Stephen Poleskie's "The Bird Film" will be showing this Friday, May 6, at Arcades Project, at 135 The Commons (the former Night & Day space). Image provided

A 1966 VILLAGE VOICE listing describes Stephen Poleskie’s The Bird Film as “allegorical slapstick.” That’s half right. While the comical chaos of the film certainly is slapstick, it’s hard to find much in the way of allegory, and this is to the film’s credit.

The Bird Film opens with an American flag, then a figure in binoculars and a funny hat (the “birdwatcher”) rises into the shot. The political viewer, aware that this film was made in a famously turbulent era, might be tempted to begin reading allegorically at this point, but would find that reading stunted, probably less than a minute later when the birdwatcher is attacked by an actor in a bear mask, who is in turn attacked by the Indian, who wears a box on his head that is painted in the “exotic” colors you might expect one of any number of cartoon Indians to wear. Instead of allegory, The Bird Film gives us something much more valuable: a short work made by young artists who are clearly enjoying experimentation with the form

The Bird Film is an 18 minute chase scene. Troublesome narrative components such as plot and character are left out, though to say that the chase simply serves to move the film forward wouldn’t be true. There is a certain order being followed here. After all, the film begins with a birdwatcher, who chases after the bird (played by Warhol superstar Deborah Lee). A bear chases the birdwatcher. An Indian chases the bear. As it turns out, the birdwatcher, the bear, and the Indian, all end up chasing the bird.

Scenes range from an imaginary environment constructed in a Manhattan loft to a creek, where the bird lady performs interpretive dance in the water, to a pretty pasture that was the farm of Elaine de Kooning (the film’s associate producer).

Deborah Lee plays the bird with the aloof grace of a dancer performing for no one but herself. She pauses from time to time to pose and reflect. As a director, Poleskie indulges himself by letting Lee poetically extend her arms, bend her legs, and arch her back, imbuing the short with a dream-like quality to break up the slapstick of the chase.

Watching The Bird Film once through, you enjoy it for its levity, strangeness, and photographic beauty. A second time through, you begin to notice things you didn’t notice the first time around. A man in a wheelbarrow reads a Daily News with the headline, “Gangs Raid 2 Subway Trains.” The next time we see him, about 20 seconds later, he is reading a New York Post with the headline, “Break In Miss.” Go ahead and watch it a third time. Your enjoyment is likely to increase with each viewing, but if you want to find out what it all means, you may want to take your business elsewhere. The Bird Film is a celebration more than it is a statement.

My favorite scene in The Bird Film occurs at about the 13 minute mark. After dodging the birdwatcher, the bear, and the Indian, the bird pauses on a rock to pose before a spring. The soundtrack at this point turns from hectic chase scene instrumentation to ethereal vocals. Deborah Lee turns to the camera, smiles, and lifts her arms in a gesture that says “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” In the same way the newspaper headlines hint at a world somewhere on the outside, Lee’s gesture, a shot that would have been edited out of a more “serious” film, speaks to the youthful chaos and joy that beats at this work’s center.

Stephen Poleskie, director and writer of The Bird Film (1966), is an Ithaca based artist, writer, and photographer. His artwork is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery in London. His writing has appeared in journals such as American Writing and Essays & Fictions, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Poleskie wrote and directed The Bird Film. The Bird Film will be showing this Friday, May 6, at Arcades Project. The film will be looped continually throughout the night.

David Nelson Pollock is a founder of Arcades Project and a co-founding editor of Essays & Fictions.

Thierry Guetta, or the artist Mr. Brainwash (MBV), in Bansky's "Exit through the Giftshop," nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Photo provided

AS THE INTERNET era approaches its coming-of-age, it is fitting that concern with the authenticity of authorship has become a virtual cultural obsession. Accusations of extreme political bias now dominate the American political landscape as attempts to discredit opponents and news channels. In academia, Post-Structuralist and Reader Response theories have replaced (or at least dueled with) Formalist interpretations, and in the last decade, we watched in horror, not knowing what to believe, as wars in the Middle East were justified with misappropriated  language. Though these may be disparate threads, to me they seem to point to the idea that one of the most resonant questions of the moment ponders how we determine truth value when it comes to cultural (rather than personal) matters.

With Exit Through The Gift Shop up for an Oscar for Best Documentary, these same questions are now raging in art and film circles; this time the focus is on artistic credibility. Theoretically speaking, this is somewhat of an old story. Postmodern art has long used recognizable cultural signifiers to encourage abstract conceptual play. When an object is decontexualized from its social use in its recognized environment, it both loses and gains meaning. Duchamp’s urinal is the flagship illustration of this idea;  British grafitti artist and impresario Banksy and his fellow street artists simply took this same kind of conceptual jest outside of the gallery space.

In case you haven’t seen it, the gist of Exit’s plot is as such: Thierry, a cousin of a street artist Space Invader, compulsively films the work being done by street artists on the pretense that he is making a documentary. In doing so, he gains access to the Banksy and earns his trust. Thierry is portrayed as relatively unstable because he films every single moment of his waking existence with no real attention paid to any potential boundaries between art and life; to Thierry, it’s all art and life simultaneously. When Banksy finally encourages Thierry to turn the footage into a documentary, he’s appalled by Thierry’s shoddy craftsmanship and all-inclusive approach to footage: Thierry makes no choices whatsoever but simply splices together apparently random bits of footage. Banksy then suggests that Thierry give him the footage, and to distract him, encourages Thierry to instead focus on his own art, at which point Thierry forms his own outlandish street personality, Mr. Brainwash, and creates a Warholian nightmare factory of god-awful hell-art. Through a series of “chance” circumstances and well-intentioned blurbs from the right people, including Banksy, Mr. Brainwash is able to create buzz and put on a much-hyped solo show that garners him scores of adoring fans and buyers. His art star career is launched, to the expressed chagrin of Banksy and other street artists in his circle.

Best Documentary is a category generally reserved for objective journalistic reportage, and so the truth wars have been on in earnest for some time now. While the events of the film have been verified, the meaning, or the “moral of the story,” is left wide open for interpretation and debate. The fact that Banksy keeps his face and identity a secret have added to the speculation surrounding the film. Could Thierry, in fact, be Banksy? When images of Banksy as an Oscar award surrounded by storm troopers showed up as street art works in LA recently, the same questions resounded: was it Thierry or Banksy? And what was the intent?

