1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 15: Welcome to the dollhouse

I was in college when I first saw Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. All the terror of middle school (or junior high, as it’s called in the movie) came crashing down on me again.

My friend Hoku viewed it with me. Welcome to the Dollhouse turned him white as a ghost.

(His middle school years were harder than mine.)

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Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) may not be quite at the social bottom of her seventh-grade class at Benjamin Franklin Junior High. But she’s close enough to the bottom that when she tries to commiserate with a classmate who’s just been pounded by bullies, he tells her, “Leave me alone, Wiener Dog!” and runs away.

Dawn wises up after that incident. Never again does she try to aid the powerless. Instead, she toadies up to the powerful and berates and bullies her sixth-grade hanger-on, Ralphy, and her much younger sister, Missy.

Bullying Missy is a mistake. Missy may only be in early grade school, but she knows how to work the system like one of the popular kids.

Her parents always side with her against Dawn. One of the smartest things about the movie is how it shows the adults reinforcing the social hierarchy that keeps Dawn and her older brother, Mark, from breaking away from their peers’ contempt.

Mark directs his efforts toward getting into a good college. This, he supposes, will enable him to finally climb the ladder above his popular, arrogant classmate, Steve Rodgers. Meanwhile, he toadies up to Steve.

Dawn’s strategy is another variant of: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. She throws herself at Steve.

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Dawn has little going for her, but, astutely, the movie recognizes that someone will find something about her to like.

Enter Brandon (Brendan Sexton III), whose home life is even more troubled than Dawn’s.

This isn’t a movie in which goodness triumphs. Brandon’s reserves of courage and sensitivity don’t carry the day. They’re buried very deep, and the situation is further complicated by his mean streak.

But the fact that Brandon is the tiniest bit hopeful about life, and that Dawn is the person he chooses to share that hopefulness with, suggests that there’s hope for Dawn, too.

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I said I didn’t enjoy my first viewing: it was too painful. But time makes even this sort of pain enjoyable.

The movie is filled with acid humor. It’s all in the details, which I don’t want to ruin. But I can give hints.

Dawn’s and Missy’s rivalry is exquisitely lifelike: the tones of voice, the backstabbing, the parents’ failure to administer justice. (What’s arguably the most horrific scene in the movie has to do with how the parents distribute slices of chocolate cake.)

Then there’s the movie’s use of the vernacular. Certain characters are just learning to swear. They combine their words like hilariously ill-matched fashion accessories.

As in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, the most grotesque, syrupy scenes are set to famous passages of classical music. These are juxtaposed against the garage rock riffs that punctuate angrier scenes.

This juxtaposition is paralleled in one of the subplots. Mark recruits Steve Rodgers to play guitar and sing in his garage rock band. Mark’s instrument in the band is the clarinet. The result is the auditory equivalent of spoiled milk.

This movie isn’t nice. But middle school isn’t nice. Families aren’t always nice. Life isn’t nice. This is one of the best movies of the year.

Once more to the lake

… that is, once more for Karin, who spent much of her childhood there. For me, it was the first time.

The lake is in the most Amish part of Middlebury, on the eastern edge of Elkhart County. This is some of the prettiest countryside in all of Northern Indiana. Its hills are very steep; its pastures, very green; its cows, horses, and sheep, healthy and frisky.

On the road, we met more buggies and pedestrians than motorcars.

Then we turned down a long, narrow lane with a sign that said “Private Driveway.”

It took us to the gated community of Foxwood Hills, where young and old were driving golf carts and motorized scooters. The streets had names like “4th of July” and “Iraq” and “Common Sense.” Everywhere were U.S. flags, pictures of eagles, and the like.

We encountered Karin’s sister, Lily, who was riding a bicycle. She escorted us to our parking space. All along the streets were trailers and prefabricated houses. This was one of the nicer ones:

Another nice house had a cage out on the front lawn with four young raccoons in it.

