alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

September 18, 2007

Why I Will Never Be a Popular Blogger

by AltHippo @ 12:23 am. Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve come to understand over a number of years that I’m not ever going to be a popular blogger.

Why do I say that? Well, there’s no short answer to that question. But I’ll start with a subject that always provokes an argument: never listen to critics. Which I mean sincerely. The people who are hired to criticize books, movies, music, art, etc., don’t really have a sufficient grasp of their subject to say the things that they get printed.

That idea alone makes me an eccentric. Yet, time and again I see the most god awful stuff praised as high art, while something true to form, and even clever, is tossed in the trash bin.

As an example I’ll take M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water.” I thought this film was very clever. “Lady in the Water” is an adaptation of a very old allegory about finding one’s place in the world. The allegory goes like this: imagine a majestic estate with the master of the house away. While the master has gone a very curious thing has happened. The cook thinks he’s a musician, the musicians are taking care of the children, the children are in charge of the medicine cabinet, and the doctor is making bread. As the allegory goes, everything must be put in its proper place before the master can return home.

That in a nutshell is the plot of the movie. I’ll agree that if you had no familiarity with the original allegory you would have a hard time with “Lady in the Water.” But seriously, when I read stuff like this:

“Fans of actor Paul Giamatti or of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan may get something out of Lady in the Water, a fractured fairy tale about a water nymph who comes to a Philadelphia apartment house to deliver an important message. Anyone else is likely to be perplexed by the muddled mythmaking or actively astonished at the self-indulgent ego of a writer-director-producer who casts himself in the role of a visionary writer whose martyrdom will change the world.”

I have to wonder: is there no one who publishes who still reads?

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5 Responses to “Why I Will Never Be a Popular Blogger”

  1. KathyF Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 2:22 am

    I’m not familiar with that allegory, but I remember a children’s book I used to read to my kids. Farmer Right is perplexed when his cows say Baa, his horse says Moo, his sheep Neigh, etc. It sounds like a similar theme.

    And I agree about the critics. And I am pretty certain that publishers don’t read, at least my manuscripts.

  2. Jamelle Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 9:53 am

    I can’t until the critics get their hands on the Beowulf movie.

  3. AltHippo Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    KathyF: Your experience suggests a new version of the story. Author Right is perplexed when the critic goes “mooo” and the publisher goes “baaa”.

    Jamelle: That raises a very interesting question. Will any of the critics who write about the upcoming Beowulf have read the story?

    Of course, you never know how faithful the director is going to be to the original. You may remember they redid the ending to the Scarlett Letter. When asked to comment Demi Moore said: “I doubt most people have read the book, anyway.”

  4. KCinDC Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 11:03 am

    Will the Beowulf movie have anything to do with the actual epic? From the trailer I assumed that they took the name and the monster and maybe a couple of plot elements and surrounded them with a story they made up out of whole cloth. Not sure I’ll watch it anyway, since I can’t stand that creepy “uncanny valley” animation where they try to make the people look realistic.

  5. Jamelle Says:
    September 20th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    AltHippo, I have a feeling that a fair number of the critics who review the Beowulf movie will have had little to no experience with the actual epic.

    To be fair, I do think that KCinDC is right, and that the movie will have little to do with the epic, which is a shame, since I think that Beowulf is awesome enough so that you don’t have to do too much “adaptation.”

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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