This Film Not a Little Movie

Emma Watson as Meg March; Saoirse Ronan as Jo March; Florence Pugh as Amy March; and Eliza Scanlen as Beth March. Image from movie web site: www.littlewomen.movie, as are other images.

OK, it’s not an original play on words—the New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott, who loved it, used the same turn of phrase. But it works.

“Little Women” is a giant movie. I saw 98 percent of it (I was stuck in a long popcorn line for the first 2 minutes) Tuesday, and it was a great way to end the year. It’s also good in order to practice learning to type new words like “Saoirse Ronan.”

Count me, I guess as a serious Saoirse fan—I loved her in “Lady Bird,” and think she’s perfect as Josephine March, the main character of “Little Women.”

The March sisters.

And she was not alone. One of the joys of this movie is its ensemble cast. Anything that has both Meryl Streep and Laura Dern in it sounds like it could be pretty fantastic, and both shine in this film. At one point, Laura as the mother confesses to Jo that she is angry every day of her life—and we (even me, an old man) can viscerally feel why.

Sure, it’s a movie with a feminist sensibility. But it doesn’t bash men, instead it ruminates thoughtfully on what it means to be female—and not just how the “patriarchy” defines that term, but also how women view the concept. It’s Aunt March, after all, who advises Jo that “nobody makes their own way” and she should devote herself to marrying well.

Aunt March wasn’t wrong, in an important way. No man makes his own way, either—all people depend on each other, to some extent, but women in the 19th century faced particular issues, including marriage laws that made property a male domain. And yes, I know that although we have more advanced laws now, women still face many of the same enduring societal prejudices, which is part of what makes “Little Women” feel both contemporary and a historic drama.

More images from movie web site.

It’s also great to see young women being portrayed as people—having intelligence, moods, emotions, affections, hostilities, fights and reconciliations.

With the possible exception of Daddy March, who doesn’t do much but show up and stay placidly in the background, there are interesting male characters here, too. I spent part of the movie being slightly irritated at Chris Cooper—not because he doesn’t play the part of Mr. Laurence well—he, like most of the cast, seems to live the role. It’s that his voice was so familiar that I knew this actor without recognizing him in his 19th century whiskers.

Mr. Laurence gives the March girls Christmas food, and a piano for Beth, and we understand why and believe he would do it.

The movie has an interesting narrative form. Rather than follow a straight timeline, it moves back and forth, which helps connects early events to consequences later on. Yet, it was easy to follow—the plot was not all that convoluted. Lighting helps, of course, as later scenes are darker than the brighter scenes set earlier.

That narrative form totally worked. Frankly, all of the movie totally worked.

One sequence in the movie that I loved watching was seeing Jo March overlooking the printing of the first copies of her book—the setting of type, the pages on the press, cutting and trimming the parts of the books and gluing them to a red leather cover—for a media history teacher, it was a wonderful sequence.

And the writing itself was well represented, Jo wielding her fountain pen until her hand cramped and she had to switch to left-handed writing, laying out scenes and rearranging them. It is a reminder what a blessing modern word processing can be, although a shame we don’t always use our superior tools for such deft story telling. It’s also a reminder of the level of commitment and thought that any writing demands if it is to be done well.

I don’t know for sure if I’ll go see “Little Women” again in the theater, although if the opportunity came up and someone wanted to go, I would be so there for them. I’m sure later this year when it becomes available in DVD, I’ll be buying it and watching it over and over.

It’s that kind of movie. As Scott says, it was not a little movie at all. It was grand.

The Key Word: ‘Impeached’

How my local paper reported the news.

The Poynter Institute had as an interesting page that shows a few front pages from the impeachment of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, two of the only three U.S. presidents to be impeached.

I know Donald J. Trump, despite being manifestly unfit for office and clearly guilty of all kind of impeachable shenanigans, is pretty much assured of acquittal by the Senate. Still, he is forever an impeached president.

It was kind of interesting reading Facebook comments on The Gazette’s image of their front page from Thursday, covering the news. Several comments were along the lines of “he hasn’t been impeached” and “fake news.”

