PARVUM OPUS

Number 53

LOST IN TRANSLATION

As I wrote last week, Parvum Opus will now include bits and pieces about subjects other than strictly English usage.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

• Someone on the radio or TV said "diminuation" for "diminution." Since neither the wrong nor the right form sounds comfortable to me, I think the mistake is logical. The correct form, "diminution," suggests that the verb might be "diminute," which of course is not a word. What should the logical noun form of the verb "diminish" be? "Diminishment" is another possibility. (It helps to remember "diminutive.") This is like confusing "remuneration" and "renumeration" (meaning "payment"). It seems like it should be "renumeration" (not a word) ~ payment or money makes you think of numbers ("numer"). I have to stop and think about these words every time.
• Someone else referred to "an indulgent treat." I think it was about ice cream. "Indulgent" means "permissive." You indulge yourself, the ice cream does not indulge you. That would be anthropomorphizing.
• A political common tater said that someone has been "drinking the anti-Bush Kool-Aid." This is of course a reference to the infamous 1978 murder/suicide of 900 people who were followers of a cult leader named Jim Jones. Drinking the Kool-Aid has entered the language as shorthand for drinking poison or self-destructing. The speaker may have meant that the anti-Bushite was about to self-destruct, or he may have meant merely that knee-jerk political reactions are poisonous to the soul.
• A professor of mine once declaimed about something or other with the admonishment to us to "engage in life, not merely living!" He was probably capitalizing "Life" in his mind. I always thought this might have worked as well, or made as much (or as little) sense, if he'd told us to "engage in living, not merely life!" Maybe that's what he said, I'm not sure now. You can read anything you want into words used abstractly in this way, and the speaker (or writer) needn't trouble himself to say anything too definite. If he'd been in another line of work, he would have used other words, all capitalized: Love, Country, Mother, and so on. This is the same professor who said, "You'd like me to tell you, wouldn't you?" when I asked him a question about a paper (see PO 30). I began to suspect he really had no ideas, and little information, behind his rhetoric, which another student described as "masturbatory" ~ i.e. it gratified him more than it penetrated his students' brains.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

The eponymously titled movie starring Bill Murray (as Bob Harris) and Scarlett Johansson (as Charlotte, no last name) received good reviews as a sensitive, delicate character study of two lonely people whose paths cross in Tokyo. The movie ~ the film, I mean ~ opens with a lengthy, sensitive view of Charlotte's eloquent, significant butt seen through sheer pink panties as she lies motionless in bed. (Fred was expecting it to break out into a smile.) The camera dwelt on the above referenced rear and adjacent parts so often, for so long, that the audience had to excuse itself for several cigarette breaks. The movie ends with Murray/Harris, cheerier than before, heading for the Tokyo airport.

In a few short days, friendship blooms between the middleaged actor, whose fading career is getting a huge injection from doing Japanese commercials when he'd rather be doing theater, and the neglected young wife who doesn't know what to do with herself and her philosophy degree from Yale. (The director, Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford's daughter, did not give us a lingering shot of her diploma.)

There's little plot to speak of, just lots of mugging and a few bits of humor. Bill Murray is always worth watching, even (especially) with his clothes on. Johansson is certainly lovely and as engaging as most young girls can be, but the movie depended so much on her perfect flesh, which Murray's character resisted, though the same cannot be said of the writer or director. In a late-night karaoke scene, Murray/Harris gets to sing two songs, both moody, and yes, sensitive, lyrics about life, emotions, etc. The girl gets one song, and it's a sexy rocker ("Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders).

The lighting was odd, even in the midst of the garish neon of Tokyo, always a bit shaded. I'm assuming that was intentional. The stunning visuals of the city and Japan's surreal Westernized pop culture emphasize the alienation of these two people, but they arrived in Japan alienated. I wanted to learn more about Japan than about them.

It was hard for me to sympathize with them, whose mutual empathy stems largely from recognizing each other's ennui and sense of superiority to everyone else around them. Scarlett/Charlotte goes to a Zen temple and complains of not being able to "feel" anything, as if that were the idea. Murray is making $2 million for doing a commercial, which doesn't take long. I don't see why he couldn't take the money happily, which would support his own neglected family for a long time, while he does legitimate theater back home. So he could stop neglecting his family. Likewise, the self-admittedly talentless Charlotte could put on some clothes and get a job, or get a different degree, or maybe do charity work, instead of moaning about her inability to write or take photographs like her successful photographer/twit husband. But over the years, my own more delicate feelings have become blunted.

Somehow I'm reminded of the 1999 American release of a French comedy, Post Coitum, Animal Triste (American title, "After Sex"). A middle-aged married woman has a hot affair with a younger man, who leaves her. I watched this with a friend of mine, a woman, and we both enjoyed this vicarious fantasy (the director was a woman and got the sex scenes right), until the end. The woman has lost the boyfriend and ruined her marriage to a decent husband, when suddenly a friend pops up and offers her ~ a cruise to a Mediterranean island, to heal! This was the unbelievable part. We laughed and laughed.

SEE THE USA

My ESL students are teaching me how many things I take for granted about the United States. They love their homes, but America looks pretty good to them in a lot of ways.

• Things work here. The sewers and streets get fixed a lot. The inconvenience of interrupted traffic is worth it, because things usually operate the way they're supposed to. The garbage gets picked up. The utilities work.
• The much-maligned Post Office works too. You can send mail and expect it to arrive. You don't have to bribe anyone to deliver it, and it probably won't be stolen out of the mailbox in front of your house.
• It's safe enough here to wear your jewelry; you don't have to leave your engagement and wedding rings locked up at home when you go out in public. If you can afford an expensive car, you can buy one and drive it.
• You don't have to drive through stop signs and lights because you're afraid of getting kidnapped from your car in the middle of traffic.
• People tend to trust each other. You'll find pumpkins and plants and Christmas greenery left outside in front of a store with no one to tend them. You tell the cashier at Staples how many photocopies you've made, and he'll believe you.
• Store clerks and waiters are usually friendly and polite.
• Lots of things are cheaper here than in other countries ~ not everything, of course. Food is much cheaper than in Japan. Many manufactured articles are cheaper than in Venezuela. Some things are expensive, but there's always another store to shop in where prices are lower.
• The stores are always full of goods. We complain about our materialistic culture, but when you've got too much stuff, you've got high-class troubles. Russia is not a place to go shopping.
• The ouster of California Governor Gray Davis was controversial, but it was legal. In Venezuela, petitions signed by vast numbers of people have not succeeded in effecting a legal reelection, because President Chavez doesn't want to leave, and he has the firepower to back up his viewpoint. California's recall was a comedy, not a tragedy. Davis went quietly.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2003. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

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