tony stark and mary poppins: the fun-v or the humdrum-v?

Well, they’re not books, but movies can be studied in much the same way.  

In this blog, I am going to draw completely unfounded connections between a 2008 comic book adaptation, Iron Man, and a 1964 Disney musical, Mary Poppins, solely because I saw the two within a day of each other.  (I’m not versed in film crit, but in lit crit, we could accept this connection as long as there’s the flimsiest floss to tie them together.) 

While Mary Poppins sets out to teach the daddy (the banker Mr. Banks) a lesson about valuing his children over his monetary ambitions, Tony Stark realizes he is the daddy who has been similarly valuing profit and his penetrating escapades with both his military missiles and his other missile and thus decides, like Mr. Banks, to fly kites instead, which for Tony means creating suits and defeating his dirty-dealing surrogate father. 

It must be said that I saw Iron Man over the weekend not because I am a comic book fan (much to the chagrin of every male friend it seems I’ve ever had), but because I am a Robert Downey, Jr. fan.  Few celebrities elicit such sexual energy from my being.  In fact, only three: Jack White (who sings “You look pretty in your fancy dress, but I detect unhappiness” to me and me alone), Barack Obama (who beams those teeth just for me and moves those hands just for me), and RDJ.  Okay, four: I’ve also got a dirty job for Mike Rowe. 

Robert Downey, Jr. gets me every time, the quintessential quasi-intellectual bad boy: in Less Than Zero, when I wanted to wipe his brow during his drug withdrawal, in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which left me incanting for weeks “Harold, use your awesome might to save me from this hopeless plight,” in Wonder Boys, when I wanted to be his James when he says “I feel this kid in my bones” and Grady so appropriately responds: “Only in your bones?”, and now in Iron Man as the nearly-admirable Tony Stark, which makes me think I really am Pepper Potts, after all, the only one who can’t have his sex.

The movie is admittedly not the best action flick ever.  The gang of boys with whom I attended the theatre seemed to be rather disappointed, in fact.  But they did not have the same voyeuristic pleasure as I did acting out fantasies of being not Iron Man but Mrs. Iron Man.  (But then maybe only Iron Woman, who in some sense I am, allowing suits to do the work for me.)

So I began wondering, in a spasm of unoriginal thought, what is the female equivalent of a superhero?  Although many little girls read comic books, I’m sure, the target audience has traditionally been male.  (And let's face it: Wonder Woman is just a man with boobs, long hair, and a killer costume.)  In Iron Man, in Spiderman, in Superman, and all the others, little boys see themselves: usually ordinary Joes with flaws who get to cope with the enormous responsibilities their powers bring.

Enter the rebellious nanny played by Julie Andrews.  With the maternal instinct to care and teach—but without the obligation to stay—Mary Poppins lives a floating life, literally floating in and out on her umbrella, not unlike the wild thing that was Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s only three years prior.  And then of course there is also the character Vianne, so beautifully played by Juliette Binoche in Chocolat, who also comes and goes with the wind after she has imparted her maternal wisdom on an early sixties French village. 

Not having seen Mary Poppins since I was a youngster, I was particularly struck by the spoonful of sugar-coated (pardon me) but unabashed political agenda of the film, which pushes for a rosy “female” sentiment, as Mr. Banks calls it, to take the place of uptight masculinity.  Repression, begone! it seems to shout, but in the same breath that it accuses the little suffragette wife of being a scatter-brained fool.  When the painting scene comes around, with the adorable Dick Van Dyke, I wonder if my literary training (which some call borderline pornographic) is to blame for my thinking, on this viewing, that Mary Poppins is just a big ole tease, flirting with Burt but always leaving him.  She is the butterfly, the Cara McFall of early 20^th century London.  Burt sings: “When Mary holds your hand, you feel so grand; Your heart starts beating like a big brass band.”  And Mary, although later she is visibly miffed when Burt begins to list positive attributes of other women, compliments him in turn on his never “pressing [his] advantage.”       

Iron Man's Tony Stark, on the other hand, is quite good at pressing his advantage.  Though Robert Downey Jr. lets us know Tony is grappling with his, for lack of a better word, morality, he still disposes of women, condones violence, and has the unforgiving financial prowess of a Mr. Banks.  Perhaps loosening Mr. Banks' tie was never the answer and the floating femininity solved naught.    