Because he will win in the Senate. But, legal eagles, impeached means “charged,” and the Senate merely renders a verdict on whether to remove the President. Because the House has voted, he has been impeached.

And that word “impeached” screamed from many front pages.

Anyway, downloaded from the Newseum web site, here are 25 front pages to mark the big event for this week in history:

And So Anna Becomes Queen

Disney publicity image downloaded from Variety web site. Anna wonders: What the heck is my odd older sister up to now?

Elsa has retired and moved north to live as some sort of ice demigod, the fifth elemental spirit in this tale with an ecological subtext.

The dam is bad. We need brute force (send in the brutes) to get rid of the damn thing.

I just saw “Frozen II,” and I was impressed. I think Disney was a bit taken aback by the success of the first movie in this franchise, and as always when such a story succeeds, there’s the question of where does it go from here?

And the central unresolved question of “Frozen” was: What the heck is Elsa? And that’s exactly the MacGuffin for this plot. Unless you consider four stones with rather bland logos for elemental forces to be four MacGuffins—or is mist a MacGuffin? Are we back to the dam?

Also, is it just me, or is Olaf the character Jar Jar Binks wanted to be but never was?



Whatever. I don’t think “Frozen II” will hit with the power of the first movie. I don’t expect to see YouTube videos of enthusiastic Marines reacting to the signature music video from this film. But there is a lot to like in this second installment.

While there is an environmental theme here, it’s not the main point of the movie. Anna and her journey to womanhood is really more what’s going on. Elsa is being lured down a different life path by a siren voice who turns out to be ghost mom who also sends ghost horse—but then Elsa dies and is reanimated, so maybe “Frozen II” is a reverse zombie apocalypse there the zombie saves the town and installs the sweet younger sister as the benign despot.

But I’m getting away from my point, if I had one. I’m like Olaf explaining the plot.

I liked this movie partly because it allowed its characters to evolve. That’s even a theme that Anna ruminates on, how even a satisfactory moment in time is really only a moment in time, and things inevitably change. Someone once observed that a happy ending always depends on ending the story at the right place, because in the long run, the characters are all dead.

Which is even used as a joke in “Frozen II.” It’s a rather smart movie, with lots to unpack.

Anyway, my actual favorite theme of the movie isn’t the one about how, as Olaf says, technology can save or destroy us, as interesting as that dam theme is. Nor is it about what Elsa is and how Anna gets to be all growed up. Instead, to me the main theme is Anna facing the likelihood of her best possible choice destroying the town that she loves and is princess of.

To have peace, it’s necessary to tear down that wall. In this case, the wall is holding a reservoir full of water, and doing the right thing means flooding Arendelle. Meanwhile, Olaf has apparently expired, her sister’s fate is unknown but not good given that her magic is ending and Anna is depressed, discouraged and alone.

And she repeats a line that comes up several times in “Frozen II.” What do you do when all is lost, your dreams are shattered and Hillary Clinton was not elected?

“Do the next right thing,” Anna mutters to herself.

That line really resonated, to me, and is the most important theme from “Frozen II.” It’s a message for our times. Indeed, a transcendent message for many times. That’s a pretty deep thought from younger sister in a sequel children’s movie with magic trolls and singing reindeer.

But it works, for me. I hope to remember those words and use them myself.

Go see “Frozen II.” You may find yourself wondering, as I did, whether a giant snowflake would really save the town—sure, the wave was diverted, but wouldn’t the waters rise anyway? That’s not really the point. Elsa’s magic always was a little edgy and improbable (she can create life and nobody seems concerned about whether Olaf has a soul?).

It’s a movie about the sidekick. It's a movie about Anna. And doing the right thing even when all seems lost. And that seems enough.

What Fame is For

From https://www.abeautifulday.movie/, Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Tom Junod.

In “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod (Matthew Rhys) asks public TV children’s show host Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) about fame.

“Fame is a four-letter word,” Fred says. And it all depends on what you do with it. What he did with it was to help the people around him, and you can't watch this movie without wishing it were so for other famous TV figures.

