My daughter has learned to crawl over the last few weeks. Among the many changes that this brings to her parents’ world, I find myself musing about how she sees our home, the people in her life, and the world that we are now both mobile in. After all, when I need to get by her, I can just step over her without any trouble, and when she’s crawling around, we literally tower over her. Her perspective is no doubt different because of her small size, and it amuses me to consider how big our world must seem to her, turning a modest bedroom into a grand playground and a walk around the neighborhood into a trip into the great yonder.
It was with those thoughts swirling around in my head that I saw Horton Hears a Who!, the latest and most successful attempt to adapt Dr. Seuss to the big screen. The story centers on Horton, a gentle spirited elephant making his way through his home jungle. He is a self-appointed teacher, telling his friends about the world around him. His efforts to teach are turned on their head one day when he hears a tiny voice. He figures out that the voice is coming from a tiny speck that has come to rest on a small dandelion. The voice is that of the Mayor of Whoville, a delightful place where life is celebration and bad things never happen. In an amusing connection to the end of Men in Black, Whoville’s residents are entirely oblivious to the reality that their world is but a speck in an entire universe. The connection between the two worlds has never been made until now.
Whoville has a problem. Their life on the dandelion is uncertain, and for all of their spirit of celebration, they need Horton to bring their dandelion to a safe place where their world will be protected from the dangers of Horton’s world. Trying to do this for them, Horton encounters one obstacle after another, driven mainly by the fact that nobody in his world believes him. He’s the only one who can hear the Whos, and as his nemesis the Kangaroo reminds all of them: "If you can't hear, see or feel something, it does not exist.” Skepticism abounds, and it runs the risk of destroying the people Horton is trying to protect.
As Horton fights for the Whos, the mayor encounters similar problems. For a world that has never known things to go wrong, he must convince them that something is quite wrong, and that they need the help of a big voice that none of them can hear. In pursuing their best ends, he must endanger his relationship with his family, his friends, and the grand tradition of his office.
For a movie directed at children, Horton raises fascinating questions that are worth wrestling with at various levels. The film reflects on the need for imagination and wonder, a gift that can lie instinctively within children but that can be lost as we grow older. The Kangaroo, offering a great summary of a secularist perspective, is herself filled with jealousy and envy, and mostly joylessness. It is Horton and those who can live lives of imagination and wonder who experience the richness that life has to offer, especially the richness to see an entire dimension to his world that nobody had ever experienced before. The film is a celebration of imagination, and succeeds in inviting us to join them in their sense of wonder.
Alongside this is Seuss’ signature phrase: “a person's a person, no matter how small,” the tagline for the film that invites reflection through its deceptively simple message. It intrigues me to think about this line, written in the early 50’s, and its easy later co-opting by the pro-life movement. Of course, that kind of political commentary is far beyond Seuss’ intent, but it’s interesting to see the line come back in a 2008 film release, where the political implications would seem to be obvious.
While I expect that this kind of political jockeying is well beyond the filmmakers’ intent, I celebrate the idea and like its connection with Horton’s call to imagination. Just as our need for imagination is a celebration of life, so is our calling to protect the smallest voices. We embrace a life-giving message when we reach for those who can’t speak for themselves, who find their voices drowned out by the loud arguments of politicians or the deceptive ends of agenda-setters. Seuss’ twin values, very much alive here in the film adaptation, are as pressing and present for us today as it was when he first wrote the words.
Horton is not a perfect movie, but I was pleased to see a Seuss adaptation that could sustain the simple and complex nature of his messages without losing itself in the gimmicks that come with converting his books to feature-length films. Whether it’s the nieces that I saw the picture with, or the daughter that I step over to get where I’m going, I realize that Seuss’ messages are worth them knowing about, mostly for the deeper truths that they will point them to as they live in a world that loves to steal imagination and step on the innocent.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Be Kind, Rewind: A Review
Be Kind, Rewind has a quirky concept that I expect will leave some cold, but I found worth a chuckle. Mos Def stars as Mike, an employee of an aging video rental store owned by Danny Glover’s Elroy Fletcher. It’s an aging store, hanging onto VHS against the DVD revolution, in an aging section of a decrepit New Jersey town, fighting to hang onto its life in the face of “urban renewal.” Trying to figure out how to keep the business going, Fletcher heads out of town and leaves the business in Mike’s hands. Struggling to prove himself, Mike tries to keep it all together, including trying to enforce the one clear rule: “Keep Jerry Out.”
