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A kind of a defense of Rachel Zegler

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Tolkien and Lewis didn’t like this Snow White, but they’d have liked it better than the new one.

Just to show my vigorous independence of mind, I’m going to confess before the world that I think Rachel Zegler is very pretty. There have been a lot of jokes about how no character played by Gal Gadot (admittedly a knockout) needs to fear that poor Rachel would be a threat to her status as “fairest of them all.” Several commenters have disparaged Ms. Zegler’s looks. But she appeals to me. The delicate-figure and-big-eyes look works, as far as I’m concerned. Kind of like a… what comes to mind? A Disney princess.

But it’s not just Rachel’s appearance that I feel I need to defend. Granted, she has certainly earned (at least) a lot of the ridicule that’s been heaped on her, for her public condescension and tone-deafness. She has become the poster girl for Woke arrogance – and she’s earned it.

And yet, I don’t think she’s entirely to blame.

In a real sense, I think, she’s been trying to play it by the book. Only she’s been using the wrong book.

She has relentlessly said the wrong thing in almost every situation. First she insulted her audience, and then she doubled down on the insults. Apparently the studio people tried to rein her in, to explain that you can’t alienate half your potential audience and then expect them to want to see you sing and dance. But she didn’t seem to get the message.

This, I think, was not because she didn’t care about the Disney enterprise. I think she did it because she believes deeply in the Disney enterprise, in a different way.

She believes in what the Disney movies say.

And what do the Disney movies say?

The Disney movies, especially the recent ones, tell young women like Rachel, “You go, girl! You speak your truth! Don’t let anybody – especially any man – tell you what to do! You are a strong woman, and if you only stand your ground and never compromise, you must triumph in the end!”

And that’s how she’s played it. She hasn’t listened to anybody who told her she was off course – even if they paid her salary. Because she has to be true to the truth of her heart. In the end everyone will be forced to admit that they were wrong, and that she – the Princess, the Girl Boss – was right all along. And everyone will love her.

That didn’t exactly work out.

Instead, she now finds herself out of work and a public laughingstock.

The cognitive dissonance must be horrific. Her goddess has failed her. The promise of the Disney Princess came up snake eyes; she wished upon a star and her wish didn’t come true.

I feel sorry for her at this place in her life. It must be very lonely.

Now, if Rachel’s life were a film script, I know what I’d do in Act II.

I’d have her meet a Big Guy. A guy with broad shoulders, a farmer or a trucker or a plumber or something. Some plot contrivance would throw them together, and she would hate him at first sight. It would be like dog and cat. Everything he did would be seen as an insult, a male chauvinist provocation. She would harangue him about his privilege and scream about how he was oppressing her just by existing.

Finally, in a rage, she’d attack him with her fists. He’d grab her wrists until she stopped struggling. Then he’d kiss her hard. And her insides would turn to goo.

And then they’d get married, move to a small town, and have lots of babies.

Of course, such a heretical story could never get filmed today.

But I’ll bet it would sell tickets.

Unlike some other films I could mention.

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Words spoken and misunderstood

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Radio Announcer Markus Rautio in the studio, ca. 1930. Photo credit: Yle Archives. Unsplash license.

This continues to be a strange time in my disordered life. I’m still feeling the effects of finishing my great life project. There’s no reason I can’t start another great project, of course. Or several smaller ones. One must fill one’s time after all. Sedentary though I am by nature, my brain, I find, needs to be doing stuff. So I drag myself out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and (for the present) work on the art and science of book narration. I’m taking it in small steps, as Jordan Peterson recommends, laboring to overcome my technophobia through familiarization. And it’s working. I am getting more accustomed to it. For the present I’m just recording the instructional book I bought, to desensitize myself to the hardware and the software and the protocols. But I now begin to dimly envision myself actually recording one of my books. Or several. The Epsom books – I still think I’ll need to acquire an Irishman for the Erling series.

Here’s a thought of no importance whatever: It actually relates to narration – as narration is a branch of the broader field of voice acting and announcing. And I’m an old radio hand – best copy reader in my broadcast school class, worst recording engineer.

When I was but a wee tot, I used to hear announcers on the radio telling me that such and such a program was “brought to you by XXXXXX Company.”

