Becoming Closer to Fine
Nov. 8th, 2003 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatEver find a song or poem that explains everything you feel at the moment? Better than anything you can think up yourself?
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life afterall
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore
Chorus:
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me
in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free
I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity
Chorus:
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
E. Sailers - The Indigo Girls
Saw a couple of interesting TV shows this week that made me think and wonder about heroes. The heroic acts our society seems to focus on are the melodramatic ones, the successes, or the blazes of glory worthy of plaques and metals and rewards.
Our society also appears to expect a great deal out of a hero - they must be perfect, with no blemishes in their past, no scars. The underrated Dustin Hoffman movie Hero is a good exploration of this theme. In that movie, a petty thief and all around loser, saves a plane-load of people without asking for anything in return. The reporter hunting for the Hero that saved the people – wants someone upstanding, pretty, media-savvy. And is disappointed when she eventually discovers Hoffman. I think it would shock us to our core if someone we saw as a horrible person, a complete devil - did something heroic. Just as it would shock us if someone heroic did something twisted. I also wonder about all the people in between, the people who fall flat on their face attempting to do the right thing. The everyday heroes amongst us, who deal with our failures and somehow struggle on. Sometimes I think we can display heroism in how we deal with life’s little disappointments, as much if not more than how we handle the successes.
Three TV shows this week, all completely different, different genres, different channels, and different tones - tackled the idea of hope, connection and heroism. And each in its own way delicately walked a tightrope between sentimental clichés and honest story telling.
I admit, I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to sentimentality on TV, Movies and Books. Seen one too many tearjerkers...and there really are no new ideas. But these three shows in their own ways seemed to find a new way of telling an old story and by doing so, genuinely moved me this week.
First up : The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinqu, Ats 5.6. The tale concerns a former Mexican wrestler who has become embittered and hopeless. He lost his family and friends in an epic battle. And his heart seems to have died with them. He no longer sees any meaning or hope in helping others. He sits weighted down by the burden of his success. What's the point, he wonders aloud watching how future generations make fun of what his family once did. He and his brothers tried to make a difference, they saved the world many times, yet they are remembered as a joke? Angel recites a speech to Numero 5, which he has recited so many times by now that it sounds more like a platitude, and sensing Angel's own lack of conviction, Numero 5 predictably leaves and hops a bus. "We don't do good to be rewarded," Angel remarks I his speech, "We do it because it's the right thing to do and a part of you knows that..."
Angel's speech is repeated this week in Joan of Arcadia by a little girl in glasses and a pink dress. The gimmick of Joan of Arcadia is God or someone who states they are god (we’re never quite sure), appears to Joan in the guise of different people. In this instance it's a little girl who smilingly looks up at Joan and tells her that you help whomever you can. Joan has volunteered to help a woman on a bus. She’s become the single woman's son's babysitter, but apparently it's not the woman but her son, Joan is supposed to help now. Joan asks the little girl - "Don't I get points for each person I help. I helped the woman. Do I have to go back and figure out what the son’s problem is now? What’s the point?" The little girl smiles back and tells Joan: "It's not a point system. There's no points. You just help whomever needs it...that’s what people do. You listen and you help when they need it. The system is perfect."
But what if you think the help you're offering is hurting rather than helping the person? What if the person doesn’t want your help? In Miss Match, Kate Fox wonders this as she valiantly attempts to help two people find love, and a third get an equitable settlement from her husband. Is it right to provide people with a means of making an emotional connection? Is she right to hunt one for them? Or should she set up boundaries? Disconnect herself from them?
Angel, doesn’t have this problem in ATS, he’s already feeling pretty disconnected. Actually, Spike whose a ghost, seems more connected and chatty with the gang than Angel is this week. Numero 5, a masked Mexican wrestler, like Angel has lost hope in his calling. Numero 5 like Angel has disconnected himself from the world due to a tragic loss. Angel lost his family – Cordelia and Connor in S4 and Numero 5 has lost his brothers. But Numero 5 has taken his disconnection a step further – he’s isolated himself from everyone. His face, his life, remains isolated beneath the mask of his past, which he continues to wear like a badge of honor, showing no one.