Jerry, played by Jack Black, is Mike’s odd friend with lots of odd notions. Quickly after Fletcher takes off, Jerry gets the idea for he and Mike to sabotage the nearby electric power plant, trying to get them back for causing his headaches. After Mike bails, Jerry somehow is able to get himself magnetized, something that they slowly discover over the next few days as complaining customers bring Mike to realize that his friend has inadvertently demagnetized every single one of his tapes.
Panicked at the destruction of the business, Mike and Jerry concoct their grand act of desperation (and the grand suspension of disbelief for the film) to save the business: instead of buying new tapes, they pull out a camcorder and decide to film their own versions of the films. The film takes the most time with their filming of Ghostbuster’s, which was pretty hilarious. Everything is done uber-cheap and uber-fast, making for a great recreation of this and other films. They’re dependent on their memory of these films, which is sometimes less than perfect, adding greatly to the comedy.
The second act of the film shows their budding success. The real comedy is not that they pull off these films, but that increasingly people find out about their work and demand more. They become local celebrities, and their efforts, now dubbed “Sweding,” morphs to involve incorporating the customers into the films.
Running underneath the comedy are some fascinating social commentaries. The film is itself a celebration of film and its ability to bring people together in community. Despite the individual nature of watching a film at a theater, the film delights in showing the ways in which popular film becomes the lingua franca of a community. One discussion about The Lion King engages strangers who are decades apart, but share in their delight in particular aspects of the film.
The “Sweding” process reflects on our desire to be participants in the elements of our pop culture. While film unites, it also isolates, as it can keep us from creatively participating in our culture. This process reminds us of our own desire to participate. Whether it’s the internet boon and its interaction with the celebrity culture, the You Tube generation, or the rise of “fandom” for all aspects of pop culture, the entertainment industry itself is acutely aware of the power of encouraging this kind of participation, and the film seems to understand the power that participation brings.
Still, the film takes a significant plot turn as the studios find about Mike and Jerry’s creative efforts. Showing up with injunctions and damage awards, Mike and Jerry are quickly faced with the challenge of saving the business again, as well as saving the community itself. Without walking too much into the third act, they decide to make their own film, this one focusing on their own town’s history. As much as “Sweding” has brought their town together, so will their film unite people around their own community.
It is here that Be Kind, Rewind offers the most intriguing commentary, and one that I think extends far beyond the films boundaries. As they pour themselves into their town history, they encounter the reality that legends have built up that just aren’t historical. Rather than seeking to find the truth, or to describe legend as legend, they, and the participants in the story, just decide to make up their town’s history as they go along. Truth takes a backseat to this celebration of community.
It is a fascinating example of a postmodern treatment of history. Community is celebrated, and the experience of telling history, even fabricated history, is unifying and thus good. Within the context of the film, it works. We’re rooting for these people and their struggling town, and aren’t too worried about the veracity of their story. We just want them to find some pride in their town and enjoy the experience of working together for a better community.
Even as their story comes together, though, I could only wonder about the places in life where this kind of story would ultimately be destructive. Within the contemporary American church, there are a number of voices who offer a version of the church’s history that show about as much fabrication or simplistic misinterpretation as Be Kind’s storytellers. There is a spirit among many that echoes the film’s values and shows less concern about the veracity of our telling of history than of the emotive power that our telling has for our present community. We don’t care about whether the story is true, only that the story has emotional power for us.
It is in this place that Be Kind offers an interesting caution. For a community trying to save itself from dreadful poverty, I expect there’s not much harm in a little homegrown story about a community legend that isn’t grounded much in fact. But the story of the church is rooted in the Story itself, and the Story’s only meaning is found in the historical reality that it actually happened. The testimony of the Christian church is that it finds its strength when it tells its story well, and that includes that it tells the story how it really happened.
