Wednesdays with Cranky posted by Martin

Let’s just make it bitch night in general around here. I just got back from seeing the Seattle Rep staging of Tuesdays with Morrie. The acting was fine, the staging was impressive, the story just interesting enough. I spent the hours it was unfolding in front of me trying to figure out exactly how they were moving all the props around. Occasionally I’d remember there were people on stage too.

They say that movies are about emotions, books are about ideas, and plays are about conversations. So, here we have a conversation of aphorisms between a wayward student who is unhappy (but here’s the rub: he doesn’t know it yet) with his successful career and new bride, and a happy nub of a man who is all charm and joi d’vivre—oh, the irony, she is a cruel mistress—for this man who loves life is dying.

Let’s watch him die, shall we? Gather around, ye in the expensive seats, and ye in the cheap sets—you shall all witness together. Did you remember your hankies ladies? The darkened room will be lifted by the sniffing of many noses—anonymous people shedding bodily fluids in amazingly close proximity—while on stage this man—a man who was a sociology professor for 30 some years, who published three books, who taught some of the Yippies before they got radical we are told, who influenced thousands of students over many years—this man seemingly quotes chicken-soup-for-the-soul for his student who — maybe he never watched Hallmark theater? — has never heard anything so profound as “Love always wins.”

Am I a total asshole for even approaching it so cynically? I mean, here’s a book that has moved millions of people, and tonight all of our friends that we went with were incredibly touched.

And now here’s the part where I talk about the movie Crash. I liked it. More than I liked this play. I know that I’ve just committed total hipster suicide, but just in case any of you are thinking there’s hope, I’m coming out completely un-ironically. I didn’t like Crash the same way I’m supposed to remember liking Night Rider (or so the Family Guy keeps reminding me, anyway), I just accept it. Why? I mean, this movie isn’t worth debating to many people I know, but I just didn’t think it was all that bad. I didn’t think it deserved best picture, but you know what? It moved a lot of people who credit the film with making them think about racism. That’s not the reason I like it, but that’s not a bad reason to like it—if it honestly moved you.

And here’s where I talk about media effects. You know, how media desensitizes us, children exposed to it for long times are more prone to do bad things, etc. etc. I had this conversation recently with somebody (hey D!), and what it always boils down to is: “I like playing violent video games and watching some violent movies and television shows and I’ve never been in a fight in my life,” and the other person says something like “Yes, but you’re….” smart, or thoughtful, or well-balanced, or not clinically insane or something—but implicit in the argument is this idea that I’m okay, but the other people that the media effects are not, and we know they’re not because research shows that media effects people in abstract ways that psychologists extrapolate from as metrics for real world violence, which everybody confesses they don’t fully understand or know how to predict. I think it’s an elitist attitude, however well-intentioned. It essentially puts you in the position of being able to save humanity from some evil, but the humanity you’re saving is unable to save themselves. The laws we pass are never for ourselves, they’re for the other jerks.

Now—to be fair to the conversation I was having, her argument was much more nuanced before I pigeoned it into this tiny hole for my own manipulative purposes, but my attitude towards bashing Crash or bashing Morrie is essentially the same argument: I think it’s elitist. What’s the harm in letting people make their own decisions about what they like and don’t like. Where the hell do I get off being so cynical and egotistical about my privileged opinion on the thing?

Which is why I asked: am I a total asshole for even approaching it so cynically? The answer? Hell, I don’t know. I can only say what I would have wanted.

Which is: My Dying with Andre. Instead of pitting a life that is slowing down against a life that is speeding up and having them grate against each other, present us with threads of this man’s research. You know: engaging ideas. Here—off the top of my head: I just finished a great book by Seth Lloyd called Programming the Universe, that talks about the amazing realities of quantum physics in relation to computation. I’ll bet if Lloyd is dying in bed and has students come to him, that what they speak of will be viewed through the prisms of their education and learning. Here’s what Lloyd might say, in my fantasy play of Tuesdays and Not Tuesdays with Seth:

Lloyd (on death bed, weakly): I remember today when I first really understood the amazing notion that a particle could be in two places at the same time, until measured—at which time, the particle must decide where to be. We’re all like that particle.

Student (checking watch): I don’t understand, coach. I can’t be here and at my expensive, privileged job at the same time. I’m sacrificing for you because I thought that’s what you wanted.

Lloyd: But the particle only chooses when being monitored. Where would you be if you weren’t being monitored? What’s your choice if I wasn’t watching?

Student (Cries, grab hands of his teacher): Here coach. I choose to be here because you teach me so much about life. I want to learn. Please don’t die.

As it is, Morrie could have been Patch Adams, or Father McClusky who saved the parish, or Fireman Pete who taught us the lesson of giving back to the community, or motivational speaker Tony Snow, now dodging reporter’s questions while providing a well-marketed message that ignores reality on a screen near you….I mean, there was nothing of his career in there. To believe the play (and, maybe the book—which I have not read), Morrie only taught because he liked being around people. Not because, you know, he was particularly interested in the topic he received his PhD in.

But, maybe this is not moving to me because of going through my own father’s death, which I confess moved me more than watching a stranger pretend to die playing another stranger who did die. And maybe I feel that this play should have been informed more by Morrie’s career because my own father’s death was very informed by his own career as a minister. But just today I was tremendously moved reading Jeffrey Zeldman talk about his mother’s death. Much more than by the play. Zeldman was more honest, more vivid than this play, and not only did it not try to manipulate me, but he published it for free and didn’t make it into a made-for-tv-movie and play after selling millions, so I can trust that his heart is truly in his words.

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