If I Fell

It’s a rare enough occasion when a cover song outshines the original, and when it comes to The Beatles, it hardly ever happens. It takes some superhuman abilities to outshine The Beatles. But sometimes they outshine themselves, and that’s where this song comes in. There’s nothing wrong with the original of If I Fell. It’s pretty great by almost any standard. Except by Beatles standards. It just always sounded a little bit forgettable and mediocre compared to all the even greater greatness it was placed next to. A Hard Day’s Night. And I Love Her. Can’t Buy Me Love. Those songs are so above and beyond in greatness that they make material any other band would’ve sold their souls to have written fade into oblivion. So this one was always a merely pretty good Beatles song that I never paid much mind to because Can’t Buy Me Love was about to come on. I never even realized how tender and beautiful it was, until Across the Universe came along and set it in an entirely new context. That movie is to the idea of jukebox musicals what a wedding cake is to twinkies, or what Maus is to Garfield, or any other good vs. terrible simile you’s like to insert here. Besides making us see the hits in a new light, what it did was make the non-hits into hits. It took a dimly remembered song that made such perfect sense for the plot and characters that it suddenly became greater than it had been before. Have you noticed how moving those lyrics are? I never did, until Julie Taymor showed me.

I’m the Toughest

Last time we heard a Peter Tosh song, he was misquoting some Bible verses. Which is completely in character. Tosh was a spiritual man and liked using biblical references in his music. You can easily imagine him kicking back with some scripture. Somewhat less easy to see him as is a fan corny Hollywood musicals. But he must have been, for this song has clearly been lifted from Annie Get Your Gun. I’m hardly an expert on musical comedy myself, and I never would have known the reference if I hadn’t stumbled across on accident. I’ve never even seen Annie Get Your Gun, though I can tell from the clip below that it is hokey in the extreme. However, it was a hit Broadway show and movie, and one of its most well known songs is Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better. It’s a broadly comical duet between, I presume, Annie Oakley and some dude in a suit. It’s a battle-of-the-sexes kind of thing, which in 1950 was played as the height of absurdity. Whether Peter Tosh was a closet musical theatre geek we may never know, but at some point he encountered this song and he heard something in it beyond ham-fisted 1950′s comedy. I cannot imagine that Tosh generated his lyrics coincidentally, or on a lark. All of his songs are deeply thoughtful, and like he did those Bible lines, he took a few words from a dumb Hollywood musical and made them into something entirely new and a trillion times better. Tosh’s creation is a brazen declaration of empowerment. You could argue that the original song was that too, but since it was put forward as a laff-getter, it can’t be taken seriously as any kind of a message. Peter Tosh, however, demands to be taken seriously. When he says he can do anything better, you’d best believe him.

Good

Good is a film about Nazi Germany, from the point of view of a Nazi. Except that Viggo Mortensen’s Professor Halder isn’t really a Nazi. He’s just a decent, weak-willed man who follows the path of least resistance - straight into an SS uniform. Generally, what we love about WWII movies is their lack of moral complexity. The Nazis are evil, the Jews are their victims and the Americans save the day. Easy. Good is not an easy movie. It makes the uncomfortable case that in real life, good and evil aren’t so clearly drawn. Most of us roll through life trying to be good and decent, and usually everything turns out fine, but the hard truth is, there are times when just being good isn’t good enough. How did millions of decent German citizens become complicit in crimes against humanity? They weren’t all evil or bloodthirsty, they were just following the path of least resistance. Professor Halder is more concerned with his dysfunctional family, his job and his mistress than what’s going on all around him. He may feel vaguely disgusted by party doctrine, but he likes the perks. He believes that he can be in the party but not of it. By the time he realizes his mistake, it’s Kristallnacht. He doesn’t start out as a horrible person, but he inadvertently becomes one, just by going along with what he’s told. This movie might make an interesting double feature with Schindler’s List, contrasting the heroic with the apathetic. Oskar Schindler wasn’t a particularly good person before the war; he was a lousy husband, a corrupt businessman. Yet he outwitted and outmaneuvered the Nazi death machine, saving over a thousand lives. Or take the case of the Rwandan Schindler, Paul Rusesabagina, an unremarkable hotel manager who risked his own life and family to shelter hundreds of refugees from the genocide raging just outside. Both ordinary, not especially pious or distinguished men, who somehow saw beyond accepted doctrine or propaganda and knew the right thing to do, regardless of their own wellbeing. To ignore the dominant political ideology and do the exact opposite of what every radio broadcast tells you, that takes amazing courage, conviction and no small amount of foolhardiness. We all like to imagine that if the Nazis came knocking, we’d all be Schindlers. But most of us wouldn’t. Most of us would be Professor Halders, ineffectually trying to be good, unable to see beyond our own petty needs and unintentionally ending up on the side of the bad guys.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