The New York Times called the film a “meta-mockumentary,” a fair assessment, while less nuanced critiques have called the film a “hoax” (Benjamin Mercer for The Atlantic) and, more rabidly, accused everyone engaged by the film to be the butt of an “emperor has no clothes” joke, “congratulat(ing) themselves for being so postmodern, and so very smart.” These are the charming words of Huffington Post bloggers Linda Flanagan and Sarah Sangree. (It’s very tempting to get side-tracked critiquing this bit of drivel, but another blogger has done a good job of doing so while still treating the writers’ questions with respect.)

This lack of certainty about the film’s “intent” is exactly where indignation lies for some irked purist commentators who revere the objective fact, the transmitted truth from documentary artists to viewer, and the power of art to change the social world. But this lack of certainty is also a potentially fertile area for the viewer who is comfortable enough to spend some time there exploring.

In Essays & Fictions V.V, Fall 2009, I published an essay about what I call breach literature: written work that blends fiction and nonfiction forms in a playful, innovative, exciting and dynamic way. I felt then, as I do now, nearly desperate to talk in a concrete way about today’s phenomenon of truth-bending in literature, be it intentional, fraudulent, or ambiguous. I find the discussion surrounding this trend to be generally banal and confusing, not to mention reductive and morally judgmental: Is it a novel or a memoir? Is it true or is it not true? Is the writer honest or a liar? Is the book a hoax or is it real? When a work of creative nonfiction or a news report is revealed to have been imaginatively embellished, public outrage ensues. The author is shamed. People shake their heads. And the underlying dynamics at work, which I happen to find quite fascinating and fairly urgent, are never addressed, much less discussed.

It may be helpful to think of breach texts in some of the following ways:

Breach texts blend fact with imagination in order to open up a dialogue about the boundaries, the interplay, and the relationships between the two.

Breach texts are not fiction or nonfiction, but both, or neither.

Breach texts often use nonfiction forms to present imaginative work.

Breach texts often begin in a recognizable form, on solid “factual” ground, and slowly transform into something far less recognizable and far more fantastic.

Breach texts scramble material, thematic and linguistic signifiers to create a complex language that the reader/viewer can both decode and contribute to.

Breach texts may use confusion to their advantage.

Breach texts manipulate the consumer, sometimes sadistically, but really, it is for the consumer’s own good in the end.

One argument is that the film is primarily about the farce rampant in the art world because it highlights the capricious manner in which prestige and monetary value is assigned to art, and while this is certainly true, the more important dialogue it provokes is about the farce of identity, highlighting that all of our ideas about ourselves and others are constructed according to wildly varying degrees of self-consciousness.

There is a Rumi quote that people seem to like: “… out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Can there be a field beyond “true” and “false” where we can meet and talk about Exit Through the Gift Shop? Maybe it’s easier to digest ideas of moral relativity than it is to consider factual relativity. I would tell Flanagan, a national security documents analyst, that she need not despair, because in some fields it makes sense to operate on the assumption of objective reality, but art and literature are the last domain and frontier of the abstract, the symbolic, and the imaginative, so please, lady, get off of my cloud. There’s room in this crazy mixed up world for both documented research-based nonfiction film and literature and breach texts that scramble signifiers to provoke internal and external dialogues and musings about reality.

It’s not a hoax to play with truth values in our community, it’s a valid and maybe even necessary response to our conscious or unconscious awareness of the slippery and shifty nature of reality, partly propagated by our politicians and lawyers, intensified by post structuralist linguistic theories, and made even more urgent by the decade of wars waged on lies that we just lived through. In other words, there’s some serious cultural processing happening right now, and flatly looking at things as either “true” or “untrue” is more than a bit passe in realms of art and literature.

I have been delighted to see Exit Through the Gift Shop debated in bars and blogs: practicing breach ideas on film through the mediums of conceptual art and performance encourages a playful dialogue about what may or may not be true, and how that is determined by individuals and culture at large. This is harder to do in literature (though we continue to try: see David Nelson Pollock’s Dec. “review” on Kanye West’s most recent album). In literature, the permanence of the page and the legal and material demands of print publications seem to suggest the need for more accountability. Flanagan and her cohort are really in the minority here; most everyone else seems to be at least amused by the formal whimsy in Banksy’s work as well as the devilish nature of his public pranks. And with Exit Through The Gift Shop, as with any breach text, we are in murky territory, but I believe it is most urgent to recognize the aspect of truth value as a formal element that forged by the will of the artist or author, every bit as consciously chosen as color, composition, sound, language, plot, character, setting, and tone, because adding this extra layer of dialogue opens up potentially rich areas of liberty and exploration for creator and consumer alike.

Danielle Winterton is the co-founding editor of Essays & Fictions and an editor at large for The Ithaca Post.

Natalie Portman stars in "Black Swan." Photo provided

BLACK SWAN is crisply detailed, visually stunning, genre-defying, anxiously self-conscious, and unafraid to plumb psychological depths, but it  also reveals an old-fashioned American stereotype of female sexuality that pits the virgin against the whore in the singular body of Nina, the dutiful ballerina played by Natalie Portman. This dualistic view of female sexuality, with its moralistic ramifications and chronic images of good versus evil, traps the film in familiar double standards. Nina’s body becomes her prison, her impediment to performing, her so-called “artistic” block. To become a true artist Nina has to transform into a sexual libertine, but the price she pays for this transformation places Black Swan on a continuum with romantic comedies, thriller dramas, and horror films that consistently punish the “whore” and reward the “virgin.”

Critics have dealt with the sexual nature of the film in a dismissive, almost cursory manner: either the sexual struggle is part of the director’s demented clichéd vision of the dance-film genre, or simply an irrelevant fact within what is clearly a horror film posing as a dance film. Yet it is impossible to understand Black Swan without seeing Nina’s sexuality as the tapestry upon which both the horror and dance film tropes attach themselves, and as the catalyst for the psychological schism that consumes her. It is also impossible to envision Black Swan as a similar meditation on male sexuality. This dichotomy derives its relevance and vitality not simply from the movie’s internal vertigo, but because it taps into the continued and mechanical manufacture of female images in American Cinema and  the male gaze through which they are conceived and produced.

