Who Do You Love? Really?

I haven't been writing much in the last month, which is why this web site update is late. The reason is the depressing drumbeat of war, which is depressing everyone on every end of the political spectrum.

But there are ways of coping with this...and some not-so-good ways. I was moved to write this because of some ramblings by Harry Knowles over at Ain't It Cool News (http://www.aintitcool.com). Like many of Knowles's articles, it was all about him and his personal reaction to the war, the protests and everything else.

It may astound Knowles, but everybody I know - from the crustiest Limbaugh dittoheads to the granola-eating hippie types, and everyone in between - feels bad about this war. So do I. It embarrasses me to even mention it. But Knowles goes on and on about it, like the Iraq War was some personal trauma he had to reveal to the world. After lots of talk about how put out he is about this war, he finally revealed his salvation, the thing that gave him hope to go on. The movie Grand Canyon on DVD.

This film has been around for about a decade. If it doesn't ring a bell, it's the one where middle-class white guy Kevin Klein is suffering middle-class white agonies about his family. He gets in trouble in a bad area, and lower-class black guy Danny Glover rescues him. Despite racial and social differences, they and their families become friends, resolve each other's problems, and at the end, they all stand together and stare into the Grand Canyon at sunset. It's Hollywood feel-noble sentiment at...well, not its best, not its worst. At its most middling.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, the evidence suggests that the only white guy with problems people want to see is Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem. 8 Mile has sold something like 70 million copies since its release. The DVD is always rented out at Blockbuster. It's far more interesting as a phenomenon, since in many ways, 8 Mile is a remake of Saturday Night Fever. Here's a quick chart to explain it:

Not only has the world grown less romantic for today's young, troubled youth, but it's grown far less hopeful. Tony Manero is a kid looking for love. Li'l Rabbit is looking for something more elusive; self-esteem, a reason to live.

The battle between the sexes is also harsher. The neurotic lady bagged by Tony - played by actress and Disney-series director Donna Pescow - hooks onto the guy as her dream date, the one guy she'll give her virginity to. In his world, of course, women are either Madonnas or whores, and he callously tells her after their back seat assignation, "Congratulations. You're now a slut."

Meanwhile, the woman who sleeps with Rabbit - in the steel fabrication plant where he works, even less romantic than the back seat of a Pontiac - does so because she's trying to sleep to the top, and she's sampling all the contenders. Amazing that the terminally depressed Rabbit could even get it up for her. In the world of Eminem, all women at puberty age or over are whores, which pretty much kills women from seeing this as a romance. (For males who are goths, death rockers and just plain self-hating, this is a validating and deeply romantic vision.)

The big contest, which both guys win, are not important to our heroes in the end, but they differ in how they are not important. Tony knows he won the dance contest because the club owner wouldn't give a Hispanic couple anything. He gives them the prize money and trophy and walks out, realizing that the club life he's lived is basically phony.

Li'l Rabbit, on the other hand, fairly wins his rap battle by redefining the contest. A rap battle is a ghetto version of Don Rickles; the two people throw insults at each other, and whoever the crowd chooses as the nastiest guy wins. Rabbit hurts so much, because of his low life and his hopelessness, that he always crumbles. But in the final contest, he applies a basic rule of stand-up comedy. He puts himself down first, admitting to the crowd that he's a pale white guy with a whore mother and a bunk in the corner of a double-wide. And then he slams his opponent as someone who is a pretentious fraud, unwilling to be that honest about himself.

Rabbit wins, and his buds gather around, knowing that he's now made a name in the rap community. (This ignores that the rap community they take part in is small, poor, and is full of drug deaths and murder.) Rabbit walks away from them, refusing to be their magic carpet to fame, fortune and more cocaine. Mind you, these are the only friends he's ever had.

The big difference between the two male heroic leads is their range. No one will accuse John Travolta of being a great actor, but he has some range. In SNF he can be joyous, sensual, sad and concerned. It's not acting when Travolta is confused; that seems to be his permanent mental state, and anything else is acting. Eminem can act sad-assed and downtrodden, or angry, sad-assed and downtrodden. That's about it.

That difference is mostly a product of the worlds from which they come. Travolta was primarily an actor. He learned range. Eminem comes from music. When music artists perform in music videos, they only have to project one emotion, something that gives them an "image." Worse, he comes from the rap world, where sensitivity and understanding is considered weakness. (His scripted "self-revelation" would have gotten him killed in a real rap battle.) He will probably try to repeat this single-note approach in his next film. It may kill his movie career, the way that Under the Cherry Moon proved that Prince wasn't a movie star.