Madea Goes to Jail and the Transience of Identity

Picture this: It's late on a Saturday night, you are bored and want to watch a movie. But not a good movie, because there is something wrong with your brain. So you head over to [STREAMING SERVICE] and you see a film you've heard of, and one you're pretty certain you have a good hold of despite that. Madea Goes to Jail. What follows is a harrowing experience that can hardly be represented in words. But I guess I'll give it an shot.

Initially, the film presents itself as what one might expect. Madea, played by Tyler Perry, is an ornery old lady who apparently fucked up one too many times, and now is going to jail to meet a wacky cast of characters and learn a lesson or something. But then Madea leaves the courtroom. We stay and watch some completely separate characters. The actual main characters. Candy is a sex worker brought in on prostitution charges, and the prosecutor, Joshua, recuses himself as he knew her at some point in the past. What follows is a crash course in human misery, as every bad thing that could happen to a person happens to Candy. After one night back working on the streets, she is abducted and raped by a pimp, who plans to hold her captive until she escapes and seeks shelter with Joshua. When a local minister sets Candy up for a job interview, the man interviewing her sexually assaults her.

I could go over the laundry list of calamity that befalls Candy, but I think you get the point. What makes this film so bewildering to watch is that each of these scenes of tragedy is interspersed with scenes of Madea and her family being zany. You settle into the tone being dark and emotionally wracking, then Madea shows up for a sassy back-and-forth with Dr. Phil. It is impossible to get your footing with this movie. The listing says "Comedy." The description mentions nothing of tragedy.

What is the deal with this? I must mention I had never seen a Tyler Perry film before. Everyone I spoke to who has seen one of his films sat back like a jaded old schoolmaster and said, "Oh yes, they're all like that." One person's only comment was that it was a "funny movie." How could someone see every heart-wrenching event that takes place and come away with a bunch of yuks? It's simple. It's all in the name.

This film is billed as a comedy, and so that is what people see of it. Once they see Tyler Perry's name, they gloss over the details. Madea is a (supposedly) funny character, and her name is in the title, ergo the movie is a funny film. The content is almost irrelevant when we have nice little titles and genres to tell us what it is.

When does description cross the line into prescription? Is the film a comedy simply because it is labeled as such? Is it a comedy because it has some funny parts? Can it be a comedy even though most of the runtime would be better described as drama? Too often we take things by appearance, by how we think they should be sorted on first glance.

Most of the time with media, that works. If a movie is billed as a comedy and stars a comedic actor, we get what we expect. Sure, one or two sad things might happen in the film, but its primary purpose is to make you laugh. You pick what you want and that's the end of it. Life is rarely that simple.

The worst experience of your life can follow a moment of rare gaity.You can find yourself laughing at a funeral, mere minutes after crying the hardest you have ever cried. People can call you one thing your entire life and one day you realize you never fit in that mold at all. Films are made with intent. Indie or mainstream, somebody wrote a script and a bunch of people took their time to pick what parts they wanted in it until it appeared on your screen. Life has no intent. Things just happen. People just are.

The moral of Madea Goes to Jail arrives late in the film. While Madea and Candy are both incarcerated, Madea tells the group that you cannot be a victim, that you have to take responsibility for the things that happen to you. Shortly afterwards, both Candy and Madea are released from prison when it is revealed that the prosecutor has been padding charges, making all the cases she litigated invalid. Not a single thing about their escape from that situation was in their control. The film expects you to believe this moral it espouses while directly contradicting it with events portrayed in the film itself. It bills itself as a comedy, while bombarding me with more unfortunate events than those billed as dramas.

The labels we use are so inadequate at capturing life. So few things can be boiled down to a couple easily comprehensible terms. But we need them. You can't just think about everything all the time. We have hobbies, jobs, people to meet and things to do. You have to boil things down to handle everything being thrown at you day-to-day.

