Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War has two problems. The first is that the people who made it evidently forgot how to plot. The movie feels like one long prelude to a story that never lifts off. An impeccably directed prelude, to be sure! Exceedingly interesting and full of snappy dialogue!

But the action stays at an even tempo for the entire movie. The obstacles facing Wilson’s quest to fund the mujahideen to fight the Soviets are all too easily surmounted, so there’s no tension or drama. When the climax arrives - Congress voting to pour a billion or so dollars to arm the mujahideen - at least, I think it's the climax. I'm pretty sure it's the climax.

It's a very anticlimactic climax.

The other problem with Charlie Wilson's War is it's treatment of women in general, and Julia Robert's character, Joanne Herring, in particular. She’s a far-far-far-right rich Texan, the woman who first brings Wilson’s attention to the blight of Soviet-invaded Afghanistan; she’s the only female character in the movie who is a player in her own right rather than set-dressing.

The other players - all men - tend to be cool technocrats, the smartest guys in the room. Herring, in contrast, is driven by religious fervor and is strangely low on political savvy. She once opens a fundraising dinner by declaring that the guest of honor, Pakistan’s prime minister, didn’t murder the former prime minister he supplanted.

Kind of a political faux pas there.

Moreover, she’s imperious, touchy, and hypocritical. She clearly sleeps with whomever she pleases, but when Wilson’s staffers irritate her she snaps “Sluts” at them as she breezes out of the room. They’ve been...too pretty in her presence, or something.

The movie’s treatment of Wilson’s staffers in general bothers me. When asked why Wilson’s staff is so young, pretty, and blonde, one of the staffers explains, “He says you can teach them to type, but you can’t teach them to grow tits.” Taking this, and juxtaposing it with the scene where Wilson kisses his chief of staff, Amy Adams, to celebrate getting the money he wants to send to Afghanistan...

It makes me worry how Wilson treats his staffers.

This might have been an interesting contrast in his character - Charlie Wilson, the hero who brings much-needed aid to the people of Afghanistan, but has feet (and knees. And definitely a groin) of clay. But the movie treats his relationship with his staffers so damn jocularly: boys will be boys, and Charlie Wilson’s just a good ol’ boy who loves his whiskey and his women, and isn't it cute?

Um. Or not.

And despite all this movie got great reviews. I wouldn't expect the average reviewer to much care about the sexism, but the fact that the movie is anticlimactic, lacking in conflict or plot, and peopled mainly by characters (with the exception of Wilson and Herring) who are two-dimensional and, worse, forgettable - none of this bothers them?

100 Books, #3: Hattie and the Wild Waves

Barbara Cooney’s Hattie and the Wild Waves might also be called Portrait of the Artist as a Little Girl, and as such I identified excessively with the heroine, Hattie. I dreamed of being a writer, not a painter - I don’t know when I first dreamed it, but it was a fixed star in my mind by second grade - but the common creative urge was there.

Plus, her family went to a summer house on Far Rockaway. Could a name be more redolent of magic than Far Rockaway? The seaside scenes were my favorites in the book, along with Hattie painting the black swans from China.

Hattie is your typical tomboy heroine with an artistic twist. She loves to stand in the prow of her father’s boat, where “the moist salt breezes took all the curl out of her hair.” She hates standing for fittings, can’t sew worth a lick, and yearns to be an artist, in contrast her older sister Pfiffi, who loves getting new dresses and dreams of being a beautiful bride.

Plus, she’s named Pfiffi. It’s a very tiny-yappy-Pomeranian name.

I’ve always wondered what really girly pink-fluff-and-glitter girls read, because there aren’t many books that I can recall in which girly girls are main character. If they’re in the book at all, they’re a sister or cousin or a friend who acts as either an antagonist or a foil for the heroine - to show what a tomboy she is, because “boyish” is obviously the most flattering adjective that could possible be applied to a girl.

I don’t, I hasten to add, mean to be unduly harsh on my beloved Hattie and the Wild Waves. Pfiffi is never vilified for her more traditional femininity, and her character is necessary to show the gulf between the kind of femininity society expected and the artist Hattie wanted to be. But it is a pattern that shows up time and again, and it is unfair to more traditional feminine girls.