a sense of joy and then a panic

So, The Dark Knight Rises - the last Nolan Batman movie (God willing).  I really liked Batman Begins, which I think I saw in theaters with Christina when neither of us knew what we were expecting - and we were both like, "I think I really kind of LIKED IT" - and have a special relationship with The Dark Knight, which I saw on my own in a shopping mall/movie theater in Surabaya after I bought a canvas bag that said "Life.  Industry.  Work.  Strength."  I saw The Dark Knight Rises last weekend in another shopping mall/movie theater in Jakarta with mixed company, and I felt frustrated and disappointed with it. 

Many people have talked about the questionable politics of The Dark Knight Rises - I particularly like Abigail Nussbaum's review (but when is that ever not true?).  Others have pointed out that these weird fascistic/Randian trends have been in Nolan's Batman movies the entire time, although I must confess I didn't really see them.  To me Batman Begins wasn't very controversial politically, and The Dark Knight was about the classic dilemmas facing public servants trying to do the right thing (I think the most interesting character in it is Dent's) as well as the personal mental collapse that takes place when you decide you can't take trying anymore (see for instance "that's it, I'm moving to Canada" on a much more mundane level, or "fuck iiiiiit" in meme terms).  In the Order vs. Chaos argument, I think a pretty compelling point was made for Chaos, even if officially Order won out.  The Dark Knight Rises, on the other hand, was really playing up the 1% vs. 99% thing, and the 99% pretty much turn out to be duped by an evil that has no motivation other than to be evil.  It actually kind of reminded me of Michael Crichton's "environmentalists are actually engineering global warming to scare us all into going with the Kyoto Protocol!" as well as of that terrible book by Glenn Beck.  The 1% don't even really commit any sins except their parties are boring.  And then there they are, being thrown out on the streets and executed by exile onto a sea of thin ice!  Even Catwoman, the "Robin Hood" character, is all "Batman, you don't owe these plebes anything, they stole all your money."  So yeah, all that: kind of sucky.

Beyond that, I didn't find the movie as much "fun" as I did its predecessors.  I had heard a lot about the explosion in the football stadium scene beforehand but it did not pack the emotional punch that it truly should have, given me and my inclinations.  I actually felt most emotional in the opening scene, during the nuclear physicist's surprise kidnapping.  I don't really know why - maybe the claustrophobia and imminent death involved for such a small pack of people?  But the police being stuck in the tunnels, then surprise!liberated and being gunned down like Theoden's Riders in The Return of the King - meh.  The random schoolbus of orphaned boys - meh.  The pit?  I did feel a twinge when Bruce Wayne makes it out at last, but it was for the cheering prisoners still in the pit, not Bruce Wayne.  This one just didn't click with me.  It felt cold and distant and unwilling to really give of itself.

On the other hand: Alfred the loyal-unto-death butler and Gordon the beleaguered police commissioner were great.  I think those two and Blake (the scrappy new cop) were really the actual soul of the movie, as far as it had a soul at all - the most human characters, at any rate.  Batman/Bruce Wayne was just kind of annoying/useless (ironically), Catwoman was like What Happens When Men Write Women #5a, or so, and Miranda Tate would have potentially been a competent character if not for the barren face heel turn.  Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow was also fun. 

If anything I sort of wished Batman was erased from this movie, and that it was just the tale of the horribly dysfunctional city that had to fend for itself - that there truly was no ubermensch to save it.  Because I'm fond of Gotham - have been since the beginning - and I was always fiercely of the belief that the League of Shadows was wrong, and Gotham should not be sacrificed as hopelessly corrupt.  Maybe that's because I come from a city that really reminds me of Gotham, sometimes ("criminals in this town used to believe in things - honor, respect!"), and Gotham being assailed by Chaos was like the Jemaah Islamiyah era here, when hotels were being blown up; and the Gotham being assailed by Quasi-Revolution is like what's happening now, with people burning suspected thieves in the street.  And let me tell you: we have no ubermensch.  What we might have, if we're lucky, is a Gordon, a couple Blakes.  We certainly have plenty of Alfreds.