And – this was before I knew how to read or spell – I heard the word “brought” as “brokt.” Once I did learn to spell, a few years later, I found that the word in fact did have a couple letters inside it that would work for the “k” sound, sort of – the “gh.” But I also learned that the “gh” wasn’t pronounced. The word was pronounced simply “brot.”

But recently, while watching a couple series on Amazon Prime (“Reacher” Season 3 and “The House of David,” since you ask) I heard the announcer saying that at least one of these programs was brought to me by… I forget what company. But I am certain she (it was a she) in fact pronounced the word “brokt.” So that the phrasing went “brok to you.”

The “gh” in “brought,” of course, is a residue of obsolete pronunciation. Whenever we find such strange, unused letters in an English word, they’re usually the shadow of a past genuine pronunciation. In olden times, the word was in fact pronounced something like “brokt.” Or “brocht.”

I wonder if that pronunciation by professional announcers (I am adamant that’s what they’re saying; I’m not just delusional) harkens unconsciously back to that antique English. Or maybe its just the way the human tongue naturally curls when set to the work of pronouncing those particular sounds.

I clearly remember ads on that same station (it was the Faribault, Minnesota station, specializing in Old Time [that means oompah] music, advertising Lockwood Auto Company. But I remember that I heard it as Lockwood “L-O” Company. That one, I’ll grant you, I got wrong. Made no sense at all, but when you’re a kid lots of things don’t make sense.

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‘I Cheerfully Refuse,’ by Leif Enger

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The horizon was dirty and the waves were back to horses. Sometimes a gust knocked one’s mane clean off and scattered it abroad. The wind remembered ice.

You may recall that I’m a big fan of Leif Enger, who not only writes like an angel but is a fellow Minnesotan. So I was happy to see (how did I miss it?) that he had a new novel out – I Cheerfully Refuse.

I’m sorry to say I was disappointed by this book. This wasn’t the sort of thing I looked for from the author of Peace Like a River. However, since it’s beyond dispute that Enger is both smarter than I and a better writer, I may have simply misunderstood him.

I Cheerfully Refuse is a postapocalyptic story – but not the usual kind with zombies or Mad Max societal ferality. The America of this book, about a generation in the future, I guess, is controlled by sinister powers known as the “astronauts,” who dominate business and politics from the east coast. But before that there was apparently a takeover by “hard-shell patriots” who burned books in “fundie bonfires.” Now life goes on in America, but the roads are bad, the electricity sporadic, the air and water polluted, and many communities exercise vigilante law.

Rainy (short for Rainier), our hero and narrator, is a house painter and part-time gig musician (electric bass) in the community of Icebridge (not far from Greenstone, the setting of Enger’s novel, Virgil Wander) on the shore of Lake Superior. His beloved wife (or partner, I wasn’t sure) is Lark, who runs a used book shop. Theirs is a happy life, and they get on well with their neighbors.

Then Kellan arrives. Kellan is a starving wanderer. It’s soon clear that he’s an escapee from one of the “medical ships” where human experimentation is done. Harboring such a fugitive is illegal, but Rainy and Lark take him in. He has something to trade for their hospitality – a rare copy of a book Lark has been searching for all her life.

But the authorities come for them, and before long Rainy’s world has been shattered. He flees in a sailboat, with no plan except a vague idea of returning to the Slate Islands, where he and Lark had a happy interlude years before. But he’s a hunted man now. In time he will acquire a companion, a nine-year-old girl he rescues from an abusive home. But it’s a cold world on the great lake with the law on your trail.

I Cheerfully Refuse is as well-written as you’d expect from an author of Enger’s genius. But his previous books have carried a gentle but pervasive odor of Christianity – sometimes even explicitly Christian. There’s a sort of Christianity here, too, but it’s the sentimental kind – a Rousseauean conception that people are basically good and only do wrong because society is out of skew. That all legal punishment is evil, and everyone should just be forgiven and set free.

I perceived (perhaps I’m paranoid) a political tone here that I’ve never seen in Enger before. As if he’s one of those panicked by the rise of our current president, who believes all the stereotypes about American conservatives, especially religious ones, as cultural troglodytes: “There was a sinuous distrust of text and its defenders.”

