Mitch's Origin Story

There once was a mean little boy named Mitch. His body was full of bad little particles. He would dunk over all of the kids in his class, and he would laugh in their small ugly faces.

One day, he dunked over Radiation Boy, and Radiation Boy cried and cried because he had been owned at basketball. He cried alpha particles, beta particles (electrons), and gamma rays. Much radiation came spilling out of his body and into the body of Mitch.

These radioactive particles fixed on to all the bad little particles that were floating around inside of the young boy, Mitch. They made the bad particles so heavy that they sank down from his head, through his neck, past his torso and groin, down through his legs, and into his feet. They went through his ankles, past his heels, along his metatarsals, through his phalanges, until, finally, they all collected in his toenails. There was no more badness in the rest of his body.

That's how Mitch came to be a great guy with awful toenails.

Other Ways of Doing Things

I gave this lecture to Mitch in the kitchen. In person, you can see me do this little shuffle, walking-around thing that you can't via blog post. Stay with me, though. I'll try to make up for it.

I've been watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries! It's a webseries. The first episode is the YouTube video above. It's an adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The main character, Lizzie Bennet (Elizabeth Bennet in the original), is a modern-day 20-something in grad school who is keeping a video blog.

It's pretty fantastic story-telling. I cried during many of the 70s episodes. (There are 100 total in the main storyline.) But aside from that, three of its aspects were relevant in my kitchen-lecture to Mitch. 1) it's in a new medium (webseries). 2) It's a fictional work copying a non-fictional format (vlogging). 3) Other people weren't making stuff like this before.

I elaborate:

1) The setup is cheap: people who make vlogs - video diaries of their lives - don't have a lot of money to work with since they are one person casually posting for the internet. Since this is the form the series is fictionalizing, it means that they get away with having a stationary camera, few characters, and obvious exposition.

2) Its premise is close to a non-fiction reality. Unlike TV shows or other webseries, it's not trying to make its audience feels as if they are in the room with Lizzie Bennet. They're just asking you to pretend she's a real person talking to you, the internet. It's much closer to reality - less of a stretch - making what happens in it feel more real, more intimate. At times in the story, I felt like I was intruding, like "shouldn't these people turn off the camera and talk about this in private?"

3) These days it doesn't take a huge budget or any sort of permission to make something TV-like. It's an exciting reality, but it takes more than just the possibility to make it happen - it takes an idea.

(Lecture Time!)

I feel like, in life, people are looking for other people to tell them what to do. It's not our fault, really, that it happens this way. We're started off going to school, one level leading to the next. Structure. Structure. Structure. And then there are cultural/social life benchmarks we find out about: driving, dating, marriage, children, home ownership, retirement. We all shuffle through life in a line, following the person in front of us.

The crazy thing, though, is that there are a bizillion possibilities in life. But in practice, we only have as many options as we realize we have. (idea = an option realized) That's why I'm so impressed with the creators of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. They veered out of the shuffle line. They saw an alternative means of creating something and took it. Because they did, I also realize that it can be a way of doing things, an option in life.

Art makes the world bigger, folks. It gives us some more options.

(For more, here's a link to a Nerdist Writers Panel interview with the LBD creators. Good stuff.)

This is Not a Church, the Art of Roger Ballen

When Mitch and I were in Copenhagen, we came across a church building with a large vertical banner that read, "This is Not a Church." So, naturally, we went inside.

It was an art gallery featuring the American photographer, Roger Ballen. It cost some money to get in, but it was in Danish krone so nobody could tell how much.

Ballen has lived in Johannesburg since the 1970s, and has taken pictures of some of the poverty there. His early work has more of a documentary feel, something like what you'd find in National Geographic. Of those early photographs, this one stood out to me. 

Man Shaving on a Verandah

I love this type of photo. I grew up tracing ones like it in my parents's National Geographic coffee-table books. In such photographs, the dirt makes the walls more interesting. The weathered skin and hardened eyes of the subjects tell stories of suffering. There's more individuality in photos like that than in ones of boring rich people. 

The problem is that there's a voyeurism to taking or looking at these photos. I, with money, am able to look into your little-money life through this fancy coffee table book. It's an issue. Imaginary tourism to underprivileged classes. 

Ballen's later work does something about this. 

Sick Room

He fictionalizes the work. He sets up scenes. He lets the subjects become actors. He turns the photo around to where the joke is on the audience.

The photos are much more uncomfortable - or even scary - to look at. When I was looking at them, I felt like Ballen was solving something. And while the images were interesting and even beautiful, I felt, rightly, that I would not like to live there.