ANYWAY.  Something else I realized while watching The Dark Knight Rises: I think I may be finally shifting my gaze from older men (father substitutes, all) to men my age (the "damaged" ones, but oh well).  I was way, way more attracted to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie than Bruce Wayne (that scene where he's running to the hospital with the rifle!  Rarr!), and that is new.  I was talking about this with my mother, and concluded that regardless of who I actually date, my ideal type seems to be this older, married, brooding political scientist type that is clearly a doppelganger for my father.  And it's also!  A completely safe, riskless outlet for whatever feelings I might develop, because I know in my hardest of hearts that nothing real can actually happen there.  There was no possibility of anything developing.  I couldn't really get involved.  I wasn't going to get heartbroken.  Plus it let me deal with my Daddy Issues.  Sort of, anyway.  I mean, the walls I put up -- both because my father died and everything normal and happy was shattered, and probably just because of me, because I was born nuts -- were miles high.

But I think that's starting to change, and that's a good thing.

Jan:  what are you watching?

The Gmail "call phone" function (the little green phone under Chat) has given me helpful tip today: "Reminder: Call dad."

I interpret this to mean "Reminder: Buy ouija board" or "Remember: Call medium" or "Remember: Hold seance."  This in turn is called humor to deflect pain.  It reminds me of that begging-for-donations letter from my alma mater around Mother's Day talking about how important our mothers were to us, how she was the woman that inspired us to go to this college - this wasn't true for me, but how much less true would it be for people who never knew their mothers? 

Ironically, Father's Day wasn't a thing for me when my father was alive (because it isn't a thing in Indonesia).

So, this is my Father's Day song:

My mom and I went to a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last night (they're on tour).  It was the most enthusiastic about anything artistic I've ever seen her.  She was a modern dancer through her 20s and 30s.  She wasn't famous, she was just a dancer - dance was her burning thing, and what took her to Indonesia, and thus how she met my father, etc.  Before she started doing exclusively  Javanese dance, she took after Merce Cunningham's style, which is very "abstract" (her words) and does not use music, and she described Alvin Ailey's style as essentially the opposite.  The only dance story she's ever told me is of Merce Cunningham visiting her college's dance department or something and noticing how she was dancing (she was "falling very slowly") and saying "keep doing that."  But she had gone to a performance by the AAADT and still recalled parts of "Revelations," which is Alvin Ailey's signature 1960 piece: "the story of African-American faith and tenacity from slavery to freedom through a suite of dances set to spirituals and blues music."  They performed "Revelations" last night, and it is indeed very soulful and religious and "epic."  My favorite part of the whole performance was "Revelations"'' first segment, "Pilgrim of Sorrow."  The upward-reaching hands in "I've Been 'Buked" symbolize a total commitment to reaching for something that cannot be touched.


We were reading the program and my mother was looking through the names mentioned - Katherine Dunham Dance Company, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Lester Horton - and saying, "ah, see, this," because this had been her world.  

Alvin Ailey died in 1989 after appointing Judith Jamison as a successor - she is passing it on to Robert Battle, who choreographed "In/Side" - the lighting doesn't come through too well in that abridged video, but after this performance my mother immediately gave a standing ovation.  She does give standing ovations, but usually it's after she sees other people doing it, and it's a slow ascent.  This time she just shot up of her own accord.  When she sat back down she was crying and said that was one of the best performances she had ever seen.  She appreciates dance on a totally different level than I do, obviously - I'm always trying to "interpret" dance, and my reaction to "In/Side" was "it was like he was the last person on some planet and this was his mental process" and "the contrast between him being totally alone and the song, which is all about this other person being with him," whereas the most interpretation my mother provided for this dance was "it's like going really, really, really deep inside."  What she first praised was the dancer's control and energy flow and the different shapes he could take and his "absolutely perfect stance," and how when he would momentarily relax she would think, "no, no, don't relax!"

