http://noircity.com/

Today marks the start of the twelfth annual “Noir City,” a ten-day exhibition of my all-time favorite movie genre, film noir. The festival (which I affectionately call “NoirFest,”) is held at the amazing old-time movie palace in San Francisco, The Castro Theatre. If you’ve never seen the inside of this place, it’s worth a visit even if you don’t stop to watch a film. (Yes, in case you’re wondering, it does actually have a piano that comes up through the floor.) Parking is scarce, as you might imagine, but it’s only a twenty-minute walk from BART – up a very steep hill. I have yet to watch a movie at The Castro without being drenched in sweat. I’m not sure whether that makes the experience better or worse. Maybe it depends on the genre. 

The festival is great fun, but perhaps not always quite what you would expect. Film noir being what it is, you might think the audience would be serious, perhaps even a little glum as they ruminate over the crimes of bitter men and the misdeeds of the unconscionable women they love. Not so. Laughter abounds when the dialogue is particularly witty, clever, or racy. Applause breaks out when actors and actresses barely remembered today appear on-screen. Audience members may stand when Film Noir Foundation’s founder and president Eddie Muller is introduced. He deserves the ovation. This man has been personally responsible for leading the charge in the cause to save film noir from extinction, and with an astonishing amount of success. I wonder if he knew, when he conceived this project, how many of us there were out there, just waiting for someone to come along and give us what we’ve always wanted – a chance to experience the movies we love from a generation gone long before us.

What has continually amazed me is that in every year before this one they’ve managed to find a special guest from the era to make a personal appearance. What a thrill it must have been for these little old ladies, most of whom were B-film stars seven decades ago, to find themselves once again on stage, the recipients of undying admiration and affection from a throng of enthusiastic admirers! I see that this year, however, there’s to be no special guest at the Saturday night premiere. This makes me very sad. Film noir may live on, but the men and women of noir do not… 

The focus this year is on foreign noir. Purists will tell you that noir is an American genre, which, for a host of reasons I won’t get into here, is arguably true. However, there’s no doubt that the dark perspective and jaded worldview that characterize film noir proper also appear in other movies made around the world at the time. Indeed, this makes a great deal of sense; since noir was born in the World War II era, and, in my mind, was in many ways linked to the mood engendered by the war, one would expect its themes to permeate international cinema as well. I’m actually looking forward to comparing some of their creations to some of ours.

Noir City runs from January 24^th through February 2^nd. Hope to see you there!

It’s the first of January again, and all over the world, people are making personal resolutions for 2014. Amazing what a date can do, isn’t it? Millions of humans scattered around the globe, all simultaneously attempting to better their lives by altering their own behavior in positive ways. For many, a new year offers an incentive, a reason to push towards self-improvement or greater satisfaction with one’s life and one’s being. And what better day to feel as if you’re starting over than New Year’s Day? It’s a day of reflection on the year gone by and on the year yet to come. It’s a day in which to consider whether we’re moving towards the goals we’ve set for ourselves, or whether we need to change the paths we’re on in order to come closer to achieving them. And the making of resolutions is perhaps the vital final step of this process, because there’s little point in evaluating the state of our lives if we don’t then utilize our conclusions to bring us one step closer to happiness.

The trouble with the New Year’s resolution is that, by its very nature, it doesn’t take effect until after the end of the current year. And in a backhanded way, this encourages us to wait to act upon our resolve. We don’t exercise in December because we’ve decided to get in shape after the holidays. We don’t quit smoking in October because, without the motivation of the New Year’s resolution, we’re afraid we’ll fail. We don’t start tucking money away in August for that dream vacation we’ve always wanted to take, because there’s school clothes shopping to do, and then the holidays are coming up, and once again, we’ve postponed that project to another year.

And then what happens when we, as we inevitably must, fail to keep some of those resolutions we made in so much earnest? We wait again. We try again – the following year. How much of our lives are wasted waiting for this imaginary turning point to roll around so that we can make those changes we believe are so vital to our well-being and sense of fulfillment?

