Admittedly, my ardor for Will Ferrell has cooled considerably since “Anchorman;” I didn’t see his last few movies because they looked pretty bad. But Emma Thompson as writer Kay Eiffel and Queen Latifa as assistant Penny Escher were in this so I thought to give it a try (I hate to admit it, but I watched “Last Holiday” and felt it was a nice feel-good candy movie!).

The premise of the movie is Harold Crick, a very methodical and uninspired IRS agent working in Chicago. His life is orderly but lonely, and one day begins to hear someone with a British accent narrating his life. It spooks him  but what frightens him the most is when the body-less narrator says, “Little did he know that events had been sent in motion that would lead to his imminent death…” This of course, sets his life in a new direction.

Dustin Hoffman plays a literature professor who helps him discover this mystery narrator. He did a great job in this, and had a great line: “I’m teaching five classes this term, advising two doctoral students, and I’m the faculty lifeguard.” For some reason, the idea of volunteering for lifeguard duties as a professor is reason enough for me to want to be a professor. So I can do non-professor things.

Both he and Emma Thompson fufilled their roles as, respectively, semi-crazy literature professor and crazy recluse writer. They entertained a lot of strange idiosyncracies, like drinking a lot of coffee or detesting umbrellas. One moment I’ve kept in mind is the sight of Emma talking to Harold, while nervously clutching a tissue that’s been twisted into a thin, uneven cone. It’s a touching visual although I wonder if as a viewer I’m supposed to be noticing these types of things.

Maggie Gyllenhaal also appears as an anarchist baker. I liked her fake tattoo - although it seemed they were trying too hard to convey a sort of wild, rule-breaking woman - but I did not like her relationship to Harold all that much. It was very conventional in a movie that was trying to be willfully unconventional; a beautiful young girl with an older, funny-looking man is a familiar trope. To this same effort, some scenes are strained, particularly of those with Harold shouting into the air to his invisible narrator.

I was also hoping for more meta in this movie. The ending alluded to some in a clever way that enhanced its predictability, but I wanted to see this kind of device used throughout the rest of the movie. This is not to say that “Stranger than Fiction” is a bad movie and should be avoided. Overall it is a pleasant movie to watch with few slow moments that make me question whether directors even bother with trying to edit out pleasing but tedious scenes. Hello, you could put those in the DVD extras and have an even tighter, better film! The soundtracks is also pretty good.

Read this book a while ago in anticipation of the movie. Although it presents an interesting future - the entire world has gone infertile! - both the book and the movie have misogynistic undertones. While the book refers to the infertility of both men and women, the movie appears to just imply that women are infertile. This justifies a post-apocalyptic, desperate kind of setting.

In this world, James hints at a Cold War-like era, with lots of espionage, secret scientists labs, and rivalry between countries. Power this time comes in the form of the answer to infertility, as opposed to creating the most destructive atom bombs. Spies? Cool, but then we never hear about it again.

There were so many political, gender, racial, and environmental issues that James could have explored but didn’t. Why did people become infertile? Pollution? Nuclear waste? Mountain Dew?

The main character is Theo, a fifty year-old Oxford historian whose cousin Xan has declared himself dictator of England. Xan also wears the ring of England, which confers ultimate power…Frodo?

Xan is a rather one-note character here. They used to play together so Theo theoretically has a lot of pull, considering this and his background in history. He draws a few interesting parallels dealing with power, euthanasia, and the criminal justice system but aside from talking about it, doesn’t care to urge his cousin along a straighter path.

Theo is a sort of sad sack character here. Incredibly bland and blase about everything. HISTORY MAJORS, DO NOT BE AS USELESS AS THIS FELLOW PLEASE. The book’s point of view alternates between Theo’s weirdly detailed diary and some mysterious third person narrator in the first half of the book. The last half of the book just falls into a third person narrative. If I ever wrote fiction like this I know my professor would not hestitate to come over and bean me on the head.