In Black Swan, the virgin/whore dichotomy is the very first order of business. When the choreographer of Nina’s ballet company fires the old prima ballerina in an effort to mount a new “visceral” production of Swan Lake, he chooses Nina as his Swan Queen. Nina has been dreaming of the center stage for years; she is  a “good,” obedient, self-sacrificing girl, determined to be “perfect,” controlled by her mother, practicing her technique so religiously that she bleeds, cracks her toes, develops a grueling rash, and endures extraordinary bodily pain. She is the embodiment of the American ideal, the hard-working artist willing to traverse any lengths to achieve fame and artistic expression, and in a meritocracy, hard work pays off, except when you’re a woman. Because for a woman, perfect technique, brilliantly executed pirouettes and flawlessly turned out feet are not enough; there’s also the requirement of sexual allure, that enigmatic quality bestowed on some, presumably at birth, and denied to others.

The director tells Nina: “yes, you’re beautiful,” and have perfect technique and if he only needed a dancer to play Odette, she’d perfect for the role. But he needs a dancer who can play both, Odile, the black evil seductive swan, and Odette, the white innocent virginal swan. Nina’s sexlessness becomes her downfall; she’s not fit to be Odile because she’s not desirable. And female desirability, here as in other films, seems to be the ultimate measure of a woman’s power – but only in so far as it can infect the male gaze. Beauty alone is not enough – it’s a painting in impotent repose; beauty has to be in dialogue with the male gaze.

In Nina’s case, the decisive male gaze is her teacher’s, and he demands that her beauty converse with him – become a tool in his seduction. He sets her on a path of sexual experimentation which necessitates a cruel humiliation.

During a routine rehearsal, the teacher asks Nina’s male partner to evaluate her: “Would you want to fuck her?” and then answers for him,“No!” He also mercilessly compares Nina to Lily, another dancer in the ballet company vying for the role of the Swan Queen, emphasizing Lily’s innate sensuality and underlining Nina’s malfunction. And in so doing, the teacher establishes the essential opposition between the two women; their sexual temperaments become templates for their moral characters. Nina’s failure to be sexual translates into instant “goodness,” innocence, frailty, openness, obedience, whiteness while Lily’s ability to exude sexuality translates into “evil,” cleverness, manipulation, confidence, blackness, dishonesty, concealment.

In true horror film fashion, the teacher is also the Devil. He appears in a devil’s mask in Nina’s hallucinatory visions, guiding or possessing her like a sorcerer in her dance. He wants to transform Nina into Lily, implant enough evil in Nina to create the perfect amalgam of Odile and Odette in one human female body. As a demonstration, he puts a hand between her legs, exciting her, bringing “more” of “her” out, but then he throws her away like a pitiful wet dog, balking at her asexual kiss and savagely telling her: “I seduced you, you did not seduce me,” thus inciting her to further torture. Because Nina can’t simply be sexual; she has to literally mutilate her frigid self – in the hopes of eviscerating the virgin altogether.

The Devil is never satisfied; his gaze is always pockmarked with frustration, and it is his facial twitches of disapproval and reproach at Nina’s failure as Odile that send the responsible “sweet” girl on a night of debauchery before a major rehearsal. Nina picks up men, drinks a cocktail enhanced with drugs, and possibly has sex with one of the men, though this is a blur. And although we witness Nina taking Lily home and having rapturous sex with her, we’re not certain to what extent she is imagining the whole thing. Nina’s face is superimposed upon Lily’s towards the end of the act, making us wonder if Nina was merely having sex with herself – an ecstatic, finally consummated round of masturbation. A prophetic voice later tells Nina that the only thing standing between her and the stage is her own self.  Yet regardless of what truly happened – reality is irrelevant here – Nina’s psyche has been altered. We’re meant to feel the force of her passion – her final awakening, symbolized by a grandiose orgasm (unhindered by her mother, who’s finally been exiled) and by her extensive physical transformation: her feet become webbed, her legs turn bird-like and crooked, and she’s finally able to extract black feathers from her itchy back. An authentic sexual awakening is feral, internal, animalistic – a physical alteration of the self.

The notion of female sexuality as a good exchanged for something else has been an unwavering principle of American cinema. From genre to genre, from decade to decade, virginal good girls are pitted against sexual libertines and whores. In the pristine waters of romantic comedies, a woman can never successfully bed a man before the ending, and if she does, like Katherine Heigl’s character in 27 Dresses, she better be in a drunken stupor and repeating the following mantra: “I never do this, I never do this, I mean I never do this.”  Why couldn’t poor, devoted, selfless Jane just sleep with a hot man without having to profess a monk-like existence? Her sexy, barely-clad, platinum blond sister, who sleeps around with Italian men abroad, is depicted as a selfish, lying, uncaring “bridezilla” who has to be brutally humiliated for her “sins;” her man breaks up with her at their engagement party.

And what about Knocked Up: the awesome comedy at the expense of an expanding pregnant female body, where the price for a drunken one night stand is that Katherine Heigl’s character has to have a baby with the jobless, awkward, pot-smoking, smut-loving Seth Rogen. As her belly grows, she’s not only stripped of her sexual allure, but demeans her own body to explain her hysterical behavior: “and you know, my ass was just getting so big.”In The First 50 Dates, Drew Barrymore’s character beats Adam Sandler’s character with a baseball bat upon discovering him naked in her bed. Yes, she’s suffered memory loss from brain damage, but why couldn’t she merely ask: “did we just do it?” Why beat him senselessly?

Because the perfect American woman always experiences horror for having had sex – always justifies, apologizes, regrets, and repeats the mantra, “I never do this!” There is no sexual wilderness for a woman in American cinema without the reformation of the sexual libertine into a “good girl” or failing that path, her cruel and severe punishment.

Women who behave even remotely like men suffer interminably. Consider the character played by Scarlett Johansson in the deplorable “romantic” comedy, He’s Just Not That In To You. She’s one of those rare female characters whose sexuality is so palpable and evolved that she has no qualms about sleeping with a married man, a crime so despicable in American Cinema that we immediately await her moment at the guillotine. Even so, Ms. Johansson’s humiliation astonished me; forced to hide half-dressed in a closet, she listens as her married lover has sex with his own wife.

