Frozen Toothpaste

There’s something irrevocably odd about Lars Lindstrom. He seems to be the consummate loner. Completely willing and able to see people no more than he needs to, while always being friendly to those he does see. He’s a good worker and a church-goer. He lives in a run-down garage next to his parents old house, where his brother and wife live. He seems in no hurry to find a girlfriend, but as he tells the nice lady at church, he’s not gay.

And one day, Lars receives a very large package. That evening, he knocks on his brothers door to report — with a wide grin on his face — that he has someone over. Relieved as they are, his brother and his wife willingly offer to let the girl stay in their house. They even have new towels she can use to bathe.

It’s when they finally meet Bianca that they’re appalled to learn that the Brazilian emigre isn’t real, but an inanimate doll. Worse still, she’s clearly meant primarily to fulfill the sexual pleasures of lonely men like Lars.

And so it begins. I could go on, but I’d likely end up gleefully — and poorly — reporting the whole story. There’s no question that Lars is, as they used to say, touched. But whether for good or ill, to what effect on him and the small New England town in which he lives, I’ll not say.

I’ll merely say that Lars and the Real Girls is one of those stories I could tell, from first explanation, I’d be rather enamored with. The posing of difficult philosophical questions — what is reality? what is living? what is loneliness? what is community? what is maturity? — through the device of mild absurdity is one of my oldest favorites.

If, unlike me, you find the whole idea rather pointlessly absurd, I cannot speak to your view of the film. It’s unquestionable that the film requires more than one suspension of disbelief to be taken quite as seriously as it takes itself.

But if you can take the leap and accept Bianca as a real girl, you’re in for a rather enjoyable ride. A ride that offers for your consideration whole reams of questions about what it means to grow up, what it means to be responsible, and what it means to be real. Lars and the Real Girl doesn’t explicitly offer the answers to these questions, but the way it asks the questions is better than most things I’ve seen before.

I’ve been faintly aware of Bloggingheads.tv for about 18 months, and a loyal “viewer” — more on those quotation marks in a minute — for about six months. Bloggingheads is a talk show with little production value but constantly compelling guests. Most episodes are about an hour long from end-to-end and features little more than two heads presented side-by-side talking to each other. The most movement you generally see on screen is heads bobbing during the course of the conversation, and some holding of books. There are no graphics, and rarely anything interesting to see.

But talk shows shouldn’t be about production quality and really shouldn’t rely on eye-candy. Dedication to those ideals makes Bloggingheads a place dedicated to interesting conversations about relevant (and interesting) topics. Surely those turned off by politics will be mostly bored by Bloggingheads, but most of the commentators are interesting and thoroughly knowledgeable about the topic they discuss.

As you may reasonably expect from the name, most Bloggingheads contributors are bloggers, and many are of the political variety. If one has spent much time in the political blogosphere at least a few names and faces will be familiar. If you’re unfamiliar with the personalities, take my word that they’re mostly interesting and intelligent.

To the “viewing” question: one could legitimately ask why — other than it’s inspiration as an alternative to cable news channels’ talk shows — Bloggingheads does video at all. As was noted, rarely is much of interest presented by the conversants’ faces, and almost never are the visuals necessary for comprehension of what’s going on. After all, the show is produced by two people taping themselves talking on the phone, with neither able to see the other. Acknowledging that reality, the show is available as an audio-only MP3 podcast, my preferred method of “viewing.”

It’s hard to address the contents of the show themselves, as so many episodes are produced in a week, with such a variety of topics and tones. There are some standards however. On Fridays, a left-leaning blogger and a right-leaning blogger discuss the topics that have lit up that “sphere”  in the past week. On Saturdays, two science personality — usually journalists, but sometimes scientists or even philosophers — will discuss topics including their latest writings or experiments. On Sundays, Mark Goldberg discusses UN-focused international affairs topics with everyone from activists, to ambassadors, and reporters. On Mondays, Will Wilkerson usually discusses new books with their authors on the libertarian-leaning “Free Will.” And recently, the sites founders, Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright, have gotten back into the habit of talking to — and yelling at — each other about mostly-mainstream political topics, usually on Thursdays.

