I really do like my girl Jennifer Lawrence, but it’s super weird to me that so much of tumblr holds her up as the personification of this site and then boo hisses Kristen Stewart who has just a good a claim on that title. They’re both about the same amount of awkward, they’ve both said problematic shit, they both have equal difficulty dressing themselves sometimes (because if people are gonna diss Kristen’s fashion, shit, I saw the dior pantsuit Jennifer wore to the Silver Linings’ premier, and it was the first time that I’ve ever literally whispered “oh sweetie no” at my laptop screen). Kristen Stewart’s getting shat on for being injured while Jennifer Lawrence falling gets a standing ovation, and I just. Don’t. Get it. Like at all.

I’m not saying that if you like one you have to like the other, but it seems to me that Jennifer’s basically the socially acceptable form of awkward that involves a lot of smiling and genuine enjoyment of what is happening and is really just quirky while Kristen’s the other kind of awkward, the actually awkward kind of awkward where it’s uncomfortable and weird and off-putting because she’s so keenly aware of how much everyone is going to judge her, and it just seems like a website full of awkward motherfuckers like us should be overflowing with sympathy for her.

I happen to really like Jennifer Lawrence and dislike Kristen Stewart.  Why?  Performance.  At the end of the day, both of these women are actresses, and I think Jennifer Lawrence has an incredible natural talent for acting.  When I see her on screen, I believe in the character she is portraying.  Her characters have range and depth and they are *not* Jennifer Lawrence.

On the other hand, when I see Kristen Stewart on screen, all I can manage to see is Kristen Stewart.  She doesn’t seem to have a lot of chemistry with her co-actors; there’s no sense that her character has an emotional reaction to any of them.  It might come across in the script, but it doesn’t come across in her body language or expression.  Her performances are largely unmemorable to me.  She’s in one of my favorite movies, Fierce People, and I wish she had become a larger presence in it, but she really just feels like an afterthought.  If she can channel her awkwardness and personality into playing characters who are like herself, she might be more successful, but I don’t think she is leading lady material.  Alternatively, maybe if she did TV, she could stick with the same group of people for long enough to develop and portray the kind of chemistry that I like seeing from an actor. 

I think one of the reasons that tumblr (and other media) favors Jennifer Lawrence over Kristen Stewart is that it is clear, to me at least, that Jennifer is largely having a good time and Kristen isn’t.  Jennifer shines on camera; she is awkward, but she revels in it.  On the other hand, I don’t think that fame agrees with Kristen.  I don’t think that she enjoys, or is willing to play, the game that celebrities are strongly encouraged to play.  She is not garrulous or ebullient.  Neither does she cultivate an air of mystery.  She is not a bold rebel or a sensitive artistic rallying point.  She is that girl who stands at the back and doesn’t say as much as she is thinking.  And I honestly don’t know how she got to be as famous as she is, or why she wanted it in the first place.  I wonder if she enjoys her fame.  Because the reason the media shits all over her, in my opinion, is that we don’t like watching people be uncomfortable.  We don’t like watching people achieve the thing we dream of (stardom) and not appear to enjoy it.  It makes us doubt our dreams, doubt the golden boulevards of Hollywood, doubt that if we do what the beauty mags tell us we’ll become famous and popular too.

I would hate the fame that comes with being a movie star.  I sympathize with Kristen Stewart.  I am not going to judge her on her clothes, her private life, or the manner in which she does interviews.  But I am going to judge her choice in film roles, and I am going to judge her acting, because these are things she does professionally and publicly.  I think she has made some poor career choices, and I don’t think she’s that interesting to watch.  I hope that changes.  I would love to see her grow as an actress.  I just don’t think she’s gotten there yet.

These are my opinions and you don’t have to agree with them! 

(via clavicularity)

It’s funny how the world changes.  I used to put this stuff on facebook. 

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jtotheizzoe:

Ten Thousand

I think there’s some personal blogging philosophy in this somewhere.

(via xkcd)

(via tokidokifish)

betterbooktitles:

This week, Better Book Titles turned 2 years old: 5 Million visits, over 400 book titles, and there will soon be a book version! Thank you everyone for the positive feedback and all the great submissions.

I wanted to share a related blog I started with my friend Robert Dean, called Unquotables. Here are some of my favorites.

Happy Fourth of July!

gyzym:

as in, META ABOUT META. yes i know that’s not really how inception works—believe me, i really know that—but i don’t care. it’s catchy! and there’s also the fact that that’s what inception has come to mean, in current cultural vernacular: people took the concept the movie is structured around (to wit, dreams within dreams) and made its title into a word meaning “a thing within itself/a thing about itself/etc.” which, as set-ups for posts about media go, is pretty solid, so, without further ado….

dear everybody who has ever felt it necessary to inform me that i am reading too much into [whatever piece of media] in writing meta about it: 

first of all, congratulations, you are spot-fucking-on. i am definitely, for sure, no doubt about it, 100% reading far too much into it, every single goddamn time. this is not sarcasm, i very much mean this—in fact, all of my fanon meta is grounded firmly in reading too much into the canon in question. maybe it’s because i threw caution to the winds and went to school to study english literature and creative writing instead of leaning a more marketable trade; it does get hard to break that habit. however, mostly i’m pretty certain i read too much into shit because: 

• it’s fun 
• i find it rewarding
• it’s fun 

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Ladies and Gentlemen, here is a beautiful short essay on why I love literary analysis.  And it isn’t limited to English class—having opinions about a piece of media, and then supporting those opinions, and using them as starting places for further speculation—that IS fun. 

I like to think of the difference between authorial intent and reader interpretation like this: your original text (book, movie, whatever) is like a marble statue in a round room.  The walls of this round room are painted a variety of different colors.  Depending upon where you stand in the room, you have a different view of the statue, and behind the statue is a different background.  The author has a complete 360-degree view of the statue, and was the one who designed it, but all of us readers bring our own background which we use while viewing the statue.  Or text.  None of our interpretations are wrong—they are simply a matter of perspective. 

I actually miss writing essays, which feels kind of weird.  It’s true though.  Might as well accept it. 

Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (via unfolded-proteins)

There aren’t a lot of things that make me patriotic, but this is one of them.  It is an ideal that we [ought to] aspire to.  I pronounce no judgements upon history; I simply say, in a perfect world, America is a place where the rootless can put down roots. Also this is a beautiful bit of poetry.

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Recently, Cracked.com posted an article called 10 Great Books for (Traumatizing) Children.  It was pretty funny, so I guess it met its goal, but I was surprised to see a book by Maurice Sendak in place #7.  I mean, this list has books about the bombing of Hiroshima, abuse, racism, fascism, and drugs.  And they think that a fantasy book by Sendak is traumatizing?

Needless to say, I immediately went to the library and checked out Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak.  And of course I loved it.  I mean come on, it won a Caldecott Honor Award. 

In this book, a little girl named Ida babysits her infant sister while her parents are busy.  While she’s not paying attention, goblins steal the baby away, and she has to get the baby back.  (As the cracked article says, this was apparently the book that inspired the movie Labyrinth). 

Now, I do think that this book is a little bit disturbing, but not for the reasons the cracked article mentions. 

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