Neil Labute's Work Really Bothers Me!

Last night, I was home, feeling slightly dyspeptic, and decided to take advantage of the fact that I pay Netfilx every month.  After getting caught in the maze of "Top Ten for James," which I always seem to drop into when I log onto the sight (my partner swears that I'm very easily distracted by bright, shiny things), I got down to business and took a look at my "Instant Queue."

Now, I'm not a frequent Netfilx user, and I'm relatively new to the service.  I found that several of the films I had in my list of films I want to see, someday, were scheduled to drop off that list, at specific dates, very near in the future.  That, of course, led me to feel a sense of failure.  I mean, I was about to miss deadlines, which I simply do not allow myself to do!!!!

I then scanned those films which are about to drop off my list (within the next three weeks!!!!), and decided that I would spend my Saturday night with "The Shape of Things."  Now, I admit that I chose that film, knowing full well that Neil Labute's work generally makes me uncomfortable.  I mean the titles, "In the Company of Men," "Fat Pig," "The Shape of Things," are slightly sexual to me, and the thought of his oddly arch style of writing is discomfiting for me.  I do not feel comfortable with self-consciously ironic dialog, for the most part.  I like to stick to interactions in which people are generally "nice" to one another, and then periodically move into conflict, and then move out of it.

Don't get me wrong.  I understand very clearly that our lives and our personal realities force us to recognize those with whom we engage for who they are.  I understand that to survive, I have to choose my intimates very carefully, and I know well what it feels like to cut people out of my life, as if they were cancers, invading my sense of self and threatening to obliterate me.  For those of you who have never experienced that reality, for those of you who live your lives with the same people in your life from childhood to death, I do not understand you and I do not judge you.  I ask that you accept me in the same manner.  My ability to "move on" in my relationships is "healthy" for me, and not a subject on which I want to dwell here.

Yes, I understand Mr. Labute's worlds, where people spend time with one another, and then because of horribly destructive acts of meanness and cruelty, those people no longer spend time with one another as true enemies.  I also understand Mr. Labute's sense that relationships are kinds of experiments, in which we work through problems and through which we learn about ourselves and form ourselves over time.

I just cannot get through the surface intellectualism of Mr. Labute's dialog.  His characters always seem to speak "at" one another, rather than "to" one another.  Mr. Labute's dialog always seems to me to depend on a very good actor's putting it across.  I will admit that I have never read any of Mr. Labute's work, but every time I see one of his plays, in a theater, or on the screen (and in my estimation, Mr. Labute's films are always more "filmed plays" rather than "films"), I am made excruciatingly uncomfortable by the interchanges between his characters, which I am forced to experience.  I am not easily embarrassed, but I am discomfited by Mr. Labute's interactions between his characters.  For me, it seems that his characters are constantly sneering at one another, and I just find that a toxic way of interacting with one another.

Having recently been forced to drop a very important person in my life, absolutely due to the fact that her special talent is in being able to cut swiftly and deeply with her words, showing one how little she values one, even as one is performing some service for her; I am still sensitive to situations which recall my interaction with that woman.  I loved her dearly, and cutting her out of my life was an extremely difficult thing for me to do; but I had to move away from her meanness and expectations, her sense of entitlement, and her overly inflated sense of self-importance.  I also remember the delightful adventures we shared over the years.  I miss her, just as I miss all the people, from whom I have been forced to remove myself over the years.

I appreciate that Mr. Labute explores the way that we are all manipulating one another, each of using the other towards our own ends.  It is very much my experience, that we all are constantly using one another in exactly those ways.  I honor and respect that we humans seem to need to work our way this life, through our relationships with other humans.  I just wish Mr. Labute's plays showed me more of what motivates his characters to hurt one another so deeply.  I wish I understood his characters motives better.  I wish Mr. Labute was able to show us, humans, to be slightly more altruistic than we are in reality.  Mr. Labute's mirrors, which I think his plays truly are, tell truths about most of us humans that deflate my hopes for the human race.  I need to see a good production of "Cyrano" after having toiled my way through a piece by Mr. Labute.  Mr. Labute is a moralist at heart, but his parables never seem to have happy endings, for anyone involved in his dramas.  I need to see that humans are capable of kindness and willing to care for one another, even if I do not believe it to be the case.  In the end, I think we are not all as narcissistic as Mr. Labute would tell us we are.  Still, Mr. Labute does tell us truths about ourselves, which no matter how discomfiting, we should hear.  Mr. Labute writes the truth about how horribly we damage one another, for the sake of future generations, for the sake of our species.  For that, he deserves my praise.

