CSotD: So much for kinder and gentler, eh?
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One of the founding principles of this blog is that a good cartoon spurs not just laughter, but thought. Today's lesson is on how little the intent of the cartoon directs the tone of those thoughts.
If you read the comments (and this is one of the few web sites where they won't send you into a deep depression about the state of humanity), you know that my discussion of the Lockhorns the other day spurred a comparison to the much kinder, gentler Parkers of The Better Half.
Little did I know that, mere days later, kinder, gentler Stanley and Harriet would send this discussion back to rabid, dysfunctional Woody and Mia.
Well, neither did Randy Glasbergen, I'm sure. Given normal deadlines, this panel was in the hopper long before that batch of 20-year-old dirty laundry was hung out on the washline for the neighbors to tut-tut over.
Though that's not the first thing that came to mind. The first thing that came to mind was a question of whether, following my own divorce, I tried to start a men's group before or after I saw Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh sum up the whole damn divorce game in "Starting Over."
The great thing about the following scene is how completely un-healed their alleged "leader" is, as Burt Reynolds gently points out to him in the last line of dialogue.
Well, that and the contrast between the half-dozen men who want to discuss their feelings and the stream of women coming in to discuss theirs.
If you're not into dark gallows humor (as in the best it is), a caution: Don't click play.
So I started this group which got together I-forget-how-often and, for the first three or four meetings, hashed over problems we were having and issues we were facing, and gave each other what advice we could, or at least sympathy in lieu of advice.
And then somehow it degenerated into, not playing poker, but the same sort of general testosterone bull-session tomfoolery that Stanley alludes to.
I guess, as the alleged leader, I should have nipped it in the bud.
"Jack, with all due respect, I don't think that's a very healthy attitude."
The nice thing about "Starting Over" is that you can hit "pause" when you've had enough for awhile. In real life, you have to actually get up and leave and then people ask you why and that's when I become reluctant to discuss my feelings.
I don't know if they continued to get together to talk dirty and disparage their exes, but, if they did, they did it without me.
Avoidance isn't entirely a male thing. Avoidance of talking about feelings might be, but avoiding deeper, more unpleasant introspection certainly works across gender lines.
Which is probably why those who remember "Starting Over" most often cite Candice Bergen's courageously tone-deaf performance as the soon-to-be-ex, writer of an incredibly insipid but incredibly successful pop tune. It's a very funny scene, in a scary kind of way.
They don't mention that the rest of the film is gut-wrenching and painful and true and not in a funny kind of way.
Or that, while "Heartburn" was full of wit and literacy and style, "Starting Over" just got right down in the mud and, in the words of that earlier era (1979 compared to 1986), "told it like it is."
It's important to note that a large part of what made "Starting Over" work was that there were no kids involved. The film was able to concentrate on the adults and their relationships and that was how it could be so honest without being 12 hours long.
Just as a large part of what made "Kramer vs Kramer" work was that the mother never made much of a case for herself and then, once confronted, simply threw up her hands and gave in. That's another way of simplifying the process: Make one of the characters out of cardboard and then tack on a completely bullshit ending.
I wrote a series about kids in 1992, and, even in a news feature, when it came to divorce, it took two different stories to cover it: One with a counselor explaining what too often happens when couples are in pain, and one with a lawyer examining the collateral damage.
Again, click at your own risk. This is the Woody-and-Mia part.
"In vain I have looked for a single man capable of seeing his own faults and bringing the charge home against himself." — K'ung Fu-tzu
To close on a lighter note:
Today's On the Fastrack also hit home, for more frivolous reasons.
I bought a new computer, which was supposed to arrive Monday but for some reason showed up Saturday morning, which was good, because I would have fallen seriously behind deadline had I not started ironing out the wrinkles 48 hours earlier than I expected to.
It wasn't loaded with bloatware, but the folks at Lenovo certainly want you to be their friends, because they had Internet Explorer configured so that you couldn't put in your own preferences and they could be not just your home page but a second page selling their games and other add-ons, and such that IE then didn't show up in the handy-dandy list of programs you could uninstall.
Which isn't to say I didn't find where they'd hidden it, but it was annoying.
They also had the thing set to open Acrobat files in some proprietary program they wanted to sell me. Fat chance, boys: I overrode that one, too.
But every new task has revealed some bizarre default setting and I'm beginning to feel picked on.
It's not as bad as purchasing from Best Buy, where the Geek Squad "prepares" each computer in a way that guarantees you'll be coming back to purchase service from them — not only "adjusting" settings but removing from the box the slip of paper with the number of the manufacturer's toll-free, no-charge helpline.
Still, the updates have been endless over the past couple of days. I would have thought they'd all come within the first 24 hours.
Nope.
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