Tag: response

Merry Christmas to all!

I should be hastily packing for my trip to Ohio. Or eating breakfast. Or finishing up the last vestiges of work I need to do before I can declare myself on vacation. But instead, I find myself with a need to pay tribute to A Christmas Story.

Last night, one of my friends posted that he’d seen the film for the very first time, and hated it. Why? Because the parents didn’t talk to each other about their conflict surrounding the lamp. The kids did stupid things and made poor decisions. The bullies hurt people for fun. The staff at the Chinese restaurant acted like racist caricatures. He couldn’t quite fathom why people love this film so much.

I ended up writing a long comment defending the film. And then decided to turn it into a blog post. Much of what is here is from my original comment, with a few changes.

Many children do act idiotic. I don’t mean that in a nasty way. I mean they are still growing and developing and lack the cognitive skills to act like fully intelligent beings. Bill Cosby has a whole bit about how all children have brain damage. And kids giving each other stupid dares is pretty par for the course. Again, children have a different sense of safety, rationality, and fun than adults do. They’re not mini-adults.

Bullies do hurt other people for fun, sometimes. And when I watch Scott Farkas on screen as an adult, I think about how now, I see him as hardly intimidating at all. But you can see why Ralphie is scared. And I am reminded of how when I was a child, bullies were, in fact, terrifying. Because I was a child, and didn’t see things the way adults did.

The husband and wife have issues with communication, sure. But this was set in the 1950s, filmed in the 1980s, and in 2014? Couples still have communication problems. Sadly enough, that kind of dysfunction is encouraged. I can’t go a week without seeing a magazine headline in a women’s magazine encouraging passive-aggressive manipulation rather than open communication.

People love this film because it rings true. It’s funny, but it stings, because it contains realities of experience for so many.

Because it’s about a time in childhood when you’re starting to really learn that things can be tough and that life isn’t always fair. There are moments of sentimentality, to be sure, but it’s also unsentimental in that it shows that childhood can at time be upsetting, frustrating, and even scary.

Because it’s a film about people who are terribly flawed still loving each other and doing the best they can. Ralphie’s dad is a curmudgeon, but still wants his kids to be happy. The parents have communication issues, but still do love each other. People all over the world have flaws small and large, but still care for family and friends in spite of those foibles. And they recognize their equally-flawed loved ones are doing the best they can, as well.

And if you are not religious, that’s a pretty good lesson to keep in mind on Christmas Day. That we make lots of mistakes and generally muddle through, but still love each other and try to do right by our loved ones.

As for the racist caricatures? I blame Hollywood for letting that one through.

Last night, the above joke appeared on my Google+ stream. At one point, a woman made a comment about how the “how can u” people didn’t do “any meaningful work.” Since I had insomnia anyway, I pointed out the classist assumptions in her statement. Education (both grammatical and sexual) and employment  are both associated with poverty level. To automatically assume that the “how can u” group doesn’t do any “meaningful” work is highly problematic. Working two part-time service jobs to make ends meet is certainly not what many people would call “meaningful,” but it doesn’t give us the right to call lower-class people lazy and make fun of them.

This woman and I tussled for a bit, and ultimately, she gave me the “it was just a joke” line. She told me that this joke, and discussions of poverty and education, were two different issues.

Words matter. I know this. Words matter because they are the building blocks of human communication. They are how we transmit ideas. The are how we teach. When we think, we think in the language we know. Words are one tool we have for developing our worldviews. It’s almost scary how much power they have.

Words always have meaning. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a joke. It doesn’t matter if you’re being serious. Words still always mean things, and those meanings cannot always be erased in context.

But words also are not always overt. In the picture at the top of the page, the punchline is that “Grammar Matters.” Now, I love good grammar. I love good punctuation so much that I have a tattoo of a semicolon on my wrist. I do believe that grammar matters.

However, this image isn’t just saying that grammar is important. The words don’t just literally mean that. They are also implying that if you don’t have good grammar, you’re the kind of person who gets STDs and doesn’t do anything meaningful to improve the world.

As I mentioned above, poverty can have a huge impact on education and employment. I signed a bunch of confidentiality agreements at my day job, but I can tell you that I spend 40 hours a week seeing the disparity of education levels between wealthy and poor communities. There is a huge gap between Dallas and Brownsville. Houston is so big and diverse that there are huge gaps within the city itself. Depending on where you are in Texas (in the USA, in the world), you may or may not be learning to write. You may or may not be learning about safe sex. You may or may not be learning basic concepts in math and science. You may or may not even finish high school.

The image above makes fun of the huge disadvantages that economically disadvantaged people face on a daily basis. On the surface, the words are saying, “Ha ha, let’s make fun of all the stupid people who don’t know how herpes is transmitted.” (Let’s not even touch on the fact that you can come from an economically wealthy community and be taught, in public school, that abstinence and religion is the only option you have available and doesn’t actually educate you.) But what it implies is that if you have not had the advantages of a good education, if you are poor and struggling to make end’s meet, if you don’t have energy after working 60 hours a week to fight global warming, or any spare money to invest in stocks, then you are less of a person. It implies that if you haven’t had the advantages of a middle- or upper-class person, you don’t measure up.

I don’t see this image and discussions of poverty and education as separate issues. The reason this image exists is because these disparities exist, and somebody thought it was funny to mock them. This is funny because there is class inequality in this country, and some people like to try capitalizing on that for their own amusement.

This image is not “just a joke.” It is a reflection of the way we view and judge the undereducated in the United States. And I, for one, am uncomfortable with laughing at those who haven’t had all the privileges I had growing up.

I believe that language has the power to change the world. One of the ways it can do that if if we stop using it as a tool to mock others who are undeserving of our scorn. Thing before you speak. And when you do, don’t just think about what your words say on the surface. Think about what they suggest. Think about what they imply. Think about what you might be really saying.

Last week, I came upon Becky Tuch’s “On Quitting Writing,” which is actually a series of statements by authors and editors about why they don’t quit writing, or why they came back after a long hiatus. Which, of course, got me thinking about what keeps me going, especially because my focus is on poetry, and there isn’t even lousy pay in that — there’s no pay (okay, there’s a little pay once in a while, but not really). I don’t have the hope of an increasingly-elusive six-figure advance to keep me going when times get tough.

So what is it that drives me when I’ve gotten way too many rejection letters in a given week? Or when a journal sends me two rejection letters because for some reason their system didn’t think the first rejection went through? What brought me back to poetry when I hadn’t given it any substantial attention in roughly six years?

All I know is that when I was twelve, during spring break in sixth grade, I decided that I was going to write poetry. I had never written a poem before (outside of creative writing exercises in school). But I was going to learn.

All I know is that during the six years I wasn’t writing poetry, I was still compelled to try every once in a while.

All I know is that now, if I go a day without writing even the roughest draft of a poem, I feel twitchy and restless, and as though the entire day has been a waste.

All I know is that I love words. I think I love words more than I love avocados and semicolons. And if you know me, you know that’s a pretty big deal.

All I know is that, at the end of the day, even if no editor takes a particular poem, at least I can say I’ve created something I love.

That’s all writing is about, really. Making something you believe in. Something that gives you meaning. I want people to read and enjoy my poems, but really, all I need is a space to play with words and make something outside the constraints of my day job. Outside the constraints of what other people want from me.