In Defense of Grammar

As if I needed yet another reason to believe that the Internet is mostly a dangerous, destructive, terrible thing, recent perusing of the self-indulgent and slightly maudlin Thought Catalog has alerted me to the awful truth: literally Anyone and Everyone is now a bona fide writer, thanks to the Internet.

You no longer need to possess any particular command of the language in order to see your name in a byline. Interesting and novel ideas are not a prerequisite for unleashing your words on the populace. Generic, pointless rubbish is not only accepted by the likes of Thought Catalog, it appears to be the preference. And, possibly most offensive and repugnant of all, good grammar is not required.

What does the Internet have against commas? Why on Earth does no one seem to regard the distinction between “your” and “you’re” as being worthy of consideration? Can I truly be the only person in existence who grinds her teeth in ill-concealed fury when writers fail to use “who” and “whom” correctly? Has simple, honest proofreading gone the way of the VHS and become extinct?

Even worse than the affronts to grammar and syntax is the vitriol that we unfortunate proponents of the English language encounter when pointing out said affronts—from being labeled as “Grammar Nazis” to being outright ridiculed for daring to draw attention to what some consider to be “trivial”. With regard to the former, calling anyone a “Nazi” (in the year 2014, no less) for being mindful of grammatical errors is distasteful, lazy, and indicative of a philistine understanding of history. With regard to the latter, it’s easy enough to fall back on the notion that the content supersedes form in terms of the relative impact of a written piece, but this attitude is woefully ignorant of the fundamentals of literature itself. One cannot hope to communicate one’s ideas, however brilliant and revolutionary they may be, if the basic structure in which they are presented is weakened by faulty machinery. And grammar is, indeed, the machinery that powers all writing. Why, then, do Internet users vociferously dismiss its importance, even to the point of chastising those who draw attention to flaws in the machinery?

I’d love to know why we seem to accept grammatical errors so easily. Is this a product of the millennial generation, the inherent belief that their words are the super special words of super special snowflakes who simply must express themselves immediately lest all their Facebook friends and Twitter followers are left to wonder in agony what infinite wisdom awaits? Is the urge to say something—anything­—so powerful that we simply accept that whatever is said is going to be at least a little bit sloppy and flawed, as millennials have all but cornered the market on being sloppy and flawed? Is our generation so uncomfortable with silence that we will connect, must connect, using the Internet’s version of the written word in order to ensure that we can never fade into anonymity?

Writing is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. Sort of like transplant surgery, if writing were easy, then everyone would do it, and they would do it well. In those days of yore when the distinction of having one’s writing published was reserved for those with actual talent, authors were praised for their skillful prose, their exciting notions, their memorable characters, their startling use of symbolism, their sensitive tackling of difficult issues.  They were not praised for their grammar—because correct grammar was a given. Transplant surgeons are never praised for tying a knot correctly, because knot tying is a fundamental skill in surgery that everyone who calls himself a surgeon is expected to be able to do. Good quality writing is indeed about far more than good grammar. But bad grammar negates good writing.

So this is my wish for all of us who aspire to call ourselves writers: take grammar seriously. We cannot expect to command the written word in any meaningful way if we fail to grasp the underlying machinery, those fussy little semi-colons and prepositions and verb tenses that are so easy to dismiss in our eagerness to indulge ourselves and stroke our egos by publishing our own special, precious little words with the click of a blogging button. The Internet can just as easily transform us into mindless, hash-tagging, self-impressed automatons who artlessly express ourselves in 140 nearly incoherent characters as it can educate, inspire, and motivate us to share our thoughts and ideas with the global community. I can only hope that social media, blogs, and the Thought Catalogs of the world don’t succeed in their endeavor to slowly wear down the machinery of good writing and render grammar obsolete. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a believer in syntax over hash-tags. 

