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| Word around town |
| 07.22.04 (8:24 am) [edit] |
Worked on the book with Carleton today. October is shaping up to be nuts: Avol's, a cool little bookstore in new digs, will be launching the book on the 14th, the Wisconsin Book Fest will be having me read early in the month, and I'll also be heading back to Toronto for the Nightwood launch in late October.
C'est What, a Toronto institution, is closing next month. If you had a basement and you had a lot of wood to furnish it, it'd look a lot like C'est What. Saw Lenni Jabour and Justin Rutledge at their last gig there. Whereas Lenni breaks hearts with old piano tunes and French, Justin does it with barely a voice and a ratty photo taped to his guitar.
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| Dodgeball & Pointy Shoes |
| 07.05.04 (7:06 am) [edit] |
Besides yard sales and ice cream, Brantford has a mall movie theater where you can watch Dodgeball.
White Goodman (Ben Stiller as hilarious villain) vs. Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughan as hero)
The more I think about it, the more it strikes me that onscreen villains are much more interesting than heroes:
Agent Smith vs. Neo
Jafar vs. Aladdin
Leo DiCaprio's character vs. Daniel Day-Lewis's in Gangs of New York
My guess is that insofar as the Hero is supposed to be an Everyman character, the Hero must be as bland as possible in order to represent as many men as possible. As in so many stories, the conflict is masculine-centered. The Hero is alienated from society in a way that prevents him from fulfilling his potential and being recognized as a Hero. The Villain, on the other hand, is firmly perched at the top of the food chain. The course of the story depicts the rise of the Hero and the fall of the Villain.
All of this probably comes as no surprise. But what I find interesting is that insofar as the Hero is supposed to represent the largest number of men in the real world, who does the Villain represent?
If we take Daniel Day-Lewis's character in Gangs of New York as an example, we note his height, his top hat, his handlebar moustache, and his interesting fashion sense. In contrast to the bland cap and clothes of Leo's character, we are meant to notice Day-Lewis's character, and his visibility is related to his villainy.
In other words, the Villain sticks out as exceptional. He's the embodiment of Exception. Which would make him the opposite of the Everyman: rather than representing the largest number of men possible, the Villain represents the smallest number of men possible.
Port Dover also has a pier, the kind that has a tower with a green light for boats, the kind on which you while away the evening by talking to your friends. It's also the kind that young white men with baggy pants visit with their boom boxes.
One of them asks your friends, "Do you have any weed? (No.) Coke? (No.) What kind of music do you listen to? (No real answer.) Oh yeah? We're from London."
The one with the beer funnel turns to you. "Where are you from?"
"Canada."
"You know what I mean. What's your background?"
"Canadian."
"What languages do you speak?"
"French."
The one with the backwards baseball cap comes over to you. "Are you fucking with me? Do you speak English?"
"Yes."
At this point, your friend is smart enough to say, "Let's go," and you leave.
The first thing that strikes you is that you have been marked by being exceptional. Let's say it's your pointy shoes. Or let's say it's your skin color. Either way, you're visible. If you were an Everyman, you'd be invisible because you wouldn't have any features that stick out.
Under these rules, you can't be an Everyman. Everymen have the power to stay invisible and wear baggy khakis. Eventually you realize that you can't change your skin color, but you can wear pointy boots because staying invisible (bland) is a crucial part of Everyman's game.
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