First, screw trying to find era-appropriate pictures of The Beatles. It takes too long.

Second, forget trying to be informative or educational. Let’s presume you and I both already know everything there is to know about The Beatles. So that leaves interpretation, which is always fun. There are some songs that have cut-and-dried meanings you can’t argue with, and there a lot more that are open any kind of meaning you want to hang on them. A large part of it is just free associating. What emotions and memories come up? Or you could go the critical thinking way and break it down Lit Class style. Let’s talk about the underlying metaphors in this poetic stanza, shall we? I like to do both. In this case, the actual meaning is probably not terribly complicated. It’s a love song, and I’m guessing it’s about Yoko, and it’s kind of ambivalent, which makes sense because Yoko Ono could be kind of a heavy trip. He’s in love with her, but he’s having a few second thoughts, because he knows he’s signing up for a hard time. Easy enough. What it means to me on a personal level is basically nostalgia. It reminds me of the time when I listened to Abbey Road and then I turned the tape over and listened to Sgt Pepper and then I did it again. And again and again and again, until something else caught my interest. What! I was fourteen. I can tell you I didn’t think too deeply about what any of it meant. This is actually one of The Beatles’ less metaphorical songs. It’s easy to spend way too much time teasing out obscure scraps of meaning from I Am the Walrus, but this not so much. Which is why I have to applaud the surprising take on it from Across the Universe. That movie, by the way, was one of the best musicals in recent memory, and one of the brilliant things about it is how it takes so many familiar songs from all over The Beatles’ history and shakes every single one into something new. Turning I Want You into a political allegory is completely unexpected, yet totally obvious, and it works so well you wonder why The Beatles didn’t think of that themselves. If they had thought to make a video with images of G.I. hauling a prone Lady Liberty through the jungle it would likely have become an iconic moment. As it is, it’s merely a really cool one, and a great example of artistic interpretation that creates something original instead of repeating something borrowed.

I Think I See the Light

Cat Stevens didn’t write this song for Harold & Maude, but it was featured in the movie and it shares a message with it. That film and its Cat Stevens soundtrack is one of the most perfectly balanced matches of story and music, so much so it almost feels like a musical, although technically it isn’t. Another example of a movie completely suffused with the spirit of the soundtrack artist would be The Graduate with its Simon & Garfunkel songs. Those movies are honorary musicals because the music adds to our understanding of the story and even helps move the plot along. That’s a very difficult trick to pull off, which a lot of filmmakers have tried and failed to do. What usually happens when someone tries is they end up substituting emotional pop songs for emotional content, bringing in from outside feelings that should have been generated by the story and actors. Obviously, Harold & Maude doesn’t have this problem. Partly because the story is so fresh and partly because the cast is so excellent. And in no small part because the music genuinely adds depth to the story. Cat Stevens has always projected a lot of positive energy in his music; his message is always life-affirming. The message of the movie is also life-affirming, but it’s not immediately easy to grasp that, what with all the suicides and very dark humor throughout. It doesn’t have an instantly gratifying happy ending. It’s an ending that begs thinking about. It’s thanks to the songs that we come away with a feeling of fulfillment, knowing that everything turned out well in the end. It’s the songs that pull all the essentially happy themes to the surface. It’s certainly a very philosophical movie, and it uses music to subtly bring its ideas into focus. That’s a pretty rare feat when every song says something about what’s going on. This one very much does that. It was already a great song just being an album track on Mona Bone Jakon, but it benefits from a new context. What I’m talking about works both ways. Just as songs can add to a story, adding a story makes you think differently about a song  you already knew. It makes you think about what it means and what you think it meant before.

