doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for December, 2008
no name
03 years ago
I was on Netflix, cruising around, browsing for new DVDs to add to my queue, when I came across the blurb for the movie Bubble. I tend to like quirky, off-beat, independent type films. Then I noticed that this film is by Steven Soderbergh. Not necessarily in the so-called indie genre then. But it has that kind of a feel. I read a bit further.
Set in a crumbling Ohio town that revolves around the local doll factory, Steven Soderbergh’s offbeat film follows the antics of townsfolk turned detectives who try to unravel a murder mystery — and end up discovering a bizarre love triangle. In sharp contrast to his high-budget Ocean’s Eleven remake, Soderbergh uses low-cost digital camerawork and employs no-name actors in this quirky small-town drama.
Of course I’ve heard the term “no-name” used before to indicate someone who is not famous, who does not have a specific box office draw. However, it really bothered me. I started to really think about it, maybe even obsess over it a little.
How do the actors, Dustin James Ashley, Katherine Beaumier, Joyce Brookhart, Ross Clegg, Decker Moody, Leonora K. Hornbeck, Debbie Doebereiner, Misty Dawn Wilkins, K. Smith, and Daniel R. Christian like being called “no-name?” Beyond that, do they see themselves as “no-names?” Isn’t the fact that they have these names a direct conflict with the whole notion of being a “no-name?”
Is it belittling or disparaging to say that someone is a no-name? Don’t we remove some of their identity when we do this?
I wasn’t sure if this was the studio’s official release or not, so I went to the official movie site. It doesn’t actually say anything and the only link that works directed me to Best Buy where I could buy the movie. They write
Steven Soderbergh followed up his slick, star-studded sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, with Bubble, a small-town drama about workers in a doll factory, played by a cast of unknowns.
A cast of unknowns seems to be a better choice than no-names because it’s probably closer to the truth (although unknown is tricky, too, isn’t it? I mean, who are they unknown to? Certainly not family, friends, agents, managers, one another, etc.).
Ok. They are both discouraging terms when describing the cast. They seem like dirty words in some way. Isn’t there something better? Ingenue? A cast of talented actors? Why do they have to point this out at all? Is it because Soderbergh is known for his big blockbuster movies with casts of well-known actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and others? The writers are making not-so-subtle comparisons, and I don’t see the point. The targeted audiences for the two films seem to be very different. The styles of the movies are different. If you’re going to compare the types of casts (especially when the audience of Bubble would probably not care who is in the movie), then it seems like a pointless waste of valuable blurb real estate.
It’s almost as if the writers of these blurbs were thinking of a way to sell this movie to an Ocean’s Twelve audience, trying to pull them in, without really thinking about the audience, a more indie-oriented audience, they could have. It’s ok to appeal to various audiences. But it’s not effective to do it in a way that divides your audiences. It certainly doesn’t seem to have been effective for the underrated Bubble and the no-name unknowns who were cast to act in it.
a year has gone
5
… and I still miss him as if it were yesterday. Each morning I wake up, and this photo greets me from the wall across from my bed. A friend got me Walking With Zeke, by Chris Clarke (of Creek Running North fame). Clarke writes
And he was sometimes taken for granted, an occupational hazard of being so steadfast, so trustworthy. While I never for a moment in more than 15 years forgot how much I loved my dog, I count myself as lucky that I came to realize, late in his life, just how profoundly he had affected me.
I had lunch with three women today, all dog owners and lovers, who spoke with such care about the dogs in their lives. Then one stopped, leaned toward me, and said, “Tell me about your dog. I know you lost him recently. I want to know about him.” I struggled not to let tears well.
This is the plain truth: Dakota irritated me beyond reason when he begged for food, when he pulled trash out of the garbage cans, when he ate too much and then threw up. But I wouldn’t trade any of those things for the joys he brought me. For the unconditional love, the friendship, the listening. I can’t tell you how many times he would lay his head on me when I cried, getting close to me, almost as if he knew I needed to be loved. Or how I would wake up with sore hips because he laid so close to me in bed that I couldn’t move — and how I didn’t mind those sore hips because it meant I was loved. Or how he made me laugh when we played tug-of-war with his favorite toys, or when he burrowed through the snow, popping up like a “whack-the-mole” 20 feet later, with snow on his nose.
I still love my boy. He taught me so much about myself and about love, just when I needed it.
It’s been a rough year, Dakota. I’ve missed loving on you. I’ve missed talking to you. I don’t cry every time I talk about you anymore. Instead, I smile, and remember, and love you all the more.
all roads lead to congo
23 years ago
Several years ago, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible
Flash forward to November 2008. I am on a mailing list for PhD students in my program. Our director of graduate studies, Bernadette Longo, sent out an email about a class, WRIT 5112, she will be teaching in the spring. She wrote,
This course focuses on the theory and practice of information design. For the first half of the class, we will read about information design, information architecture, and related issues pertaining to this course topic. In the second half of the class, we will work with First Step Initiative, a non-profit microfinance organization working with women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (www.firststepinitiative.org). We will work with FSI and its founder, Chingwell Mutombu, to design cell phone based social networking tools to connect people in the US (and at the U) with people in Congo, as well as connect FSI entrepreneurs and staff with each other in Congo.
After reading her synopsis, I wrote to her immediately. While I don’t need an information design course, I was interested in the subject matter. It has been my lifelong dream (since I was in high school, at least) to work in an environment or on a project that will make women’s lives better. I gushed. I was very enthusiastic and nearly insinuated myself on her to be a TA in her course. I wanted to be a part of this. In fact, I was worried that I had gone overboard, but Bernadette, being the fabulous person she is, recognized my enthusiasm for real desire to be a part of something wonderful and said she’d she what she could do to help me be a part of the project (I can’t actually take the class because I am already registered for the classes I need).
Since then, Bernadette and I have spoken a bit more in depth about this course. Ms. Mutumbu sounds like an amazing person and I was finally able to have my first glimpse of her in a video produced for this course.
While all of this was going on, I was looking at some websites of activist photographers (one is in Chile, another in Afghanistan) who show atrocities going on in different parts of the world. That’s when I stumbled on Condition Critical, a site that discusses the realities of war in the eastern part of Congo (DRC).
I had been aware of the issues that affected women in the Kivu provinces of DRC. As Wikipedia states (my emphases)
The war situation has made the life of women more precarious. Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal. In July 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern about the situation in eastern DRC. A phenomenon of ‘pendulum displacement’ has developed, where people hasten at night to safety. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence, Yakin Ertürk, who toured eastern Congo in July 2007, violence against women in North and South Kivu included “unimaginable brutality”. “Armed groups attack local communities, loot, rape, kidnap women and children and make them work as sexual slaves,” Ertürk said.
While this violence is mostly restricted to the east, all Congolese women struggle for a sense of place, ownership, and safety. Ms. Mutombu is making a difference in the lives of women, one at a time. I would be honored to be a part of this.
context is everything
13 years ago
cogdogblog recently blogged about goingtorain, the website that gives you a weather forecast in the simplest form possible. Is it going to rain? In my case, it was snow (and below the “yes,” it states “there will be snow today with a high of 27°f in saint paul, mn.”
What I love about this site is its simplicity. I’m constantly talking to my students about simplicity and context. It’s easy. Is it going to rain? In this case it means “will there be precipitation?” Yes. Simple. Easy. What is the context of that “yes?” Is it going to rain? Yes.
So what happens when you take a serious scene from the movie Downfall and put subtitles to it that change the context of the entire scene? How do we view the scene in the context of the subtitles?
For the record, the weeping women and the comment of “There, there. I hear he only shoots in jpg anyway” did crack me up.