Karin’s dad’s generation is the third to own the family’s four lots. But the family’s trailer hasn’t been habitable for many years. Karin’s dad and his relations keep waiting for “Aunt Kimberly” to clean out the trailer; meanwhile, they visit the campsite during holidays and weekends, sleeping in tents and using the toilets in the bathhouse at the top of the hill. They sit in camping chairs around their fire pit; and when they tire of that, they take their chairs down to the lake and sit there for a while; and then they go sit around their fire pit again; and so on. There isn’t much to do at Foxwood Hills.

For the children, there are playgrounds, and one can always bathe. The lake itself isn’t too shabby:

It’s possible, also, to stroll along one of the four trailer-lined canals:

But the adults don’t do a lot of strolling or bathing. Mostly they just sit in their camping chairs. It helps that they also have coolers of picnic food and beer and vodka.

Anyway, it was good that Karin & I went there on Sunday and not on Memorial Day, when t-storms and tornadoes swept through the region.

Leading Sunday School

For whatever reason, I’ve been made the de facto deputy leader of my church’s Sunday School class for adults. So far, I’ve led three sessions, and it looks like I’ll be given charge of all of the next series, in which we’ll read through John Stott’s study guide on the beatitudes.

I really like these study guides by Stott. I understand the biblical texts much better after discussing them, under Stott’s guidance, with my classmates. Stott’s questions are open-ended, yet they always seem to direct us to the truth.

Tomorrow, though, we’ll finish a different series, Jim Cymbala’s Life-Changing Prayer: Approaching the Throne of Grace. The plan is to watch a 24-minute DVD episode; to answer the two discussion questions left over from our previous meeting (we watch every episode twice); and then to spend the rest of the session praying (it is the last session, and the unit is about prayer, after all). Like Stott’s curriculum, this one also pretty well teaches itself.

(I’m glad to have been put under the spotlight at the very end of the series, since the final episode, “The Church That Prays Together,” has been my favorite by far.)

The Wuthering Heights book club

The brothers (John-Paul and Stephen) are reading Wuthering Heights, one chapter each day. … It’s my second attempt. The book is nowhere near as good as Jane Eyre. Charlotte wrote pleasing sentences; Emily didn’t.

I’m sticking with WH, though, so I can watch the movie by Andrea Arnold. Also, WH deserves credit for inspiring this music video …

… and this cartoon.

Anniversary #3

Well, I turned in the three dissertation chapters, which I’m very glad about. I do wish they were better.

Now I have to finish writing one more chapter and the introduction.

Today, Karin & I celebrated our third wedding anniversary at a pasta restaurant called Macri’s that I recommend to all. While we were eating our pasta, we watched James Holzhauer, the virtuoso Jeopardy! contestant, slaughter two more opponents. It was very gratifying.

Also gratifying is our bedtime reading: Candide, illustrated by the great Sheilah Beckett (life story here; art samples here). If ever I get a tattoo, it will be of one of Beckett’s Candide drawings.

A stressful week

Longest blogging lapse in two years, I think. I desperately need to turn in three chapters that I promised my adviser a week ago.

This has been a miserable time.

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Not that it’s compounding my misery, but Brianna is being thrown out of her mother’s house, effective tomorrow. (Brianna has turned eighteen, and her mother is within her legal rights.)

No, Brianna isn’t going to live with us. She’s taking a spare room in a friend’s friend’s house.

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There is some good news. On Tuesday, Karin & I found out that we’re going to have a baby boy. The child seems healthy. The due date is in mid-October.

May’s poems

This month, I offer two poems whose disturbed author was Mary Lamb.

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Envy

This rose-tree is not made to bear
The violet blue, nor lily fair,
Nor the sweet mignionet:
And if this tree were discontent,
Or wished to change its natural bent,
It all in vain would fret.

And should it fret, you would suppose
It ne’er had seen its own red rose,
Nor after gentle shower
Had ever smelled its rose’s scent,
Or it could ne’er be discontent
With its own pretty flower.

Like such a blind and senseless tree
As I’ve imagined this to be,
All envious persons are:
With care and culture all may find
Some pretty flower in their own mind,
Some talent that is rare.