I Got Life

The whole spirit of Hair in one scene. Maybe the whole spirit of the 60′s right there. That’s what Hair meant to be, a musical, comical manifesto of the hippie generation. But if the 60′s was all it meant, it wouldn’t hold up very well today, and I think that it does. Not just because we’re supremely nostalgic for everything besides our own times.  Because the spirit of rebellion stomping on the fine china of establishment is timeless and universal. We wanted to kick high society in the balls in 1969 and we still do. We still want a dance on the table with George Berger.

 

Movie Watch…

Some thoughts on two movies I watched this week, which have nothing at all in common except that their respective stars were good friends in real life, and both are now no longer with us.

First, Micheal Jackson’s This Is It, the documentary cobbled together from footage of Jackson’s rehearsals for his planned series of London concerts in 2009. Those concerts never happened and what was meant to be footnotes became the whole show, because Jackson died mere weeks before the first performance. The documentary that was rushed out in tribute will be a treat for Jackson’s fans, and of interest to anyone interested in the inner machinations of show business. What we see is Jackson working closely with musicians, dancers, set designers, videographers and others to perfect what was meant to be a spectacle to end all spectacles. He was planning to come out of a giant robot, show 3D video and have a custom designed bulldozer roll up on stage. Also a cherry picker. Some of the creative participants briefly get to talk, but there’s no interviews with MJ and the focus is strictly on the musical numbers. Jackson meant for these concerts to be comeback, to remind people why he was famous in the first place, his musical legacy having of late been overshadowed by the tabloid image of Wacko Jacko the delusional millionaire pop star with no nose and a set of disturbing legal woes. Judging from this footage, he would have succeeded. Although he appears extremely thin and has the face of a horror puppet, the singular voice and commanding stage presence are still there in full. And though he repeatedly states that he’s holding back and saving himself for the real thing, he can be seen effortlessly executing complex choreography, easily outmoving dancers half his age, all the while sounding exactly like he did on record. He does not appear like a man about to die – he’s engaged, professional and clearly in his element. It’s certainly fascinating, even for casual fans, to watch a born entertainer in the midst of the creative process.

Then, randomly yet not, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Michael Jackson’s bosom buddy Elizabeth Taylor at her best. Not her most glamorous or beautiful, but certainly her best as an actress. Taylor’s performance as a woman insane with alcohol and discontent is one of her greatest roles, and she leaves all movie star vanity at the door. The movie is a classic, with great a great performance from then-Mr Taylor Richard Burton, and the stinging words of Edward Albee’s play. There’s a lot to be said about what it says about the social mores of the times (firmly in the “evil 50′s” genre) and the oft bitter realities of marriage and broken dreams. But what I immediately thought of, and this might actually be a novel interpretation, is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. (If you don’t know what that is, watch this video.) Movies show this fantasy ad nauseum – the sullen, sensitive depressive intellectual/hipster/artsy type male loser is inexorably drawn out of his funk by the adventurous spirit of a vivacious, unconventional, devil-may-care cool chick. It’s all part of the old male fantasy that awesome chicks are interested in pursuing sullen loser types for absolutely no reason. And how does Liz Taylor tie in with all this? Well, when I saw this movie, I could instantly see the MPDG type relationship, 30 years and way too many bottles of wine later. This is how it happens after the rom-com happy ending. The sullen intellectual loser is still a sullen intellectual loser who, having gone nowhere in life, is wallowing in his shame and sense of inadequacy. The Manic Pixie is now a manic depressive alcoholic, boiling over with rage at her wasted life. Because they’re actually a terrible combination. They do nothing but bring out the worst in each other. He’s ruined her life and feels guilty. She knows her life is ruined and resents it. It’s a bitter downward spiral of tears, insults and accusations, fueled by endless bottles of ‘bourgin’. Yes, watch this movie then go watch some of the movies discussed in the video and tell me if those aren’t the same characters, before and after reality crushed the spirit out them both.