Angel and Numero 5 are attempting to defeat an Aztec demon named Tezcalpita, who is cursed to reappear every 50 years to hunt for a talisman that will turn him into an indestructible being of light. The demon represents both Angel and Numero 5’s current state of hopelessness, despair, disconnection. To survive the demon collects the hearts of heroes – Angel and Numero 5 aren’t it’s targets because both lack the beating heart of a hero. One’s heart is dried and dead, the other’s is hopeless. Hearts represent our emotional connection to one another. Without a heart – a body can’t function – because the heart beats blood to all the other organs, connects them to one. Ironically the way to kill the demon is the same way one kills a vampire – through the heart. Kill the central engine. And like a vampire, the demon dissolves. But how Angel kills the demon isn’t as interesting nor the point/heart of the episode – it’s how he figured out how to kill the demon that is important just as it is how he was able to pin the demon down that’s important.
Going back to Joan of Arcadia, Joan’s best friend is cranky, she can’t figure out why nor really cares. He says he hates November. But Joan has other problems. God comes to Joan at a career fair, tells her to listen to people, to help. Bewildered, Joan starts hunting people to help, and hears a woman crying on the bus that she and her cranky friend are riding on. The woman tells her that she needs a baby sitter so she can go to night classes, Joan offers to become the woman’s sitter, and through an odd inter-locking series of events, which eventually leads to Joan walking through a grave-yard with the son, she stumbles upon the reason her friend hates November and is so cranky. It’s ironically through helping the woman and her son, that Joan inadvertently discovers her friend’s pain. A pain that oddly echoes Joan’s own, not to mention Numero 5 and Angel’s – the loss or injury of a loved one.
Angel discovers how to defeat the demon by inter-acting with the AI group. The combined efforts of Fred, Gunn, Wes, and Spike inform Angel that Numero Cinqu and the demon’s heart are the keys to defeating it. He must work with Numero Cinquo.
He can’t do it alone. Through his work with Numero Cinqu and the miraculous reunion of the five dead brothers, Angel realizes that what is important is his connection with humanity and he searches out the Shanshu prophecy, which he hopes will someday literally re-connect him. Immortality seems to separate Angel from the world, just as immortality separates the Aztec demon. Both are dead, yet cursed to walk amongst the living like leeches, both strive for a way to overcome that – one to be a god, indestructible, the other to be human and mortal, free from the disconnection that comes with being a demon. Although one can’t help but wonder if part of Angel still wants the prize – the super-powers more than the mortality? But as we see with Numero Cinquo super-powers without friends are worth little. It’s the human connection that is important.
Joan discovers the same thing. On a bus, she confronts the person representing God, and asks him why people must suffer. Why do they die? What’s the point in helping? What’s the point in caring? Why don’t you help? Smiling God answers that it’s important to care. To want to help. That helping in of itself is the answer, whether we feel it’s succeeded or not. The fact that she cares so much, feels others’ pain so powerfully – makes her powerful, makes her strong. It’s when we start ignoring our empathy for others, stop feeling for them, stop noticing their pain – that we become weak, disconnected. That, says God, is hell. The emotional disconnection.
At the end of Miss Match, Kate Fox discovers somewhat the same thing. The people she’s helped, that she’s reached out to, tried to set up a connection with, even her failures, appreciate the fact she’s taken the time to care. Thank you for caring enough to help. Kate looks at the book she bought on setting up boundaries in her life and throws it away.
Sentimental? Maybe. But isn’t it interesting that three different television shows attempted to explore this in three different ways this week, coming more or less to the same conclusion – that whether we like it or not, we need one another, like a body needs a heart.
I’m not usually a fan of Miss Match, the characters often grate on my nerves, but tonight’s episode was actually worth a visit. Joan of Arcadia has become a sort of comfort food that I watch whenever I’m home but don’t feel a need to tape. So far it has managed to dance around the pitfall that Touched by An Angel and Seventh Heaven fall into – preachy sentimentality and religious indoctrination. This week was no different.
Regarding ATS 5.6 , I enjoyed it. The masks – indicate the masks that the AI gang wear.Angel – who hides Angelus. Spike – who hides William. Wes/Fred/Gunn – whose memories have been altered thus hiding the darker sides that emerged in S3-4.
I vaguely remember a poem about masks – something about until we have faces, we remain masked?? And I remain convinced the memory wipe will be addressed this year in some fashion. My fear is that they will address it in the same blasé manner they addressed Spike getting a soul. I trust these TV writers about as far as I can throw them.
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life afterall
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore
Chorus:
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me
in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free
I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity
Chorus:
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
E. Sailers - The Indigo Girls
Saw a couple of interesting TV shows this week that made me think and wonder about heroes. The heroic acts our society seems to focus on are the melodramatic ones, the successes, or the blazes of glory worthy of plaques and metals and rewards.