Women in drama thrillers fare even worse. Diane Lane as the adulterous wife in Unfaithful not only loses her beautiful lover, but also her husband – who most likely goes to prison for “her” sin. If juxtaposed with Fatal Attraction, Adrian Lyne’s 1987 adultery movie, it becomes obvious that a man’s infidelity carries a far lighter sentence; yes Michael Douglas’s character endures being stalked by his insane mistress, yes he is burdened by excruciating guilt for putting his family in danger, but at the end when Glenn Close’s character is killed, the cheating man is relieved, order is restored, and from this point on, Michael Douglas can make love to his devoted wife. Diane Lane’s life on the other hand will be mired in loneliness and celibacy; she’ll never take a new lover while her husband withers behind bars.

The horror film genre is perhaps the most sexually offensive and humiliating to women. Sexually active or “loose” women’s bodies are readily exposed, raped and dismembered. In Piranha 3D, women are called “whores,” and “bitches” and one woman’s body is severed in half with the camera still lingering on the dismembered breast. Ezra Winton calls it one of Hollywood’s “most misogynistic and sexist films in recent memory.” In earlier movies like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, “the Final Girl” is the last girl standing, the resourceful, intelligent, usually asexual female bringing into view the virgin/whore dichotomy. In such films as the Hostel:Part II, a woman who quickly falls for a man against the better judgment of her asexual friend, the final girl, is hung upside down, naked, gagged, tied, while another woman – the killer, also naked – uses a sword to chop off the woman’s limbs and imbibe her blood. In Turistas a blond flirtatious woman is awake and watching as each of her organs is slowly cut out and removed, her breast still perfect, covering the hole which used to house her heart.

There’s a relationship between these horror films and the horror that Natalie Portman’s Nina endures in Black Swan. Nina bleeds, pulls off her own skin, injures her toes, feels her frail body breaking as she shifts into her animal form – she is tortured from within her mind but its physical manifestation demonstrates that her pain is just as severe and destructive as any horror film depiction.  What saves Black Swan from collapsing into the typical Hollywood horror-film stereotype is that Aronofsky turns the virgin/whore dichotomy on its head; Nina suffers precisely because she is not “fuckable” – that is what stands between Nina and art. One must be free and uninhibited, loose of mind and spirit, untethered to the moral tenets of parents and society to perform exquisitely on stage.  Art on stage requires a purity of sexual spirit – and an unleashing.

When at last Nina fully transmogrifies into the Black Swan and sails unimpeded by her own hang-ups across the stage, her blackened eyes lit by scouring desire, the audience witnesses a rare flicker of triumph . Her dancing is at long last sexual, seductive, artistic all at once. One even feels that she gains power.  Her eyes glitter in red, illuminating an evil strength – the sort of strength that can be equated to the ability to impose one’s will upon others. For until now, Nina has been acted upon. Innocence was a passive existence. Being sexual means having a will, having agency; she is able to kiss her teacher at last with her tongue, to impresses her dancing partner, even to outdo him, and to win over her audience, thoroughly enrapturing them.

“She did it,” I wanted to cry at the screen, in spite of an unsettling suspicion that she may have killed her nemesis to attain it.  But Nina had only killed herself; Nina was Odette to the core, unable to kill anyone but herself, proving to us that while she may have acquired the attributes of a black swan for the stage, Nina was ultimately good.

The movie, however, is stuck in a peculiar paradox. If we demote the moral terms of “good” and “evil” to society’s continuously changing “moral” ethos, then the ending can be seen in the service of art. Nina can only create true art if she kills her asexual “good” self. “Goodness” then must die for art, the goodness that is equated with female “asexuality” and “virginity.”

However, if we view goodness as an objective term, bound to a higher power that transcends  changing social norms, then the ending becomes a happy one: Nina did not kill Lily in the service art – out of a selfish thirst for success; instead, killing herself was the only way she could still be a black swan on stage and not become an evil murderess in life – it was her only option as a “good” heroine. The goodness of a heroine is vital for successful American cinema, vital to the male gaze, which hungers for sexual libertines but always wants to end up wedded to the “good” girl. Yet it is the Devil-teacher who creates the dance and then determines within the framework he’s erected what is “sexual” and what is “good,” which woman lives and which woman dies upon the stage – and ultimately in life. It is this reliance on the male gaze that imprisons the Black Swan in familiarly grating stereotypes. In other words, it cannot escape its own male gaze. Think of what a woman can achieve when she is not harnessed by the virgin/whore dichotomy. Think of Baryshnikov’s brilliant performance as a suffering dancer in White Nights – a struggle depicted through dance against the oppressive Soviet regime. Reinvent him as a woman – and offer her his expansive stage.

Anna Fishbeyn is a writer and performer. Her one-woman solo show, Sex in Mommyville, debuted at the Flea Theater in New York City this summer. Please visit sexinmommyville.com for listings of future performances.

Joe Smellow, who integrates hospice work and nature programs in Ithaca, is one of the people that appear in Sue Perlgut's documentary "Beets and Beans: Living and Dying with Hospice," which premieres Thursday, Jan. 27 at Cinemapolis. Photo provided

LOCAL DOCUMENTARIAN SUE PERLGUT attempts to dispel some myths about what it means to work with a hospice provider with her new film “Beets and Beans: Living and Dying with Hospice.” This video interweaves the rich journeys of patients, caregivers and family members at different points in their interactions with hospice services.

Both of producer Perlgut’s parents were patients of a hospice program and her personal experience with hospice led her to tell the story of how the experience can bring peace and dignity to all at the end of life. While taping this documentary Sue decided it was time to give back to Hospice and became a volunteer at Hospicare in Ithaca.

Hospicare and Palliative Care of Tompkins County in Ithaca, NY allowed Perlgut and her collaborators access to their residence and referred us to in-home patients. Providence Hospice of Seattle, Washington referred us to pediatric patients and facilitated interviews with staff.

The documentary was edited by Ithaca native Nils Hoover and former Ithacan Christopher Julian served as the director of photography.

Perlgut currently directs the Senior Citizen Theatre Troupe of Lifelong in Ithaca, NY. As a volunteer, she served as president of the boards of the Kitchen Theatre and the Greater Ithaca Activities Center; helped form her neighborhood association, South of the Creek Neighbors; served on an Ithaca city committee addressing neighborhood issues and volunteers for many arts and human services organizations including Lifelong and Hospicare.

The premiere of the “Beets and Beans: Living and Dying with Hospice” will take place at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27 at Cinemapolis.

