Things I Love About Little Women...

By "Little Women," I mean Little Women the book and movies, not... short women, though I probably love some things about short women as well.  At any rate, much to my students' chagrin, I have forced them to watch Little Women over the last couple of days (hey, if I'm going to show a movie, I'm going to make sure it has some kind of literary merit).  I also recently had the pleasure of watching a friend play Jo in the musical adaptation of the novel.  Clearly, Little Women has been on my mind, and I've realized there are some things I absolutlely love about that story.  Forgive me, as this doesn't have much to do with my single life, or my struggles.  It's just the thoughts of an English teacher who loses herself in literature.

I love:
1.  Jo March.  She is loud, independent, stubborn, strong, creative, funny, friendly, idealistic, a dreamer, and a writer.  She loves her sisters so much that she bucks against change, especially when men are involved in stealing them away.  She wants to see the world.  She doesn't accept "good enough."  She lives life to its fullest and loves with all her heart.  She is fantastic.

2.  The friendship between Laurie and Jo.  It's funny how Louisa May Alcott answered the very question Harry and Sally asked, only more than a hundred years prior: no, men and women cannot be close friends, because inevitably one or the other will develop feelings.  Their friendship is sweet and true, but it ends up at that awkward moment that many similar friendships experience.  And Jo doesn't settle, as much as she loves him as a friend.  I love that courage.

3.  The deep sisterhood of the March girls.  They fight, they bicker, they play, they learn, and they love.  They are each other's greatest allies and greatest champions.  Jo wants them to stay forever as they are, close and inseparable.  Having no sisters of my own, I couldn't comprehend this... until my two sisters came along in college, and I rememember similar feelings of closeness and contentedness in the camraderie of my sisters... and I hoped it would never change; when it did, as it always does, I fought against it.

4.  Their creativity.  The March girls put on plays, providing themselves with endless hours of entertainment, something that most children couldn't do today if they tried.  The most wonderful things come from the imagination, and they capture it perfectly.

5.  Jo's unexpected match.  Everyone thought Jo wouldn't get married-- even she didn't think so.  And yet, she found her match in an unexpected person, but it was perfect in every way-- someone who could keep up intellectually, challenge her, and handle her independence.  That's so encouraging, even if it is fictitious.

So this, my last post as a twenty-five-year-old, has no deep meaning, no real moral, except to show that two decades later, this girl loses herself in literature as much as she did in her youth.  As I inch my way toward thirty, I hope I lose myself still, in the pages penned for imaginations like mine.

My Life, Now Playing at a Theater Near You...

Today I sat for a while in the relative cold outside a local Starbucks.  Sipping my seasonally inappropriate passion tea lemonade, I squinted into the sunlight as I attempted to put into words what has been flitting around my head these last weeks.  Some, too personal, will never be put into words.  But as I sat there, this is a bit of what came to my mind.

Sometimes I feel my life playing out like a movie-- a "rom-com" without the rom.  Don't think less of me when I tell you that I even play a mental soundtrack.  Most times, I am the weirdo quirky best friend who supports the leading lady and provides comic relief.  Once in a while, however, I am the leading lady.  I see my life in the reels of film-- as I come home to an empty apartment, as I cackle and bemoan life with my girlfriends, when I wrestle with life decisions and emotions.  Only the satisfying resolution is missing; the last scenes which play out to a happy conclusion before the credits roll.  That "aha" moment never comes.  The leading man never comes out of nowhere with his pithy, witty charm and devilish grin.  Maybe that's why I keep watching rom-coms.  I love when things change for the leading lady, when things resolve, and when the music swells and the camera pans away.

But life isn't a rom-com.  It's not even a com.  It just is life.  Perhaps it is my expectations of my brand of a happy ending that causes me to stop trusting God, take my eyes off Him, and place undue attention on myself and my desires and dreams.  See, what's missing from rom-coms is an eternal focus.  My story may not be the stuff of Hollywood, but it is a good story, because it is written by the sovereign Creator and Sustainer.  I'll be satisfied with the journey until I reach the happy ending He's written.  I might still create mental soundtracks though.

Inglorious...

Last weekend I saw what I thought would be a typical QT movie, meaning of course, that it would be brimming with undue and over-done violence, would be humorously irreverent, expertly filmed, completely stylized... and totally enjoyable. Inglorious Basterds was exactly that, and I loved every minute of it.
What I didn't expect was the sociological/philosophical questions it would bring to mind.

*** spoiler alert ***

I sat there, laughing (though shielding my eyes from the gore) with the rest of the theater when the members of Brad Pitt's inglorious squad beat a German soldier to death. I laughed (though shielding my eyes from the gore) when they carved a swastika into their foreheads so they could never forget the atrocities they'd committed while wearing the Nazi uniform. I was pleased to see that they weren't going to pull a Valkyrie, but that Hitler was indeed going to die, and of course-- I laughed when they riddled him with bullets. I felt a sense of satisfaction when a theater full of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers burned.

But then it hit me... how sick is this? How sick are we that we, as a collective group of individuals in a theater, are actually happy and pleased to see the torture and deaths of a group of people (however heinous their own actions had been). Were we really so very different from the Nazis in the movie who laughed as their hero sniper killed hundreds of ally soldiers? We sneered from our theater seats as Hitler laughed at the allies dying... and then we laughed as the movie depicted their deaths.
I don't even know if QT intended this little commentary, because I think with a film like that, he enjoyed seeing the Nazis "get theirs" as much as the rest of us in the theater. Even so, it made me think... and maybe you'll think about it to...