With the end of the quarter near, I am VERY pleased with myself that I actually have drafts done of everything I'm turning in. Of course, I haven't finished my reading for discussions this week, but little things, little things! Especially the grant proposal, I think it will be very good once I finish the revisions. Hopefully, good enough for the Fullbright and the NSF to fight over me and give me tons and tons of money, so I can buy a big fancy microscope and live in style. It's funny to me that the microscope actually comes before the living in style part, although given that I've been a grad student for so long, style really means anywhere that the landlord gets real repairmen in immediately when things break instead of a) ignoring it in the hope that it will go away, or b) trying to fix it himself but doing a crappy job. Good thing my standards have been lowered so much!
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A friend of mine and her roommate recently had a conversation about Joss Whedon. Every time a new comic book movie comes out, most of the commentary seems to be about how much better things would be if Joss had written it (not being all that interested in comic book movies, I must take their words for it. Also because they decided everyone should get their own clone of him, which strikes me as an amusing idea). And while this is undeniably true, because the man is brilliant, I wouldn't want him to write every comic book movie. First, because then people would be accustomed to high quality writing and begin to demand it in every film...oh, wait, no that's not it. But seriously, while I know the movies is where you make the big bucks and can get the budget to film every little huge-ass special effect your heart desires, Joss belongs on TV. This is NOT an insult!
I've come to realize recently, I like TV (with the caveat of 'when it's done well', naturally) much better than movies.* In a good TV show, the writers have time to let us get to know the characters slowly, the way we would in real life. In a movie, there are ten or twenty minutes to set up who's who at the start, and then maybe five minutes to introduce new people later. This means that, necessarily, they must be simpler characters. It is almost necessary to rely on stereotypes, because without them, the audience has no hope of understanding who everyone is and more importantly, why we should care about them. But in a TV show...character development can take ages. The entire pilot episode is a long introduction, 'who these people like the world to think they are', but then as time goes on, you get to see who they really are. You figure out the tragic backstory, or the hope or fear that drives them to act oddly in certain situations: Lorelai Gilmore in
The Gilmore Girls initially seems like a damaged but independent woman, but over the course of several seasons her desperate need for parental approval and masculine support becomes apparent; Wesley Wyndham-Price from
Buffy and
Angel appears as a bumbling, pompous fool, and his gradually revealed history of abuse and deep feelings of inadequacy and insecurity explain him. Because we came to know these flawed people over time we love them, because we can see ourselves in them. In a movie, we might only be able to say 'Why would she ever talk to those people again?' or 'Wow, he's an ass'. With 22 hours a year to deal with, writers can give characters complex interactions--Sarah and Gil's incredibly slow romance on
CSI was extremely powerful and meaningful when it finally got to the next level in this season's finale, in a way that no movie could ever do. They spent subjectively six years, which is objectively over 132 hours of viewing, tentatively wanting each other and being afraid and backing away and getting closer and having one more ready than the other. No relationship developed in three hours could possibly be as intense.
And this is why Joss belongs in TV. His genius lies in making thoughtful, well crafted characters the audience loves, and complex, revealing, extensively thought-out plotlines. And the right medium for that is television. Who wants three hours of those characters and those plotlines when they can have 100?
* disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with anyone who can do anything in Hollywood. Well, Joss Whedon hugged me once, but that was because I said something nice about the way he looked, and I doubt he would remember!
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I'll be leaving for Turkey in three weeks, and am now beginning to think about packing (and getting my passport back from the consulate with my fancy visa in it, and finishing my grant proposals, and signing a new lease, and finding a pet-sitter--yes, the life of a grad student is filled with fun! On the plus side, last Thursday I got free lunch for going to a moderately interesting talk). This is one of my more difficult packing experiences, because of all the different things I'll be doing:
- For four weeks, working: this is twelve hours a day, six days a week in a strongly Muslim area but in 115 degree weather (fortunately in the shade, because otherwise I would melt into a little puddle and die right there) and complete filth. Suffice it to say, the bathing facilities are irregular due to water supply/heating/cooling problems and the toilets are frankly not to be believed. Honestly, port-a-johns are a palace to me now--hey, silver lining, cool!). This will require lightweight but long sleeved and pant-ed clothing that won't show the dust, grime and assorted other crap, and that won't fall apart, change color patchily, or shrink three sized when washed with boiling water and the extremely crappy washing powder available there. How the population of Turkey isn't naked because their clothes just melt off their bodies I don't know, although at a guess they must have access to better laundry detergents. Perhaps I can bribe the site manager to buy some when he's in town...
- For two weeks, traveling with my mother, sightseeing: Again, very hot, but this time fairly clean with regular bathing facilities and a toilet I'm not afraid to touch, plus the requirement that I look presentable, still fairly modest and not overly touristy. In essence a completely different wardrobe, and one that will last two weeks, because we won't be able to do laundry, moving at the rate we are.
- For two weeks, visiting my boyfriend and attending his sister's wedding: Which means fancy clothes suitable for impressing potential future in-laws and/or looking attractive to the Boy. Again, a completely different wardrobe.
Even if I do laundry once a week on site, this is more than a month of clothes. And, since I'm selling the house just before we start to travel, I actually hope to buy some souvenirs this time, yay, but it means limited space. I'm considering packing up boxes and shipping them off to people instead of humping all this stuff all over Turkey. I wonder if that's actually unreasonable?