I might point out that it is not the conservative schools that are turning out illiterate graduates. It’s not the conservatives who try to purge the classics from curricula. It’s not the conservatives who design ugly, brutalist buildings and tape bananas to walls and call it art.

As I said, maybe I misunderstood. Maybe there’s a rich Christian subtext here that passed over my head. After all, big Pharma is a major villain, and there is a plot line in there arguing against assisted suicide.

All I can say is that I Cheerfully Refuse is a well-written book that disappointed this fan.

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Fossils congregate

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This actually looks a little like Cahill’s. But it’s a photo by Pablo Merchan Montes. Unsplash license.

Somebody at the table brought up the subject of libraries, and I, of course, had a thing to say about that.

“The day is coming,” I opined, “when parents will be telling their kids, ‘You know, once upon a time libraries were places where people went to borrow books, not homeless shelters and day care centers.’”

I don’t know how impressed my friends were by this insight-slash-prophecy. How many things are there around us that started out as one thing and ended up as something else entirely? The theater began with morality plays during church festivals. Nascar began (I am informed) with bootleggers racing revenuers during Prohibition. Nokia started out as a wood pulp processing company in Finland.

There’s a group of my high school classmates – those who still live in the area, and who still live at all – who get together for lunch someplace every few months. This last Wednesday we went to the “new” restaurant in Kenyon, our home town – new in terms of management, though two previous owners have occupied the same commercial space. I might as well plug them – the manager was nice enough to send one of his staff up on a ladder to hang a shade to block the too-bright sunshine coming in through the south-facing windows. The place is called “Cahill’s,” which strikes me as an odd name for a Mexican fusion restaurant. But they were able to provide the stodgy anglo hamburger I required (really quite good). Also they had cloth napkins on the tables – I wonder how long it’s been since any eatery in Kenyon has boasted cloth napkins.

The conversation ran along customary retirees’ lines – where people take their vacations, how their kids and grandkids are doing (I had nothing to offer on that score), and our aches, pains, and medical procedures; I thought I had the prize for the most recent surgery, with my detached retina, but one of the “girls” had shoulder surgery just about simultaneously.

Afterward I filled up my gas tank (I like to support the local economy) at the Co-op gas station where my dad was a member, and headed back, past buildings that used to be something else, or the ghosts of buildings no longer standing. I had realized shortly after setting out that morning that I probably shouldn’t have gone at all – my left eye is still fuzzy; reading signs was a challenge, though I pretty much know the way without sign-reading. And the ride back was better; the sun was brighter and I remembered that I can see more clearly if I just close that bad eye.

Arrived home utterly exhausted from the rigorous exertion of ordinary human interaction; I was played out for the rest of the day.

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Theodor Kittelsen

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Tonight, I had Norwegian folklore on my mind, and I found this amusing video on YouTube. It concerns the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914), one of my favorites. He was an imaginative illustrator, and sometimes — in my opinion — he was ahead of his time, employing stylistic techniques that would become popular later on.

I came on an anecdote involving Kittlesen in my reading recently. The author Sigrid Undset, when she was a girl, went with her mother and sisters to spend a summer holiday at the seaside. They were very poor after the death of her father, but the cottage was available cheap. To her astonishment, little Sigrid found that their closest neighbor was the artist Theodor Kittlesen and his family. She made friends with Kittelsen’s daughter, and was introduced to the great artist, whom she greatly admired. At that point in her life she was contemplating becoming an artist herself. After a while she worked up the courage to show Kittlesen some of her own drawings.

“You have talent enough, poor thing,” Kittlesen sighed. He went on to warn her that art was no easy career.

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Freezin’ season

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Photo credit: Juha Lakaniemi, planetlb. Unsplash license.

I suppose we should all take a second to revel in this rare moment of national unity. By which I mean, of course, the cold weather. All across America, from capital A to shining small a, citizens are sharing the Minnesota Experience. We used to say the winter weather keeps the riffraff out, but it doesn’t seem to be working very well.

Anyway, it’s cold. On Sunday morning I got up for church, put on my suit and trench coat and hat (I’m the only guy at my church who dresses that way for services, but somebody’s got to show the flag), and went out to the garage and got in my car.

And I couldn’t get the door to latch. I slammed it a few times. It caught at last.