The Difficulty of Female Characters

            My dear friend John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a British WWI veteran born in the late nineteenth century, has been thoroughly criticized decade after decade for his depiction of women in his magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings. The epic fantasy trilogy is the ultimate boys’ club; every major character is not only male, but (with a few obvious exceptions) the uber-masculine archetypal warrior flavor of whatever species they represent. Sure, female characters crop up here and there: notably, we have the pristine elves Arwen and her golden-haired grandmother Galadriel, the feisty shield-maiden Eowyn, and Shelob, a gigantic, horrifying spider demon thing. That lineup says a mouthful (and a dismal mouthful at that) and gives credence to Professor Tolkien’s critics: women, when they do incidentally appear in the story, are either virtuous pedestal prizes like the elves, a jilted lover like Eowyn, or a treacherous beast like Shelob.

However, one must remember that The Lord of the Rings, written between 1939 and 1947, was in many ways a reflection of Tolkien’s world. He sought to create a mythical history of England and to critique the weapons of mass destruction that were entering the United Kingdom’s consciousness during WWII, not to comment on gender roles. Perhaps Tolkien never identified a clear purpose for women beyond being a nurturer, romantic interest, or gluttonous villain. Regardless, he chose mostly to disregard women in The Lord of the Rings. Thorough character development was restricted to male characters.

And as much as I have found myself craving a strong female heroine in the story that I’ve loved all my life, I have to give Professor Tolkien credit for refusing to attempt and spectacularly fail at writing a female main character. There are as many pitfalls to creating female characters in literature and film as there are unflattering stereotypes about women. From downright hatred to condescending oversimplification, authors (both male and female) seem to struggle with injecting their own attitudes about women into their writing, and the result is often predictable and disturbing.

Take Professor Tolkien’s close friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis, who all but cornered the market on the classic Disney-esque villainess: the formerly beautiful Empress Jadis, who later devolves into the diabolical “Witch” of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fame. The story goes something like this: Jadis has a fight with her sister, and, in a jealous rage, speaks “The Deplorable Word”, which ends her world and kills all the people in it. All that to spite her sister. She then gets stuck in a different world, which, as it happens, is the eponymous world of The Chronicles of Narnia, and gradually takes over, crafts a 100-year winter just to be nasty, scares all the nice talking animals into hiding, and then kills the Jesus Lion Aslan. What a bitch! The thing is, Lewis takes great pains to make sure that we understand just how gorgeous and sexy Jadis is before she becomes all witchy and evil (and she’s still a hottie when she’s in witch mode, albeit in a more sinister way), which implies that her sex appeal is intertwined with her villainy. This is in direct contrast with Tolkien’s Shelob, whose villainy is externalized as hideous gluttony.

Lewis seems to have differed from his friend in that his misogyny manifests in the form of aversion to female sexuality. Take his much-maligned banishment of Susan Pevensie from Narnia on account of her interest in lipstick and nylons. Susan is barred from entering Jesus Lion Aslan’s kingdom of Heaven not because she “grew up”, as some have suggested, but because she became a “woman”—or rather, Lewis’s idea of a modern woman: sexualized and powerful as a result, like Jadis. This ties in to the classic Disney villainess, the Maleficents and Wicked Snow White Queens of literature: women who are so driven by their own desire for sexual dominion over men that they literally turn evil. These women don’t care about military strategy or omniscience or power for power’s sake. They just want to be eternally beautiful and sexy—and they must be punished as a result. How patronizing. How simplistic. How misogynistic.