Oddly, the scenes in "The Shape of Things" to which I can relate, and which I find engaging, are the revelation and final confrontation scenes which occur at the very end of the film.  That's the way it seems to work for me with Mr. LaBute's work.  For me, I would prefer a brief synopsis of the events leading up to the final scenes of his plays, with much more character motivation explained, and then I would like to see those final scenes.  I really do not want to spend much time with Mr. Labute's characters, I think.  In the end, Mr. Labute creates characters, which, up to now, I find repugnant.  I just don't like any of them, really.  I find large numbers of of Mr. Labute's characters personalities brought to life by the people with whom I am forced to interact.  I guess I just find Mr. Labute's plays much too lifelike than I want to experience in the theater.  I will probably continue to follow his work closely, uncomfortably, precisely because Mr. Labute mirrrors so much of my life so accurately.  Neil Labute's work really bothers me!

The fair is in Pomona!

I ended a very short-lived relationship with a guy I really thought was "the one" back last March 31.  I've been working to move through the pain and disappointment since then.  The day before I ended our relationship, "the guy" had hung up on me as I was sharing with him that I was ill.  Turns out he was probably the person who made me ill, even; but he thought he was so far superior to me, that he could just dismiss me at his will.  He had been pulling similar stunts for the previous three months, and that was the final straw.  I gave him twenty-four hours, and then fired off an Email, letting him know that his behavior was simply not acceptable.

Since then, he's managed to manipulate the situation, making himself out to be the injured party.  He's never said "I'm sorry," once; and I really feel as if I not only got a raw deal while I was with him, but I also feel as if he's being encouraged in his continued abuse of me by just about everyone and everything.

I am really fed up with how unfair we humans are with one another.  I'd really like to experience a guilty party being held accountable for the damage he caused, just once.  It is just not right that the jerks and perpetrators manage to get away with doing great harm, and those harmed seem never to get any kind of "justice."

What are your thoughts?

So, anyone heard the Joni Mitchell "Both Sides Now" disk from 2000?

I've owned this CD for years, and I liked it a lot; but having recently gone through a really disheartening break-up with a guy I really thought was "the one," I listened to the disk again, and I'm hooked.

When she sings "I've been around, I'm an old hand, I'll understand if you have to go," and then the orchestra swells one just has to be moved.  One really wants to say "Don't go to strangers, lover come to me," when she sings it for us, even when one knows that to have a former lover as a confidant must be the most exquisite masochism that any human has ever dreamt.

I guess what I'm saying is this lady, just as she was back when I was a kid, listening to "Blue" and crying alone when JV (I will never reveal more than his initials) wouldn't even show me the time of day, is a great blues singer.  This lady is the real thing.  This lady has chops as real and honest as any of the great lady singers of the past sixty years.

The two Joni standards "A Case of You" and "Both Sides Now" are wonderful, especially her "crone's" take on  the lyrics in "Both Sides," but she's equally wonderful in "Don't Worry 'Bout Me."  As a matter of fact, she may be best in the torch songs from the 30's she's chosen to record here.

Too bad we didn't get a few more of these disks from Joni over the previous decade.  The voice is a mess, and that's good for some reason.  This is a woman singing about having lived and loved, and Joni's lived apparently.

Joni, come play Washington, with a big band.  I'll pay to come see you, and thanks for giving me another set that allows me to cry my heart out, because I really needed that over the past few weeks.  In fact we all need to that sometimes.  I mean, we do live most of the time with much less than charitable fellow men these days, its seems to me.

Life's hard and then we die, but this disk makes one remember that every once in a while we can enjoy one another, even as we know we're going to hurt one another, eventually.  Thanks for painting that picture Joni.  Thanks for this lovely, sometimes lush, bittersweet set.  Thanks for having given us so much for so long.