Jehanne
Despite earlier reservations that I might not be able to incorporate secondary and tertiary content feeds into my existing webpage structure, I have successfully managed to approach being the sort of derring-do internetician that I’d like to be. So I’m very pleased to introduce the new live content aspect of my site, a Joan of Arc blog.
I used to teach a class on Joan of Arc and her particular relationship with the Hundred Years War, and I got in the habit of scanning the world for links and relevancy. Part of the ideal for the class was that I could show that regardless that the key events took place somewhere in the vicinity of six hundred years ago, that their echoes still affected contemporary attitudes and politics, and that Joan herself was an accessible person. Since the class was primarily beign taught to 18 year old females, I especially harped on that last bit, trying not to — as Vita Sackville West did — make her a contemporary romantic figure, but to delineate how certain aspects of being young and human remained the same over time, and some aspectes of her character were purely medieval and purely foreign.
As a tantalizing morsel to get you to click through the above link and perhaps even subscribe to future updates, here’s the first entry:
30 May, 1431 – Jehanne is burned alive as a relapsed heretic in the marketplace at Rouen.
It’s a strange number, the 574th anniversary. It catches on the hems of our base-10 consciousness, looking close to a number that should be significant to a culture that celebrates centennials and their quarters. But because quarter centuries aren’t particularly important except to people and occasion-starved businesses, even next year’s anniversary will have two important flaws. Firstly, it will seem either 25 years too early to recognize with any real flair, or 75 years too late, and secondly, it’s the anniversary of the horrific death of a young woman who wasn’t even sure how old she was.
Joan’s words that morning, as translated by Willard Trask, are as follows:
Alas! Am I so horribly and cruelly used, that my clean body, never yet defiled, must this day be burnt and turned to ashes. Ha! Ha! I would rather be beheaded seven times than suffer burning.
Alas! If I had been kept in the Church’s prison, to which I had submitted — if I had been kept by churchmen instead of my enemies and adversaries, I should not have come to such a miserable end.
Such merriment! Fun for all!
Browncoats
Right, full disclosure time. My first impulse, after buying the tickets to the special Official Sneak Preview of the upcoming film Serenity, was to wander to my closet and figure out what I was going to wear. I had eight days until the screening, and there was no earthly reason why I should want to look nice or special or noticeable… But, y’see, the überfans of Serenity and its progenitor, the television show Firefly, are called “Browncoats”, for reasons important only to those who care. I’m a big trenchcoat wearer, but I don’t own a duster, and I certainly don’t own a brown oilskin, which would be the preferred garb of a die-hard Browncoat. I didn’t and don’t particularly think of myself as a die-hard, but the truth is that my first thought was to consider if I could find a duster in time for the film and, if not, what I could scrounge from my closet that would be a suitable substitute.
This is how the nerding begins. I scoff at Star Wars fans and Trekkies and Trekkers and even Rocky Horror Picture Show devotées. I’m too cool for school, and I think that a minimalist nod in one’s wardrobe that acknowledges that one knows the scene but maintains a detached distance from it is the best dress code. Never wear a Name shirt to a Name concert, but a slim cloisonné pin from a band in the same scene or on the same indy label… now that’s slick. Hip, but superior: that’s the way one carries oneself at a public gathering of fans. So I found myself surprised to be, well, almost dressing up in costume in my excitement for this film. I was able to justify it by using nothing that I wouldn’t have casually worn with anything else in my wardrobe on any given day. But, truthfully, I garbed up for this event, and I’m a little embarrassed at how slippery that slope really is.
Luckily the brakes on said slope were put on by the presence of the other audience members, who weren’t as appalling as the average comic book convention, but still represented a cross-section of genetic slovenliness that should shame both Mendel and God. And while I will certainly watch any downloadable videos or special features that have footage shot by the documentary and promotional crew on site, and I will look for myself in the crowd, I was a little relieved not to be interviewed or featured, as such a prominent position would mean that I Belong more than I’d prefer to admit. I’m just not fan enough.