"Clownation," a short film written and directed by Ryan McGuire, right, and shot and edited by Rachel Ferro, left premiered at Silky Jones Saturday, January 22, 2011. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer / FreeAirPhoto

WITH A CAST of more than 50 actors, all sporting a red nose (not from the cold!), the short film “Clownation” had its Ithaca premiere at the bar Silky Jones. The film played on a continual loop beginning around 8:00 p.m., and audience members, many of whom were either in the movie, or at least were connected by a degree or two, laughed, cheered and felt like a community. That was all part of the filmmaker’s intentions, director of photography and editor Rachel Ferro reported later. A community of clowns. Photos by Ed Dittenhoefer.

A still from "Clownation," which screened on a loop Saturday at Silky Jones. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer / FreeAirPhoto

Audience members and bartenders alike were handed clown noses, which most wore during the film and throughout the night. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer

James Pellegrino and Keir Neuringer, generally serious, look a bit less so with clown noses. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer

A bar full of clowns. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer / FreeAirPhoto

A creative use of clown noses at the film premiere of "Clownation," where audience members literally clowned around. Photo by Ed Dittenhoefer / FreeAirPhoto

To view “Clownation,” please visit here. For more information on the film, please visit www.creatorofart.com.

Winnie Gecko, the feckless angel in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Twenty years after making the original Wall Street in 1987, Oliver Stone’s take on women remains reliably chauvinistic. Photo (c) 20th Century Fox.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps? Its popularity is winnowing, its reviews on the whole were lukewarm, its box office numbers are mediocre (the domestic number as of November 14th, 2010 is approximately 52 million, its production budget was 70 million). The verdict seems to be in: this remake’s influence will surely never top or even come close to that of the original masterpiece. Yet it remains the only movie in recent history to take a look at Wall Street and the economic crisis, and, despite its numerous flaws, it proves to be an uncannily accurate reflection of an ominous social boomerang that threatens to reverse the gains women have made in the workplace over the last three decades.

Twenty years after making the original Wall Street in 1987, Oliver Stone’s take on women remains reliably chauvinistic. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps fails to produce one viable, admirable female character who wields power in the world of finance with the confidence and acuity allotted to men.  Stone’s second Wall Street movie was not merely a reflection of the director’s age-old prejudices, but an uncomfortable mirror exposing sweeping social trends that threaten to propel women back to their original pre-feminist roles, zapping us into the Stepford wives of the 1950s.

Although many feminists had criticized the original Wall Street for its demeaning portrayal of women, the movie’s tremendous staying power and indelible influence on our culture brushed these criticisms under the rug. When Michael Douglas declared that “greed is good,” he sent reverberations through entire generations of Wall Street bankers, even leading social observers to link this ethos to the recent economic collapse. The movie has become so iconic that in The Boiler Room (2000), aspiring bankers watched Wall Street as a rite of passage, making Oliver Stone the unofficial Hollywood chronicler of the world of finance, a prophet of unadulterated greed inspiring thousands of young men to pursue investment banking as a career.

Obviously, Stone did not intend to make women the focal point of his work, but Wall Street’s sway on the insular world of finance demands that his portrait of women be brought into sharp focus. Consider Darien: a beautiful seductress and former lover of Gordon Gekko, the powerful financier whose callous acquisitions and dismantling of companies destroy human lives. Darien parlays her relationship with Gekko into a lucrative interior design business and begins a torrid love affair with Gekko’s protégé, Bud Fox. But when Fox has a falling out with Gekko, Darien warns him: “if you make an enemy of Gordon Gekko, I can’t be there to stand by you.” Fox accuses Darien of being Gordon’s whore, but it is Darien who ends the relationship. Her loyalty to Gekko signals her undoing in the clear-cut moral universe of Bud Fox, whose idealism and straight-shooter goodness ultimately defeat his greed.

Darien symbolizes the immortal gold-digging whore-bitch, the beauty whose polished exterior conceals a cruel heart. She has a message for men: if you want to possess me, you need to make money, thus neatly packaging herself as the prize for male success. In 1980s Hollywood, this was a well-established domain for women in movies such as The Secret of My Success (1987), Trading Places (1983), and Risky Business (1983). But Wall Street outshone the rest in its unsentimental stripping of all other human considerations, giving us a woman ruled purely by her greed (a “rib” ripped directly out of Gordon Gekko’s ribcage). And if by chance, as in the case of Darien, a woman has her own career aspirations, she cannot hope to muscle her way into Wall Street (Darien’s field of interior design seems well suited for the “softer” sex). Her aspirations must always be subsidiary to the aspirations of a man.

But that was 1987. In 2010, does Stone attempt to redeem himself? In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, we get Winnie Gekko, the child-woman who works at a non–profit news blog. Winnie despises her father, Gordon Gekko, equating capitalism (symbolized by Gekko) with evil. Perpetually tearful, naïve, and utterly indifferent to money, Winnie releases $100 million from her trust fund, believing that it will be invested by her boyfriend, Jacob, in a company developing fusion energy. In fact, Gordan Gekko steals the money and uses it to rebuild his investment empire.  Winnie is meant to symbolize goodness, innocence, freedom from greed, and an unwavering belief that trust is the essential ingredient to a lasting, healthy relationship.  But if I had to choose between Darien, the ruthless whore, and Winnie Gekko, the feckless angel, I’d choose the whore, for Darien’s loyalty to Gekko at least expresses a female desire for power and advancement, an ambition to be on an equal footing with men, and a refusal to let romance interfere with that ambition.  Winnie, on the other hand, is a victim who could never threaten men, whether in the board room or the bedroom, a far more dangerous prospect for women than the grasping, sexually-liberated Darien, because Winnie willingly cuts herself off from the sphere of power.

By disguising Winnie’s impotence and weakness in the moniker of goodness, Stone perhaps hoped to neutralize the feminist response to his latest female creation – to convince his critics that her lack of participation in the turbulent world of finance is due to her moral rectitude, not her gender. Yet a brief look at his other female characters proves that Stone’s view of women is unassailably backward. Consider the unsavory female banker who lacks in vision, insight and sensitivity as she argues pointlessly with Jake, Shia LaBeouf’s character. Consider the faceless red suit in the boardroom – we’re not interested in her because the camera skims over her as if she were an inanimate object. And consider LaBeouf’s nerve-wrecked mother, played by Susan Sarandon, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong: in the collapsing real estate market. Her nerves finally settle when she quits real estate and returns to the honorable profession of nursing. How much happier and more dignified she looks at the end than as a money-grubbing, chain-smoking real estate broker.

