Culture Briefs

Real feelings

“The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept - and I’m sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling’s ’Harry Potter’ series led to similar tears. (After her final book was published, Rowling appeared in interviews and told about the letters she got, not all of them from children, begging her to spare the lives of beloved characters such as Hagrid, Hermione, Ron, and, of course, Harry Potter himself.)

“A friend of mine told me that he can’t remember hating anyone the way he hated one of the characters in the movie ’Trainspotting,’ and there are many people who can’t bear to experience certain fictions because the emotions are too intense. I have my own difficulty with movies in which the suffering of the characters is too real, and many find it difficult to watch comedies that rely too heavily on embarrassment; the vicarious reaction to this is too unpleasant.

“These emotional responses are typically muted compared with the real thing. Watching a movie in which someone is eaten by a shark is less intense than watching someone really being eaten by a shark. But at every level - physiological, neurological, psychological - the emotions are real, not pretend.”

- Paul Bloom, writing on “The Pleasures of Imagination,” on May 30 at the Chronicle of Higher Education

Cannes do?

“Apart from the films themselves, a general cloud of gloom and doubt seemed to hang over the Croisette. The films that Cannes favors are hard to finance this year. Serious directors find themselves frustrated. Everything is falling apart. Manohla Dargis wrote of her complex feelings upon discovering that Cannes, even Cannes, seems ready to abandon film for video.

“While the festival was underway, the announcement came that some studios want to release their big first-run films to On Demand TV within a month of their theatrical openings. This is bad news for theaters, bad news for what seeing a movie has traditionally meant, and bad news for adults, because that distribution pattern will lend itself to easily-promoted ’high concept’ trivia.

“I’ve been to 35 festivals in Cannes. I’ll tell you the truth. I doubt if there will even be a Cannes Film Festival in another 35 years. If there is, it will have little to do with the kinds of films and audiences we grew up treasuring. More and more, I’m feeling it’s goodbye to all that.”

- Roger Ebert, writing on “Cannes postmortem. Is that the wrong word?” on May 24 at his Chicago Sun-Times blog

Maher’s blackness

“As you already know, over the weekend, Bill Maher said: ’I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president. You know, this [BP oil spill] is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt so you can see the gun in his pants. That’s - (in black man voice) “we’ve got a motherfu**ing problem here?” Shoot somebody in the foot.’

“Now despite all the PC stuff, the left-wing still proves to be the ones doing the majority of the stereotyping. And I’m pretty sure they had a medic on stand-by in case Maher’s guts ruptured from him using more testosterone than he ever has in his life to try to pull off his best ’black’ impression. This is what black people are to Bill Maher. This is what we’re supposed to be: gun-toting thugs. And if we’re not, then we’re just docile Uncle Toms who wanna be white.

“Truth is, there is no behavior that could satisfy Bill Maher because he’s a racist, and a very confused individual. He’s pro-gun-control, yet he wants the president to brandish a weapon at the table with BP. But when it comes to dealing with our enemies, the ones who get a special thrill up their leg when they cut off the heads of Jews, well no - those are the ones we should just have talks with.”

- Alfonzo Rachel, writing on “Obama Ain’t Black Enough for Bill Maher,” on June 2 at Big Hollywood