1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 90: Green fish

Tagging Green Fish (1997) as a “gangster” flick is like calling Badlands a “spree killer” flick: it ignores the poetry. Beautiful little scenes are interspersed with violent ones. The little scenes carry the movie.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ilsan, which lies within commuting distance of Seoul, was once farmland. Now, high-rises stand next to the fields. Mak-dong’s family still lives in a hut. The patriarch has died. Mak-dong’s oldest brother is mentally disabled; another brother, a policeman, is a drunkard; another barely gets by, delivering eggs; their mother cleans houses; their sister does sex work.

Mak-dong has just completed his military service. Riding the train home, he confronts ruffians who are molesting a stylish young woman. The ruffians beat him. He loses his belongings; the woman retrieves them and tries to contact him. He tracks her to Seoul, where he lands himself in another fight, this time with the gangsters whose boss the young woman, Mi-ae, is mistress to. The boss, “Older Brother,” brings Mak-dong into the gang.

Mak-dong’s talent is for taking beatings. His first assignment is to bait a councilman into beating him up after karaoke. The councilman thus acquires a debt to “Older Brother.” Such is the labor to which Mak-dong is put.

I’ll support the family, Mak-dong tells his brothers. He works for their sake – and for Mi-ae’s.

And, paradoxically, he is motivated by genuine loyalty to his exploiter, “Older Brother.” Not just by need or fear.

You might believe such loyalty to arise from a misguided, idiosyncratic compulsion. But “Older Brother” is just as loyal to the older head of a rival gang. Although these men are adversaries, they uphold the same seniority code.

Mak-dong’s fellow junior gangsters are ineffectual louts. The parallel with Mak-dong’s biological family is unmissable: the gangsters also are called “brothers.” Mak-dong outperforms his fellows, as “Older Brother” recognizes. Yet he remains at the bottom of the pecking order. The gang is hardly a meritocracy. Only the boss’s intercession saves Mak-dong from suffering more abuse than he does.

And Mi-ae? Behave how she will – whether she obeys or throws tantrums – she’ll always be the “kept” woman. That’s her fixed place.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As a genre specimen, Green Fish exhibits the common tropes: police corruption; assassinations; the “kept” woman’s daliance with a subordinate member of the gang.

But these are just pegs from which to suspend the individual scenes. And these, often, are glorious.

(1) Mak-dong’s early encounter with the ruffians has a surprising, satisfying logic of reversal and counter-reversal.

(2) Mi-ae lets go of a scarf. It flutters from her train window and lands on Mak-dong’s adoring face.

(3) Restaurant patrons discuss whether to order the dog soup or the chicken soup. They agree on the chicken and then join the cooks in chasing the condemned bird around the yard.

(4) The egg vendor is pulled over, bribes the police, is cheated, and chases the police in turn.

(A persistent theme is contempt for official authority. All of the police are corrupt or weak. Mak-dong’s policeman brother prefers to describe himself as a public servant; thrown out of a restaurant, he makes no appeal to his badge. Mak-dong, as a soldier, receives no respect from civilians. Is this because every man must take his turn in the armed forces? Or must every man take a turn because soldiering is disdained?)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I was hooked from the opening credits, which are set against lovely old photographs of Mak-dong and his family in the countryside.

An early scene (below): Mak-dong the ex-soldier comes home. See how indifferently he walks past another fight. (Fights seem very common.) You can get a sense of the movie’s soapish/​noirish music. The mood is of a defeat.

Which, for many rural citizens, was what Korea’s new industrial prosperity was.

Another “promotion to glory”

R.I.P., another dear Salvationist friend: Yvonne, Grace’s sister, Frank’s widow.

Her daughter made this collage:

I almost saw her in January – she was thinking of stopping over on a return trip from Chicago – but she was suddenly hospitalized. She ended up flying back home, to Ithaca.

No one I knew in that town was more hospitable than she. I spent many happy hours with her & Frank. She told me about where she’d lived … Argentina, Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bronx … in spontaneous tidbits. She wasn’t the sort to curate her anecdotes.

The thing about soccer is, those guys run and run. … I was in Mexico during the 1986 World Cup. I watched all of it because I was laid up in bed.

Were you glad Argentina won?

No! That made me mad! They were such cheaters! The Germans were better.

She was still ticked off about it in 2022.

On politics:

Trump is what I call a New York bully.

So you voted against him?

No! I’d never vote for Hillary.

I never minded, she was so candid; her opinions, strong though they were, were informed by her own experience.

Of their respective families, she & Frank were the quiet ones. That’s probably why they liked me so well.

She collected nativity sets, played on her phone, and watched the Hallmark Channel and (with me) murder mysteries. She fed me a lot of raclette. She was good company.

She & Frank and their siblings and kids and grandkids were lovely together.

Obama’s elf

Another week, another successful mowing of the lawn. Karin went to the dentist’s today. She brought home a complimentary goody bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, etc. I didn’t notice these goodies until I saw Samuel carrying them around the house. He also emptied a bottle of “Flavor Chews” (off-brand TUMS) onto the floor.