“Leave the money troubles to men,” Stone seems to be screaming at women. The men, on the other hand, not only get to swim in the mortgage bank lending swamp, but they also get free reign over Winnie’s money: first her father, then Jake take turns investing her money as each sees fit. In antiquity, women of royal birth had to marry precisely because they were seen as unfit proprietors of the nation’s capital, unable to handle money because they lacked the wisdom and even-keeled reason of men.

Winnie Gekko’s eschewing of money and power runs directly parallel to the disappearance of women on Wall Street through attrition. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “women are becoming more rare” in finance and that since 2000, the number of women between the ages of 20 and 35 working in finance dropped by 16.5% while the number of men in that age range grew by 7.3%.” Women in positions of power in finance are indeed rare: there are in fact no female CEOs on Wall Street. The meteoric rise and spectacular fall of Erin Callan starkly illustrates the fleeting presence of women at the top of Wall Street. Callan was named CFO of Lehman Brothers in 2007 at the age of 41, and was quickly anointed by the media as “Wall Street’s Most Powerful Woman.” She was forced to resign less than a year later as part of Lehman’s ill-fated attempt to regain market confidence. Callan is seen by many as the ultimate example of a woman who gains too much power too soon – she is thrown not only through the “glass ceiling,”  but also off the “glass cliff.”

Callan is not alone. The Catalyst reported that “female executives were three times as likely to lose their jobs during the recession” and that the proportion of women in executive positions slipped from 10.3% to 9.8% in 2009. While we’re bombarded with statistics about women’s progress in the workforce and articles entitled “The End of Men,” women still lack power, especially after this recession. The discrepancy – 19% of female executives lost their jobs when their companies downsized or closed, compared to 6% of male executives – is astounding.

What accounts for the disappearance of women on Wall Street and their absence from positions of leadership? Is finance too chauvinistic – an impermeable boy’s club? Are women discouraged because they don’t feel welcome – or have women decided that the stress is simply not worth it? Remember Winnie Gekko – we can’t imagine her fragile, flower-like presence at any of the banks at which her boyfriend works; she’d shrivel. At the end, Winnie is pregnant and reconciled with her father and her boyfriend: while the men make money, the women make babies.

The female surrender of Wall Street is part of a wider retreat. More women (especially those with professional degrees) are choosing to stay at home and have babies. For many, feminist causes have been pushed aside to give way to a baby mania that’s burdening new mothers with giddy obsessions: the perfect toddler birthday party, the perfect sleep routine, the perfect brain-developing CD, the marathon-runners’ double stroller, an environmentally safe “GREEN” diaper, breast vs. soy vs. cow milk, and so on. The FAM has replaced the FEM, as journalist Irina Aleksander recently noted, and women don’t need to talk about equality in the workplace and the right to choose because they feel like they’ve already made it..

Perhaps we should hide our feminist manifestos in our Baby Bjorns and close shop altogether – why struggle when there’s nothing to struggle for? Because, as Erica Jong warns in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Mother Madness,” the FAM has become a new kind of prison. A popular movement known as attachment parenting demands a fanatical devotion to children at the expense of parents’ own needs, imbuing mothers with severe guilt that has led to widespread female victimization: “Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It’s a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women’s freedom as the right-to-life movement.”

Yet Jong’s analysis doesn’t go far enough. She makes a fleeting reference to the impossibility of working and practicing attachment parenting, but as far as I can see that is the crux of the problem. It’s not enough to say that attachment parenting and baby mania are imprisoning stay-at-home moms – these trends are also literally driving working mothers out of the workplace and back home. In the future we may witness even greater female attrition in the workplace, not only in finance, but across a whole range of careers. Already in this economic crisis, women’s potential pregnancies or children are viewed as real liabilities, especially against the backdrop of swarming resumes of eager, equally deserving men.

The so-called Mommy Wars have undoubtedly pitted stay-at-home mothers against working mothers.  Due to the demands of a hostile, stressful work environment that is often the trademark of Wall Street, and the feeling that they’re “missing out” on their children’s young lives, many working mothers confess to experiencing unbearable guilt, and in the process they devalue the significance of work in their own lives.  On the contrary, Jong argues, being raised by a village is an advantage rather than a necessary evil; children adapt, learn, and become increasingly social and flexible as a result of being with different caretakers. The working mother is raising her own child even if she is not able to spend 24/7 with her child; the “other people” are her support group – her village – her teammates who allow her to have a job. Yet now, once beleaguered stay-at-home moms have gained a new confidence and pride in their title. As a stay-at-home mom, I can safely report that saying the words, “stay-at-home” has acquired an almost boastful lilt. Yet I fear that our rise is at the expense of the working mother, the result of a fallacious either/or philosophy. In order to help the working mother re-establish herself, to regain the confidence she once enjoyed, we cannot treat one woman’s choice as a judgment or denouncement of another. There cannot be a winner to the Mommy Wars, but a peaceful co-existence and a profound acknowledgment of the hardship involved on all sides. One working mother recently told me, “I do everything – work and take care of the children and my husband who stays at home. But I really have no other choice.” I wanted to throw my arms around her and thank her for going to work every day, for doing her part as a lonesome woman (she happened to be the only female partner in her law firm), in the world of men.

Working and taking care of young children is phenomenally difficult, but it is necessary for women as a defiant stance against historical oppression. If we don’t work, we’ll completely disappear from the spheres of social, political and economic power. In order to see the first female Wall Street CEO claim her rightful title, the role of the working mother has to be resurrected as a desirable and worthy goal, allowing us to move beyond the weepy Winnie Gekko. Women have a responsibility to our society to tackle every field, however unreceptive it may be to them – and at long last induce the financial industry to become more representative of both genders.

Anna Fishbeyn is a writer and performer. Her one-woman solo show, Sex in Mommyville, debuted at the Flea Theater in New York City this summer, and will be shown again at the famed La MaMa Experimental Theater Club this December. She recently published an article about the sexuality of mothers entitled “Whoa, Mama!” in NYPress.com.

Josh Fox brings his award-winning documentary "Gasland" to Ithaca College Tuesday, Nov. 2 for a free screening at 7:00pm. Image provided

THE DOCUMENTARY “GASLAND” took a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and has taken the country by storm during an HBO run and limited release in theaters from coast to coast.