Heaven On Their Minds

I’ll use this clip from Jesus Christ Superstar as a starting point to bemoan the death of the great American movie musical. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a bit since seeing the godawful fiasco that was Nine. From the invention of the talkies up until the mid-sixties musicals were one of Hollywood’s most popular forms of entertainment, then abruptly, the art form died and has been unable to be properly resurrected. There’s a debate as to why, and one of the theories is that as movies in general became more realistic, audiences were no longer willing to suspend their disbelief for something as inherently ridiculous as movie stars bursting into song and dance numbers. Jesus Christ Superstar became a surprise hit in 1973, a time by which musicals were completely out of vogue. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it was exactly the perfect material for a musical. The story of Christ by definition requires a suspension of disbelief – that’s what faith is all about – and if Christ could walk on water and raise the dead, why wouldn’t He sing too? On top of that, the movie makes no effort to be historically accurate or realistic in any way, eliminating completely those awkward segues from normal talking to emotive singing. It’s an all-encompassing vision, in its way and that’s why it’s one of the few post-1960′s movie musicals to pull it off with grace. The same is true for more recent hit musicals like Moulin Rouge and Chigaco – they make no pretense towards realism. Others, like Cabaret and Dreamgirls, work because they happen to be about show business, giving the characters a real-life excuse for their singing and dancing.

I think the other big reason that movie musicals died out had to do with the stars themselves. In Hollywood’s heyday, there were dozens of professional song-and-dance-men and -women. Stars like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Ginger Rogers, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, and many, many others were trained dancers, excellent singers, and charming personalities who did nothing but make musicals. A Fred and Ginger picture might look silly to modern eyes in many respects, but there’s no denying that those two were masters of what they did. There’s a reason why there aren’t any musicals starring Humphrey Bogart. He wasn’t a song and dance man, and the studios that owned him effectively prevented him from making the mistake of imagining that he was. Likewise, although a few like Sinatra and Day were known to take dramatic roles, the dancers mostly stuck to dancing. Nobody wanted to see Astaire go all Method, just as nobody wanted to hear Marlon Brando sing. And the studios kept it that way. When the studio star system collapsed, the stars were free to manage their own careers, and while that allowed them to make more money, control their own images, and not be indentured servants to the likes of Adolph Zuckor, it also meant that there was no one to nudge a talent in a promising direction. So everybody who wanted high-prestige dramatic roles went for it, and the song and dance men became few and far apart. My Fair Lady is one of the last great musicals, but it’s well known that Audrey Hepburn could neither sing nor dance, and her vocals were dubbed. Also, after the sixties happened, everyone who could sing and dance wanted to be rock stars. Liza Minnelli was the last of her kind, the last song-and-dance type performer to become a cultural figure on a large scale. Today there are no song-and-dance stars. There may be performers who can sing, dance, and deliver sharp dialogue as well as anybody in the old days, but they’re all on Broadway, which is a kind of entertainment ghetto that as far as I can tell only gay men of a certain age still care about and consider cool. There’s hardly anyone working in movies today who can sing or dance, and even fewer who can do both at the same time. The actor Hugh Jackman moves comfortably between the worlds of Hollywood and Broadway, and I believe that Beyonce has what it takes to be that complete package of moves, vocals and charm required to carry a musical.

I think that the failure of the movie musical to reignite its old popularity has little to do with the disbelief thing. What with CGI monsters and superheroes being all the rage, it’s clear that audiences have no trouble suspending their disbelief for a well-constructed fantasy. The problem is lack of talent. Recent musicals have flopped because they rested on the shoulders of unqualified stars. You can’t suspend disbelief when you’re laughing at how idiotic Kate Hudson looks trying to dance and move her mouth at the same time.