Is the solution, then, to express femininity in a non-sexual and therefore non-threatening way? The well-intentioned writers of “badass chicks” seem to think so. Many fantasy writers in particular give their female characters special powers or stereotypical “toughness” that sets these characters apart from the damsels in distress. Katniss Everdeen is handy with a bow and wears flaming couture in The Hunger Games. Arya Stark is an adorable serial killer in A Song of Ice and Fire. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s brilliant and STRICTY PLATONIC OMG SO PLATONIC sidekick, vanquishes bad guys with knowledge and logic. While this depiction of female characters is less offensive than most, it’s still inherently reductionist and a bit condescending. Katniss and Hermione, after all their toughness and badassery, require marriage to cement their happy(ish) endings. We don’t know yet what’s in store for Arya, but I cynically suspect that she’ll end up married to Gendry. Eowyn kicks ass and kills the Witch King in The Return of the King not just because she wants to prove how much of an amazing warrior she really could be—she essentially goes on a suicide mission because Aragorn tacitly rejects her. The life of a powerful, independent woman who could be and do so much more, reduced to nothing because of a man. Which makes me wonder: is there an authentic, relatable way of writing a female character who has admirable skills and attributes? Must we feel compelled to express a female character’s inherent femininity by reminding our readers that, underneath all the toughness and competence and awesomeness, she is still just a woman and therefore ultimately an object of desire, driven by desire?

The fundamental danger of writing a competent, admirable, relatable female character is that she inevitably gets branded with the unflattering designation of being a “Mary Sue”. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a female character who more often than not serves as a self-insert for the author: a disgustingly perfect character who fits the author’s ideal of what he or she aspires to be and allows the author to live vicariously through that character. The most revolting example that I can think of is Bella Swan from the Twilight series, whose biggest “character flaw” is that she’s sort of clumsy in a cute and appealing way. Everything good happens to a Mary Sue: she charms the hero, is applauded for being classically “feminine”, gets to have oh-so-special powers and qualities, is inexplicably good at sports (I’m looking at you, Ginny Weasley), often displays tolerably plucky and sassy behavior, and always manages to save the day with her innate feminine goodness. That’s right: “bad” female characters are bad because they want to be, whereas “good” female characters, including Mary Sues, are good because they have to be. Take all the autonomy out of your female character and she becomes good by default. Readers tend to despise Mary Sues; we cannot relate to them and the self-indulgence on the author’s part is woefully transparent.

Therein lies the difficulty of writing female characters, which falls somewhere between the realms of author failure and reader resistance. Authors struggle with writing well-rounded female heroines who are not driven by stereotypically “female” motives, while readers resist well-rounded female heroines who somehow fail to fit into their mold of what constitutes an acceptable female character. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts, reinforced by those problematic archetypes that define the fantasy genre in particular, but inevitably invade other genres as well. The result is often a travesty of femininity: sexually manipulative villainesses, tough chicks with hard exteriors but soft hearts secretly longing for male attention, or Mary Sues who lose us entirely with their perfection and ridiculous amounts of good fortune. 

We also harbor subconscious expectations that a female in any narrative must serve as a harbinger of romance; even when the romance does not explicitly manifest within the main narrative, we know it’s coming. Arwen and Aragorn never interact in the text of The Lord of the Rings, but we always know that her purpose—her sole purpose--is to be his queen. Ginny Weasley is Harry Potter’s prize for saving the world: not a partner or an ally, but a reward. In the context of the real world, which has real issues with gender roles and the subjugation of women, this reduction of women is intensely problematic. Defining a woman’s purpose as it relates to the men in her life is the foundation of sexism and misogyny. Widows in India are made to light themselves on fire on their husband’s funeral pyres because they are thought to no longer serve any purpose without a husband. Female children in China are abandoned and murdered because impoverished families can’t afford the prohibitively expensive wedding customs that accompany a daughter. These are the dangers of defining women in men’s terms. When women are thought to exist solely as support for men, whether in literature, real life, or both, it becomes all to easy to dismiss the value of women not as women, but as people who happen to be female. We tend to have less trouble viewing male characters as simply people who happen to be male. Is this a product of our heteronormative, male-revering global philosophy? Is this the effect of generations of religious shaming of femininity, the original sin of Eve?

