things you can articulate and things you can't

[rinue]

A movie I don't intend to see is The Counselor, mainly because it looks awful. If you had asked me to make up a capsule summary of a movie I wouldn't find interesting in the least, the description would have fit perfectly. Even more perfectly than Savages. It's amazing. This means, if you follow the logic, that I would rather sit through a bad animated kids' movie with ample poop jokes. (Note: I would rather not do this. Hence I don't. What a wonderful world we live in.)

It's just candles on the cake that it's directed by Ridley Scott, who 30 years ago directed two films I like (Alien and Blade Runner) and then drifted into garbage like Gladiator, American Gangster, and Prometheus. (Notable exception: Matchstick Men was enjoyable.) It's kind of like the career trajectory of George Lucas. (If you follow the logic of my first paragraph, I'd rather watch a new Star Wars film than The Counselor. JJ Abrams and all. Yet won't. What a wonderful world.)

The real bit that makes me know I'm not interested in the film is the script. The script by Cormac McCarthy.

I have liked a film based on McCarthy. Of course I have, because it was made by the Cohen brothers. They have never let me down, ever. Not once.

I have read one McCarthy book. The Road. I didn't like it.

I have read, or been exposed to, various McCarthy interviews in which he has been casually misogynist. Casually like breathing or sweating, like he can't stop himself, views it as totally natural. But also not casually, like he wants to make sure we all see that he is breathing and sweating, that he lives this complete disbelief that women are people. He has seen through the conspiracy, it seems, the conspiracy that says women exist even though we all know it's absurd to imagine that they do.

It is certainly possible to separate an artist from the artwork. If I could only read books by fourth-wave feminists, I couldn't read most books. Most people don't even acknowledge the existence of a fourth wave. (Hint: it involves intersectionality.)

But not reading McCarthy is not a hardship. I don't find he understands people particularly, even the ones who aren't women. Nor are his ideas exciting to me. I'm not his audience.

In any case, saw this in a review, referring to Diaz's character:

Bathed in the kind of misogyny that seems like a tedious relic of the generation in which Scott, now 75, and McCarthy, 80, grew up, it’s not a very intriguing role. I hope I’m not being hopeful in calling it a relic.

Pretty much sums it up. "It" more broadly than just this character. Or just this movie. Or just these men.

Perhaps the interesting thing is that I suddenly understand in a way that I have previously not understood why some people can't read Huckleberry Finn because of one word. Or Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer. I'm not against "bowdlerized" copies of these books; I roll my eyes when people (white people) freak out and scream about censorship. These people are not bothered by the "censorship" of American copies of Harry Potter changing "pavement" to "sidewalk." I'm fine with Angry Joe, or just Joe. I'm fine with just Jim.

I think people can read what they want. This is not new.

But I get it now. I understand that it's not flightiness or political correctness or baggage. It's not about "hurtfulness," or being "triggered." It's - well, it's this:

GUIL: . . . It could have been - it didn't have to be obscene. . . . It could have been . . . . I was prepared. But it's this, is it? No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, portentous, only this - a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes. . . .

Comments

[knaveofstaves]

This stuff is absolutely like being ambushed by a grotesque.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

The comment I have made about The Counselor—"When I first heard it was a McCarthy screenplay, I thought, 'With two women characters? How did he manage that?' Then I heard the one thing I heard about Diaz's character, that she has a scene in which she masturbates against a windshield, and I thought, 'Oh.'"

[rinue]

Oddly enough, on one woman-dominated comment board (I think Jezebel?) there was a sincere-seeming post saying, essentially, "it's so nice to have an acknowledgement that women get off using inanimate objects. I've done almost this exact thing with my glass coffee table, and yet you never see that represented in mainstream media."

Everybody else on the site was basically like, what. Are you talking about. And she was surprised like "really? We don't all do this?" To which the resonse was: no, but also, if it makes you happy why not, dildoes certainly come in all kinds of strange shapes and don't need to be penis-y.

So it seems McCarthy has accidentally understood at least a woman.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

There's no way that wasn't sarcasm turned trolling after no one got it. . . right. . . ?

[rinue]

I'm actually willing to give it the benefit of doubt. Something about it didn't feel like a put-on. Plus sex is weird.