is this a riddle?
No. I’m asking a question. That’s what the ? is for. HEY SMARTYPANTS. RIDDLES END WITH ?’s TOO. But they have funny content like idon’tknow. funny content. lol. well this is why i asked is it a riddle? i coudlnt tell lol EXCEPT THAT THERES NOTHING FUNNY IN MY QUESTION. but u cant tell with riddles all the time either! …how do you go from what’s the saddest breakfast to RIDDLE? MEFS lol that’s why i asked? I Dunno operative word dunno i was just checkinnnnggg jebs mesf jesfbet jeebs mefs   it was a real question mine too so to answer im not sure what a sad breakfast would be and if i wanna really eat it we are going to find out. A MYSTERY! or… RIDDLE?!?! hahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha no. a SAD BREAKFAST. so u can say Following the convo, Linda edited the breakfast to add “(Don’t answer, this is a rhetorical question)” I wrote the question expecting her to say: “THIS ONE.” I should have learned by now to never ever try and predict Linda. I’ve been meaning to do this for a little while. I figure 2010 was a huge year, so it took me a whole month to review it. That seems fair to me. Remind me if I forgot anything. Linda, considering how much of November I remember (damn that rhymes), I might be persuaded to do the blogging thing again. January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about random theories that pass through my head, about how much I love Bear or my family. I spend time praising Bear or sharing strange things that Bear says. I spend time talking about what I bake. Everything I say on here is for Linda’s consumption, but I don’t spend much time praising or sharing the things Linda does or says. I don’t unpack our relationship much. Mostly I don’t do this because this blog is FOR Linda. She’s the audience in my head for ever post I write and she’s the main actual audience. Considering the thankful post from last Thursday and the post from Friday, I wanted to share a little story of Linda and I. She already knows it. She even already knows it from my perspective. It makes this post hard to write, because I feel like I’m forcing her to listen to me repeat myself. I think though that writing this story down in keeping with the blog matters somehow. So over a week ago, Linda emailed me this blog post. The quote in it completely struck me. Like lightening to the chest, I was electrified. Linda, as is typical for Linda, probably saw the quote, thought, “Huh. Cool. I’ll send it to mef.” and then she went off to find something else new. I don’t think I moved on though. I kept rereading the quote over and over. Finally I noticed that the quote seemed very conversational, it wasn’t clean like a speech would be. So I thought, lemme see if this came from an interview. Maybe Mr Glass has more bits of lightening. So I searched and I found all kinds of awesome on youtube (which spawned my last Friday post). I found out that Mr Glass makes his living in public radio as a journalist. I kept digging. Turns out his show is available on the internet! Linda and I don’t listen to NPR and having experimented with NPR in the past, I knew I wasn’t going to just start listening wholesale. Linda had mentioned loving Ira Glass’ voice (I totally agree!). I then found the mp3 for the lastest episode of This American Life and I listen. I not only download and listen all the way through over several days, but I download the rest of the episodes that are available and start the next episode. I kept gushing to Linda over the whole of my exploration. She is always supportive and went to find her own episode to listen to of This American Life and was blown away as well. Now my exploration of Ira Glass is finished. Linda and I have a new thing to share (episodes of This American Life) and a new awareness. I picked this story to share though because it’s Linda and I in a nutshell. Linda will notice things, lots of things, and share them with me. Usually (because it’s Linda) something she gives me strikes me and I’ll start an exploration. I’m not sure she even calls me on the fact that she’ll mention something to me and it takes me a month or a year or a week to have finished my digging and thinking and poking and prodding. My favorite analogy is that Linda is like a … gem finder or a gold sifter. She finds tons of rough gems and gold flakes that are just scattered. I’m one of her cutters and polishers. She brings me stuff and just hands them over like they are so much junk. (She’s generous that way.) Sometimes I even ruin her pretties and she’s never stopped handing me stuff. (Oh gosh, I’ve ruined stuff for her before. I feel terrible sometimes.) She’s just always delighted and amazed when I had her back an emerald or a diamond or even a bit of polished quartz. It isn’t even that she couldn’t polish her own gems. She does sometimes too! That’s Linda for you though. She is both skilled and adventurous. She is always generous. There’s a reason that I’m Pinky and she’s Brain. |
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