Our society also appears to expect a great deal out of a hero - they must be perfect, with no blemishes in their past, no scars. The underrated Dustin Hoffman movie Hero is a good exploration of this theme. In that movie, a petty thief and all around loser, saves a plane-load of people without asking for anything in return. The reporter hunting for the Hero that saved the people – wants someone upstanding, pretty, media-savvy. And is disappointed when she eventually discovers Hoffman. I think it would shock us to our core if someone we saw as a horrible person, a complete devil - did something heroic. Just as it would shock us if someone heroic did something twisted. I also wonder about all the people in between, the people who fall flat on their face attempting to do the right thing. The everyday heroes amongst us, who deal with our failures and somehow struggle on. Sometimes I think we can display heroism in how we deal with life’s little disappointments, as much if not more than how we handle the successes.
Three TV shows this week, all completely different, different genres, different channels, and different tones - tackled the idea of hope, connection and heroism. And each in its own way delicately walked a tightrope between sentimental clichés and honest story telling.
I admit, I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to sentimentality on TV, Movies and Books. Seen one too many tearjerkers...and there really are no new ideas. But these three shows in their own ways seemed to find a new way of telling an old story and by doing so, genuinely moved me this week.
First up : The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinqu, Ats 5.6. The tale concerns a former Mexican wrestler who has become embittered and hopeless. He lost his family and friends in an epic battle. And his heart seems to have died with them. He no longer sees any meaning or hope in helping others. He sits weighted down by the burden of his success. What's the point, he wonders aloud watching how future generations make fun of what his family once did. He and his brothers tried to make a difference, they saved the world many times, yet they are remembered as a joke? Angel recites a speech to Numero 5, which he has recited so many times by now that it sounds more like a platitude, and sensing Angel's own lack of conviction, Numero 5 predictably leaves and hops a bus. "We don't do good to be rewarded," Angel remarks I his speech, "We do it because it's the right thing to do and a part of you knows that..."
Angel's speech is repeated this week in Joan of Arcadia by a little girl in glasses and a pink dress. The gimmick of Joan of Arcadia is God or someone who states they are god (we’re never quite sure), appears to Joan in the guise of different people. In this instance it's a little girl who smilingly looks up at Joan and tells her that you help whomever you can. Joan has volunteered to help a woman on a bus. She’s become the single woman's son's babysitter, but apparently it's not the woman but her son, Joan is supposed to help now. Joan asks the little girl - "Don't I get points for each person I help. I helped the woman. Do I have to go back and figure out what the son’s problem is now? What’s the point?" The little girl smiles back and tells Joan: "It's not a point system. There's no points. You just help whomever needs it...that’s what people do. You listen and you help when they need it. The system is perfect."
But what if you think the help you're offering is hurting rather than helping the person? What if the person doesn’t want your help? In Miss Match, Kate Fox wonders this as she valiantly attempts to help two people find love, and a third get an equitable settlement from her husband. Is it right to provide people with a means of making an emotional connection? Is she right to hunt one for them? Or should she set up boundaries? Disconnect herself from them?
Angel, doesn’t have this problem in ATS, he’s already feeling pretty disconnected. Actually, Spike whose a ghost, seems more connected and chatty with the gang than Angel is this week. Numero 5, a masked Mexican wrestler, like Angel has lost hope in his calling. Numero 5 like Angel has disconnected himself from the world due to a tragic loss. Angel lost his family – Cordelia and Connor in S4 and Numero 5 has lost his brothers. But Numero 5 has taken his disconnection a step further – he’s isolated himself from everyone. His face, his life, remains isolated beneath the mask of his past, which he continues to wear like a badge of honor, showing no one.
Angel and Numero 5 are attempting to defeat an Aztec demon named Tezcalpita, who is cursed to reappear every 50 years to hunt for a talisman that will turn him into an indestructible being of light. The demon represents both Angel and Numero 5’s current state of hopelessness, despair, disconnection. To survive the demon collects the hearts of heroes – Angel and Numero 5 aren’t it’s targets because both lack the beating heart of a hero. One’s heart is dried and dead, the other’s is hopeless. Hearts represent our emotional connection to one another. Without a heart – a body can’t function – because the heart beats blood to all the other organs, connects them to one. Ironically the way to kill the demon is the same way one kills a vampire – through the heart. Kill the central engine. And like a vampire, the demon dissolves. But how Angel kills the demon isn’t as interesting nor the point/heart of the episode – it’s how he figured out how to kill the demon that is important just as it is how he was able to pin the demon down that’s important.