In the book, people from other countries - by others I mean “dark-skinned” - and set to work hard until they turn sixty, at which case they are sent back. No rights, no nothing. This would be a great opportunity to explore this turn of life - which the movie looks to touch upon - but other than mentioning it as motivation for some subversive groups, there’s really nothing.

The book itself was disappointing, in the writing and the buildup, for such a fascinating story. I’m going to recap it anyway.

Spoilers ahead.

The Setup
Since no one can have babies, the youngest generation - or Omegas - is revered and pampered. This leads to a lot of moral degredation, as bands of Omegas like to attack lone travellers and “sacrifice” one person per attack. Homicidal tendencies aside, Omegas are also pretty bratty.
People also become strangely insane; women go nutty fawning over elaborately cared for dolls, cats, or dogs. I’m sorry, I mean even nuttier than some people now. Or perhaps just a larger percentage of people become nutty. Animal birthdays are treated like the birthdays of children, animals are baptized just like babies, etc etc.

People also lose interest in sex, so there are state-run pornography shop to encourage people to keep having sex in the hopes of conception. Um…what about the gays? James speaks little to that, since they’ve never had sex to procreate anyway, apparently.

Of course, eugenics and euthanasia come back into play. Twice a year people are sent for mandatory fertility testing. Anyone who has a mental handicap, was born with slight deformations of the body, or are over fifty are exempt. Additionally, since the number of elderly people increases this means that they need more assistance in daily living. Xan decrees the Quietus movement, which is voluntary euthanasia, or suicide if you will. No one is really for it until he begins to offer benefits, like giving loads of money to surviving family members. Needless to say, Quietuses become really popular.

In the book, Theo meets up with a group of rogues and falls in love with Julian, a spacey-type of woman. Julian is actually pregnant, too. Unfortunately not by her arrogant husband - who is low class but has lofty and ill-intentioned aspirations - but rather her priest-friend. After a sad attempt at revolution, they all need to go on the run, taking Theo with them. Being on the lam takes up the second half of this book. Blah blah blah.

Between the Book and the Movie
There are a lot of differences. Clive Owen being one of them, mainly. Also it seems that Julian disappears and that his ex-wife comes back instead, as a member of a subversive group. Additionally, there is a definite goal as opposed to being on the lam, goal being taking a pregnant black woman(!) to the shore where a project out to save humanity lies.

It does seem exciting to watch, though, as Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter!) directs and the soundtrack is Sigur Ros (Sigur Ros!). View the trailer.

Ending of the book (highlight below)


Quietuses aren’t really voluntary! Old people are drugged, placed on a rickety barge, taken far out to sea, and sunk! Woooooot.

At any rate, everyone in the group is killed - captured, tried to become a traitor but was killed, killed by Omegas - save for Julian, Theo, and Miriam, a midwife whose down-to-earth personality I really liked. They end up at the old, abandoned estate of Xan’s father, where Theo and Xan used to play. Julian has the baby in the woodshed and Miriam goes to the mansion to find food and water. Miriam doesn’t come back so Theo goes to look for her. She’s been garroted (ouch). It turns out Xan is right on their heels.

A showdown between Xan and Theo. Xan knows Julian is pregnant but he doesn’t know she’s had the baby (a boy). Theo has an old revolver with one bullet left, plus he’s out of shape and bad at shooting. Good odds. Xan shoots, but is simultaneously distracted at the rare sound of a baby’s cry. Theo takes the moment to shoot him in the heart. The rest of the government swoops in after, ready to imprison Theo, but Theo puts on that good old ring of power, er, England.

So now he’s safe with the government, having killed his cousin. The baby and Julian too. For the moment.

Nothing but the Truth is one of those novels aimed toward young women at the cusp of their coming of age, with a twist; it’s for young Asian American women at the cust of their coming of age! More specifically I suppose, hapa (mixed race) women.

