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1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 85: To die for

A few years ago, I put on I, Tonya (2017) and then quickly turned it off. I couldn’t stomach its “mocumentary” format.

I had too much sympathy for the “sober reassessment” of Tonya Harding then coming into vogue. I’d been impressed by The Price of Gold, ESPN’s respectful documentary about the figure skater.

I’m not sure if I, Tonya tries to portray Harding’s life any more accurately than, say, Amadeus portrays the life of Mozart. What I am sure of – now – is that stylistically and thematically, I, Tonya is a re-hash of To Die For (1995).

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To Die For isn’t about Tonya Harding, but there are elements of that movie that arguably nod to the Harding-Karrigan scandal as it was interpreted in the 1990s – i.e., as a specimen of:

(a) ruthless feminine ambition (to take the lurid perspective);

(b) journalistic sensationalism (to take the sober, critical perspective).

(See, e.g., the second verse of Weird Al’s song “Headline News,” which expresses both perspectives.)

To Die For’s source is a 1992 novel by Joyce Maynard. The novel draws from the real-life murder of Gregg Smart by his wife, Pamela.

However, To Die For and the Harding-Kerrigan case do share certain themes. These include:

(a) personal ambition;

(b) the sleaze of media producers, subjects, and consumers;

and

(c) violence at second-hand.

Imagery is shared, too: especially, ice and ice-skating.

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“First impressions in one word?” says rough-edged figure skater Janice Maretto (Illeana Douglas) when asked to describe her sister-in-law, Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman). “Four letters. Begins with ‘C’ … Cold. C⁠-⁠O⁠-⁠L-⁠D.” Janice looks directly at the camera. One gathers that she’s being interviewed for a documentary about Suzanne and that Suzanne has acquired a certain notoriety.

Other characters, including Suzanne, are “interviewed” during the movie, but it isn’t always clear whether it’s for the same “project” or even whether it’s during this life or the afterlife. It isn’t clear whether Suzanne herself is alive or dead.

Her husband, Larry (Matt Dillon) – Janice’s brother – is definitely dead. The movie recounts Suzanne’s role in his demise. It blends “interviews,” other TV “footage,” and straightforward cinematic narrative. The blend disorients, but that’s on purpose.

The general outline is simple enough: ambitious young wife tires of husband, regards him as career obstacle, plots his murder, is found out.

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There’s more to it. The murder isn’t just Suzanne’s means to a career.

No, what’s distinctive about Suzanne – her tragic flaw, if someone so hollow can have one – is her craving for attention. She wants a career in broadcasting because it’s a way to be seen.

The wrinkle is that she’s unable to supress that craving in order to obtain greater exposure in the long run. She has to be noticed at every step. It’s a compulsion.

When she gets a job forecasting the weather for the local cable channel, she inundates her boss (Wayne Knight) with suggestions about how to run the station.
Boss: “Well, Suzanne, I sure pity the person who says ‘no’ to you.”

Suzanne: “No one ever does.”
She recruits high schoolers to feature in her self-publicizing documentary about the lives of … wait for it … high schoolers. She does more than interview and film them. She becomes their after-school companion.

Soon she’s hanging out with them in shopping malls, giving them weight-loss and career advice, trying on clothes in front of them. Training them to depend on her, adore her, gawk at her, hang on her every word.

Her posse consists of three young losers: Lydia (Alison Folland), Russell (Casey Affleck), and Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix). They’re the best thing about the movie. Director Gus Van Sant is on his surest ground here, sympathizing with troubled youth. Phoenix’s performance, especially, is a slam-dunk. It’s as if a dismal cartoon teenager from Beavis and Butt-Head acquired flesh and blood, became a Real Boy. Suzanne soon has Jimmy wrapped around her finger. She plays him against the other two.


Then she coaxes them to murder her husband.

Why? Why not kill him herself? Why involve these sad, incompetent children? Not because Suzanne is a criminal mastermind, but because it’s compulsive for her to play to an audience. Why bother to become a murderer if no one is there to see it?

Lydia, in an interview, explains:
Suzanne used to say that you’re not really anybody in America unless you’re on TV … ’cause what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if there’s nobody watching? So when people are watching, it makes you a better person. So if everybody was on TV all the time, everybody would be better people.
Then, touchingly, Lydia adds:
But, if everybody was on TV all the time, there wouldn’t be anybody left to watch, and that’s where I get confused.
It’s like someone near the bottom of a pyramid scheme dimly realizing it’s a pyramid scheme.