Nine

The Italians didn’t invent the virgin/whore dichotomy but they believe in it more literal-mindedly than anyone else. Their patriarchal and Catholic-guilt-ridden culture is a strange subject for Hollywood. I’ll admit I’ve never seen Fellini’s 8½, but it’s the source of all this foolery, every cliche – the saintly mother, the long-suffering wife, the vulgar mistress, the friendly neighborhood whore, the token crass American, the nebulous muse. At least Fellini had the excuse of drawing from his own life. Who thought that turning this material into a lavish musical was a good idea, I don’t know, but everything about the film Nine is misguided, from Daniel Day-Lewis’s Chef Boyardee accent to the sight of that sexless old hatchet Judi Dench dolled up Folies Bergere style. First problem, the songs aren’t very good. Second, insurmountable problem, none of the leading ladies can sing. The only one who doesn’t make an embarrassment of herself is Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, who just happens to be a professional pop singer. The third terrible problem is terrible, terrible miscasting. Nicole Kidman wears more padding than Eddie Murphy in a futile attempt to evoke Anita Ekberg. Kidman doesn’t have the figure for it – she’s tall, lean and flat-chested, all straight lines and angles. Nor does she have the personality of a sex-kitten. She’s at her best playing refined, neurotic intellectuals. I like her very much, but she’s simply not the coochy-coo type. Marion Cotillard’s spurned wife is all doe-eyed and weepy. Kate Hudson is a useless piece of flotsam dredged up to add a bit of extra celebrity wattage to the marquee. Sophia Loren, as close to a living goddess as anyone could get, is given nothing to do except stand there, looking saintly and wise. The only good thing about the picture is Penelope Cruz. Although her yowling and jiggling begs for one of those cartoon hooks to whisk her offstage, at least she’s having fun. She’s only actress perfectly cast – playing passionate, sensual and needy is right up her alley, and she musters enough enthusiasm to act as though she were in a real movie. Is that worth the price of admission? No. Go rent Elegy or Volver.

The Girl Who…

As I was incoherently saying earlier today, there’s a dearth of strong female characters in, well, everywhere. It’s no secret that Hollywood writers still uniformly think that women are too ‘adorkable’* to chew gum and walk – see Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan, Katherine Heigl, Zooey Deschanel, et al. I also can’t think of very many strong, smart, self-sufficient female heroines in literature either. Alice in Wonderland and Pippi Longstocking come to mind. Lucy Pevensie. Arya Stark. Lyra Belacqua. Hermione Granger. Matilda Wormwood. Somebody write in and remind me of a kick-butt heroine who isn’t a small child. The only instance I can instantly remember of a grown woman standing up for herself and being strong is Lady Eowyn from The Lord of The Rings. Nearly every female character in every book ever written is either a dirty slut or a miserable helpless victim. It may not be fair to fault writers who lived 150 years ago for insufficient feminism – they wrote about the times they lived in. The Sexual Revolution wasn’t that long ago. It’s no wonder we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Now, in what the entertainment industry will surely dismiss as a freak occurrence with no rational explanation, we have the massive popularity of a book and movie franchise that wouldn’t exist without its convention-shattering heroine. I’m talking about Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, which introduced us to Lisbeth Salander, the first truly, fully modern fictional heroine. Larsson’s books are compelling enough mysteries, but there’s no shortage of those floating about. What there is shortage of, and what these books offer, is an original character, an amped-up version of today’s cool young woman. Lisbeth is a deeply, perhaps irrevocably troubled person, and that is part of her appeal. As Larsson bluntly states on the first page of his first book, a staggering percent of women find themselves on the receiving end of some kind of violent and degrading treatment. It’s a lucky woman indeed who makes it to old age without being abused in one way or another. Most of us can relate to being made to feel helpless and weak. However, the image of the stereotypical weepy, self pitying victim is in itself degrading. As if a woman who has been raped or otherwise assaulted should just curl up and die, or continue feeling helpless, worthless and violated for the rest of her life. What I think readers love about Lisbeth Salander is her absolute refusal, no matter the horrible things that have been done to her, to give in to the victim mentality. She’s been abused, but she’s no helpless victim. She fights back with every weapon at her disposal. She continues, against all odds, to be herself.

