{"id":5313,"date":"2005-01-08T23:22:17","date_gmt":"2005-01-09T03:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/httpblogslawharvardeduceerock4\/2005\/01\/08\/garden-state\/"},"modified":"2005-01-08T23:22:17","modified_gmt":"2005-01-09T03:22:17","slug":"garden-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/2005\/01\/08\/garden-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Garden State"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I trudged two blocks through the snow and saw Garden State<\/span>
\ntonight. I’m still mulling it over. My reaction to it is complex. I was
\nvery irritated by it. I resisted it. Though it still “worked”, i.e. it
\npushed my buttons. But I am very irritated that it did that. If I had
\nto come up with one word right NOW to describe the film, it would be
\n“childish.” That’s not quite the right word, but it’ll do for now. I
\nwas most irritated by Natalie Portman’s character, some perfect-perfect
\nimaginary male-fantasy creature. Every word she said was perfect, every
\naction choreographed to say “fall in love with me!” You could say, “an
\nepileptic compulsive liar who lives with her mother and wears a helmet
\nto work is the “perfect” female?” And I will say YES, because that is
\njust one of her perfectly quirky traits–we don’t have to actually see
\nher go through a seizure or deal with the effects of medication, she’s
\njust delighfully epileptic. And her lies are all cute and innocent and
\nshe owns up to them instantly. Her “flaws” are really attributes; it’s
\njust some added flavoring in the recipe for “perfect quirky-girl for
\nquirky twentysomething modern males.” She’s the Gidget of the ’00s. She
\ndoesn’t have any real  <\/span>baggage, only the guy gets to have that. Her purpose is to pull him <\/span>out of his slump. Compare quirky Sam to quirky Clementine in Eternal Sunshine<\/span>. Both exist for the same reason–to draw the guy out–but in Eternal Sunshine<\/span> we see how Clementine’s personality is problematic as well, not just cutely quirky. Her quirks are her <\/span>problems, and they don’t just exist to make some guy smile and dovetail perfectly with his personality. And, she even tells <\/span>Joel not to expect her to save him. Garden State<\/span> just isn’t as meaty. Childish.<\/p>\n

It may be obvious but in a Garden State<\/span> world, I’d be Zach Braff. <\/p>\n

I didn’t hate the film though, and I like Zach Braff. It’s a good
\nstory, a sweet movie, with a lot of heart. The chemistry was great. But
\nit’s just a little too precious for my tastes. <\/p>\n

Go ahead, call me a Grumpy Shit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I trudged two blocks through the snow and saw Garden State tonight. I’m still mulling it over. My reaction to it is complex. I was very irritated by it. I resisted it. Though it still “worked”, i.e. it pushed my buttons. But I am very irritated that it did that. If I had to come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58QoK-1nH","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}