The things we will see in hindsight might offer perspective
Three is a Magic Number by Steven Uhles
Hindsight is a funny thing. When we look back at something – an event, personality, or presentation – the truth of the thing often seems much clearer than when it was initially happening. Nobody deems something as their favorite memory as it is happening, and no disaster is declared the worst in its initial moments. It is only when we apply hindsight and the luxury of comparing and contrasting it affords that we truly see the breadth and depth of a thing. This week’s Magic Three is dedicated to hindsight, to things I think we may look back on in shame, will perceive as successes after initial failure, and how looking back sometimes only happens when it is too late.
Maybe it is just not funny
Last week an image rolled across my Facebook feed that I have not, quite sadly, been able to get out of my head. It seemed to originate on the Austin Rhodes Show page and featured a large man in a not-nearly-opaque-enough body suit. We now know that the man in the picture, one Timothy Marcus, is a registered sex offender with a long history of pretty perverse acts on file. I have no problem with his name or photo (although I would have chosen to include modesty bar down around his equator) being shared with the public. It is important people understand and avoid any unsavory elements that might crop up in the community. What I found distressing was the tone and timbre of the response.
The thing with the Marcus case is, prior to knowing all the facts, we did know we were seeing one of two things. It was either someone in the middle of a real mental health crisis or someone unwilling to keep their deviant desires to themselves. Neither feel very funny.
And yet, the comments and commentary became a clearinghouse for every middle school junk joke ever uttered. Comments were made about size and shape. Vegetable comparisons were made. There were certainly more than a few comments made about Marcus’s weight and general attractiveness. Making fun of the accused became not only part of the discourse, but the discourse in and of itself.
Look, I am far from puritanical. I read the comments and, in truth, found a few quite clever. It was the piling on, however, that I found disturbing. Marcus was either going to be identified as a character to be pitied or reviled. Both are a bit of a bummer when searching for the punchline.
The fire still burns
I tend to freeze up when people ask me where I’m from. It’s a complicated equation. My family is from Seattle, but I’ve lived in Augusta most of my life. My childhood was spent in Texas, but my earliest memories are of a quiet cul-de-sac in Oregon. Where am I from? I can’t really say.
But I was born in California.
More precisely I was born in Pasadena, California and, shortly after my birth, taxied to the very first place I could call home – a modest apartment at the end of a road that backed up to the mountains in Altadena, California. And while I’ve always felt a connection to Los Angeles, a place where family and friends still reside, I’ve never really given that little apartment much thought. I certainly have no recollection of it. I’ve seen photographs only a few times. It was my first home but not my LA.
Until this week.
Looking at the fire maps, and the Eaton fire in particular, I realized that those Altadena neighborhoods, the ones that backed up to the mountains, are gone.
To be certain there has been a lot of living that has gone on in the years between my parents bringing me to that little apartment and today. I’ve lived a lot of places, met a lot of people, and established a lot of personal history – very little of it in California generally or Los Angeles specifically. But I do love that part of the world, and I do wonder what the version of me that stayed there might have looked like. I’ll never know, of course. That history is far too ancient and my time in Altadena might as well be a cave painting.
Except it is my cave painting. My first cave painting. Everything I know and everything I have become started there, in a place that is now ash – and that hurts far more than expected.
I’m not saying I understand what those people who lived in what was once my neighborhood are going through and I won’t pretend to. My heart and thoughts go out to them. They, after all, have been left with the sharp pain of sudden loss. My suffering is the dull ache of what might have been.
One day that monkey will be a star
I set up a small cinematic experiment this weekend. Without telling my wife what we were going to see, I took her and my son to a screening of “Better Man.” The film, for those unaware, is a standard rags-to-riches-to-rags-back-to-riches musical biopic – think “Walk the Line” or “Ray.” Only this film was about the British pop star Robbie Williams and Williams was portrayed as a computer-generated monkey.
Initially, I thought taking her might broach an interesting conversation about the conceptual nature of art. What does the monkey mean? Does this film work despite or because of the monkey? Does it fail despite or because of the monkey? That sort of thing.
Then I looked up its opening weekend receipts and discovered that whether it worked or not might be immaterial, because nobody had gone to see it. Not only were there crickets at the box office in North America, where Williams never really broke out as a star, but also in England, where he has enjoyed enormous success?
Is the monkey to blame? Perhaps. It is an awfully offbeat idea. But I also believe that in the long run, a run we rarely see anymore, it will also succeed – again, because of the monkey.
There are, on occasion, movies that while initially box office bombs, economically succeed over a number of years. “Blade Runner” did not do well when initially released. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” failed to recoup its very modest budget. “Dazed and Confused,” “Fight Club,” and “The Princess Bride” all appeared, initially, to be bombs. Some took years to find an audience. All of them did. My prediction – “Better Man,” a willfully weird and definitely dark piece of singalong cinema will join their ranks.