She said in the parking garage that the performance was good for her soul.  The only real chance I get to hear her perspective on dance is when we watch So You Think You Can Dance (she's a big fan of it), and in fact the AAADT gave a performance on SYTYCD last season that I think reminded her of the company, and inspired her to buy the tickets.  I think the most benefit for my soul was actually just listening to her.

I've never been made unsafe because of my demographics.  I'm half-white and half-Javanese, but I pass.  I look a lot whiter now than I did when I was younger (my skin has gotten paler, I've started looking more like my mother, IDK).  I guess most people can identify that I don't look totally teutonic, or whatever, but I get to rest in the safe "mildly exotic" zone.  The only people that actually broach the ethnicity subject with me are themselves not white.  And I know that has made my life a lot easier.

Lately I have started to feel uneasy.  I keep having nightmarish visions of America entering some kind of... social bottleneck, or something, because the amount of combative racist agitation in the country seems so high right now.  A little while ago it was Arizona and the border.  Now it's Islam.  And while the anti-immigration rhetoric did make me nervous (and pissed for non-personal, more philosophical reasons) the anti-Islam rhetoric actually creates physical discomfort, because I was raised in Indonesia and my father's family is Muslim.  To be honest I don't know much about the religion.  I went to a Muslim school for two years, learned nothing (I was too busy talking to myself), was registered as Muslim at my international school, literally raced through my prayers, the end.  My best friend was Christian.  I was more excited about Christmas (presents!) than Idul Fitri (adults talking).  But it was a Muslim society, and save for my atheist mother, all the responsible adults in my life were Muslim - though they ranged all the way from my dad, who was mostly atheist, to a friend of my dad's who was like a freelance preacher.  To this day hearing the adzan comforts me.  So I guess I have some cultural identification with Islam.  

I pretty much know that the anti-Islam stuff going down in the U.S. is never going to hurt me, personally.  I don't identify with any religion (right now I'm immersed in Christianity, and dabble in paganism, a la Christine O'Donnell I guess) and I look white enough that no one's going to bring it up.  But I guess... I just feel more on-edge about it than I used to.  I don't know if that's because of the changed climate or because I've gotten more sensitive or what.  But these days I feel wary about saying I used to live in Indonesia, because what if they know Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population?  Why did that woman at work mistake hearing "Indonesia" for "Egypt" and then say "close enough"?  That is how hyper my neurosis is.  After all, if that is how Obama has been identified as Muslim - going to school in Indonesia, having a Muslim father - well, shit, my cover's blown.  I shudder to think of the number of people who would happily high-five me in Memorial Stadium now who wouldn't if they knew.  And believe me, thinking that way - feeling paranoid that I'm going to be somehow "found out" - makes me feel very cowardly and hypocritical, because WTF, right, there should be no shame in identifying with whatever ethnicity or religion, and how lame am I in propagating that there is something shameful about Islam through my actions.  Like I am braver about sticking up for other people (who I couldn't be mistaken for) but don't have the balls to put myself on the line.  That's fucking awful. 

But then there's the question of whether I should even identify with Islam enough to feel uneasy and paranoid.  I mean, there are a whole lot of people who have more cause for concern than I.  It's not part of my identity.  If we're going to pick out cultural/ethnic markers for me, I would say something along the lines of "l'enfant colonial."  The line "Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo" is my favorite from "We Didn't Start The Fire."  And on the other hand, I totally believe that people shouldn't wait to be a member of a group at gunpoint to, you know, say or do something.  A lot of casual and/or combative racism upsets me mentally - but this is the first time I've ever felt physically and emotionally uncomfortable, for purely self-defensive reasons.  It is very different from anything I have felt before. 