My attitude on this matter does not stem from any animosity towards men. Female and male authors alike seem to struggle with creating honest, compelling, realistic depictions of female characters. I have the utmost respect for Professor Tolkien for throwing up his hands and deciding to refrain from even attempting to write female characters, as he clearly did not possess enough insight into the female condition of his own era or of his fictional setting to write something honest about womanhood. It just wasn’t a part of his narrative. Is that the solution, then? To turn a blind eye to the difficulty of gender roles? Of course not. Nor can we hope to subvert traditional gender roles in literature by continuing to write stereotypical bitchy queens, badass lonely chicks, and Mary Sues—or by turning our noses up at any depiction of a female character that doesn’t stroke our egos or comply with our own personal status quo as a reader. Literature is and always will be a two-way street.  I don’t doubt that the difficulty of writing female characters is a symptom of the difficulty of accepting women in modern society for all our conflicting attitudes, goals, and self-perceptions. If you think depicting women in literature is tough, try being a woman in real life. If you think it’s hard to write about a woman’s success without being patronizing, try earning success as a woman without being patronized. If none of us are actual damsels in distress, evil vixens, ass-kicking cool chicks, or flawless Mary Sues, then what are we? Something even more difficult, complex, and interesting. Hard to write…but even harder to be.

The Princess Problem

I admit it. When Kate Middleton burst into the spotlight with her fabulous fascinators and polished suits, I was overcome with jealousy. For weeks, I withdrew into existential malaise, ruminating over her good fortune—she had ascended from a commoner to a princess simply because she had charmed the buck-toothed heir to the British throne. The fact that she would someday wear a bejeweled crown, ride in a horse-drawn carriage, and live in a historic palace while I continued to toil in plebeian anonymity felt like the most brutal of all injustices.

To cope with my rampant case of princess envy, I decided to overhaul my wardrobe. If I couldn’t be a princess, I could at least dress like one. I acquired beautiful, leather Ralph Lauren riding boots, tailored pencil skirts, elegant nude pumps, bold Derby hats, tweed blazers, crisp wool trousers, linen shift dresses, elbow-length satin gloves—even an intricately embroidered turban-like headband, a vague homage to princesses from kingdoms more closely intertwined with my own heritage. Thus attired, the fantasy of royalty felt more attainable.

Fortunately for my rapidly dwindling savings account, buyer’s remorse eventually overpowered my outlandish delusions of grandeur, and most of my princess costumes were returned by the time the Royal Wedding aired. I listlessly watched as Kate, in her infuriatingly lovely and tasteful wedding dress, became Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge. I reluctantly acknowledged that no amount of fancy new clothes could make me into a princess; you’re either born royal, or you marry someone who was. You can’t be awarded a crown because you studied hard or you scored highly on an exam, and you can’t sit on a throne because you organized a successful campaign and convinced people to support your cause. Being a princess is honor without accomplishment.

In Disney movies, princesses are invariably beautiful, kind, feminine, clever, and either helpless or willful, depending on the era. It wasn’t until the very recent Disney/Pixar hit Brave that a princess was portrayed as a genuinely spunky tomboy whose storyline was not dominated by the quest for a husband. As a child, I never questioned the soulless homogeneity of Disney princesses. I memorized their songs, dressed like them for Halloween (and sometimes on other days as well), and daydreamed about sitting on a throne and bossing people around. But eventually, I began to wonder: what actually made these characters special? Did being a princess mean that they were innately superior? Was everyone who wasn’t a princess somehow unworthy? I knew that couldn’t be true; my parents had emphasized the importance of education, a good work ethic, and dedication to one’s career as being the central tenets of success, so I knew that being innately superior had nothing to do with it. Then wasn’t all this princess nonsense just a bunch of elitist horseshit?

As I aged and progressed in my education, I noticed that the anecdotal use of the word “princess” had a negative connotation, and was often used as a synonym for “entitled” or “demanding”. Many of the girls who went to my college and majored in Elementary Education—the ones who wore Uggs and donned false eyelashes to go to the gym and socialize next to the elliptical machines—were derogatorily referred to as “princesses”.  There was a tacit implication, amongst observers and the girls themselves, that they had no real desire to work, and were hoping to marry wealthy men. Such girls were generally regarded as prissy, high-maintenance, and unambitious.