Summary:
Patty Ho is basically a gangly outcast who happens to be good at math. For the summer after her freshmen, instead of heading to the Seattle beaches to ogle white boys with her white friends. As expected, Patty’s mother is one of those shrill, “aiiyaaaa!!,” overbearing Taiwanese/Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc mothers you’d find at Margaret Cho’s house. Or yours. Patty commiserates over her mother’s overprotective and strange herbal concoctions while feeling envious at her old brother, who is about to enter Harvard and looks more Taiwanese than hapa, like her.

Patty’s resentment at herself and her life is compounded by the absence of her white father - who seems to have run away by her mother’s craziness - being bullied by dumb white guys at school, and potluck dinners comprised of several Taiwanese families that meet regularly to show of their children and gossip visciously about others.

Patty goes off to math camp at Stanford, falls in love with an Asian American boy(!), meets all sorts of characters that challenge her notions of what it means to be Asian American - hunky Asian guy, empowered Asian female, nerdy Asian girl who is seething with sexual so-and-so underneath, blah blah blah - and finally learns to embrace herself, her mixed heritage, and consequently her mother.

My thoughts:
After an abortive attempt to write lurid fiction to make money on the side, I am well aware of the genre called “chick-lit.” My problem with this book is that it sells itself as such with an ethnic twist. However, Chen Headley’s desires to appeal to a wide audience while remaining loyal to Asian Americans often collides in moments that create an awkward flow.

Conceptually, I enjoyed this book as an attempt into ethnic chick-lit. But since chick-lit itself is often problematic, a second reading of this book makes it less desirable. As typical of chick-lit, inane descriptions/formulas (”brains + brawn = lots of yummy”) and self-empowering labels like “hip hop happening hapa mama” run amok, making it a little embarassing to read. Additionally, I found that Patty’s path of self-empowerment is made at the expense of others, a strategy already familiar to those in power. Huh.

Still Chen Headley is determined to make a niche for Asian Americans in chick lit. When confronted by her mother - who has traveled cross state lines to check on her daughter - about her budding relationship with a Chinese guy, Patty begins explaining the history and politics between China and Taiwan. Out of place for chick-lit but nice info for those not in the know.

When I read about Patty’s relationship with her mother, I instantly think “Amy Tan for Teens!” Like the mother figures in Tan’s works, I find them repetitve: shrill and inscrutible to the daughter until some big catharsis reveals that shrillness = caring and inscrutability = wise secrets you are still too stupid to understand. Likewise, Patty seems to have found a permanent peace at the end treating her mother’s antics with a fondness and patience found typically in long-distance relationships, not in teen girls still living at home with their parents.

Patty also mixes her metaphors and occasionally calls up outdated terminology for painful Pan-Asian palaver:
- “…my life ig going to be filled with even more disaster than it is now with this Mount Fuji-sized pimple on my chin…(p 2)”
- “I emerge from my Great Wall of Chinese Silence…(p 132)”
- “I notice that Katie looks deflated, a cream puff without her fluff. Hi-yah, White Girl! The Kung Fu Queen is back in town (p 174)”
- “And weirdly, I miss Anne, my Asian Mafia gal pal who I’ll take over any China Doll (p2 11)”
- “Now that I have my own samurai guy, I wish Stu were anywhere but here, listening to this…(p. 154)”
- “Pots clatter and clash; Mama’s Wok-and-Roll Band. (p 23)”
- “My stomach quakes a little, but I lift my eyes to Steve, glaring at him with my best Dragon Woman stare. (p 226)”
- “…Jasmine karate chops her with a comment of transparent dislike…(p 93)”
- “That’s not how Kung-Fu Queens treat their Asian Mafia soul sisters (p 177).”

Has anyone read Shawn Wong’s American Knees? Did anyone notice that even though there were Asian/Asian relationships, this rare pair was mollified by their unusual beauty? Sure. Asian American woman can go out with Asian American guy, but AA guy happens to be tall with Western-features? Similarly, Patty only finds Asian guys hunky when they are tall and distanced as far away from looking “too Asian” as possible. And when Patty’s only Asian love interest proves to be a bastard fuck-face, the lack of interest in any of the numerous Asian boys at math camp suggest she goes back to her old preferences. That, and her flirting with white guys only in the end.