That’s a small sampling of the content available. And there’s no doubt that it’s a lot of content. In a given week at least five hours content will be posted. And some of it will contain little more than “the narcissism of small differences.” And some will be punctuated primarily by two people hurling invective across massive divides of misunderstanding. And some will be dedicated to other minutia about which I simply don’t care. It can sometimes be too much for even the most time-rich viewers to watch loyally.

But these problems are minor compared the to unique qualities of the project. It’s certainly better — if less up-to-the-minute — than anything you’re likely to encounter on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. A show that features intelligent people having civil discussions about interesting topics? I’ll do my best to find time for that.

Let me be clear from the outset: I think that The Story of Stuff, a web video starring Annie Leonard and aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of mindless consumption, is an admirable project with an even more admirable goal. And were I a few years younger I may have even felt it was important or inspiring. Today, I find it to be incredibly annoying.

The Story of Stuff makes the same errors that I find so vexing about environmentalism in general. Though most activists don’t like to admit it, activism is a field marred by unrealistic idealists who imagine that but for some tragic flaw the world would be an entirely different place. For most environmentalists that bogeyman is named “big business,” “corporations,” or “the government.” These forces are the reason people act in ways they shouldn’t, for it is the bogeyman who rapes the land, makes loads of junk that people neither need nor want, and then shoves that stuff down their throats. Soon after, he makes them throw that stuff away in the least responsible way and buy more of the same stuff they didn’t want in the first place.

This is a convenient and understandable story, but that’s doesn’t make it right, and that certainly doesn’t make me any more willing to tolerate it. It’s a message laced with helpless victimhood and painful pessimism that sees the world in total crisis.

And though you wouldn’t know it from watching The Story of Stuff, we are not in the middle of a hopeless crisis from which there is no way out. We are not idiot machines who’ve subverted our will to that of the bogeymen.

Surely the world’s got its fair share of problems. Global warming has still not been adequately addressed. There are places in the world where it is still acceptable to put workers in harm’s way working with hideously dangerous chemicals or working in terribly dangerous mines. Places where clear-cutting is accepted and slash-and-burn tolerated.

But I don’t see The Story of Stuff as the proper response to any other these problems. The deeply cynically video is more likely to make me pull my hair out than to make me an activist or “no impact man.”

Because I can’t manage to fit my problems with the video into a cohesive paragraphs, a few of my biggest gripes:

• The video’s presentation of the government/corporation relationship is comically insulting to both hardworking politicians and honest businessmen. This is not to say that all members of both groups fit that description, but I loathe when people go out of their way to deny the work of either. Showing the government polishing the shoes of a bloated “corporation” may be how you perceive reality, but it’s an immediate turn off to any and all that disagree.
• Not all collection of natural resources is done by clear cutting, strip mining, or general raping of the land. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure a lot of it still is, but denying that some companies are working hard to be sustainable and responsible is an insult to both reality and those responsible stakeholders.
• Not everything about manufacturing is “toxic.” Make no mistake, I think there are plenty of dangerous chemicals in the things we produce, but you’re playing fast-and-loose with reality if you’re going to say that manufacturing is the simple practice of putting toxic chemicals onto stuff to produce toxic products.
• Why oh why are you bringing up George Bush? What relevance do his boneheaded proclamations have to do with anything?
• Americans in the past were not wiser and more earth-friendly by choice. We’ve not been made into mindless consumers by a shadowy cabal hell-bent on making people consume as much as they can. People like to have things. When they can have things cheaply, they’re likely to take that opportunity to have a lot of cheap things. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it’s human nature.

Mostly, I’m just disappointed by all of this. And it’s not just about The Story of Stuff either. Similarly egregious things are done everywhere in the “environmental movement.” Its default mode seems to be a deep pessimism coupled with a pervasive alarmism that stifles action.