This is the core of the problem with marking time in our lives by special occasions – it causes us to neglect all of the everyday occasions that would have served us equally as well in helping us to attain our goals. Maybe your sweetheart expects you to bring her flowers on Valentine’s Day, but she’ll be much more impressed by the bouquet you bring in November. Chocolate cake is sweeter when it’s not baked on your birthday. Why wait until New Year’s Eve to have a beer and hang out with your friends? Won’t your mom be more pleased if you call her in March just to chat, then if you wait until May to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day?

I don’t ever want to wait until January 1st to change my life. I might want to quit my job on July the 15th, or start writing a book on September the 24th. It doesn’t need to be the first of the year or the first of the month before I decide to move forward with my resolutions; any given Monday will do. I’ll derive just as much joy from turning my life around at 3 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in June, as at midnight on a Wednesday in January.

So that’s my New Year’s resolution. Never again to wait for a new year to arrive before I make my resolve. Never again to pretend that January will be soon enough for me or my life to change. It isn’t.   

Seriously, what is the deal in popular music with this worn-out and woefully inaccurate cliché?

The Kelly Clarkson hit with the phrase in its title. Kanye West’s otherwise entertaining Stronger. Will.I.Am’s That Power. Plus a host of other songs by artists such as Theory of a Deadman, Pain, Dappy, Saving Jane, Shontelle, KISS, Clay Aiken, Solarward, Kataklysm, Seventh Key, Heltah Skeltah, and Carpathian, among others.

First of all, shame on all of you for not coming up with more original song lyrics. It seems to me as if a musician would at least want to use a different cliché from the one everyone else is using. But maybe I’m being too harsh here. There aren’t many words that rhyme with “longer,” after all. It’s not like “Every cloud has a silver lining,” which has a multitude of rhyming possibilities. Pining, dining, whining, signing… imagine the poetry that might be constructed around “mining!”

What really irritates me about this overused phrase is not the words themselves, but the concept behind them. It’s true that most of the time, if you survive a viral illness, you’ll develop immunity to the germ that caused it and will arguably be “stronger” because of that. But certainly in the realm of physical injury, anyone who has ever sprained a knee or slipped a disc knows how vulnerable that spot becomes after you’ve hurt it once. Yet consider this line from The Fighter by Gym Class Heroes (which is a band I generally like, by the way):

“Every time you fall it’s only making your chin strong.”

Now that can’t be true, can it? I would think that smacking your chin repeatedly would cause little hairline fractures to form along the jawline, setting you up for a break later on. Maybe what they mean is that repeated blows to the face deaden the nerves, gradually causing you to feel less pain. That would certainly make sense; otherwise how would boxers stand the abuse?

And maybe I’m being too literal, interpreting this in the physical sense. I suppose one could argue that suffering a mental trauma might make a person less vulnerable to emotional dysfunction in future. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a psychiatrist who would agree with that. Don’t we more often hear of repeated crises referred to as “the straw that broke that camel’s back,” to employ another well-worn platitude? And what about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Tell front-line soldiers that they’re stronger for not being killed in action and see where that gets you.

No, the problem is that people want to believe that they’re getting something out of their suffering; that something positive results from pain. And maybe sometimes it does. Suffering can change a person for the better. There’s value in learning to endure pain. But for the most part it’s a trick; a deception practiced upon one’s own mind to make hardship easier to bear.

The irony is – perhaps it does. Maybe the delusion itself is what prompts us to “dust ourselves off” and “get back on the horse.” Maybe that’s what makes us “look for the silver lining” even when “the chips are down.” Maybe that’s how, when our world is at its darkest, we are able to force ourselves to wait patiently for the dawn.

What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. But maybe believing it does.    

Well, the holiday season is rapidly approaching and, as it is every year, my mind is inevitably drawn into contemplation of the true spirit of Christmas – 1970s Christmas specials!

