Yesterday, my husband and I watched the Nancy Meyers film, The Holiday (starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, and Eli Wallach) which revealed an interesting dichotomy.
In the film, Cameron Diaz plays an LA editor who runs her own company that specializes in movie trailers. Her home is filled with walls of DVD’s and audio/video equipment. Kate Winslet plays an English writer who lives in a “quaint” rural cottage stuffed with books and no noticeable indication of even a TV! Wearing layers of clothes and heating the apparently ancient edifice with two fireplaces, she does not appear to have the same economic power as her LA counterpart or the same level of influence within her industry. Hmmm.
Winslet’s love interest, Jack Black appears to be a self-sustained film composer while Jude Law, who plays Diaz’s love interest (as well as Winslet’s brother) appears to be a very successful English editor. Hmmm.
Now my husband is not originally from the United States, and often views things from an interesting perspective. Taking this brief overview of the film into consideration, my husband’s question may not surprise you, “Do the English read books more than Americans?” At first, I denied the assumption. I began a structural explanation of how location and profession where being utilized to emphasize the opposing nature of both character’s, but then I stopped and thought about the summer I studied in England.
The school I attended was in Surry-Rheohampton, just outside of London. I often took public transportaion into and around the city. I remember riding in the Tube (the London subway system) and being amazed by how many people where actually reading during their commute. Could my husband be on to something? The English definitely have the advantage in literary legacy. And America is, after all, the home of Hollywood.
You may at this point expect me to lament the lack of literary appreciation or ambition in this country; to chastise consumer obsession with film and television, but I will not. In fact, I believe I have done this forum a serious diservice by excluding film from discussion. As an undergraduate, I took a very fascinating “English course” about film.
In his book Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain hypothesizes that “when a critical mass of people within a society acquire literacy, especially alphabet literacy, left hemispheric modes of thought are reinforced at the expense of right hemispheric ones, which manifests as a decline in the status of images, women’s rights, and goddess worship” (viii). (Shlain relates the left brain with what I call rational ways of being and the right brain with what I call intuitive ways of being–see “Replacing the Terms ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’”) Therefore, I will be updating the purpose of this blog to include the representation of women in both film and art.