And then I checked to see if I could open it again, and I couldn’t.

I hit the buttons on the remote. I hit the buttons on the door. Nothing.

Now I could, in theory, have driven to church and crawled out the passenger side. But after trying it in the garage, I found it was a lot of effort for an old fat man in a long coat. So I gave up on church.

I am, indeed, a fair weather disciple.

My primary theory was that some water had gotten into the door when I washed the car last week, and had frozen, and that was the problem.

Yesterday, I squirted WD-40 into the keyhole. Tried to turn the key, and it still wouldn’t unlock. I gave it overnight to marinate.

Today it was still frozen. I used a hair dryer to warm the lock up. A sleeveless and bootless task, as the English used to say. (I think.)

Tomorrow will be a little warmer. If I still can’t get the thing open, I’ll assume the problem is not ice but mechanics, and try to get an appointment at my garage.

Why you should care about this I have no idea. I’m still at post-translation loose ends. I did nothing today, writing-wise, except to start getting my figures into a spreadsheet for my tax preparer.

As I’ve said too many times, my taxes are way too complicated for my low income. You could say, as far as that goes, that it’s a good thing my script translation gig has gone the way of the floppy disc. At least I don’t have to fill out forms for foreign income. H. & R. Block charges for every form.

But does that make up for losing the right to honestly tell chicks I’m “in the movie business”?

I might be able to tell you if I’d ever tried it.

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Stiklestad Church

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As anticipated, today was a decompression day for me, adjusting to civilian life again, as it were.

I read. I paid my bills (a usual Thursday task), took out the garbage. Went to the grocery store. Forgot my shopping list. Bought from memory. Came home and discovered — to my considerable shock — that I had bought everything I need. This has never happened before, in my whole long life.

The Norwegian video above, with English subtitles, offers a little tour of the church at Stiklestad in Norway. The Battle of Stiklestad (spoiler alert) forms the final big climax for my upcoming novel, The Baldur Game.

The Baldur Game is coming soon. I refuse to give up hope for that.

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A stereoscopic look at a burger

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Not a 50s Grill burger, but you get the idea. Photo credit: Anita Austvika. Unsplash license.

Your fears have been realized. I have nothing to write about tonight except for my day. Which makes it a post about nothing. And I’m no Seinfeld. My apologies in advance.

Today I ventured out into the world, after several days spent at home on purpose. I looked over the instructions for my recovery (from surgery for a detached retina, as you may recall) and discovered I shouldn’t have been driving at all these last couple weeks. Maybe not even now. But I feel like I’m ready – except for night driving, which I think I’ll avoid for a while, because of glare. (I drove at night once, and decided it was a very bad idea.)

But now I have 3D vision again. It’s a great relief.

What they did during surgery (among other things, I have no doubt) was to inject a bubble (nitrogen, if I recall correctly) into my eyeball so everything would be held in place while it healed up. At first that bubble covered most of my field of vision, which is why I took to wearing an eye patch a lot of the time. Having one working eye was preferable to looking through that annoying opaque bubble.

But the bubble is diminishing, as they promised. Now it’s perceptually about the size of my little fingernail, and it bobbles around at the bottom of my sight like a bubble in a carpenter’s level. Almost amusing. Almost.

But anyway, the rest of my field of vision is clear. Sadly, it’s not clear in the sense of clear vision – my sight is fuzzy in that eye, and will be for a while, I’m told.

But I’ve got stereoscopic vision again, and my accustomed peripheral vision. And that makes driving a lot better. And safer, for myself and (as the saying goes) others.

So I went out for lunch today.

I went to one of the best nearby places that’s survived the Great Sorting of the pandemic. It’s called 50s Grill, and its gimmick is that the waitresses wear poodle skirts and the walls are decorated with movie posters from the 1950s. And they play oldies over the speakers. And, just incidentally, the food is really good. Like you remember, if you’re old enough to remember the ‘50s. There’s no ashtrays or ambient cigarette smoke, but you can’t have everything.

I had the hamburger. They do a great hamburger at the 50s Grill, the best I know in this area.

Now I have to add a caveat here. There are all kinds of tastes in burgers, and I know I am not one of the majority.