And so my question, I suppose, is this: male or female, does the fun-v always drive away?  Is part of being a hero always sacrificing hum-drum (but stable and loving) domesticity in order to roam the world slaying enemies, delivering chocolate, and caring for rich kids?  And why do the movies always have to make that look so fucking glamorous?  

heads, tails, and semesters

Forgive me, father; it has been thirteen days since my last confession. In those thirteen days, I have massacred. And worse still, I am proud of my work, of the death toll. I am a dictator, crazy with power. I have destroyed, I have undermined, I have selfishly indulged in childish fears, in adolescent rebellion. There were supposed to have been 76 heads on sticks, but three got away. I am a mad scientist, but without Frankenstein's output, without the sanity to attempt to reverse my mistakes. I am recklessly creating a new generation, if they will let me. I don't want them to be bitter, but I want to make them vulnerable, like me, to expose themselves, to feel every tender prick in the world.

This was my April curse. Well, the first of two parts: there was this terroristic madness, but it was coupled with an intense examination of said madness. The idiom goes: "April showers bring May flowers." And, for the House of Brown, every year since '74 has brought a stormy April. This month has seen members of my immediate family injured, robbed, killed, or otherwise devastated. I thus approach April with (and I think I'm not the only one in my clan) a sense of impending doom. You may call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I have hence been struck by the curse this year, not in the usual way--this April I was cursed with a sickening, despicable case of Nostalgia. So now, safely in May, I recount the symptoms of this disease.

I love about the academy what I loved about the theatre: the ephemeral nature of it. Each semester begins and ends, and thus leaves little tiny openings for the devil Nostalgia to run in and grab you by the throat. I could call him Reflection, or Reminiscence, and thus lend some significance and maturity to the process; I could refer to Michelet and Freud, who both thought that woman is the vessel for the repressed past, devoted to reminiscence. But both would be evasion. (Ironic how the most powerful language comes from a desire for clarity and a desire for concealment all at once. Words: demons, eaters of souls, sending us off in packs like innocent uniformed schoolboys about to discover responsibility. And girls.)

And so, at the end of this particular semester, perhaps my last at this particular university, I find myself crying: Goodbye, Suck City; I love you. There, I said it. As I start packing up books, I feel a responsibility to this city, this place, Bowling Green, Kentucky. I have been a horrible lover; I am like the mother who held a car above her crushed son for a full five minutes, just standing there--I saved myself, but only after standing there, for a full four years.

But this is my Ode to Home, what was to have been the purpose of this particular blog. How it has all changed. Here is where my coming into being is still coming, where college follows me like a puppy, and I am passing through beds, being resigned to an unremarkable life, feeling like cement churning sluggishly in a truck, remembering when I "hitched my wagon," walking by dormitories, standing in the stairwell in the light booth, watching Travis being followed by a photog, and all of you with your cigarettes--why did I never smoke?, I'm in the experiment on Center, I'm with the Mimosa girls, I'm wearing all the Halloween costumes, sitting at Froggy's when it was Baker Boys, glaring at Wayne when he hated my shoes, wanting the show to never be over, feeling my legs turning blue but there's still one more left, painting circles and watching Tim Burton, annoying Gretzsky on the ice, planning ahead at SATCO, at Cattie's, at Kessley's, dancing with Susan and Shea at State Street, holding 'meetings' at Spencer's, walking ominously up those cobwebby steps at Jason and Jeff's, receiving a naughty gift from Aimee, being "found out" by Missy, remembering that Louisville is one way and Nashville another, and here is the place in between.

To what extent, I wonder, have I lived "by the rules"? And what have I hoped to accomplish when I transgressed?

All this Nostalgia. Emerson says it's ok--it's my job as a scholar to Think. Michelet and Freud say it's ok--it's my job as a woman to Think. But then there's all of you-and-you-and-you out there, still alive, who call Reminiscence and Thinking "worrying" and "impractical." But I create, I know, you-and-you-and-you "in my own image"--and can there be any other way? We are all gods, some of us better than others, creating, multiplying, eating and breeding. It's disgusting. But perhaps by expelling here, I hope to purge that desire to colonize my students.