Now it’s coming to Ithaca College, along with filmmaker Josh Fox and two people featured in “Gasland,” which examines the impact on communities of a gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing — or fracking. The presentation and screening will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. in Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. It is free and open to the public. Fox will introduce the film, after which he will join with Craig and Julie Sautner in a Q&A session with the audience.

Fox is the founder and artistic director of International WOW Company, an innovative global theater organization. After a gas drilling company approached him to lease his Pennsylvania land on the banks of the Delaware River, he decided to learn more about the new process being used to extract shale gas, which involves injecting millions of gallons of fresh water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals into the earth to break apart gas-bearing rock.

Fox subsequently embarked on a cross-country trip to visit people living with the effects of fracking. In the documentary — part travelogue, part exposé, part mystery, part showdown — Fox encounters EPA whistleblowers, congressmen, world-recognized scientists and many ordinary Americans fighting against fossil-fuel giants to protect their water, environment, homes and communities.

Among those ordinary Americans are Craig and Julie Sautner, who live in rural Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Just one month after Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation began hydraulic fracturing gas drilling in their area, the Sautners lost their clean water source as their well became contaminated with what the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found were high concentrations of iron, magnesium, sodium chloride and highly saturated methane gas.

“The Secret of Kells” is now showing at Cinemapolis, 120 Green Street in Ithaca. Showtimes are 2:15 pm and 4 pm (for weekend matinees), 7:15 pm and 9 pm. Image provided

FOR A MATURE AUDIENCE, the secret to enjoying The Secret of Kells is to ignore the plot – it’s for and about children. But one can hope—and that’s a stretch—that a boy’s passion for the written word will resonate with children of the digital age.

The animated film offers the story of a young boy, Brendan (Evan McGuire), living in a heavily fortified medieval village, where inhabitants are fearful of attacks by Viking raiders. The nephew of the village’s religious patriarch, Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), Brendan spends much of his time in the monastery’s scriptorium cultivating an interest in scribal arts. Aidan of Iona (Mick Lally) comes to Kells after Vikings have destroyed his own monastery and brings with him the ancient “Book of Kells,” which has yet to be completed. Aidan and his book stimulate Brendan’s creativity and fantasy to become a scribe himself. However, Abbot Cellach’s anxiety of foreign attacks extends to a tight reign over his nephew. Brendan is forbidden to leave the walls of Kells. He does, of course, and enters a dangerous, enchanted forest where he meets Aisling—a fairy wolf-girl who helps in his quest to complete the “Book of Kells.” The Secret of Kells does not stray from the gloom, death, and destruction of the Dark Ages. This may be a children’s movie, but the happy ending does not come quickly.

The film is in competition with itself. While the plot is for the children, the stylistic, hand-drawn, “2-D” artistry is for the adults. The attempted Old World enchantment is a cold stage for the adolescent appeal.  However, the gorgeous design intricacies are the allure for adult audiences. But the visual pacing and plot do not match up. The story is simple; the flat, color-blocked characters are simple; the backdrop and the speed at which it changes is over-stimulating. At some points, the rapidity at which the artwork flashes across the screen conjures anxieties of Malcolm McDowell’s forced viewing party in A Clockwork Orange.

The film, as a whole, fails to make much of an impression, but the protagonist obsessed with the composition and maintenance of tangible text is refreshing. Brendan is a brave, ninth-century hero bent on preserving his culture’s history, but for the young audience, it isn’t clear why this is important.  He does not have the luxury of many of the children viewing this film who document their lives in a virtual world, incessantly text-messaging and updating Facebook accounts. While the twenty-first century children may be at an advantage, avoiding life-threatening romps through mystical forests, what sense of responsibility do they learn or accept in the creation and dissemination of information? Audience members may agree with Abbot Cellach’s proclamation: “you can’t find out everything from books.” Of course not, we have the internet!

Kathryn Andryshak is a contributing writer for The Ithaca Post.

"A Town Called Panic" is now showing at Cinemapolis, 120 Green Street in Ithaca. Showtimes are 7:30 pm and 2:30 pm for weekend matinees. Image courtesy of Zeitgeist Films

Dread set in. I did a quick mental scan of the previous 75 minutes of pleasurable quirky stop-motion animation and witty absurdity, trying to detect furtive, or perhaps blatant, racist moments I somehow suppressed.

Nothing. “Racist?” I replied. “No, it was brilliant!”

And following exhaustive self-reflection, I support this initial reaction.

I had not intended to see the film; I was at the movies killing time while hosting undesired company. The movie poster’s tagline, written by Colin Covert for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, billed the film as “Toy Story on Acid … Monty Python meets Gumby.” This did not particularly make me want to see this movie (I cringed at the possibility of a feature length cartoon experience à la South Park, Family Guy, or anything from Adult Swim; American efforts insist on employing the crude and profane to make audiences laugh.) But alas, Village au Panique was our only option. Thankfully—mainly because of my faith in Cinemapolis and foreign cinema—I bought a ticket, and my party and I enjoyed a private viewing. (The latter condition was pleasing, yet saddening too. Support independent theaters!)

The film’s primary players are Cowboy, Indian, and Horse. During their trip to the center of the earth—one leg of a trip, also a catalyst for subsequent community-building—Cowboy complains: “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” Horse is present and mildly offended. The film moves on.

Am I to read inter-species relationships as metaphors for racial intolerance? I could try, but what a waste of time. During the character’s passage to reconstruct a rural, panic-infused village, the successful effort of inclusion is evident. Tensions run high, feelings are hurt, but the wacky plot and fantastical locale make the obstacles and frustrations imbued in accomplishing this goal palatable, if not desirable.

The film, the first stop-motion animated feature selected for Cannes, is an expansion of the “Town Called Panic” shorts by animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar that have played on French television since 2000. As in the shorts, Cowboy (Aubier), Indian (Bruce Ellison), and Horse (Patar) are housemates, with Horse leading the group as a kind of patriarch to the bumbling duo who vie for his attention. Both are unmistakably dim-witted; all are endearingly eccentric.

The film is a novelty. Characters are dime-store figurines in a stop-motion world that has a tabletop, dollhouse feel.  The intentionally rough cinematography offers skewed and mismatched perspectives—a sense of manic yet focused after-school play using whatever is in the toy chest. Hysteria is the prevailing emotion; characters speak as if they are high on laughing gas. It’s energetic, silly, and funny; the jokes come fast and hard. Other reviewers have deemed this film surreal or bizarre, but truly, it’s a familiar breath of fresh air. Escapism at its best, A Town Called Panic doesn’t help us to forget; it makes us remember a time when every mountain was a molehill and fantasy was our reality. The unrestricted frame of mind is the key to traversing obstacles.