Self-loathing and self-validation through the invalidation of others run rampant in this book even after Patty becomes confident in being hapa.
1. Validation of being hapa at the expense of being not-hapa:
a. When Patty’s empowered feminist 100% Chinese roommate sighs at Patty’s having eyelids available for crazy empowered feminist eyeshadow.
b. Although Patty is reminded that being good at math and being Asian doesn’t necessarily purposefully fulfil certain stereotypes, this validation is by her white TA, which she instantly accepts.
c. Initial jealousy of the “China Doll Club” or “all-Asian” girls who also attend the potlucks turns into triumphant loathing of their being all-Asian. Although in the end Patty understands that being of Asian heritage doesn’t mean she has to suscribe to stereotypes about Asians projected by others, she ironically still uses this same type of judgment on others even after her self-discovery.
2. Self loathing of skinny tall body, physical traits that are desirable by today’s standards.
Aforementioned skinny tall body is referred to several times throughout book. A typical device in chick-lit, where the main character’s desirable physical traits are repeated for the benefit of the reader; by this we are told she is desirable physically, yet she herself doesn’t know about this goody surprise, so not all is lost.
3. Validation of being hapa at the expense of white archnemesis, who happens to be too rich, too white, and too rich.
Did I mention rich? With pattern behaviors of a racist from the sixties? This girl was just too one-dimensional. We get it. Stupid white woman.

While this is not a horrible book, Nothing but the Truth reveals the troubling framework behind chick-lit and what many would consider empowering identity politics. I saw a lot of it in school and wasn’t pleased; unity through asserting superiority over others? No thank you. It didn’t last for the colonialists and it won’t work for anyone else.

Chen Headley makes a valiant attempt to appeal to teens, to hapa kids (she dedicates this book to her own children), and to young women. Unfortunately she chose the wrong genre and the wrong way for Patty to embrace her hapa self.

Not a fan of the first two; I felt they had a weak storyline, was boring, didn’t speak out to me. Greenway’s childhood in Hong Kong gave the background of the story a certain authenticité, but her characters were rather unbelievable by their actions without grounds. The last half of the book fell flat as well, making Hong Kong out to be just another exotic local a necessity to keep one’s attention.

Fake Liar Cheat disappointed me because I loved Goldberg’s Comeback Special; it had vibrant, believable characters and a hilarious but tender tone of an Everyman who happens to have a ubiquitous velvet portrait of Elvis, only bleeding to match a religious artefact. Fake Liar Cheat made me believe that he is better off with short stories at the moment. The only character I loved was Charlie, a minor guy. Fake Liar Cheat had the feeling of a quickie trendy novel of the early 00’s that is full of Fight Club-esque action without meaningful goodness. I’ll have to post the Comeback Special here sometime soon.

I definitely recommend reading Covering. I’ve read a few memoir/scholarly books lately and have not been too impressed by the level of synthesis overall. I believe that memoirs are easy to write but difficult to write well. The flood of memoirs/life rants into the market have really turned me away from reading lately.

However, I think Yoshino does an admirable job of employing this method; the few autobiographical stories he uses are pithy yet empathetic, personal yet universally relevant to his topic of covering.

Yoshino moves away from the issue of civil rights as a central focus because he feels there are already enough laws and bills on protecting the one’s race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. However, he points out the crucial lack of laws protecting the behavior consequent to identity. Being told to act less gay, Asian, motherly, etc; everyone, even white heterosexual males are told sometime to tone down a part of them that is perceived to clash with a non-existent mainstream. A modern-day version of brute assimilation into the “melting pot.”

Yoshino’s stories mainly focus on his gay identity, but what I like so much about about his writing is that he is able slide neatly into discussing scholarly issues with relevance and vice versa. His concepts really appeal to me and other embittered by cyclic, futile student/community activism (which may only be localized to my old campus.)

PS: Does anyone have access to law journal archives? I’m interested in reading Jean Shin’s “The Asian American Closet.” 11 Asian L.J. 1-29 (2004).