Choosing a Profession

A Creole boy from the West Indies brought,
To be in European learning taught,
Some years before to Westminster he went,
To a Preparatory school was sent.
When from his artless tale the mistress found
The child had not one friend on English ground,
She ev’n as if she his own mother were,
Made the dark Indian her particular care.
Oft on her favourite’s future lot she thought;
To know the bent of his young mind she sought,
For much the kind preceptress wished to find
To what profession he was most inclined,
That where his genius led they might him train;
For nature’s kindly bent she held not vain.
But vain her efforts to explore his will;
The frequent question he evaded still;
Till on a day at length he to her came,
Joy sparkling in his eyes; and said, the same
Trade he would be those boys of colour were,
Who danced so happy in the open air.
It was a troop of chimney-sweeping boys,
With wooden music and obstreperous noise,
In tarnish’d finery and grotesque array,
Were dancing in the streets the first of May.

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Of the author, the Poetry Foundation writes:

British Poet and anthologist Mary Lamb worked as a seamstress for 10 years to support her ailing family. She suffered from bipolar disorder and, during an episode in 1796, killed her mother with a kitchen knife. Her younger brother Charles, a poet and essayist who worked for the East India Company, agreed to serve as Mary’s caretaker rather than consign her to lifelong institutionalization. They lived together for nearly 40 years, save for Mary’s annual manic episodes, during which she was institutionalized.

Despite her illness, the siblings developed a collaborative writing relationship and produced many well-known collections of poetry and prose for children, including Tales from Shakespeare (1807), Mrs. Leicester’s School (1809), and Poetry for Children (1809). The books they wrote together were published anonymously or under Charles’s name in order to shield Mary from unwanted publicity.

Charles and Mary were forced to move often due to Mary’s notoriety. In 1823 they adopted an orphan, Emma Isola, who lived with them for a decade until marrying their publisher. Charles died in 1834, and Mary was cared for by family members and a nurse, and at times placed in asylums, until her death in 1847.

A tragic, heroic tale.

I thank God for placing us into families that restrain our wildness, hold fast to us though we wound, and steady us so we can do some good …

… today, especially, I thank Him for grandmothers, mothers, wives, and sisters.

A week off

It’s my jobless week in between the spring semester and the first summer term. This afternoon, I’m in a lounge at Notre Dame, hoping that the strangeness of the locale will stimulate me to write.

I lunched with my dear cousin, Vickie, who’s just finished her bachelor’s work at Notre Dame. The poor thing has lost 20 lbs. during her last semester. I asked if it’s because she’s been eating phở in the cafeteria every day. No, she said, she hasn’t been doing that; she’s lost weight because of stress.

She has some jobs lined up for the next couple of years, but eventually she’ll have to decide whether to go to graduate school.

She said that in one of her sociology honors courses, the professor told the undergraduates that she expected all of them to go to grad school for sociology.

I think that’s the sort of expectation that ill serves humankind.

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The last two days, I got to watch two fantastic Champions League semifinal games.

On Tuesday, Liverpool defeated Barcelona at home by four goals to zero, gaining a decisive 4–3 lead in aggregate goals and canceling out Lionel Messi’s superb performance from the previous game.

And yesterday, the Potato Tots scored three second-half goals in Amsterdam to edge out Ajax on “away” goals. Lucas Moura, the goalscorer, prayed fervidly at the start of the half, and by the time he put in his second goal, it sure looked like he was receiving divine favor.

Still, I felt badly for Ajax: they’d outplayed the Potato Tots in three of the four halves. And I felt badly for Messi, whose teammates had failed to oblige when, in Barcelona’s home game, he’d set them up to score enough goals to put the series to bed.

The final (June 1) will be a ferocious contest. They’re two very gritty teams, Liverpool and the Potato Tots.

R.I.P. Rachel Held Evans

Her earthly race is all run.