Bravo’s much-maligned new series Princesses: Long Island presents a particularly unflattering portrayal of young Jewish women from economically privileged families, colloquially referred to as JAPs, or Jewish-American Princesses. For the most part, the women on the show are entitled, shallow, immature, pampered, unintelligent, overly indulged, inarticulate slobs who drink too much and have no marketable skills. Unduly impressed with their own looks, they all labor under the delusion that a prosperous, handsome man is waiting for each of them in the great wide somewhere, desperate to wed and grant them eternal comfort and elysian bliss. They seem unperturbed by the fact that they bring nothing to the table: no remarkable insight, no personal accomplishments, no interesting experiences, no ambitions of their own—not even the subtle, traditionally “feminine” qualities of being a good homemaker and mother. The simple designation of being a “princess” apparently earns them the right to be cherished and adored.

After all, being a princess has nothing to do with your own accomplishments. You’re treated like you’re worthy of respect and reverence only because you’ve arbitrarily been designated as superior. Your status depends on the perceived inferiority of others and on the continuation of your father’s or husband’s sovereignty. At least princes and kings have historically been known to win battles and make important decisions; princesses are rarely more than commodities, bargaining tools, and figureheads. This is a hardly a role to which any modern woman should aspire.

What I’m about to say will probably seem unnecessarily harsh, but I’ll say it anyway. Women, stop behaving as if being female and/or attractive and/or the daughter of well-to-do parents makes you inherently superior.

The monarchy is a dying breed; civilization has finally started to wise up to the fact that nobody is born inherently superior to anyone else. Monarchy has flourished as long as it has because people have believed in the divine right of individuals who bear a certain genetic lineage to rule. Throughout history, hundreds of thousands have died in revolt against the monarchy, yet modern “princesses” uphold the belief that being arguably attractive and having been raised in a privileged environment gives them the right to certain luxuries. It doesn’t. Misogyny, like the monarchy, is also getting phased out. No one has to pay for your drinks, buy you expensive bags, and marry you simply because you exist. Modern women in the western world have every opportunity to buy their own drinks and expensive bags, because our predecessors have fought and struggled and advocated for women’s equality. It seems rather hypocritical to subvert decades of feminist advocacy so that we can view ourselves as “princesses”, because being a princess is a silly, childish fantasy that’s inaccessible to 99.999% of the female population. What is accessible to all of us who were fortunate enough to be born into middle-class families in the western world is equal pay, equal opportunities, equal education, and an equal chance to succeed. Those who live in developing countries where women are subjugated and commodified surely view our reality as a fantasy.

I’m a woman. I’m attractive. I’m the daughter of well-to-do parents. And I’m studying to be a doctor. Some women have no desire to work, and that’s fine. Kate Middleton is probably a wonderful princess, and that’s fine too. But I’m not a princess, and I never will be. I’m happy to have the opportunity to take ownership of my future and create my own stability. I’ve been give the chance to be anything I want to be, to take risks, to devise my own timeline, to marry if and when I choose. If I were a princess, all of those decisions would be made for me. Being a commodity means sacrificing autonomy, and autonomy is precious to me—much more precious than a sapphire heirloom engagement ring.

Some women have no problem with being a commodity, and I wish them well. I would also caution them to remember that, by labeling oneself as a commodity, one has no right to demand respect or equal partnership. If you’re to be coddled and pampered like a princess, you had better be prepared to be patronized and controlled as well. Don’t say no one warned you.

I won’t claim that I will never, ever don a rhinestone tiara and gaze wistfully at myself in the mirror, wishing for something more genteel and glamorous than the dreary hospital wards and lifeless white coats. Fantasy can be a harmless coping mechanism. But I will always remember to be grateful for my reality: choices, opportunities, autonomy, and self-respect. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but I’m happy to carry the burdens that I’ve chosen for myself.

Writer's Block.