Her role as a righteous avenger is only part of her appeal, although it’s the most obvious one. But besides having a talent for annihilating those who oppress her, Lisbeth personifies what I think of as an ideal new woman in countless other ways. She breaks practically every convention of how women are portrayed, across the board. First off, she is not conventionally attractive, a cardinal sin for any woman, fictional or otherwise. She’s less than five feet tall, malnourished, heavily pierced and tattooed, badly dressed, and has a bad haircut. She has zero social skills, an almost worse sin, for after physical appearance a woman’s worth is measured in charm. A woman should be like a kitten society says; soft, cuddly and endlessly, brainlessly amusing. Lisbeth is not amusing. She’s sexually liberated. She fucks whoever she wants to, whenever she feels like it, with no emotional investment. As is her prerogative, but that’s still considered shocking. The fact that Larsson has written a heroine with the sexual morals of a man is in itself a great leap forward. Society is still trying to wrap its collective head around the idea that a woman can and should freely pursue her sexual desires, outside the love/marriage institution. The fact that Lisbeth continues to enjoy sex despite having been raped is another huge fuck-off to victim culture. She sees no reason to let one man’s depraved actions destroy her own capacity for pleasure. She’s not interested in love, either. She does fall in love at one point, but it doesn’t work out, she feels bad for a while, then she gets over it. As we all do. No hand wringing, no baby-come-back. Having a love interest is traditionally a defining feature of any fiction featuring females, with the possible exception of the Miss Marple stories. How can a woman live without being defined by the man who owns her heart? Very easily, it turns out. Finally, Lisbeth’s greatest strength is her brilliant mind. She’s not defined by her looks or her sexuality or who she’s in love with. If there’s anything to define her by, it’s being a genius. A thoroughly modern one, a wizard on the computer who ferrets out evildoers’ secrets to use against them in self-defense. She gets by on her own resourcefulness, never waiting around to be rescued. This might be the first time we’ve met a heroine who is so completely her own person.

Obviously the thanks for Larsson’s popularity rests entirely on Lisbeth’s shoulders. For as I might have mentioned before, he’s kind of a crappy writer in many ways. The three Millennium books have a lot of faults, which I’ll admit are par for the course in the thriller/mystery genre. Larsson’s prose is supremely clunky, his dialogue graceless. There are long bouts of boring and unimportant exposition. There’s his habit of cataloging every sandwich, cup of coffee and Ikea purchase. To be fair, though, the editing process was never properly completed, because the author died before publication. Also to his credit, Larsson had quite a depraved imagination, inventing an unusually compelling series of mysteries. The first book can stand alone, and has a somber wintry mood that is very different from the other two, which delve speedily into a convoluted and far-reaching conspiracy. The last two books move with immense speed, gathering clues and twists on nearly every page. Larsson was planning a series of ten books, and had supposedly nearly finished the fourth one at the time of his death. After unraveling the inner workings of Sweden’s Secret Police, I can only imagine what new evils he was planning to mine. As always, his subject is the abuse of power. It was writ on a small scale in the first novel, unfolding withing one awesomely dysfunctional family. In the final two, he tackled abuse of power on a government level, with the same righteous anger. The sense that Larsson isn’t just aiming to entertain, but is truly all steamed-up about inequity within society might also be a part of the series’ appeal.