There are big problems facing the world today. And that’s a great reason to offer a lot of practical things that people can do to cope with the broken system you see. But The Story of Stuff instead offers only one final minute packed with buzzwords that the average viewer can neither understand nor implement.

I dislike being so deeply critical of anything, but it’s the only way I know to express my deepest disappointment.

You could feel, almost as soon as you’d read the title, that this was one of those ideas that was going to be a little too clever for it’s own good. One of those things that at first brush sounds rather clever, but fizzles after about eight sentences when it shallowness becomes clear.

Surely writing a review of the review that you’re writing is a clever conceit, there’s no denying that. But it has the very real pitfall of being a self-fulfilling prophecy. The review is inherently trapped by the basic idea and judgment that began it. If in the first paragraph the review was condemned as mediocre, the rest of the written piece must then be mediocre.

By the same token, if the initial judgment was that the idea was a work of genius, there would be an almost insurmountable level of expectation that would make it almost impossible to fulfill, and thus to write the rest of the review.

Most reviews are written after the work under review has been completed and polished. Not this one. This one is being reviewed as it’s simultaneously being written. Thus the quality of the review that it presently being written is based on the quality of the review that’s presently being written. It’s a sort of recursive review that feeds on itself indefinitely, unable to rise above it’s initial assessment of itself.

This review is further impeded by the fact that it cannot ever assess the work holistically, but must, in each paragraph, judge only those previously written. This obvious limitation could be taken as emblematic of the echo chamber that’s created by a small circles of elite intellectuals endlessly reviewing each others works. Feeding endlessly on the works of each other, the act of reviewing itself becomes recursive.

In this way, the review suggests a Dadaistic contempt for the very act itself. Unfortunately, the suggestion is neither borne out by thorough examination nor accepted public consensus. When an idea lacks either wide acceptance or textual support, it is incumbent upon the reviewer to provide at least a smidgen of evidence for their premises and thus their conclusion.

It somtimes feel unfairly dismissive to see something dismissed as “too clever by half,” but here the phrase is apt. Though it begins with an interesting idea, the review quickly fizzles for want of a more thoroughly thought-out execution. Though one can understand that the form itself would seem to limit this possibility, that seems a more cogent argument for abandoning the form than for excusing it’s myriad flaws. If it’s impossible to do it well, perhaps it shouldn’t be done at all.

Dr. Seuss’s Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? is a book I knew by title long before I took the time to read it. I should also note that I think the question posed by the title is one that’s is critically important to ask of me and people like me. People who are, for example, able with little effort to do well in relatively-good public schools, go to a university, and graduate with little or no debt.

I suppose I should have known that a great title doesn’t make a great book, but I forgot. I also suppose I should have realized that Dr. Seuss is not exactly one to talk about the privileges I have had, but I forgot. So I found myself an odd mix of disappointed and satisfied when I finally took the chance to read the book.

Did I Ever Tell You… proceeds about the way you’d expect a Dr. Seuss book with that question in the title would. The narrator begins by telling about when he met a man in the Desert of Drize who “sang with a sunny sweet smile on his face:”

When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad…
you should do what I do!
Just tell yourself, Duckie,
you’re really quite lucky!
Some people are much more…
oh, ever so much more…
oh, muchly much-much more
unluckly than you!

From there, we of course proceed through a litany of terribly unfortunate people forced to do terribly scary or unfortunate things. All, of course, accompanied by the dynamic and colorful illustrations for which Dr. Seuss is so well known.

But all of it, as well-executed as it is, as much as I love the idea, left me disappointed. Surely there’s something to be said for my having held too much anticipation for too long to be quite satisfied with a children’s book, even one by Dr. Seuss.

I know it’s silly to criticize a children’s book for being too simplistic and diversionary, but that’s the problem I find myself having with Did I Ever Tell You…. The reality, I suppose, is that I don’t know how lucky I am. That there exists a single children’s book that asks one of the most essential questions that most Americans — and really most in the “first world” — need to grapple with at some time is a marvel. And for that alone, I should be at least a little satisfied. And I’m certain that should I have children, they will be repeatedly subjected the book, however imperfect I find it.