For the last five years, I have been making a valiant effort to write a novel. Not a coming-of-age, small-town-girl-in-a-big-city, bildungsroman--oh no, that would be far too philistine for my tastes--rather, I've decided to designate myself as the author of the next great American fantasy novel, solely because fantasy is my favorite genre. It speaks to me, if you will.

However, it has come to my attention that I have literally nothing original to contribute to the fantasy lexicon. Nothing. This may sound absurd, since the defining quality of fantasy is its boundless opportunity for novelty, but in reality, fantasy (like any other genre) abides by a set of unspoken rules. You must have a hero or a heroine, for example (unless you're George R. R. Martin). Well, this poses a problem, as it makes your narrative inherently predictable. A story built around a single central character demands that that character survive all events of that story, thus eliminating any sense of jeopardy. Martin successfully circumvents this by having numerous "central" characters who are all equally likely to get offed, but Martin I am not. Another principle of fantasy by which it is particularly difficult to abide is the expectation that there will be a large-scale, epic battle scene at some point. Now, these are the sort of scenes that I love to read but hate to write. My forte is dialogue and character development, not endless paragraphs' worth of play-by-plays. So you see, I've encountered a bit of an impasse.

What's even worse is the fact that I truly believe that the greatest fantasy novels have already been written. What could I contribute that would surpass Tolkien? Would I be able to subvert a prototype that has withstood the test of many decades--and should that prototype be subverted in the first place?

Somewhat dejected, I halfheartedly considered writing my novel about something other than dragons and princesses and knights. How about a historical epic? Too much research required to do it right. A gentle contemporary novel about a dysfunctional family? Boring and insincere. A sexy murder mystery? Hmmm, now there was a possibility...but no, I'm too obtuse for murder mysteries; every mystery I've ever written has been woefully transparent. I felt burdened by the responsibility that one must shoulder when one decides to write a novel: the responsibility to entertain, to inspire, to communicate coherently and elegantly, and to strive for originality. The pressure of creating that elusive  element of surprise and wonder that defines every great novel I've ever read began to suffocate me before I could even devise an outline.

I decided to blame med school, lacking as I was for any other explanation for this abrupt cessation of my formerly prolific writing career. Med school, I deemed, was robbing me of my creativity. All my energy was being diverted towards sustaining good grades, performing tasks related to hygiene, and nurturing relationships with loved ones. For God's sake, before med school, I was able to write a song in fifteen minutes. A good song, at that! Nowadays, when I sit down at the keyboard to write a song, the phrase "twat waffle" keeps buzzing bleakly in my ears and I can write nothing of value. There is simply no room in my life for hobbies! Or so I convinced myself, in order to avoid taking responsibility for my own raging case of writer's block.

In reality, it would appear that I'm gradually starving my creative spirit to death by simply not writing frequently enough. (Similarly, I'm bludgeoning my music chops by not playing enough...or at all.) Creative muscles, like any other muscles, need to be kept in shape, or they will atrophy and leave you weak and talentless. I fear that, if I continue along this trajectory, my writer's block will devolve into full-blown Absence of Talent. The problem is, while med school is clearly not the SOLE perpetrator, being generally rather busy doesn't do much in terms of providing creative outlets. When I come home after a long day of rectal exams and verbal abuse, I generally feel inclined to avoid expending any more mental and emotional energy by eating Nutella and watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Failure to replenish these energy stores generally results in tearful breakdowns and 23-hour sleeping benders.

One must always try to define one's priorities in life, and it appears that I've made the unfortunate and unwitting decision to strike writing off my list of priorities. But was this decision for the best? Or will I be a better doctor if I continue to challenge myself to be well-rounded?

Perhaps this is a sign that I should go back to basics and write my own story, in true philistine form: a touching tale of a curly-haired Indian girl raised on the East Coast of America who grows up to possess balls of steel and talk a lot of shit while hiding many neuroses from the general public. Would you read that? No? Damn.

