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[proximoception]

Anomalisa



Michael Stone: hardened, severe (b/c archangel Michael?)

He's not impolite, as he's a customer service expert. But everyone gathers that he is being polite, hence is not reaching out, and feels judged - defensive, uneasy, wanting to win him over. He's a middle aged white male in a shirt with buttons who goes to nice-ish hotels so seems important, is apparently considered handsome, is British so considered smart. He doesn't notice the asthma sign, has no patience for figuring out the unfamiliarly narrow hot-to-cold range of his shower, misses the tone in which "toy store" is said, gets his child the absurdly inappropriate toy just because it had caught his own eye etc. He does not read books/people with a dictionary by his side despite admiring this, basically. Lisa does not start with his advantages so has more reason to accept what comes her way - she feels she doesn't "pass" whatever standards might be applied so doesn't dare apply any of her own, even if she still grasps what's motivating other people. How she speaks of her previous boyfriend, for example, or how she gently prods Stone to slow down during oral sex (more hot vs. cold impatience, though he's at least able to listen to her - part of how she's anomalous). How she gets him, in the end, with the help of a dictionary. Is herself able to keep things new by continually retranslating (the Brightman) and exactly replaying others' words and tones (the Lauper) - looking at sources more closely or from other angles, rather than moving on when her reactions to them stale.

But he's in cursed-level pain and doesn't seem to quite know why, and is at least trying not to be rude in his pursuit of the goddess, even if he ends up rude anyway given his unmissable impatience. Lisa, whose ability to see her friend (while driving "in the sun") and enjoy herself despite setbacks makes her luckier than him, teaches us to not judge him. He has all the information, given what he says in his lecture, and has sought help - the Zoloft. We see what it's like to be him, and he does seem to grasp in his moment with the mirror that there may be nothing amazing behind his own face. Even in the egg moment he's trying. What would make him try harder? Get him more than 90 percent of the way between selfishness and liking people? Better habits, probably, but with habits you need to be able to start and keep starting for a while. They need inspiration, moments of anomaly. Presumably there's a lot of confession/self-castigation involved here, as is usual for this writer, but probably also some self-pity and self-forgiveness, as may be also. A movement from "here is my horrible story" to "my horrible story is my fault" to "but my faults may not be my fault."

And pretty much all this is present in The Birthmark, which does explicitly make Aylmer's story compatible with Hawthorne's own up to a point. Hawthorne wasn't married when he went Wakefield, so we're probably to take Mrs. Wakefield and Faith with the pink ribbons as types of the eternal feminine, hence, since "man is a Woman," humankind. Don't know if he meant to, but Kaufmann's clarified that Hawthorne is in the Michelangelo/Goethe/Ibsen/Joyce tradition that he himself is. Probably because of Shelley? And Spenser, if we take his many flawed knights as castoffs from himself, which seems about right. I wonder if Hawthorne learned from Spenser how to be married.

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[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen this but of course now I want to.