“Third-person plural is grammatically and, more important, aesthetically unacceptable. Thon is the superior solution to the ungendered pronoun issue we as a people of the enhanced gender spectrum face today.”
“Dinsmore has requested they/them. It is Dinsmore’s choice how they/them are to be gendered.”
“I’ll speak to thon about it when I get back. I think thon will see it my way. Thon is a reasonable … human of unstated gender.”
“In the meantime, email your notes to them.”
“Thon.”
“Goodbye, B.”
Arvide hangs up.
I send my files to Dinsmore with a cutting note too subtle for thon to understand (thon is an imbecile, regardless of thon’s protected status). Surely thon’s essay will be heralded no matter what thon writes. After all, thon is a card-carrying member of the nonbinary community. Thon’s critique is preordained, pre-celebrated. Thon is, after all, a font of hard-earned wisdom. I was always going to be up against this type of thinking with my version of the essay. Who do I think I am, a privileged white et chetera, et chetera assessing a work that by rights is the genderqueer community’s to assess. And frankly, I am glad to have washed my hands of it. Not that I will not be facing similar outrage once I release the African American Ingo’s film. But having rescued Ingo from obscurity, I should be offered immunity from that otherwise righteous indignation.
As I pack, I consider the sage words of brilliant New Yorker film critic Richard Brody: “It’s not enough to love a movie—it’s important to love it for the right reasons.” He’s said everything here. It is the reason I write film criticism: so that audiences can learn why a film is good. And, of course, Brody and I share a love of all things Anderson and we both know precisely why it’s so good. Many’s the evening we’ve passed together at the local gastropub discussing, discussing, discussing Anderson, or as we playfully call him Wanderson, to distinguish him from the hack Panderson.
Ah, young love. Moonrise Kingdom captures it precisely as it is truly felt, perhaps the only movie in history to accomplish this. Certainly, it features all of Wanderson’s delightful eccentricities—what young boy really smokes a pipe? Ha ha. But what young boy in his heart doesn’t imagine himself smoking one? No young boy, is who! And this is where Wanderson leaves his generation of filmmakers in the ash heap of history. He understands that in film there exists an opportunity (an obligation!) to externalize the internal. And he goes about this task with the precision of circus sharpshooter Adolph Topperwein shooting a cigarette from the lips of his beloved Plinky. In this analogy, we, the audience, are Plinky. There are, you see, no mistakes in a Wanderson film. I was that smoking boy (how oh how did he know?). And so were you. Perhaps in your jaded, cynical current state of being, you will refuse to acknowledge this truth, but truth it is, nonetheless. Unless you are female, in which case you dressed as a bird. Do not deny this. Wanderson is the chronicler of our tender heart and as such deserves our adulation—yours and mine. I recall meeting and being charmed by his lovely girlfriend at a reception for The Wonderful Mr. Fox (fantastic movie!) and I was then and remain now convinced Wanderson knows pure love more purely than you or I ever could. Although I might be closer than you in that his girlfriend’s Lebanese roots are similar to my girlfriend’s African roots, not so much geographically but in terms of the ethnic differences between the two of them and the two of us. That kind of close.
I LOAD THE GIANT truck, excitedly imagining myself at the presentation soon to occur in my publisher’s office. There I will be, smack dab in the center of New York’s famed Film Criticism District (7th between 25th and the middle of the block, facing uptown, east side of the street). It’s not unheard of to spot Davin Plum or Amodell Kingsley on the street here wandering, pens in hand, deep in lofty thought. Soon I, too, will be wandering thusly, unaware that I am being gawked at by some ambitious unknown upstart. Plum, Kingsley, Rosenberg. A respectful nod as we pass each other on that bustling thoroughfare.
The drive to New York is different from the drive down here. As I haul this massive U-Haul filled with Ingo’s masterpiece and all the extant props and sets including the retrieved Unseen, I think only of the movie. In a very real sense, I am a different person now and am continuing to evolve as the film dances in my head. The Slammy’s cashier is no longer a concern. Let her think I’m Jewish or old or any of a number of other terrible things. I am with purpose now. I am immune. Ingo’s movie is my inoculation. It is my manna from heaven. I feast on it, my mind a pinball machine: Wait, what about this scene? What about that moment? Who was that character? A second viewing is in order. A third. Backward and upside down as well. It will take a year, maybe longer (time is of no importance, for it does not exist in the way the former B. thought). I will know this film. I will become its advocate, its adherent, its foremost priest. Those who want to submit to it—and they will be legion—will submit to my interpretation. There will be pretenders to my throne, but I welcome their attempts at overthrow. Have at me, fellas. I will always win. I am the only one who knew Ingo. I was his best friend, when you come down to it. I took him to the hospital. I was his emergency medical contact. I am the one who attended his funeral. I alone penned his epitaph. I wrote the book. That’s right. Literally, I wrote the book on Ingo. Have at me.
As I near Slammy’s, I am put in mind of the insects that had splattered my windshield. Oddly, troublingly even, there are no insects now. Has the world changed so much during the several months I’ve been in Florida? That we are in the midst of an environmental crisis, a mass extinction, is of no surprise to any thinking person, but what occurs to me at this moment in an epiphanic burst is that there is a mass cultural extinction as well. The pesticides in this case are ego and ambition and greed. One wants one’s seed to grow at the expense of others, and so one destroys the ecosystem of ideas. As much as one wants to be able to see through one’s windshield, if the insects are gone, the entire ecosystem collapses. So it is in the world of ideas in which I travel. I am not entirely clear on this train of thought, but it feels profound. Perhaps it is this: Perhaps I have been influenced by Ingo’s intense privacy, his resistance to the trappings of fame. I consider my own dual nature. The art is of paramount importance to me, of course, but perhaps on some level I do covet celebrity. Clearly it is not a primary mover in my psyche, but I suspect it is there, buried, lurking. The movie has lain bare those needs and the damage they may cause. Do I truly want to make this movie known in defiance of the artist’s wishes? Am I serving a crass god (goddess, thonness) here? The windshield is clean because the insects have been killed for our convenience, for our profit margins. No. If I am to share this film with the world, it must only happen once my own motives are clear to me. Until I know with certainty I am not motivated by self-aggrandizement, I must protect the world from my self-interest.
I consider the following:
Let’s face it, animals make noise. They demand attention. They make more noise than vegetables, which in turn make more noise than minerals. So the animals, especially the humans, are inherently dramatic. They are not more important but believe they are. This is something one learns almost immediately when one studies Linnaeus. Classification is just that. There is no hierarchy. Every element is weighted exactly the same, exactly. A simple analogy would be to try to determine which part of a ball is most important. There is no answer because the question makes no sense. You might think it is unfair that humans get the most attention, rewarding the screamers, the squeaky wheel getting the grease, but then you have to ask, unfair to whom? The human is the part of the ball that gets the attention: The human is the part of the ball that hits the ground first in a bounce, but it is the whole ball that deforms.—DEBECCA DEMARCUS, Solving for X
And just like that, a burden is lifted from my soul. God bless Debecca. I am serene. I am happy. I call my girlfriend to tell her of my thoughts. She does not pick up. I pound on the truck horn.
SLAMMY’S BY DAY is a whole different creature: a bright, cheerful roadside beacon. Its mascot, a smiling and proud