As you may have heard, there's an on-going blizzard in the Great Plains area.  12 inches of blowing snow so far.  This after many years of non-white Christmases.  So, Christmas dinner has been postponed until tomorrow night.  Oh boy!  As Pippin says, "I don't want to be in a battle.  But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse." 

That said, I got some pretty good loot today:

• Pancha Tantra, Walton Ford.  (this was my mother's big splurge, and I still can't believe she bought it...)
• Phantom, ed. Paul Tremblay.
• Under the Dome, Stephen King.
• Apocalypse Now, the DVD!  (my favorite movie, so I needed this)

Also a couple baking books and a jewelry stand, because apparently I am a girl.

This is inspired by my bff royinpink's posts on teaching history, and an earlier post I made about Nazis and our perspective on them.  It's just an anecdote, but I like anecdotes.

Indonesian schools are really bad at teaching history.  Sejarah, history, is part of IPS (Ilmu Pengetahuan Sosial), social knowledge, and although I think that history everywhere is often a tool of social control, this is particularly true in countries like Indonesia, where we went from no mass education to the Dutch Ethical Policy to authoritarianism.  So my history classes in elementary school were very, very bad.  Bad as in factually incorrect.  My mother gave me homeschool lessons on top of my actual school lessons.  No idea what it's like now.  Judging by reports of what it's like in Japanese and German history classes, I'm going to go with "tense." 

So obviously I didn't know that in 1965, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 "Communists" were killed in Indonesia, over a span of a few weeks.  Oh, I knew about 1965.  I knew it as Gestapu, Gerakan September 30, when evil Communists kidnapped and killed six military officers and dropped them in a well called Lubang Buaya, Crocodile Hole.  The real tragedy, as taught to us, was that the Communists had also killed one general's little girl.  A reasonably well-done propagandistic movie about her death was supposedly shown to school children every year on September 30, although I have never seen it (my mother has). 

By the time I learned about all the mass executions that were carried out "in revenge" for the generals' deaths, I was in college.  I knew about the Cold War and McCarthyism by then.  I wrote a research paper about who was doing the killing.  The Indonesian Army has always said that angry mobs got out of control and hunted out Communists themselves, but nobody believes that the Army had nothing to do with what was happening.  However, the Army couldn't have killed all those people on its own, and I doubt the Army would have wanted to.  My theory, which seems to square with the few accounts of civilians who were involved in the killings, is that the Army pushed the gory details of the generals' deaths on the already anxious public, drove into towns with guns and tanks, and "strongly encouraged" young patriotic, Muslim men to do their part protecting Indonesia and kill Communists.  I think the Army wanted entire communities to get involved because they wanted to share the blood.  One anecdote I read was about a dentist who had killed Communists in 1965 and had nightmares where he saw the faces of the people he killed, years later.

This was all very horrific for me, and late in my research paper it occurred to me that my father had been 18 in 1965 (my father died in 1998).  I called my mother in a panic - had he been involved?  The thought made me nauseous.  My mother said she didn't know, but he probably just hid somewhere and stayed out of it.  She couldn't imagine him not sharing something like that with her.  I believed that and moved on.  

Half a year later I was in Indonesia for an internship and I visited my relatives in Jogjakarta.  My father was the oldest of ten, and my aunt and uncle are the only relatives on his side of the family that I know, because they were the ones my dad was closest to.  On our last day there, we went to a military museum next to our hotel.  This museum was surreally awful.  Old tanks - made in the U.S.A.! - parked in front, with a dim, un-air-conditioned network of rooms under terracotta roofs.  Every artifact imaginable from various wars is on display, with little explanation.  Photographs of decapitated soldiers and open mass graves cover the walls.  And in the 1965 room, replicas of the dead generals' blood-stained uniforms.  This room quieted my aunt, who had been a teen in 1965, and she started to talk about fighting the Communists with my dad.  Something about storming a theater that was run by a Communist, and breaking into a school, and having bullets shot at her while she was on the roof.  I asked what my dad had done, and she said that he had gone to help "guard the Communists" that had been captured and were awaiting execution.  I don't know if he actually killed anyone or not, and will never know.