The sweet story of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” did draw me in. I was a bit old for the TV show, but saw it in snippets when I was growing up.

It was never my favorite. The pace was too slow for me, but then again, I was too old for the show.

Mr. Rogers had a way of talking to younger viewers at their level, and from all I’ve heard, not knowing the man, it came from a genuine desire to help children navigate this life.

Hanks is a good choice to play Rogers. He doesn’t imitate too much, but does remind one of the actual Fred Rogers.

The movie makes real life and the Land of Make Believe a bit similar, showing a toy New York. My wife and I both laughed when a toy plane touched down with realistic noises. But that fit, somehow. The idealized version of reality was the world as seen through the lens of the TV show.

And it was a cool movie, partly because it showed what a TV studio looks like and functions. You do feel a bit sorry for the whole crew who has to wait it out while Fred Rogers is being so nice to someone.

If you grew up at all with Mr. Rogers, I think you’ll love this movie. If you like writing and journalism, it’s not a bad portrayal of how life and reporting can interact.

And it will leave you feeling a bit better about this mortal existence. That’s about all a kid’s TV show or movie about it could do, I suppose.

And the Music Winner for Now is YouTube

What music site do you prefer?

I listen to Pandora on some computers, because it’s convenient to sign into on many devices. I have Spotify installed on my office computer at home.

I kind of like Spotify because it suggests interesting new music to me. I’m sure I never heard “Hole” before Spotify suggested Malibu, and although I consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure, that’s still a pleasure.

But when I’m working at some mundane task that doesn’t require much attention, I’m likely to just launch a list suggested by YouTube. Yeah, I know, I’m being controlled by the Overlords at Google, and I get exposed to the maximum number of ads that way, but still, YouTube just seems to make the best guesses about what I might like. I think Phoebe Bridgers and The Big Moon both came onto my radar through the magical algorithms of Google.

Facebook, you think you know me, and you probably do. But my robot overlords really control me through Google and YouTube.

Anyway, when I want a break from the disaster that is the Trump impeachment reality TV show, here are some recent songs that have been the background of my life:

First, Phoebe with “Motion Sicnekss.” I often find that live recordings by radio stations—often public ones—gives me the best versions of songs, and while I like her official music video, I think this version is better:


Next, Tessa Violet, because who doesn’t need some Tessa now and then? And she has a new album. Hmmm. Christmas is coming. I like all of the songs I’ve heard from the album, this one in particular:


Third, The Big Moon, because, why not? I used one of their videos on a recent post on my bike blog, and here is another of their songs accompanied by another whimsical video:


Fourth, Taylor Swift, of all people. I have to be in a mood to listen to Taylor, she’s rarely my first choice, but when I want some pop, there she is. Both the banter and the music are entertaining in this NPR concert, and if you don’t watch NPR tiny desk concerts, there’s a whole new world of time suck on YouTube waiting for you:


Last, guiltiest of guilty pleasures. No, I am not a big Courtney Love fan, but in truth several of her songs are catchy:


All of my choices are women. Hmmmm. Men are welcome to sing, too, but I guess I'm liking listening to women. Must be the antidote to Trump.

Spotlight on a Film that Gets Journalism Right

Brian d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight. Photograph: Allstar/Open Road Films—from The Guardian.com. I like how they hold pens and use notebooks--a small thing, but that's what a reporter would look like during an interview.

 Last week, students in my media law and ethics class got to snack on pretzels and enjoy one of those rare classes where Joe didn’t spend too much time talking. We watched most of the 2015 movie “Spotlight.”

It’s a sobering film to watch at a Catholic university. But it’s a great film, in my opinion. NPR liked it, too.
 The all-star cast does a great job of creating the feel of journalism as it actually is, something that is very rarely seen in movies. These people aren’t glamorous or rich—they are inquisitive, intelligent writers who are feeling around in the dark, trying to find the story. They don’t know what the story is when they start.

And the people they are dealing with are not simple, either. There are multiple points of view, multiple levels of deception and truth telling.

As I re-watched the film with students, I was struck by the many memorable lines in the film:

Liev Schreiber, playing the new editor of “The Boston Globe” Marty Baron, introduces us to some journalism jargon, noting an opinion column about an abuse speech. “What’s the follow on that?”