A young lad snuck around a couple of rows to try and move more quickly through the line to receive autographs from the graceful attending stars, Morena Baccarin and Sean Maher (see image at left), and ended up standing behind me. He attempted to engage in conversation about the success of the film, and I could tell by his plaintive, reedy voice that a withering stare was not going to dispell him. I considered turning and frankly informing him that not only did I not go to the cinema to meet people, but that I especially didn’t talk to overgrown juveniles whose vocal pitch and tone indicated a severe lack of human, non-virtual interaction… but, well, it seemed slightly harsher than the occasion merited. However, he did compliment me on my attire, and I think I did rather well not to immediately strip down and set it ablaze.
However, despite this and the most minimal of other disproprtionately memorable experiences, it was a good audience, an audience that listened to the film and drank it in with the appropriate attention. It meant that the theatre was quiet, because they were fans, and they wanted to get every morsel of dialogue and plot and information that they could. And it was lovely to be in a cinema with patrons so attentive and respectful.
When they got home to the internet, of course, the talk turned bitter. Plot events conspired in directions that made sense dramatically, but may seem as a betrayal to those who care more about characters with whom they empathise than the merits of the well-told story and its needs and structures. Too bad. It’s a dynamite movie, real solid summer entertainment with good storytelling, inventive filmmaking, and impressive visuals. Early buzz said that it was just a longer episode of Firefly, and the negative response by some of the fans is making the fans that couldn’t go to the screenings nervous. I hope the second series of pre-release screenings on May 29th (an odd promotional decision, I feel) does something to counter the bad vibes being engendered. I left the cinema more satisfied theatrically than I had since The Incredibles.
So a brief note for those who have read the hints of the doubters, who never saw the source TV show, and for those who are slightly allergic to anything associated with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movement: Serenity is a marvelous piece of sci-fi cinema. It’s funny, charming, and has some excellent visuals, and some breathtaking suspense. Universal has a film that could easily go toe-to-toe with any summer blockbuster, but it’s not going to be in theatres until September 30th, when the season has cooled down. Hopefully this will allow Serenity not to get chased out by the newer, bigger release and will give you enough room to go see it. Give it a whirl. I strongly recommend it.
Nature’s First Green is Gold
I’ve been watching the trees go from the pallid yellow color of winter survival to the brighter yellow that Robert Frost and Ponyboy spoke about. And within the last week, most of the deciduous foliage in my part of the world has graduated into either a lush variance of true greens or bursts of blossoming flowers.
All of which has lodged Deb Talan’s song “Cherry Tree” firmly in my vernal head. Here, therefore, is the third and last of my Spring Songs for the season. Unfortunately, neither of the links I could find are downloadble, but are instead streaming audio. However, if you like it, I recommend checking out “Tell Your Story Walking” from Ms. Talan’s homepage, and those two songs should hopefully convince you to hunt down Sincerely, which I consider to be the best recorded reproduction of the live, acoustic, small-venue experience. Sadly difficult to find, as I believe it’s out of print, it’s worth the search. “Tell Your Story Walking”, by the by, is based upon Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn.
EDIT: Sorry, not Motherless Boorklyn, which is either a typrographical error or a post-modern crime drama about the Swedish Chef with Tourette’s.
Calvin and Hobbes
Along the lines of the Gillen film, this is another digital project I’ve been planning on getting ’round to for quite some time. However, while the Gillen footage was taken in November of 2002, I clipped the original version of this from the newspaper almost ten years ago. Long before I knew of a computer program that would allow me to animate pictures, I knew not only that there had to be one but that one would eventually come into my possession. Thank goodness for free scanner software and Adobe Elements, for I can now animate GIFs to my heart’s content.
Bill Watterson has been very outspoken about controlling licensed and unlicensed reproduction of his creations, and with the recent announcement of the publication of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, a number of C&H archives have disappeared from the web. I don’t begrudge either Watterson or Andrews McMeel the right to control their product, and I repoduce the following strip only as reference and context for the following animated image. After all, while I assume and hope that Watterson assumed and hoped that people would cut out these images and paste them onto three by five cards and staple them together into a flipbook, scanning them into Photoshop Elements, making the slightly uneven squares match, and making a digital flipbook is much the same impulse.
And rest assured that I will be plonking down a hundred and fifty dollars in October when that gorgeous behemoth hits shelves.
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