An Unexpected Journey Home

Anticipation can be destructive. In the months leading up to the premiere of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I found myself daring to hope that Jackson would strike gold once more--that this film would be a triumph of story-telling and visual effects on the same level as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Day by day, the hope grew from a small kernel into an entire corn field...until the reviews starting rolling in. They were positive, for the most part, but not overwhelmingly so. Many "top film critics" complained that they didn't feel engaged in the story, that the pacing was too slow, that it  felt hackneyed and repetitive. Crestfallen, my hopes regressed. The anticipation gnawed at me still, but a new feeling took root: doubt. Was Peter Jackson's attempt to make The Hobbit, a straightforward, 300-page children's story, into an epic film trilogy nothing more than an intricate scheme to make himself even richer by capitalizing on J.R.R. Tolkien's life's work? Was Jackson selling out at the expense of quality? What if I hated The Hobbit?

These are the things that a die-hard, lifelong Tolkien fan worries about when someone--anyone, even the massively talented Jackson--attempts to adapt the stories of Middle Earth from the page to the big screen.

As it turns out, my fears were completely unfounded, and the "top film critics" are full of rubbish. The Hobbit is, from beginning to end, nothing short of perfection.

It wasn't the innovation or the novelty of The Hobbit that defined the quality of my viewing experience. It was its familiarity, the fact that it felt like an extension or an expansion of the LOTR trilogy. It was its similarity, yet differences; from the music to the costumes to the color palettes, it felt like meeting an old friend for the first time in a decade and learning about all the wonderful things she's seen and done since the last time you saw each other. This franchise is surely more than a money-maker for Jackson. He treats the Tolkien canon with reverence, and it shows in his films.

That's not to say that The Hobbit isn't, at times, rather silly and droll. After all, the main characters are the cheerful hobbit Bilbo Baggins and 13 hungry, boozy, loud, bombastic dwarves. Viewers may have grown accustomed to the stately elves and human warriors that were involved in the events of the LOTR films, and perhaps came to expect the same of the new trilogy. There is nothing inherently dignified or elegant about dwarves or hobbits; thus, their discourse and activities are proportionately outlandish. I found the dwarves' antics delightful and extremely true to the tone of Tolkien's work. Capturing the essence of a group of characters is difficult (one of the major failures of the Harry Potter movies, in my opinion), but Jackson succeeds, creating a charming pack of misfits that seem to have been lifted straight from the hundreds of thousands of pages that Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth. I respect Jackson's ability to adapt to the change in tone of The Hobbit films from the more sober LOTR. Those who criticized the silliness simply didn't understand that The Hobbit takes place when Middle Earth is not being directly threatened by the evil forces of Sauron, and that the relatively peaceful setting demands a different, more lighthearted tone.

In life, anticipation is often met with disappointment. Heinous tragedies occur of which no sense can be made. But I'm pleased to find that the refuge offered by the fantastical tales of Middle Earth, where good prevails over evil with comfortable predictability, is still here for us, in all its 48-frames-per-second visual splendor. The old adage says that you can never really go home, but for those of us devoted to Tolkien's Middle Earth, Jackson awards us with a unique opportunity to prove the adage--and those "critics"--delightfully wrong.

A Gender-Bender That Didn't Quite Bend

I tend to refrain from blogging about every movie that I watch, since I operate under the assumption that no one particularly cares what I think about movies (or anything, for that matter). However, I wanted to write about Albert Nobbs, a strange little period piece I recently saw on DVD, for the simple reason that I’d like to remember how it made me feel.

I won’t say unequivocally that I enjoyed this film; rather, it made a forceful impression. It stuck with me, so to speak. It had quite a few flaws, and it fell short in many ways. I suppose it frustrated me for all its unrealized potential and self-consciousness about wanting to avoid the tacky gender-bender stereotype, but it was also oddly touching in a way that I never expected.