Yes, it’s true – Christmas was never more meaningful than it was during that wondrous era in which we celebrated the most important holiday of a child’s year not by going to church, not by caroling, not by hitting the mall at midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, but by plopping our butts down in front of a nineteen-inch black-and-white at 8 pm on Saturday nights in December and losing ourselves in these classic tales of childish wonder. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the story of an outcast who saves Christmas. Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the story of an outcast who invents Christmas as we know it today. How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the story of an outcast who… Wait, I’m starting to sense a pattern here.

Now, I am not going to confess that I still watch these specials every year, and sometimes more than once, even with no children in sight. I will decline to admit that I have all of my favorites on both video and DVD, or that the one day of the year in which even I will almost certainly tear up is when I witness The Grinch having his big change of heart. I will, however, be happy to share my thoughts on that most thought-provoking of Claymation creations – the story of Rudolph.

Yes, because there’s more to the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than the patently obvious lesson about the worth and value of misfits. This 1964 Rankin and Bass drama is chock full of enough subtext to satisfy the most diehard of film enthusiasts, and it is still, nearly fifty years later, remarkably evocative of the socially progressive era in which it was born. Let’s look at how.

1. The authority figures are jerks. There’s the nasty coach, who, after Rudolph’s secret is revealed, informs the other children snidely: “From now on, we won’t let Rudolph play in any more reindeer games, right? Right.” Look at Rudolph’s dad, Donner, who forces him to wear a fake nose, which is not only uncomfortable, but wholly undermines Rudolph’s budding self-esteem. “You’ll like it and wear it!” he commands. “There are more important things than comfort. Self-respect!” Consider Clarice’s father, who reaffirms Rudolph’s worthlessness by rejecting Rudolph on sight: “No doe of mine is going to be seen with a… with a red-nosed reindeer!” And how about the mean elf-boss, who yells at Hermey and then (illegally) refuses to give him his break until he finishes his work?

And then there’s the big man himself, Santa Claus. Not content with merely trashing the new elf song his pint-sized slaves have spent so much time writing and rehearsing, he quickly turns his temper to the subject of Rudolph. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he tells Donner. For what, we wonder? For siring a red-nosed son? “What a pity – he had a nice take-off, too.” In other words, Santa is so closed-minded that he can’t even consider the possibility of putting someone who’s a little different on his team, no matter how good he is or how much potential he has. It’s the attitude of guys like him that gave rise to the idea of Equal Opportunity Employment.

The message is as clear as a bright red bulb on a foggy winter night. Don’t trust anyone over 30!

2. The one authority figure who isn’t a jerk is King Moonracer, that good-looking magical lion. Although he speaks smoothly and with conviction, he is, unfortunately, an idiot. Every evening he circles the entire earth, collecting toys that no little girl or boy loves, and bringing them to his Island of Misfit Toys. Yet practically the first thing he says to Rudolph on meeting him is, “When one day you return to Christmastown, would you tell Santa about our misfit toys? I’m sure he could find children who would be happy with them.”

Okay, Your Highness, you may seem majestic with your wings and your crown and your cool castle and all, but you need better advisers. You’re telling me that you circle the entire earth every night seeking abandoned toys, but you never once thought to stop off at the North Pole and talk to Santa yourself? Heck, I mean, it’s not even that far – no farther than one can travel by ice floe, at any rate. The misfits may be all right, but the ruler of the misfits… Well, he obviously isn’t roaring with a full mane.

I’m not quite certain about the intended lesson here, though. Is it merely a dig at autocratic rule, or are we being taught that monarchy consists largely of exercises in futility? In either case, it’s none too flattering to the man in charge – and in the end, it’s the brash young upstart who actually solves the problem of the misfit toys.

3. There’s a hint of underlying feminism. When Rudolph goes missing, Donner naturally decides to go out looking for him. “Mrs. Donner wanted to go along, too,” narrator Burl Ives assures us. “No! This is man’s work!” Donner blusters in response. But the days of mindless obedience to one’s husband are passing. “No sooner did the man of the house leave than Mrs. Donner and Clarice decided to strike out on their own…” It’s also interesting that all of them – male and females alike – wind up in the cave of the Abominable Snow Monster. The buck, it seems, really was no better equipped to take care of himself than the ladies.