But there are times when you can't. When the words you used to describe yourself turn into a prison, a list of dos and don'ts. When the things people have said to you don't match up with what you can plainly see. When you've been submerged in an ocean of easily classified Comedies and Dramas, there falls into your lap that which defies these conventions. And though every signpost and label says it's one thing, you know it's not. It is not so easily categorized. The only question is:

Where do we go from there?

Broly: A Life Unlived

We take it as fact that the villains of Dragon Ball Z are not complicated people. They usually have a simple goal in mind, one instantly recognizable as evil. Our characters come up against them, halt their plans, they engage in combat, and the good characters inevitably prevail. Sometimes their defeat eventually turns the villains to the side of good, which allows them more space to develop as characters, such as Piccolo or Vegeta, but otherwise they just die, without much more to define them. When speaking of one-dimensional villains from the Dragon Ball series, there's one name that seems to rise above the rest: Broly.

Out of the shallow villains from DBZ, Broly seems the most so. While Cell was programmed to kill Goku and took joy in facing a strong opponent, or Frieza reveled in conquest and victory, Broly lacked even that much complexity. Broly wanted to kill Goku. Unlike the Androids, he was not programmed to do so by someone with a grudge, unlike Vegeta, it wasn't out of some drive to be stronger. We are meant to believe that as a young child, Broly heard Goku's cries, which etched so deeply in his psyche a hatred for him, that even as an adult, the hatred has only gotten more virulent.

At a cursory glance, this seems one of the weakest reasons for a villain to try and kill Goku. Broly has no other plans, no ambitions. Does he just enjoy destruction for its own sake? However, unlike most of the antagonists Dragon Ball holds, we see Broly's past. We see his family, his origin, and looking deeply, we see something far more tragic than at first glance.

The Bergen's Burden

Happiness. So ephemeral, so illusory. Can we obtain it? If we seek it, will it remain beyond our grasp? What brings it about, and how can we keep what we've attained? We've pondered these questions for all of human history, and they've been addressed by something not nearly up to the task. Trolls.

No, not that one.

NOT THAT ONE

OH COME ON

There we go.

In Trolls, there are two races of being. The eponymous Trolls, small annoying creatures who love to hug and dance and all that shit, and the Bergen, big hulking ugly humanoids that have one trait in common: They are all depressed. They remain listless, apathetic, and emotionally destitute for their entire lives, save for one possible treatment. Eating a Troll.

The Bergen hold an annual holiday where they harvest Trolls from the Troll Tree in the middle of town, each Bergen eats a Troll, and they temporarily quench the harrowing despair. They depend upon this to keep their community alive. Well, at least it seems like they would have to. In the events of the film, all the Trolls breach a dangerous escape from Bergentown, and for twenty years not one Bergen eats a Troll.

Miraculously, they've not all killed themselves. In fact, things seem to be going pretty well as far as a clinically depressed town goes. It looks like they all got jobs, and there's kids around, so something must be working out. I guess they haven't created alcohol yet. Hope surges through the town when their exiled cook finds the Troll village and brings some back. Trollstice begins anew!

There sets off the events of the film, where two Trolls have to get into Bergentown and save the rest, they meet some Bergen, and teach them all something surprising. See, in two occasions, Bergen feel happiness without ingesting a Troll. In one, the King Bergen goes on a date with the chambermaid, who is helped by the escaped Trolls. They have a fun time dancing around and rollerskating, not realizing until later that they even experienced joy. The second instance comes at the end of the film, where Poppy, the Troll Princess, explains that happiness isn't found in something outside, but inside each and everyone one of you. All you gotta do is dance. And that's it. They all start dancing and the ending of the film implies everyone will be happy forever now.

I found something odd, though. How is it that no Bergen ever tried to dance during the twenty year absence of the Trolls? They had a roller rink, how did that not do the trick? I mean, there's children, so obviously Bergen relationships still occurred, but nobody admitted to being happy. On the one hand, it's possible they were so misled by the notion that only Trolls could bring happiness that they discounted any positive feelings as something aside from True Happiness. But something else stands out.

