Australia Day
The most polarising holiday of the year.
I’m using the “I’m a brainless scumbag” excuse in regards to the fact I bought and read James Franco’s Palo Alto. The lady at the counter scolded “James Franco ruined literature, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Here’s what I thought about it:
Coming-of-age is at the centre of Franco’s interrelated string of short stories, which are marked by random acts of violence and a haunting sense of ennui. Palo Alto is reminiscent of, and perhaps inspired by, the dark coming-of-age classics Less Than Zero and The Virgin Suicides. Like those books, Palo Alto concerns bored adolescents and succeeds in evoking a particular anomic mood. Franco has an aptitude for descriptions, whether it be detailing a local 7-11 or a dark suburban street:
“I love driving down an empty dark freeway, lit up intermittently by the lights at the side of the road, and when I see the lights, I think of all the little worlds out there, and how we could pull over and have an adventure at any one of these forgotten pockets of the world, just nothing zones.”
Palo Alto has distinct aesthetic concerns. Franco litters his work with pop-cultural references from the book’s early 90s setting: Beavis And Butt-Head, 2pac, the DOOM computer game. One character sees a news report about River Phoenix’s drug overdose on Halloween just before he drunkenly drives his car over a woman in a hit-and-run. The references are finely tuned. Allusions to delinquent culture, they successfully reiterate the masculine affronts Franco writes about.
Franco’s characters, however, are appallingly dim. As one remarks, “They cared too much about fucking and being cool to really like each other.” It’s a small quote, but it unintentionally reflects what the book is all about. The teens have sex, smoke joints, drink beer, get in fights, watch Boyz N The Hood and then have some more sex. And they do it all without the slightest sense of emotion.
“Teague was dating a girl named Kate Keller who went to an all-girls school. My mom used to teach there. Kate and Teague fucked all the time, so people said. One time Barry told me that in eighth grade Teague took Kate to Wayne’s World and fingered her during the whole movie. Just watching and working.”
The characters never grow up or come to any point of enlightenment or moment of self-realisation. They’re like Lemmings (to use a Franco-esque early 90s reference), each indistinguishable from the other, burrowing around and performing mundane tasks in unison. The aforementioned character who runs over a lady while driving drunk never gets caught and eventually forgets about it. “Halfway down the block I suddenly remember, “Oh yeah, that’s where the accident happened””. Cool story, Hansel.
It’s interesting that Franco recently slammed Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn in The Paris Review. Sure, it’s got a retarded plot and it wears its heart on its sleeve, but it’s better than having no plot and absolutely no heart. Palo Alto is a proverbial Tin Man.
I know the whole point of Franco’s stories is that they’re supposed to be gossipy and godless, but reading them makes you like the characters as much (or as little) as they like each other.
It’s frustrating, because Palo Alto could have been something good, given the frameworks for Franco’s stories are so on-point. If he cares more about his characters next time, maybe James Franco won’t be as horrible at literature as he is at hosting the Oscars.
At Ikea
Jill: How weird is it how everyone here is searching for happiness?
Me: Or they just need new dishes.
Gotta stop my sister from being Angela Chase.
Poignant Things Witnessed Lately:
-Closed waterbed factory
-Fat man devouring a burger alone in a foodcourt
-Tween girl kissing a poster of Justin Bieber on the train
-Divorced mum of high school peer on a date in a cheap restaurant looking frisky and getting day drunk
-Married mum of high school peer in same cheap restaurant with a man who wasn’t her husband, sitting in a discreet corner and constantly looking to make sure she wasn’t being seen
There are so many shows about terrorists, the CIA and plots to blow the shit out of things that you kind of have to wonder what TV would actually do without that fatal day when the planes flew into the Twin Towers. It would be easy to make the mistake of lumping the new thriller Homeland into this worn out “post-9/11” genre that permeates our screens. It bears all the hallmarks. But think this is just another copy of a middling NCIS spin-off at your peril.
Terrorists, the CIA and bomb scares do drive the plot lines in Homeland, but it’s the character’s flaws and their complex personal relationships that creep up to make this the best show of the year and, just maybe, the most engaging series ever. Homeland doesn’t just tantalise you with what’s going to happen, but also why it’s going to. This is a remarkable feat in a genre where motivations are given little thought. It’s not unlike The Silence of the Lambs, a perfect psychological thriller where the encounters between Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling are the the most engaging scenes in the film. In Homeland Danes, like Starling, plays a strong willed government agent whose obsession with solving a mystery consumes her. Claire Danes is like Gwyneth Paltrow with balls. She just doesn’t give a fuck, and she’ll probably win Best Actress for the role at the Golden Globes this week. In fact, the show itself will probs take out the Best Drama category. It’s an A-Grade mystery, a familial drama and character study all at once.
Recommended to me by my cousin over the holidays, Homeland filled in the gaping hole left when I finished Friday Night Lights. How good it is to have a show that you love, to know that there are episodes in the vault waiting for you to watch at the end of the day. Fast-paced Homeland has nothing in common with the slow burning FNL, except that they’re both deeply layered, emotionally engaging and flat-out brilliant.
It looks like it’s slim pickings on TV this year, so watch Homeland. It could potentially put you on edge about another impending attack, but then you see ads for Excess Baggage, the new weight-loss reality show starring Kevin Federline and Ajay Rochester, and you realise the terrorists are irrelevant. We’re already fucked.
Missed It
“In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year… Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.” -The Great Gatsby
Season 3, Episode 10: “A Girl and Her Dog”
Theo always wears the best sweaters! Even when he’s just hanging around the house and helping Rudy hide a dog in the basement.
Favourite.
You should make it your resolution to check my Twitter everyday, even though I say nothing remotely intelligent or interesting. Do it.