Albert Nobbs is set in socially conservative 19^th century Ireland, when women were either sheltered to the extreme or left to fend for themselves as best as they could, depending on their socioeconomic status. The eponymous character, played by a shockingly convincing Glenn Close, is ostensibly a waiter in an upscale Dublin hotel catering to the badly behaved super-rich. As a waiter, Albert is efficient, punctual, meticulous, and discreet. As a man, he is reserved and taciturn, somewhat of an enigma to the other members of the hotel’s staff. When Albert is forced to share a room for one night with a migrant laborer named Mr. Page, we and his new roommate discover that Albert is actually a woman (surprise!). Luckily for Albert, crisis is averted by the revelation that the new confidant is also a woman disguised as a man, which leads to a shared bond of trust and much commiserating over the complications of living as the opposite gender. Upon learning that Mr. Page is married to a woman, Albert decides that, if Mr. Page can do it, Albert can also find a wife to assuage his loneliness. He designates a maid named Helen—who already has an alcoholic boyfriend named Joe--as the object of his affection, and proceeds to court her. This courting is to the severe detriment of Albert’s hard-earned savings, as Joe and Helen have devised a plain to exploit Albert’s solicitations in order to fund their journey to America. Meanwhile, Albert is busy striving to make his fantasy of operating his own tobacco shop, with Helen at his side, a reality. Things start to go awry when Joe gets Helen pregnant. Albert recognizes that Joe is a hit-it-and-quit-it sort of lad, and tries to warn Helen, but Helen overtly rejects Albert. Helen reports back to Joe, who drunkenly starts a fight, prompting Albert to intervene in Helen’s defense. Albert gets his head knocked against a wall for his trouble. At some point during the kerfuffle, Albert quietly returns to his bedroom and is found dead in his bed the next morning, presumably of an intracranial bleed. Soon after Albert’s death, Mr. Page returns to the hotel to find that Helen and her baby have been abandoned by Joe, just as Albert predicted. The movie ends ambiguously with Mr. Page, now a widower, implying that he will look after Helen as a sort of homage to Albert.

Critics have unanimously agreed that the strength of the film originates from the performances of the actors, particularly Glenn Close, and not from the plot. I don’t necessarily agree. I thought the story had a lot of potential as a study in becoming what we despise as a means to avert rejection and failure. Albert, who was the illegitimate child of a mother with some means, was cast out on to the street after the death of her mother and subsequently raped by a group of strangers.  In order to survive, she dressed as a boy and found work as a waiter, rather than continue to be vulnerable as a girl with no family and no prospects. However, she continued to live as a man for thirty years, which suggests that she eventually began to self-identify as Albert Nobbs. Albert, traumatized by rejection and shame, is essentially hiding from himself, creating a new life in which he is able to protect and provide for someone the way that nobody had ever done for him. Similarly, Albert’s competition for Helen’s affections is a handsome bad boy with an abusive, alcoholic father he loathes. He appears to have every intention of doing right by Helen and marrying her, but in the end, his demons win the battle and he continues his father’s legacy, becoming a violent drunk who shirks his responsibilities. Joe, like Albert, inadvertently transforms into that which he had vilified. I think this theme could have been explored more thoroughly, as it's a rather intriguing notion that rings true to life. 

It almost goes without saying that Glenn Close gave a truly outstanding performance as Albert. It can’t have been easy to play a woman playing a man—particularly with a common sort of British accent—but Close positively transformed into the character and gave Albert an awkward vulnerability that was mesmerizing to observe. I was astounded to learn that Close didn’t win an Academy Award for this remarkable performance. The lovely man-boy who played Joe also delivered a delightfully subtle turn, at once aggressively masculine and irreverently boyish. This movie boasts some genuinely solid actors and actresses that make Albert’s trials feel extraordinarily personal.

At the end of the day, I have no idea what to feel about Albert Nobbs. It was just uncomfortable enough to inspire me to ponder it weeks after watching the film, without being so uncomfortable to make me say, “What the F did I just watch?” (I’m talking about you there, A History of Violence.) I was certainly left wanting to know more about Albert; I felt that his abrupt death was unsatisfying and anticlimactic. I definitely felt a sense of emotional dry heaving with this film. There was something wanting to get out, but never quite yielded the catharsis that I expected.