Most Americans’ idea of a good burger involves cheese. It’s gotten to the point (and I complain about this a lot) that you have to specify if you don’t want cheese when you order. Many places just assume the cheese unless you inform them elsewise. (I suppose I should appreciate their intentions. They mean well. “You say you want a burger? Why don’t I enhance the experience for you, just out of the goodness of my heart!”)

But I don’t like cheese.

The American model nowadays tends to involve a lot of lettuce and tomato slices and pickles and sauces, etc. And, of course, that ubiquitous cheese. The whole Big Mac/Whopper scenario.

For me, a good burger is meat and bread. I’ll add ketchup on my own. Onions are good, because they enhance the meat flavor. (Sautéed is best, except that kind is hard to find. You can get sautéed at Hooters – don’t ask me how I know. But it’s embarrassing to go to Hooters. Especially when you’re an old man alone. Or so I’ve heard.)

Now I won’t say the 50s Grill burger is the kind of austere burger I just described. It in fact involves lettuce and tomatoes and pickles and a special sauce, plus the onions I tolerate. But I can pick off the tomatoes and pickles, or ask to have them “held,” as we say. And I’ll tolerate the lettuce, because I’m a magnanimous soul.

But the meat there is great, and – wait for this – they bake their own buns fresh every day.

The bun is an underappreciated element in a really fine burger.

Of course, such a meal (especially with dessert, which is a whole other rave review) eats up all the calories on my diet for the day.

It’s worth it. I’m sitting here in the evening, still full.

And that was my day. Except for all the translating. Which I can’t tell you about.

So, The End.

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Where do legends come from?

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Robin Hood on a horse, ca. 1475. Wikimedia Commons.

As you may recall, I am peripherally involved in the world of Viking scholarship – not as a real researcher, but as a lowly translator. I am also, of course, a creator of historical fantasy, which means I’ve had to learn a few things. Not as much as I think I’ve learned, of course, but a few things. And, of course, I have ideas.

Here’s one of them.

The scholarly controversy over how the Icelandic historical sagas should be understood, as I’ve often mentioned, is about how much we can believe of what the sagas tell us. Many historians won’t use the sagas at all, because they were written after a period of oral transmission. And a lot of historians are very suspicious of oral tradition.

For instance, I often come across a statement like this: “Historians disagree whether King Harald Fairhair of Norway ever actually existed.” They mention that there are no clear mentions of him anywhere except in the sagas.

For some historians, in fact, it seems that a mention in a saga is proof of non-existence.

Which makes no sense to me.

One comes across the same argument with figures like King Arthur and Robin Hood. “There are legends about these characters,” the historians say. “Therefore, we’re sure they never existed.”

“Why?” Walker screams.

Historians seem to think that legends spring out of the human mind, ex nihilo. As atheists think the universe was created – by nobody, out of nothing.

It makes more sense to me that legends probably come from something. Perhaps something trivial, perhaps they happened to a different historical character – but they came from something.

What historians don’t seem to remember is that in this real world they write about, actual things do happen. Sometimes they’re quite exciting things. People remember them, and repeat them to others.

At the Green Bay Viking festival, a friend told me a story about building a working guillotine on commission, and nearly chopping his hand off. I’ve been retelling that story ever since.

It happened. Interesting things do happen in real life.

Why should the default explanation for a good story be that somebody just made it up?

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The Fantoft Stave Church

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Happy Friday, and happy Tolkien’s birthday!

I often slough off my responsibilities on Fridays by posting videos, just as high school teachers used to wheel out the film projectors when they were too hung-over to teach that day. Tonight, for some reason, a short film about the Fantoft Stave Church, near Bergen, Norway. In winter, because it’s winter now.

This is a polite little film, clearly intended not to offend.

Because there’s a small detail the video leaves out. They tell you it burned down in 1992, and was rebuilt. True as far as it goes.

They do not tell you how it burned. It was not an accident.

A heathen burned it down, on purpose, to strike a blow against Christian oppression.

I saw the building during its reconstruction. My first trip to Norway was in 1995, along with my dad. While we were visiting a cousin in Bergen, he took us to see the building as it stood at the time.

Not much to see then. I remember black plastic sheeting covering the roof.

Anyway, it looks nice now, doesn’t it?