Month: August 2013

August 31, 2013

“Red Angel” Versus “The Blue Angel”

My two main activities this weekend are reading plays and reading about Jane Byrne for a play I’m writing. Among the plays I checked out was “Red Angel” by Eric Bogosian. I first started reading it while sitting on the fountain outside of Michigan State’s main library, but then walked to run some errands in Downtown East Lansing. I then sat down in a coffee shop and finished the play while sipping on some tea.

My immediate reaction to the script was that it was well-written and less angry than the Bogosian plays I’ve previously read, although the tone of later Bogosian is much different from “Drinking in America.” I was also impressed because thanks to reading too many plays I expected the premise of a writer and professor sleeping with a student at the college to end up being very cliche or maybe ending with the woman going to great lengths to ruin the life of the professor who is her lover.

After finishing the play, I then looked at the back of the script and noticed Dramatists Play Service included the following sentence with the synopsis:

“Bogosian’s riff on Von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel.”

This caused me to pause and suddenly try to reevaluate my opinion of the play because I’m very familiar with “The Blue Angel.” That evening, after having dinner, I reread the play and tried to see if my opinion changed at all.

“The Blue Angel” is a 1930 film that catapulted the career of Marlene Dietrich*, who stared as cabaret performer Lola-Lola. The film focuses on teacher Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), who goes to the cabaret Lola-Lola performs at hoping to catch students who have been circulating photographs of Lola-Lola. He becomes immediately smitten with her. He eventually becomes consumed with his infatuation with Lola, eventually marrying her. Due to resigning from his job as a teacher, he becomes a clown performing with Lola and his life continues to slip away.

The plot of “Red Angel” is that one evening a writer and professor, David Blau, has three graduate students over after a reception. Two of his students leave and the third student, Leena, stays with him and they talk at great length before deciding to have sex. She spends the night, they have more sex and he discovers she is very familiar with his work. He becomes instantly smitten with her and grows jealous as he finds out there is another man in her life.

There are some similarities and even some possible allusions. One is that the both David and Immanuel are educators, another is that David’s last name is Blau, which is the German word for “blue.” There is also the similarity of the male character in both works becoming jealous regarding his lover.

However the stakes are much different in the two works. Rath is a very respected educator and loses everything because of his infatuation with Lola. Blau is a moderately successful writer who doesn’t really lose anything. There is an emotional change during the course of both works as Rath eventually goes crazy from his jealousy and Blau is significantly weakened by his feelings for Leena.

As for Leena compared to Lola, the strong difference I see is that we see Lola is a woman men go gaga for while I can’t tell how men other than David feel about Leena. Both are strong confident women in creative careers.

The main difference between the two to me is the tone. For me, “The Blue Angel” is very much like a tragedy as we see the fall from grace Rath experiences and his eventual realization that he screwed up before his life comes to a sad end. “Red Angel” feels more like a common drama, although with conflict seems less contrived than in other plays I’ve seen involving romantic relationships. The play, at least on paper, doesn’t seem to be emotionally devastating**, but it ends on a rather lugubrious note.

So after analyzing the similarities, “Red Angel” does feel like a riff that is distant enough from the other material to make you really think about the two different works. Even without comparing “The Blue Angel” to “Red Angel,” the play is very good because it doesn’t devolve into “Women are bitches,” which is what I was afraid of when reading the play because of other plays I’ve read throughout my life.

(I think I just wrote a blog post to discuss my feelings on a play. Sorry, everyone.)

*Marlene Dietrich is a German treasure.

**Emotionally devastating Bogosian would be his novel “Wasted Beauty,” which I enjoyed.

August 18, 2013

Thoughts on Music Videos

After a couple of years of writing about bad music videos for Punching a Jayhawk, the blog I write with my sister, I have learned there are things people consistently do in music videos that often fail. Sometimes, this works well. Since this worked better as a blog post than multiple tweets, I’ve compiled a list of thoughts on music videos here on my personal blog.

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August 12, 2013

Geek Bars Are a Thing Now

WBEZ has an article on their website about a Kickstarter to create a geek bar in Chicago. (thanks to Anna Tarkov for tweeting about it.) This is a bar for “geeks” to enjoy geeky pursuits like playing Magic the Gathering or discussing The Lord of the Rings or debating if Anne Frank or Lizzie Borden would win in a fight.

The article quotes Tony Nilles, who owns a geek bar in Milwaukee:

“You have a demographic where if they go to other bars and clubs, they don’t feel comfortable, they feel like they are an outsider or outcast,” Nilles said. “When you get them around other people that are just like them, they feel this sense of belonging and you find that you have these really nice, kind people that are able to express in ways they weren’t able before.”

It almost sounds like geek bars are analogous to gay bars.

That’s the problem with this concept. It feels like “Aw, the poor geeks. They don’t feel comfortable at The Violet Hour, Big Chicks, Simon’s or some Billy Dec place. We should give them a place to feel comfortable. We’ll give them a geek bar! It will be a safe space!”

The difference between a gay bar and a geek bar is that gay bars are there for gay people to interact with other gay people–and now straight women who want gay best friends. It is a place where they can flirt, pick someone up and feel safe doing so. The quote from Nilles makes a geek bar feel like it’s a way so geeks don’t have to interact with people who aren’t Star Wars obsessives.

I happen to enjoy some things that would normally result in me being a geek. I read comic books, play video games and watch Star Trek, Game of Thrones and Doctor Who. I also occasionally enjoy anime, but with all of these things I’m not an obsessive. I can’t give you a complete overview of Superman’s mythology, debate which Final Fantasy games are superior to other games and I don’t speak Klingon or Dothraki. This might mean that I’m not a geek, but I enjoy “geeky” things. When I walk into a bar I feel very comfortable. Then again, I can carry on a conversation with people about things I’m not geeky about. I’m not going to walk up to some stranger in a bar and talk their head off about health care policy.

What seems even more surprising about this is I’m curious if a geek bar is really necessary in the age of the internet. It’s really easy to find people who share an interest with you. Although going to a bar is a unique experience, if you really want to be around people with a similar geeky interest with you without feeling awkward at a bar you don’t feel like you fit in at, you can go on a subreddit and drink a beer in your apartment.

I also find the quote from David Zoltan, the man behind the concept, about where he got the idea from to be very interesting:

“I thought, I don’t have cable. I’d like to watch the show with a bunch of my Whovian friends and other Whovians from the rest of Chicago,” he said. “(But) while I can throw a stone out and reach a half dozen sports bars in Chicago, there isn’t a place for the geek.”

The thing about this is that you could put together a viewing party at your place or a friend’s place. I know people who don’t have HBO and watch Game of Thrones at a friend’s place. Although going to a bar to do something like watch a football or hockey game is a unique experience, a viewing party with close friends is a great experience. You can eat water chestnuts wrapped in bacon and TARDIS-shaped cookies, or sugar cookies decorated to look like Ood.

But perhaps this ends up being a good idea. It’s promising that this is for people who are geeky about all things, something I don’t get from the Milwaukee geek bar. It seems as though I could walk into this bar and start spouting opinions on mass transit in Los Angeles and it would be okay. Still, it feels a bit discouraging that people feel the need to create bars for geeks to be geeky when it’s seems like it would be relatively easy for geeks to gather in this day.