Larsson was in the magazine business himself before he started writing fiction, and loved to uncover the dirty deeds of right-wing political organizations and the like. The hero and Lisbeth’s sometime parter, Mikael Blomqvist, is so obviously an idealized alter-ego of the author. He’s an impeccably moral journalist, an endlessly loyal friend, brave and brilliant and absurdly irresistible to women. His very incorruptibility is almost grating. He would be a rather dull protagonist if he didn’t have Lisbeth to spar with. Her near-anarchist ways make a good foil for his rather conventional thinking. He’s the classic good detective. All good all the time. Larsson’s world doesn’t have any room for shades of grey. It’s good guys and gals against pure evil. Lisbeth is the only really complex character in that regard. Everyone else is either or. Lisbeth likes to take morally suspect action, being capable of extreme violence and cruelty, but she’s more avenging angel than ethical conundrum. There’s never any doubt she’s doing the right thing, even when she’s being sadistic. (Acknowledging that a woman can be sadistic and violent, another trailblazing score for Larsson!) But, of course, a clear moral universe is what’s expected of crime fiction. The satisfaction of seeing bad guys get their due punishment is what makes the genre so addictive and pleasurable.

Speaking to anyone who might not get around to reading the actual books, there’s also movies available for you to watch. I have to disagree with the otherwise perceptive Joan Acocella’s assessment that the story lives better onscreen. For all their faults I think the books offer a more satisfying experience. However, the movies are also worth the time. Against all expectations I found the American adaptation far superior to the Swedish original. I don’t know who director Niels Arden Oplev is, but his adaptation is perfunctory and too genteel by half. The plot is overly simplified, losing too many relevant details. It’s a complicated story, but it didn’t need to be reduced to bullet points. I also thought the visual style was a little flat. The main weakness for the Swedish entry is the casting of Blomqvist, whose heroic characteristics the bloated and pockmarked features of Michael Nykvist reflect not at all. He looks more like a creepy rapist than the creepy rapist does. The American version has the benefits of a much more faithful and detailed adaptation job, the visual flair of David Fincher, director of perverse grunge classics Fight Club and Se7en. And  new-model 007 Daniel Craig is a much-improved Blomqvist – charismatic but rough around the edges. I thought that both actresses cast as Lisbeth Salander were excellent in their own ways, although Sweden’s Noomi Rapace might actually be a bit too beautiful for the role. Rapace plays Lisbeth as fierce and deeply angry. American Rooney Mara plays her more as wary and sad, looking at times like a drowned rat. I find Mara unrecognizable without black bangs, and that element of blandness is actually a strength when it comes to portraying a girl who is already iconic in readers’ imaginations. It allows her to create the character with no outside associations.

I find it delightful that people have embraced the Millennium books and made Lisbeth Salander a phenomenon. And I can’t help but bring up yet another wildly popular page to screen adventure that stars a young woman for whom self-sufficiency, intelligence, and physical strength rank far above cuteness and charm. I’m talking about The Hunger Games books. Although Suzanne Collins’s books are miles and genres away from Larsson’s they have similarities, in their heroines. Collins has created Katniss Everdeen, a girl who shares a lot with Lisbeth Salander. Like Lisbeth, she survives by her wits, cares deeply about doing what’s right, fights bravely against an inhumane and abusive power system, doesn’t need a man to take care of her, doesn’t give a damn what she looks like, doesn’t care about being nice, isn’t afraid to fight and kill if need be, and refuses to give up being herself. I think it’s no coincidence that both these young heroines have become household names, and are fiercely beloved and endlessly talked about. They are obviously filling a deep need for female role models that real women today can admire. Because the princess in the castle who dreams of getting married is so hopelessly obsolete it’s laughable, and so is the wily femme fatale who inevitably gets punished to being too up front about the feminine business of using her looks to manipulate men to her advantage. Because on both sides of the traditional virgin/whore schematic it’s the same thing going on; women using their only precious resource (their pussy, duh) to somehow finagle their way to a better station in life, whether by ensnaring Prince Charming in holy matrimony or turning tricks. That entrenched view of women is outmoded, outdated and no less disgusting for being perpetuated by singing critters in Disney movies. Well, today we have a generation of young girls (and boys) coming of age who’ve internalized the positives of first wave feminism, who’ve grown up with the expectation of equality, grown up expecting freedom and respect, and we want to see ourselves on the screen and in books.

*newspeak for ‘functionally retarded but still fuckable’