That a priest would abuse so many kids “strikes me as an essential story for a local paper,” he adds. One overt key lesson of the movie, to me, is the importance of the kind of journalism that the Spotlight team at the Globe represents and that sadly is passing away as American journalism contracts.

But on to the memorable quotes from the movie. Stanley Tucci, as lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, is conversing with a Globe reporter and notes the system of secrecy that existed in the Archdiocese of Boston. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” he says.

The class I was teaching lasts an hour and 50 minutes, and the movie is a bit over two hours long. I put a DVD on reserve in the library, and students are required to finish the movie, and write an essay answering some discussion questions I posted.

The class movie viewing was last week. Papers are due Thursday. I’m excited to read what students think. The movie, I hope, will pack some impact with them.

And at least they got to see one movie with actors and actress who actually look and act like the journalists I worked with during my newspaper career.

Boonville Daily News, circa 1985. JK. Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James are members of the Boston Globe investigation team that uncovers a sex-abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in the film, Spotlight. Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films—from NPR.org.

The Beer Can Sign That Delineates Iowa’s Divide

Carson King held up a sign at the Iowa-Iowa State Football game asking for beer money, and like seismic forces beneath the earth’s crust pushing tectonic plate against plate, a Des Moines Register story suddenly caused a major media quake.

The fault line was already there. It’s easy to blame President Trump and his nasty “fake news” rhetoric, but his message resonates for some of Iowans. And on the King story, Iowa has gone beyond crazy.

Image downloaded from KCRG.com, credited there to KCCI. Carson and his sign.

The Des Moines Register, in the wake of King’s beer sign and online fund-raising drawing oodles of money for the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, reported on some racist tweets King wrote as a teen. To his credit, King didn’t shy away from the truth, admitted he had sent tweets he now considered shameful, and apologized.

But there is a growing anti-journalism cultural strain that has been building up energy for years. The King saga, for some reason, unleashed an unholy upheaval that threatens to level the media landscape in its wake.

Well, good, some would say. Those nasty liberal Des Moines Register libtards are getting what they deserve. Who needs a newspaper—indeed who reads a newspaper—anyway?

I don’t think it was coincidental that Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds quickly joined team King. Republicans in the state, even before the fake-news-in-chief became president, have been divorcing themselves from traditional media coverage—refusing newspaper invitations to speak with editorial boards, not returning candidate questionnaires, never acknowledging that there is any legitimate or important role for traditional news media.

Image by Rod Boshart of the Gazette, King and Reynolds.

And after the economic recession of 2008, newspapers have been in a constant state of turmoil and retrenching. One can hope that the internet will allow more growth of viable alternatives for news, but sadly, the economic model of the online world heavily favors the giant corporations running the show and not the ink-jet-printer-stained wretches producing the content.

Anyway, the King story took on a wild life of its own. In its wake, for reasons that honestly make little sense to me, the entire staff of RAGBRAI resigned and have started an alternative Iowa Ride. Yes, I know, the Register would not let the director of RAGBRAI speak freely—but that’s not an unusual action for a corporation, media or not, in the midst of a crisis.

Why was the King story the trigger for this quake? I think it has something to do with a certain disdain for modern times that defines a kind of building cultural backlash. Iowans used to be known for being literate, well-educated and tolerant. That was then—maybe the 1970s or so. Now, we’ve underfunded our public schools for decades, trashed higher education and become more suspicious of newcomers and outsiders. In too many cities and towns, among too many white Iowans, casual racism is common and expected to be excused, especially if it comes from the young.

And we, good white Iowans, don’t like them darn liberals shaking their nanny state fingers at us and telling us we have to tolerate Mexicans and blacks and homos and all those others who don’t, by God, respect the imagined glory of rural America.

I think Gazette columnist Lyz Lenz says it well in a column posted this week entitled “We are missing the point.” She writes:

 “It’s telling how many white Iowans have mumbled to themselves about their own social media history, as if it was somehow a rite of passage to be occasionally racist in your past. It’s not, actually. Nor should it be. But we tell on ourselves with what we fear: We don’t fear racism, we fear being discovered for it. We fear the reporter asking about our misdeeds more than we fear actually doing them.”