This shattered me.  At lunch I started bawling because I felt this made my father "a bad person".  My aunt didn't understand - "no, he wasn't a Communist, he was against the Communists!" - but my uncle, who had been a kid in 1965 but had gone to school in the U.S. (like my dad), got it.  There wasn't really much he could say, other than to remind me that my dad became an anti-government Marxist himself several years later, and smuggled copies of the banned Communist Manifesto into the country on steamships.  I called my mother and told her all this in the hotel that evening.  I felt bad telling her, because it would mean that my dad hadn't told her himself, but my mother just figured that it was a part of his life he didn't want to remember.  My parents were 40 when they got married.  They left behind a lot.

It took me a while longer to accept this without feeling ill.  In the long run I think it actually really helped my understanding of my dad's generation - explained the extreme sense of betrayal evident in the 1970s student protests that he was a part of - and my understanding of atrocities in general and the people that commit them, why they commit them.  It's a cliche, but it made me look at everything I thought I knew about history differently.  It helped me understand nationalism from a less biased perspective.  Of course my understanding is lacking, and always will be.  I don't have my dad to talk to about it.  Which is part of the problem of history in general. 

This song sort of sums up where I am now on this matter: "Freezing" by Philip Glass (vocals by Linda Ronstadt, lyrics by Suzanne Vega).  

I'm not really into memoir, but the debate about whether parents should be allowed to write memoirs that concern their children's "private lives" is an interesting one, mostly for the level of vitriol and extremism it engenders. It's acting like it's A Big Deal because Julie Myerson's book about her drug addicted teenage son (Lost Child) was released in the US (she apparently got ravaged for it in her native UK some time back).

First, the writers/Myerson-sympathizers:

Now, everybody else:

What a bunch of excuse-makers. Why don’t you just go the whole way, put on fangs, and suck the kid’s blood?...  It’s a dishonest writer who doesn’t know that using other people’s stories is theft and often a form of violence. If you’re so utterly self-centered that you can’t keep your hands off your own kid, don’t have kids.

On the other hand, since when do “artistes” give a rusty you-know-what about other people? If they did, they wouldn’t write it.

The pursuit of truth? OK, so that’s how you justify it. Well the rest of us live in the real world in which people have feelings. Yes, you have the choice to disregard those feelings and pursue whatever you call truth. But that’s abotu the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard. Why do you need to pursue this flight of fancy (pursuing truth)? And what makes you think the subject of your writing has anything to do with a truth that’s significant to society.

This is why I decided long ago to never get involved with a writer or tell a writer anything personal.

That said, I'm with the people that say writing is about making sense of the world, and pretty much everyone and everything you interact with helps form your experience and knowledge and perception of the world.  That's true for everybody.  What's also true for everybody is that they imprint the sense they've made of the world onto the world - that's in your conversations and the work you choose to do and the politicians you vote for (or don't vote for) and the causes you give to and the way you raise your kids.  Writers just do it in a very distributable, reproducible, "legible" way - for better or worse. 

That said #2, I'd fictionalize the whole thing to avoid charges of libel, etc., and to have more artistic license. 

Dedicated to my uncle's mysterious second wife, Mary Ann(e). She and my uncle were both English professors. I never knew Mary Ann(e). My mother did - she briefly lived with Mary Ann(e) and my uncle between educational pursuits - and says only that Mary Ann(e) was intense and intriguing and smart and hard to live with. They had no children. She's quite long dead, possibly of suicide (my uncle had to go identify the body), and my uncle has a drawer-full of love letters they exchanged. I was there when his third wife found them in the basement.

My uncle is now working on marrying wife #4.


"Pictures of Mary Anne" - Swans