RHE – blogger, book author, speaker – ecumenical Episcopalian, ex-evangelical, biblical anti-literalist, feminist – U.S. Southerner, Bryan College alumna, daughter, sister, wife, mother – and much more – has suddenly died at thirty-seven (my own age). Her body seems to have reacted severely against routine treatment for infection and flu.

I used to read her blog when I lived in Ithaca. I liked watching her wrestle, in near-real time, with difficult questions of biblical interpretation, theology, and practical ethics. I liked the humility with which she responded to critics. I liked how she made room on her blog for respectful Q&A sessions with representatives of different faith traditions.

The last couple of days, I’ve been skimming through entries that I missed after I stopped reading her blog around 2013.

She wasn’t formally trained in the topics she wrote about, but she was a persistent student. We can see this from her notes on Justo L. González’s The Story of Christianity, vol. 1 and vol. 2. Reading the latter volume, she learned that …

… at a time when Christians were condemning, expelling, and killing one another over doctrinal differences, a guy named Georg Calixtus had the crazy idea that perhaps one could hold to one’s convictions (his were Lutheran) without condemning as heretics those with whom one disagrees. He argued that there was a difference, after all, between heresy and error. This made far too much sense, and Calixtus was largely written off by his contemporaries. But he sounded cool to me so I gave him hipster glasses and a hat:

(Yes, alas, this sometime Proverbs 31 aspirant normally clothed herself in hipster garb. But she wore it lightly.)

Since few of us are professional scholars, it was valuable to have someone publicly exemplifying what she did, which was to approach serious questions with candor and humility, as a confirmed amateur, untainted by the presumptions of the guilds …

… which she skewered, graciously, in another blog entry, “Why a Seminary Degree Doesn’t Have to Make You a Jerk.”

She wasn’t afraid to take authoritarians to task. She was a skillful gadfly, judiciously choosing her targets, as we can see from her entry “The Bible Was ‘Clear’ …”

Playing the gadfly brought her enemies, maybe especially from among the Southern Baptists. Here is what one of them says. Without spelling it out, he insinuates that RHE has been sent to hell.

I’m not nearly so pessimistic. Whether her race was well run is for God to decide; but, having read much of her blogging, I have reason to hope that the best for her is still to come.

I’m terribly sad, though, for the husband and two young children she leaves behind.

(Photo by Dan Evans)

Update: Here are three of the better tributes to RHE, all on one page. (Hat tip to David Swartz.)

Update: Here’s a merciful conservative Christian reaction to RHE’s death. (Hat tip to my pastor.)

Update: One more article (this one from the Atlantic).

Job hunting

What with my Ph.D. nearly in hand, I’ve been applying for college teaching jobs. Long shot, I know …

This involves writing cover letters and other supporting documents for dozens or even hundreds of schools. Naturally, if a school’s application requirements are too onerous, I simply choose not to pursue employment there.

Several times, I’ve submitted an application and then been asked, on short notice, to submit more documents not initially requested.

A couple of these schools made their second request after I’d survived the first cut in the application process. It was onerous, but I complied.

This last time, though, I’d filled out a twelve-page application form that included several essay questions. Then, when I emailed it (along with the other documents specified in the job advertisement) to the search committee’s representative, she replied with another series of essay questions for me to answer – questions she said were required of all faculty job inquirers.

When I have received this document, she said, I will forward [your application] to the search committee for their review.

I know that schools can get away with doing this because they receive hundreds of applications for each job they advertise. But how is it not frowned upon?

I took it as a sign of how the school treats its employees and decided not to complete the application. (Besides, I have lots of other work to do.)

I composed this reply:

No. If [your school] requires all faculty job applicants to submit answers to these five questions, it should include the questions in the job advertisement or in the application form.

I don’t think I’ll send it, though. The representative is only a secretary. Her job is to pass materials back and forth between the applicants and the search committee, not to decide what the search committee should require the applicants to do.

This ordeal is giving me lots of ideas about how to conduct reasonable job searches. Not that I expect to ever be in a position to implement them. The initial hurdles may well prove too overwhelming.