The Joys of Father-Son Gastroenteritis (Seriously)

The norovirus strikes suddenly and without mercy. Nausea, vomiting, chills, shaking, diarrhea, headaches and exhaustion. Usually, that wouldn’t make for a good time, but as I found out recently, it isn’t all bad.

 

 

After the first horrible night, the perks began to appear. The sickness had taken me out of the game--away from my Major Life Activity--more effectively than anything else could. Over the next few days, in brief bouts of lucidity, I was almost able to relax. I read a handful of chapters in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Sandworms of Dune and finally got to watch Thor, the first one, from 2011. It’s always moving to watch Natalie Portman fall in love, especially in genre fare.

When my son came down with the virus a couple days later, it got even better. Of course, at first it was my worst nightmare come true--someone needs to be held accountable for doing that to my child--but once my wife and I realized he would be okay, the panic subsided and the beautiful moments began popping up. Even after a vomiting session, his brave face when he looked up and proclaimed “All finished!” was worth more than anything anyone except he will ever give me. And then, as he recovered, came those times when he would just sleep in my arms or watch Disney Junior while I rubbed his back.

These are magical moments because they come at us from outside the usual sphere of incessant thoughts and activities that make up our mundane world. At times like these, I always think of the John Updike story “The City” in Trust Me. It’s about a man on a business trip who suddenly finds himself in the hospital in a strange city for an emergency appendectomy. Like me, he finds himself out of the game, everything except getting well put on hold, and reflecting on life:

“When Carson awoke again, it was twilight, and he was in yet another room, a private room, alone, with a sore abdomen and a clearer head. A quarter-moon leaned small and cold in the sky above the glowing square windows of another wing of the hospital, and his position in the world and the universe seemed clear enough.”

By the time my wife came down sick a couple days later, however, everyone had had more than enough of the norovirus and was ready to drive that curse away, but despite all the physical discomfort of those days, I’ll always have my memories of those beautiful moments with my son.

Is It Okay for a Socially Conscious Person to Enjoy Machete?

Outrage has become a staple of public dialogue and American consciousness. If Katy Perry gives a geisha-ish performance mixing elements of various traditional Asian cultures, this is labeled “cultural appropriation” and racist. As also illustrated by the furor over Miley Cyrus’s VMAs performance last year, nothing--neither a pop music performance nor the goofy costumes worn by its performers--is above a public grilling by cultural critics.

Personally, I’m fond of this kind of critique, although outrage isn’t my response to every offense (blog). Like many feminists, I thought the scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness featuring Dr. Carol Marcus in her skivvies was gratuitous (article), but the most I could work up was a chuckle at such a naked attempt to inject eye-candy into the movie.

I’m not, however, above turning away from something in disappointment. I recently started reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Windup Girl. The first chapter was about Anderson Lake, a Western businessman running a factory in Thailand. The second was about the Chinese immigrant Hock Seng, a factory manager who aims to steal important designs from Lake. The third was about Emiko, a Japanese girl who was created through genetic engineering and works at a sex club.

At this point, I began to get a sinking feeling.

 

The stereotypes could not be any clearer: the dominant, straight-talking, brook-no-bullshit Westerner; the passive, sneaky, subservient Asian; and the sexpot Asian. In the case of Emiko, we must sit through a description of her rape by her employer and the club’s patrons--at some level, an enactment of a sadistic fantasy shared by the author and many in his audience. I kept reading, but when the big white Westerner rescued the helpless little Japanese girl, thereby winning her gratitude and setting the stage for eventually gaining her love and conquering her body, I decided I had better things to read.

Which brings me to Machete. In this age of active, sometimes overactive (blog), social and cultural sensitivity, what are we to make of a movie that blatantly breaks so many of the rules and is openly acknowledged by director Robert Rodriquez to be an homage to the exploitation flicks of less enlightened decades?

 

The text on the Japanese DVD case calls Machete the “complete filmization of a man’s dream,” and that it is--at least for many men. About a brawny, ugly Mexican who’s good at killing in grisly ways, it spills gallons of blood and shows miles of skin. Scenes of bodily fluids flying from gunshots, impalements and even weed-whackers are interspersed with scenes featuring svelte young women nude, topless, or in kinky costumes--sexy nurse outfits, a nun’s habit, black leather, and so on. While the plot deals with social justice--specifically illegal immigration--racial slurs and stereotypes abound.

Why is this okay, if it is indeed okay? Because it’s fiction? Because it’s all in fun? Because it’s a parody of exploitation flicks and not exactly one itself? Because the sexualized women are strong women? Because the epithets aren’t meant spitefully? Because all of these infringements actually serve to turn themselves on their head in order to make a point that is the opposite of what they might suggest on the surface?

No doubt the answer is all of the above, but at least some of the infractions are simply enjoyable without any need for an excuse. The racial aspects demand separate treatment, but with regard to the portrayal of women, which might in another film provoke cries of sexism or misogyny, perhaps we can say that sometimes it’s all right to put feminist narratives aside and just enjoy a ridiculous fantasy.

Sometimes it’s okay to just be a man or woman who thinks Michelle Rodriquez looks hot as Hell in black leather with matching eyepatch.