The ultimate value of Be Kind, Rewind is in elevating community over truth. The church has the same temptation today, but the testimony of the past, indeed the testimony of Scripture, is that those two values aren’t in opposition to each other, and in fact depend on each other for their real meaning.
Jerry, played by Jack Black, is Mike’s odd friend with lots of odd notions. Quickly after Fletcher takes off, Jerry gets the idea for he and Mike to sabotage the nearby electric power plant, trying to get them back for causing his headaches. After Mike bails, Jerry somehow is able to get himself magnetized, something that they slowly discover over the next few days as complaining customers bring Mike to realize that his friend has inadvertently demagnetized every single one of his tapes.
Panicked at the destruction of the business, Mike and Jerry concoct their grand act of desperation (and the grand suspension of disbelief for the film) to save the business: instead of buying new tapes, they pull out a camcorder and decide to film their own versions of the films. The film takes the most time with their filming of Ghostbuster’s, which was pretty hilarious. Everything is done uber-cheap and uber-fast, making for a great recreation of this and other films. They’re dependent on their memory of these films, which is sometimes less than perfect, adding greatly to the comedy.
The second act of the film shows their budding success. The real comedy is not that they pull off these films, but that increasingly people find out about their work and demand more. They become local celebrities, and their efforts, now dubbed “Sweding,” morphs to involve incorporating the customers into the films.
Running underneath the comedy are some fascinating social commentaries. The film is itself a celebration of film and its ability to bring people together in community. Despite the individual nature of watching a film at a theater, the film delights in showing the ways in which popular film becomes the lingua franca of a community. One discussion about The Lion King engages strangers who are decades apart, but share in their delight in particular aspects of the film.
The “Sweding” process reflects on our desire to be participants in the elements of our pop culture. While film unites, it also isolates, as it can keep us from creatively participating in our culture. This process reminds us of our own desire to participate. Whether it’s the internet boon and its interaction with the celebrity culture, the You Tube generation, or the rise of “fandom” for all aspects of pop culture, the entertainment industry itself is acutely aware of the power of encouraging this kind of participation, and the film seems to understand the power that participation brings.
Still, the film takes a significant plot turn as the studios find about Mike and Jerry’s creative efforts. Showing up with injunctions and damage awards, Mike and Jerry are quickly faced with the challenge of saving the business again, as well as saving the community itself. Without walking too much into the third act, they decide to make their own film, this one focusing on their own town’s history. As much as “Sweding” has brought their town together, so will their film unite people around their own community.
It is here that Be Kind, Rewind offers the most intriguing commentary, and one that I think extends far beyond the films boundaries. As they pour themselves into their town history, they encounter the reality that legends have built up that just aren’t historical. Rather than seeking to find the truth, or to describe legend as legend, they, and the participants in the story, just decide to make up their town’s history as they go along. Truth takes a backseat to this celebration of community.
It is a fascinating example of a postmodern treatment of history. Community is celebrated, and the experience of telling history, even fabricated history, is unifying and thus good. Within the context of the film, it works. We’re rooting for these people and their struggling town, and aren’t too worried about the veracity of their story. We just want them to find some pride in their town and enjoy the experience of working together for a better community.
Even as their story comes together, though, I could only wonder about the places in life where this kind of story would ultimately be destructive. Within the contemporary American church, there are a number of voices who offer a version of the church’s history that show about as much fabrication or simplistic misinterpretation as Be Kind’s storytellers. There is a spirit among many that echoes the film’s values and shows less concern about the veracity of our telling of history than of the emotive power that our telling has for our present community. We don’t care about whether the story is true, only that the story has emotional power for us.
It is in this place that Be Kind offers an interesting caution. For a community trying to save itself from dreadful poverty, I expect there’s not much harm in a little homegrown story about a community legend that isn’t grounded much in fact. But the story of the church is rooted in the Story itself, and the Story’s only meaning is found in the historical reality that it actually happened. The testimony of the Christian church is that it finds its strength when it tells its story well, and that includes that it tells the story how it really happened.
The ultimate value of Be Kind, Rewind is in elevating community over truth. The church has the same temptation today, but the testimony of the past, indeed the testimony of Scripture, is that those two values aren’t in opposition to each other, and in fact depend on each other for their real meaning.
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