The film begins with Indian and Cowboy’s well-intentioned birthday gift for Horse.  They need 50 bricks to build him the outdoor barbeque they’ve designed, but an error in their Internet order leaves them with more material than is necessary. Thus, an adventure, including a trip to the center of the Earth, the pursuit of thieving fish-men, and the commandeering of a giant robot penguin controlled by snowball-obsessed mad scientists. All of these events are, of course, also a foil to Horse’s romance with fellow horse and music teacher, Madame Longrée (Jeanne Balibar).

The town includes the home of Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, and the farm of Steven, his wife Janine, and animals that are just as human as their masters (even though they only get bit speaking parts). Madame Longrée’s music school and the homes of Policeman, Postman, and other ancillary characters exist in an undecided periphery. However, outsiders from an underwater parallel world, accessed via the farmer’s animals’ watering hole, disrupt the town—

Hold on! The dread just came back. Is this the film’s blatant insensitivity? Outsiders disrupt a small, unsuspecting village and are hunted down, vilified, and exported to their homeland? The plot is reminiscent of the U.S. immigration controversy. But this is not an American film, and we cannot go plucking such arguments out of the air merely because they are contemporaneous. As a postmodern culture, we function as obsessive meaning-making creatures that must excavate our own truths, because the ones proposed just never seem good enough.

We cannot fail to acknowledge the film’s simplicity, and in turn, life’s simple actions. Embracing the unfettered psychological states offered by animated toy statues helps us to recognize the oversights and strengths of ourselves and others. Here the tale is not one of contentious human relationship, but a misunderstanding of basic human need. However, all is not rectified and packaged in a neat resolution. What the film does well is feature a comforting, albeit amusing outcome, which demonstrates the hard work inherent in establishing a happy ending for all.

Wait. So maybe this is a fairytale. But there is a definite authenticity about the film that defies the realm of the fantastic or farce. Still, the film doesn’t take itself too seriously. Perhaps, when faced with the anxieties of social conformity, neither should we.

Greenberg is now showing at Cinemapolis, 120 Green Street in Ithaca. Call (607) 277-6115 for movie showtimes.

By Kathryn Andryshak

WE DON’T WANT to identify with Noah Baumbach characters. Something about his presentation of failed relationships, isolation, self-scrutiny, regret, and anger provokes viewers to wonder whether they, too, are broken, frail, and sometimes, insufferable individuals. But as a writer and director, Baumbach delivers characters of tender authenticity and magnetism that proffer effortless viewer associations. His most recent film, Greenberg, stars Ben Stiller as Roger Greenberg, a character who cannot rationalize the concept that competencies and capabilities no longer correlate to age or experience. Thus emerges a smart, yet selfish and damaged individual who is bent on hurting everyone around him. Unlike some of his previous films, though, Baumbach leaves viewers with a sense of optimism; for all of our shitty, self-destructive tendencies, if we let ourselves, we can be happy.

Although he began writing and directing in the mid 1990s, Baumbach gained notoriety from recent projects like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which he co-wrote with Wes Anderson. He wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale (2005) starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels, which won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, as well as Margot at the Wedding (2007), starring his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh (who also co-wrote and directed Greenberg), Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, and John Tuturo. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox – another Wes Anderson collaboration.

Greenberg is a 41-year-old, single, Brooklyn-based carpenter who relocates to Los Angeles to house-sit for his successful brother (Chris Messina), who is vacationing with his family in Vietnam. Recently released from a psychiatric hospital, Greenberg desires a fresh start. Although, caught up on past mistakes, Greenberg lacks the drive to make this fresh start actually transpire. He is resolved to build a dog house for his brother’s dog, Mahler, and other than that he does little else. When not writing complaint letters to corporations, local officials, or any entity that has done him wrong, Greenberg attempts to reconnect with old friends. However, former band mate, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), who is working to repair himself and his marriage (itself a casualty of one of Greenberg’s past decisions), has little sympathy or interest for the newly resurfaced Greenberg. Likewise, Beth (Leigh), with whom he wants to rekindle a past love, has moved on. The members of his social circle have melded to schedules dominated by relationships and children – conditions of life he has yet to understand.

Greenberg does, however, recognize a connection with his brother’s twenty-something personal assistant and aspiring singer, Florence (Greta Gerwig); unfortunately though, Greenberg cannot manage a platonic or sexual affair with the adorable character. Often donning a sexy heart-shaped smile and bare breasts, Gerwig as Florence is a pleasure to watch. Viewers may recognize aspects of themselves in the naïve yet hopeful Florence. Despite the self-proclaimed excess of random sex, Florence exhibits a sense of personal control and drive that is absent in Greenberg, who is at times devoid of any compassion or civility. But his self-centered, condescending, almost wrathful tirades may be a defense mechanism. At the core of Greenberg’s self-rendered alienation is essentially a battle to “fit in.”

Greenberg can’t integrate with the L.A. men his age; he maintains they all “dress like children,” and subsequently, “the children dress like superheroes.” Greenberg deems Florence’s flaw to be  immaturity. Too young and idealistic, she perhaps reminds Greenberg of the missed opportunities of his youth. We are offered this cynicism in Greenberg’s response to Ivan’s statement that “youth is wasted on the young.” “I’d go further,” Greenberg replies. “I’d go: ‘Life is wasted on people.’”

At the core of the film is an individual who feels like an outcast among people his age: Greenberg cannot understand or appreciate perspectives on a multi-generational plane and cannot see himself for who he is, which is why he is so resistant to a relationship with Florence The whiskey drinking, insult-flinging, middle-aged man can only forge a reasonable relationship with Mahler, and that may only be because the dog becomes ill on his watch, and because, ultimately,  animals transcend generational identity.

The clichéd resolution, an acceptance that one cannot love another until he loves himself, is somehow unsullied and accessible. “Hurt people hurt people” – both proclamation and realization – is Greenberg’s catalyst for self-adjustment. We don’t get to see his happy ending play out, but we know it’s there. Our own happy ending may be just out of sight, but Baumbach gives us reason to believe it’s out there somewhere, just waiting for us to catch up with it.