In the wake of the Academy Award nominations, it appears I have thrust myself into the role of defender of juno until the day comes at which I am exhausted of hearing the same tired arguments about how teenagers don’t talk like that in real life and the music’s so weird and bad and it’s pro-life propaganda and choose to move on to other, worthier disputes… But not today. Today I still have fire left in my belly and the passion for this fight.

This is a letter I wrote to the chicago sun-times in response to a column by Jim DeRogatis on the film. Read the article first, it’ll make some of my jokes funnier.

Jim DeRogatis’ column on ‘Juno’ was hilarious! There’s nothing more “rock and roll” than a guy in his forties declaring that the stuff kids are listening to these days is all heartless garbage, and the stuff that he liked when -he- was a kid is the real deal. Next you should run a piece where he talks about how the Beatles are a fad, and how all of these young’ns need to get haircuts…

Funny stuff. It appears DeRogatis got his feelings hurt by the portrayal of the stuck-in-the-90’s rock fan, and ran to his keyboard to let the world know that he’s way, way cooler and more in-touch than that. Which he attempts by claiming that artists in their 60’s are “an honest expression of youthful rebellion”, which is great - apparently youthful rebellion need now be cleared by a forty-something writer for a major daily newspaper. DeRogatis’ column makes a fine companion piece to the characterization of the aged rock never-was portrayed in the film, which could lead one to the conclusion that Reitman and Cody’s film contains more truth than previously thought.

It’s clever stuff, that “anti-rock” stance that he attributes to the picture. It’s a little sleazy to cast aspersions like “anti-woman” around in a whisper-campaign, though, especially because DeRogatis seems to not know the difference between “choice” and “abortion” (hint: that bumper sticker which read “against abortion: don’t have one!”, which any unapologetically old-school feminist surely had at one point affixed to the back of his Volvo, meant that choosing not to have an abortion was not the same thing as being “anti-woman”), but it seems that’s hardly DeRogatis’ largest complaint - it appears he was just looking for a few extra ways to discredit the movie, and by extension, the conclusions it makes about people like him.

Of course DeRogatis doesn’t think teenagers talk that way - he’s a DAD, or at least an old dude with a cool job. Any teenager worth his weight in “honest expression of teenage rebellion” doesn’t let old dudes and dads see how they really are, no matter how many rock and roll albums by sexagenarians they may have in their record collection.

It’s no crime to be out of touch, but it certainly makes an editorial look foolish when the conclusions the writer draws and publishes are based on his own outdated notions of what youth -really- is. Page is twenty years old, and likely has friends still in their teens - I’d lay odds that she’s more in touch with how the kids talk and what they listen to than DeRogatis has been in decades. It may not be the codified, canonized rebellion that DeRogatis longs to see, but he’s hardly the first old dude to not get what the kids are on about. Sometimes, if it’s too quiet, you’re too old.

–d

And so much for that. The Academy Award nominations don’t really interest me much, and I haven’t got a whole lot of opinion on them, otherwise. I was horrified to see atonement listed on the best picture list, since I don’t think I can recall seeing a more loathsome movie, at least anytime recently, but I can’t say I was surprised.

atonement was offensive on a lot of levels, but I think what I found most vile about it was the suggestion at the end that, if one is an artist of some sort, and the wrongs that one has done in life become incorporated into one’s art, then they weren’t really wrong at all- that you can atone for unforgivable actions simply by writing a book in which things turn out differently. It’s a comfort to a writer, I’m sure, which is probably why McEwan wrote the book and why the filmmakers responded to it- as an artist, the idea that the work is important enough to excuse the actions of the creator is appealing, means that anything from breaking your first girlfriend’s heart for no good reason to causing a chain of events that results in an innocent man being sent to his death can be excused as research, once the final, immortal work is created. Yeah, it’s appealing, but ask anyone who’s had a dicky artist treat them like shit if it was really worth it, and the answer will invariably be no, and it should be.

The extension of that line of thought, which is equally troubling, is that dickiness and art are intrinsically linked, that these unforgivable acts the artist has committed were vital to allowing their brilliance to flourish. It’s a convenient myth for an artist to buy into, especially if, hey, they happen to be dicks, but the reality of it is bunk. Even if one’s required to be an asshole to create great art- and I find that to be a specious claim, at least as far as direct correlation is concerned- the idea that one can make up for it with their work is fallacious. If the person who was wronged isn’t moved to forgiveness by the work itself- and that’s not the way people work- then you’re not making any real reparations. And in case you disagree that that was McEwan and the filmmakers’ point, let me remind you that the title of the fucking movie is atonement.

So, yeah. Crappy movie nominated for best picture, hardly the first time that’s happened. I liked no country for old men a lot, and it’s clear that juno resonated with me a great deal… I haven’t seen the other two pictures- there will be blood has yet to open in the UK, and I can’t recall what the other one is, but I’m pretty sure I missed it or it hasn’t opened, either. But it’s not something I’m bothered by. Aside from juno, my favorite movie of 2007 was black snake moan, and nobody’s nominating that shit for any awards.

The only other real bummer for me in regard to the Academy Award nominations is that Dan Bern failed to get a nomination for “It’s A Beautiful Ride”, from walk hard. I thought the song was tailor-made for an Oscar telecast performance, and I was looking forward to attributing the very nice quote he wrote for the cover of sometimes you gotta fight the bear to academy award winner dan bern in the next printing. But that’s life, and it would have meant little for me except to impress my parents. I’m sure Dan Bern himself is content to have the same number of Oscar nominations today as he did a year ago, and so I will not worry about it much more.

And now that we’re back in London, movies are once again a rare treat. We haven’t been to see one since we got back over here, which is fine- I kind of binged on ‘em back in the States. But sweeney todd just opened here, and in the valley of elah, and Kat has yet to see no country for old men, so hopefully we’ll get the chance to visit the local cinema sooner or later, dropping our $25 per ticket with nary a wince.

And who needs entertainment on a screen when you have as much interesting live performance on your agenda as we do? Last week we caught a theatrical adaptation of the metamorphosis at the Lyric Hammersmith, which was unlike anything I’d ever seen on the stage before. It was produced by an Icelandic company called Vesturport, and the set was the mock-up of the Samsa family home- the living room, dining room, and, upstairs, Gregor’s bedroom.

Gregor’s bedroom was an aerial view, looking straight down. What this meant was that every time the actor was lying in bed, he was standing straight up. Every time he was sitting in a chair, he was actually directly vertical, clinging to the chair with intense leg muscles and looking straight down. It made for a fascinating way to watch him as the creature he had become- he could bounce from the walls of his room, climbing the walls, and it was disorienting to watch, which is precisely the sensation you want to evoke when adapting Kafka.

This weekend we have tickets for Henry Rollins at the Hammersmith Apollo, and then it’s a series of shows featuring my former Austin video store clerks, with I Love Video represented at Astoria by Explosions in the Sky, and Vulcan Video at Scala by Okkervil River. I think we may still have an overdue copy of disc six of season two of angel from Vulcan, and I will have to actively campaign to convince Kat not to bring it to the show to give to Will Scheff. You’re never all that far from home.