The other thread of this odd saga is that people want their heroes unstained by reality. They want Carson King cheered, and nobody to look too closely or ask too many questions. This, for instance, is verbatim a comment on the RAGBRAI web site following the latest bicycle ride blow to the Register:

“Hey Des Moines Register, don’t bother trying to have your ride this year. Anyone can see how badly you’ve handled this situation and every move you make digs your hole deeper. There is no recovering from this disaster. After 11 RAGBRAI’s, I’ll be proudly supporting Iowa’s Ride and the people who stood up to your liberal censorship. To recap, your actions so far have been to drag a young man’s name through the mud (all while he was donating $3 million to a children’s hospital), drop a bomb into what was, arguably the feel good story of 2019, ruin the reputation and career of a reporter doing your bidding and now, ruin the greatest cross state ride in history. I hope the idiotic editors who chose to run that crap are happy.”

Well. I doubt that they’re happy. Carson King got a day named after him, and frankly seems to have behaved far more rationally than the crowd of King minions. And I don’t know how editors, in deciding how to handle the King story, could have or should have anticipated the bomb that the RAGBRAI staff had in store.

And so it goes. I do not think the Register showed good judgement in how it handled the original story—and I am also not so proud that the reporter, who himself was guilty of iffy past posts, was separated so quickly from the paper. But the Register’s story, even if it was badly done, was factual. The response to one editorial misstep has been beyond overboard—it’s a nuclear response to a spitball.

The Register doesn’t need to be burned to the ground, nor do its editors or reporters need to be threatened.

Right now, our nation is lurching towards a Constitutional crisis. And the election of 2020, already well underway in Iowa, is shaping up to be more bitter and divisive than the rhetorical blood bath of 2016.

And we Iowans are most outraged that Iowa’s largest newspaper would dare to actually research the social media history of a suddenly prominent person.

It’s not the only sign, if additional ones were needed, of how anti-media this once savvy state has become. Take the recent case of The Carroll Times Herald, a once daily paper that is now published twice a week. Last year, that paper investigated a local police officer and found that he, a married man, was having inappropriate romantic relations with local teenage girls. The girls were not underage, so the law was not broken, but the officer involved resigned and admitted in court afterwards that the relationships, which led to vandalism committed by jealous young girlfriends, were not appropriate.

And yet, the officer sued the paper for libel. The paper won. The judge issued a 10-page ruling that basically said the paper’s original stories were true. See the Washington Post’s story. Their image, below, had this caption: Douglas Burns, the Carroll Times Herald's co-owner, pictured at a newsstand. (Provided by Douglas Burns)

Picture from the Washington Post.

The prize for journalistic accuracy? Crushing debt for a small local business that has had to set up online fund raising in an effort to stay afloat.

The price of truth telling is getting higher, these days. Unlike the Register, the Times Herald, as far as I can see, didn’t engage in iffy editorial judgements—it acted as a good local newspaper should, as the watchdog for its community, pointing out the ill deeds of a local official.

And for that, it joins the Register in being at risk.

Too many of us have allowed a cancerous anti-fact and anti-news attitude to take hold in this once proud state. The most obvious tumor is the giant orange one in the White House, but his ignorant rants about fake news are just the outward manifestation of a deeper, darker cultural trend.

Trash the newspaper. Hate the messenger. Defend the “good” white Iowans. Look to the pastoral past, not the uncertain future. Defund education. Forget controlling pollution. Quit telling us this perfect place is at risk due to climate change or racism or other large demographic and economic trends that we don’t clearly and easily understand as our education system slips to third rate, our lawmakers forgo public discussion of key laws and our newspapers, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly in a beer-fueled football induced earthquake, pass away.

I hope it’s not goodbye to sane, sensible, live-and-let-live Iowa. But I fear our knee-jerk online reactions, full of fury and feelings and fear of facts, are not signs that we are on the mend yet.