Notice, too, that the women aren’t jerks like the men are, perhaps because they have no actual authority. Why, that Clarice is downright sweet. She doesn’t laugh along with the others; rather, she forces Rudolph to keep his promise to walk her home. She sings to the unfortunate misfit to make him feel better. She even defends his “deformity,” declaring, “I think it’s a handsome nose! Much better than that silly false one you were wearing.” She’s kind of a forward gal, too. The way she whispers “I think you’re cute!” into Rudolph’s ear just before takeoff practice, the way she nuzzles noses with him on their first date – this is not a doe who’s suffering from sexual repression.

Strong, independent, free-thinking females – you can practically see women’s lib being born right in front of your eyes.

4. It’s about coming-of-age. Because there’s no need for Rudolph to actually get rid of his red nose. He just needs to learn to control it. Am I right? The young Rudolph’s “blinkin’ beak” goes off at random, shocking nearby observers with both the shining light and the horrible high-pitched whine that accompanies it. Indeed, his secret is discovered during one such unexpected episode – and worse, he and his friends are almost caught by The Abominable during another. But by the end, Rudolph is flicking that thing on and off on command, and that’s the point at which it becomes useful – even desirable – to Santa and the others.

“Control! Control! You must learn control!” Yoda scolds Luke Skywalker, another youngster with special powers. And what about Harry Potter? There’s a story that’s all about learning self-control. Misfit or no, Rudolph, too, must gain mastery over his body and over his emotions before he can become a productive member of society.

And that, of course, is the quintessence of growing up.

5. It’s about the increasing acceptance of babies born out of wedlock. Surprising, but quite possibly true. Have you ever noticed that Hermey has rounded ears? Strange, isn’t it? Not only is he the only elf who doesn’t like to make toys, he’s also the only one with round ears. Indeed, except for his stature and classy powder-blue attire, he might not be an elf at all. He might even be – gasp – a human!

Of course, among elves, the outcast would naturally be human; the anti-Vulcan, if you will. But why did Rankin and Bass decide not to give Hermey pointy ears? Why did they decide to make him a misfit not just by personality, but also by physical characteristic?

The answer seems obvious. Hermey is – as such children used to be called – illegitimate. Because if Santa and the Missus are the only humans in Christmastown, then where did Hermey get those rounded ears? Hmm, maybe Santa’s a jerk in more ways than we thought; taking advantage of an employee… No, wait. There’s also Yukon Cornelius. Maybe he popped into town one day and decided to pop in on some cute girl-elf’s cottage. Oh, wow. What if Hermey was in fact Yukon Cornelius’ son? Think about it – they reunite, escape death, hang out, solve problems together… I may have to compose my very first piece of fan fiction.

There’s no question that the ranks of single mothers grew in the sixties – the idea of free love was bound to have consequences, after all – and perhaps, in a time in which the term “bastard” still prevailed, Rudolph gently reminded us not to judge the child by the actions of its parents. It’s a lesson that we’ve apparently learned, because look at us today – even our most respected celebrities are having babies without ever getting married, and without having to apologize for it, either. And their children, too, are no longer scorned or held down by society because of their birth; they are quite as likely to succeed in life, perhaps to become celebrities in their own right, or even, if they’re very lucky and study hard, dentists.


Programs like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are arguably the reason why children of my generation grew up the way we did. Consider the lessons it teaches. Question authority, particularly when authority is wrong. Make your own decisions. Judge people by their actions, not by their appearance or their circumstances. Respect those who are different from you. It’s liberal thinking in its broadest, least political sense, and it was born in an era of idealism, in which people really thought it was possible to change the world; in which they truly believed that one person could make a difference.

Rudolph lights the way.