Going back to Joan of Arcadia, Joan’s best friend is cranky, she can’t figure out why nor really cares. He says he hates November. But Joan has other problems. God comes to Joan at a career fair, tells her to listen to people, to help. Bewildered, Joan starts hunting people to help, and hears a woman crying on the bus that she and her cranky friend are riding on. The woman tells her that she needs a baby sitter so she can go to night classes, Joan offers to become the woman’s sitter, and through an odd inter-locking series of events, which eventually leads to Joan walking through a grave-yard with the son, she stumbles upon the reason her friend hates November and is so cranky. It’s ironically through helping the woman and her son, that Joan inadvertently discovers her friend’s pain. A pain that oddly echoes Joan’s own, not to mention Numero 5 and Angel’s – the loss or injury of a loved one.
Angel discovers how to defeat the demon by inter-acting with the AI group. The combined efforts of Fred, Gunn, Wes, and Spike inform Angel that Numero Cinqu and the demon’s heart are the keys to defeating it. He must work with Numero Cinquo.
He can’t do it alone. Through his work with Numero Cinqu and the miraculous reunion of the five dead brothers, Angel realizes that what is important is his connection with humanity and he searches out the Shanshu prophecy, which he hopes will someday literally re-connect him. Immortality seems to separate Angel from the world, just as immortality separates the Aztec demon. Both are dead, yet cursed to walk amongst the living like leeches, both strive for a way to overcome that – one to be a god, indestructible, the other to be human and mortal, free from the disconnection that comes with being a demon. Although one can’t help but wonder if part of Angel still wants the prize – the super-powers more than the mortality? But as we see with Numero Cinquo super-powers without friends are worth little. It’s the human connection that is important.
Joan discovers the same thing. On a bus, she confronts the person representing God, and asks him why people must suffer. Why do they die? What’s the point in helping? What’s the point in caring? Why don’t you help? Smiling God answers that it’s important to care. To want to help. That helping in of itself is the answer, whether we feel it’s succeeded or not. The fact that she cares so much, feels others’ pain so powerfully – makes her powerful, makes her strong. It’s when we start ignoring our empathy for others, stop feeling for them, stop noticing their pain – that we become weak, disconnected. That, says God, is hell. The emotional disconnection.
At the end of Miss Match, Kate Fox discovers somewhat the same thing. The people she’s helped, that she’s reached out to, tried to set up a connection with, even her failures, appreciate the fact she’s taken the time to care. Thank you for caring enough to help. Kate looks at the book she bought on setting up boundaries in her life and throws it away.
Sentimental? Maybe. But isn’t it interesting that three different television shows attempted to explore this in three different ways this week, coming more or less to the same conclusion – that whether we like it or not, we need one another, like a body needs a heart.
I’m not usually a fan of Miss Match, the characters often grate on my nerves, but tonight’s episode was actually worth a visit. Joan of Arcadia has become a sort of comfort food that I watch whenever I’m home but don’t feel a need to tape. So far it has managed to dance around the pitfall that Touched by An Angel and Seventh Heaven fall into – preachy sentimentality and religious indoctrination. This week was no different.
Regarding ATS 5.6 , I enjoyed it. The masks – indicate the masks that the AI gang wear.Angel – who hides Angelus. Spike – who hides William. Wes/Fred/Gunn – whose memories have been altered thus hiding the darker sides that emerged in S3-4.
I vaguely remember a poem about masks – something about until we have faces, we remain masked?? And I remain convinced the memory wipe will be addressed this year in some fashion. My fear is that they will address it in the same blasé manner they addressed Spike getting a soul. I trust these TV writers about as far as I can throw them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Talismans
Date: 2003-11-08 09:37 pm (UTC)Agree, I don't think Spike's amulet has more than metaphorical significance.
I suspect ME will find another way to keep Spike tied to W&H that has zip to do with amulets and contracts. I keep remembering all the wonderful ways W&H found to keep Lindsey, Lilah and Angel bound up with them.
Also characters on the Buffyverse have a nasty habit of doing things without appreciating the consequences.
Angel with the mindwipe, Willow and Buffy with the slayer sharing spell in Chosen, Spike wearing the amulet...Wes taking prophecies a tad too literally.