At bedtime, I told Samuel to quit the living room, and I turned out the lights. I waited. He didn’t come out. I went into the dark living room and found him lying on the couch under a textbook and a blanket, his hands behind his head, his expression serene and prepared. I carried him to his crib. I went to Karin and read to her from Saki’s Beasts and Super-Beasts. This night’s story, “Laura,” was one of those to do with a super-beast.

Daniel has started to laugh.

It is better to be in a family than to be Obama’s Elf.

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.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

May’s poems

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

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

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.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

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.

The joy of getting

This season, I’ve busied myself for many hours fashioning my Christmas wish lists.

One list is for my siblings’ gift exchange. I’ve suggested four books that my designated giver may choose to buy for me. The spending limit for all the books together is $20.

The other list pertains to the gift exchange of Karin’s mother’s family. For this exchange, each giver’s spending limit is $50, and I’ve requested ten books.

(My in-laws on Karin’s father’s side provide no lists; everyone haphazardly buys for everyone.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The task of list making requires great care.

Items may not be placed on more than one list, and some that are all right for one exchange may be inappropriate for the other.

ISBNs must be specified. For some books, it’s important to include the caveat “new” or “used.” Used copies must meet certain conditions (e.g., spinal intactness).

At least, I feel I must spell this out for several of my in-laws. Such is my condescending attitude toward those who aren’t my blood relations. (I trust my own siblings to be familiar with the requirements of book buying.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

So far, two of my requests have arrived in the mail: Natsume Sōseki’s The Gate and Crawford Elder’s Real Natures and Familiar Objects (a book of metaphysics, much cheaper now than when it was first published thirteen years ago).

I also am grateful for two unsolicited volumes: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a copy of which was discarded by the library at IUSB; and the second edition of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi, discarded by the tutoring department.

I lick my chops, anticipating further bounty.

December fragments

My little cousin posted this:

“Just to give an idea of how many books can fit
in my small bedroom. This is all thanks to my
dad who basically gives me a new book every day.”
‪#‎itsanerdelthing‬ ‪#‎youshouldseehisbookcollection‬

I feel so proud.

Announcement !!!

What: Leg One of the Ecuadorian soccer championship.

Where: Estadio Monumental Banco Pichincha, Guayaquil.

When: Wednesday (tomorrow) at 8:00pm, U.S. Eastern Time.

The cheapest tickets cost $25. This is the priciest B.S.C. game I’ve heard of. On behalf of the chusma, I’m indignant.

I don’t have a TV link to offer you. Please google “Barcelona Emelec en vivo,” and then cheer for the yellow team.

Leg Two will be played on Sunday.

Today after work I walked home in a pleasant, light rain. The park that I walked through could’ve been muddier; the alley could’ve had more puddles — I wouldn’t have minded. On the street, two different motorists flipped me off, which I enjoyed. (This is how it feels to recover from depression.) When I got home, I asked Mary to light a fire for me, and I dried my socks; she told me it would’ve been easier if I’d put them in the drying machine. Here is a nice video of some people making out.

Los regalos

December is just beginning, and already we’ve erected our Charlie Brown Christmas tree and put gifts under it. Why are we so “Christmassy” this year?

Because of David. Some weeks ago, he sent us his wishlist. (Life in Houston must be very dull.) Since then, we’ve all been posting wishlists. I’m not sure how effective those lists will turn out to be. For example, I can’t buy what Mary asked for; I mean, not without withholding the Gift of Rent from her.

She, on the other hand, has been buying quite a lot of gifts. Useful gifts. Salutary gifts.

She bought a storybook for her little niece.

She’s going to buy gum surgery for her husband. (These holidays, poor Martin will subsist on liquids.)

To me, she said: “I won’t tell you what I bought you — it isn’t what you asked for, but it’s for your benefit.”

Edoarda & Stephen bought a bookcase for me, which is nice, because now I’ll be able to bring more of my books up from the basement. Stephen gave some old shoelaces to Bianca.

Christmas 2012

Christmastime: family, family, and more family. It’s been kind of nice.

I hadn’t expected that Mary & Martin would be here in South Bend — they’d intended to go to Illinois — but on Christmas Eve, Mary got an infection and had to be admitted to Memorial Hospital. I visited her for several hours. It was kind of nice.

She’s out of the hospital now. She’s better.

I spent three consecutive days with my Uncle John, my Aunt Lorena, and their daughters, Annie & Vickie. Today I went to their house for Christmas dinner. At first they were surprised, but then they remembered they’d invited me. We ate spaghetti. It was good. … I convinced my aunt and cousins to read Wuthering Heights with me, one chapter each day. I’ve never read it. My aunt has, several times.

Annie was given a tree for Christmas — a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Here it is:

:) :) :)

Tomorrow is Carlos Muñoz Day.