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But hey, Lydia is on TV, isn’t she? She has made it, hasn’t she? And doesn’t almost everyone in this story appear on TV?

There are a couple of very weird scenes – whether they take place in this world or in the next one, I’m not sure – in which Suzanne’s family members and Larry’s family members answer questions together, for a talk show, in front of a studio audience. Despite the tragedy that has brought them there, that ought to pit them against each other, they are convivial. They even seem mildly pleased to be there. Could it be that although these ordinary citizens lack Suzanne’s obsessiveness, they share her basic philosophy: that what really matters is to be seen? That, unspeakably, the destruction of Larry and Suzanne is a blessing for them? That scraps of recognition are worth people dying for? If this is so, then the movie indicts not only the outrageous, cartoonish Suzanne, but ordinary people as well, in fact an entire society.

Re-post re: Dorothy Sayers

Forgive this lazy entry, but it’s late and this has been a rough day. Here’s an entry by somebody else: Alan Jacobs, who is writing a biography of Dorothy Sayers that I very much look forward to reading.

And here is some music.



War plans; an inauspicious debut

From The Atlantic. If you can access it, read it. It describes shocking security breaches, callous disregard for human life, reckless emoji use, etc. Also shocking (but not surprising) is the current administration’s hatred of … Europe. Someone should force the Vice President and his cronies to turn off their phones, sit still, and watch some alluring travel videos by Rick Steves. …

This has been the wildest news story of the week.

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I take it back. Wilder, if less consequential, was Ecuador’s decision to start 17-year-old Darwin Guagua against Chile tonight. The boy hadn’t even debuted at the senior level for Independiente del Valle, his club.

The soccer federation appears to be trying to show off young Ecuadorian players so that European clubs will buy them. Federation officials probably are cutting backroom deals with local clubs and then pressuring the national team’s coach to field certain players.

Guagua had been about to enter Friday’s game as a late substitute. But when the Venezuelans scored, our coach, Sebastián Beccacece, left him on the bench. So, tonight, Guagua got to start. (I doubt it was what Beccacece wanted.)

The Chileans ate Guagua alive. We effectively ceded our left flank to them for half of the game.

Apart from that, our performance was … good. Kind of awesome. Unbalanced though we were, we contained the Chileans until halftime and dominated them afterward. The result was a goalless draw. Enner put the ball into the net but was narrowly offside.

We remain in second place. No other team gained ground on us this week, except Argentina.

Incidentally, guagua, in the indigenous and European languages of the Andes, means baby.

The case against living in las Malvinas

… a.k.a. the Falklands.


Argentina came within a point of qualifying for the World Cup, defeating Uruguay, who fell in the standings. Ecuador rose to second place. We’d dropped to fifth because Brazil and Paraguay won their games; but then we beat Venezuela, 2–1, in what should have been a cakewalk but became rather fraught when Venezuela scored.

Enner scored twice for Ecuador but missed a penalty kick, as is his way. Other outstanding players were midfielder Pedro Vite and goalkeeper Hernán Galíndez. The latter dislocated his finger; Pervis pulled it back into place.

Five games remain for each team. We’ll play on Tuesday, in Santiago. The Chileans are last.

Karin took Samuel to the emergency room last night because we worried that he had appendicitis. He didn’t, thank goodness. Today we’re all much happier.

Body-text fonts, pt. 37: Bembo


(I agree with C. S. Lewis here – enthusiastically – insofar as languages make genuine or at least plausible distinctions. But what if, e.g., loving just is liking? Probably not; but the point is, languages might (a) encode different ontologies or inventories of acceptable concepts rather than (b) differ in expressive facility.

Anyway.)

Bembo is one of the oldest and greatest fonts. It’s common in books but less so in desktop publishing. I believe some text editing programs provide Bembo; if yours doesn’t, consider obtaining one of these free variants of the typeface:

(1) Borgia Pro (a clone of this standard version of Bembo, with gratis regular, italic, bold, and bold italic font files);

(2) Cardo (in Google Docs);

(3) fbb (an enhancement of Cardo);

and (4) XETBook (rather like Bembo Book).

Cardo/fbb is the closest thing to the above sample from Lewis. It’s not bad: I see it in some professionally typeset books, e.g. this book requiring lots of extra glyphs for the author’s (Nigerian) name. Tonight I learned that fbb has added a “swashed” Q to its character set. I once wrote a thirty-page research paper with Cardo, using Google Docs (which I don’t recommend for a paper of that length). The typesetting was arduous but, ultimately, successful; the paper wasn’t.