During every single instance of a Bergen feeling joy, there is a Troll present. During the King's date, Trolls were on the head of his disguised chambermaid, and he had one in a pendant around his neck. The cook only felt happy once she had captured some Trolls and had them in her fannypack. At the end, their dance is only jubilant because the Trolls had escaped their pot and were frolicking about their banquet hall.

Not once does a Bergen display happiness without a Troll on their person or around them. We were taught one thing in the beginning of the film, and it remains true: A Bergen cannot be happy without a Troll. What the Bergen got wrong was that they would have to eat said Troll to experience the psychological effects, while the Trolls, being almost entirely unfamiliar with sadness of any kind, think it's all in their heads.

The Trolls mistake their general disposition to be universal, that what makes them happy must make all delighted. And perhaps, for that one night, the Bergen were happy. But all pleasures must have a cost. One can live in a state of subdued misery for years at a time and become accustomed to it, but the real trial is when happiness is thrust suddenly into one's life, and quickly taken away again. If the Trolls no longer live in Bergentown after the end of the film, the Bergen will go far lower than their previous state of depression, because they knew bliss, it seemed within their grasp, and they will have no idea why it has gone. As a species, suffering is their lot, and it seems they will always return to it. What the film lead you to believe was a happy ending was, in fact, the beginning of a long, desperate tragedy. As Mark Twain wrote:

Sometimes a man’s make and disposition are such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour’s happiness a man’s machinery makes him pay years of misery.

We cannot blame the Bergen. They are cursed with this emotional defect that befouls their species. Trolls will never understand it, they simply haven't any notion of what could cause it. We should reserve our pity for them. They are God's playthings, left destitute and barren only for the schadenfreude of the heavens. In the end, nobody can truly lift the burden of the Bergen.

The Summer Wheeze Defense

This holiday season, I think it's time to remember the important things in life. Friends, family, the complete absence of political discussion, and a little film called Frosty Returns.

You might recall this, if you're me. Starring John Goodman as the eponymous precipitation made animate, and drawn like bootleg Charlie Brown, this little film seemed innocent enough, but as the years went by it resurfaced more and more often in my mind. Why? Because of a little thing called Summer Wheeze.

An entrepreneur, no, a genius, named Mr. Twitchell invented some formula, that, when sprayed on snow completely disintegrated it. I don't mean he made it melt or evaporate, I mean a little spray from this can annihilated snow. Now, surely, such a man would be heralded as the second coming of Christ, right? Think about the preventable deaths, no more getting stuck in snowbanks, no more mountain climbers dying in avalanches. Who gives a shit about mousetraps, beat a path to this guy's door! But does this man get the recognition he deserves? No, because of goddamn Frosty the Snowman.

Frosty, the egotistical bastard, did everything he could to brainwash the people of Beansboro into discarding the most important scientific discovery of the century. Oh, just because he happens to be made of snow, that makes it okay?! Like the Pied Piper, he entrances children and adults alike with his siren song, making them abandon the fruits of scientific progress and even dub him King. This short tries its best to demonize Twitchell, like when one of his board members protests about the unintended effects Summer Wheeze may have on the environment, he unceremoniously sends her chair hurting down through a trap door, like some kind of discount Blofeld.

And yeah, I must admit, Twitchell could have used some better marketing execs, and maybe he would have been more successful if he didn't focus all of his efforts on one small town. Though he did provide, free of charge, Summer Wheeze trucks which drove through the town, completely eliminating all snow on or around the roads. He's not just an inventor, he's a public servant!

I suppose one could make an argument that Twitchell's motivation was only to be named king at that winter carnival, but who doesn't want recognition now and then? Can't we separate the man from his work? Not to mention, by the end of the short, Twitchell's crashed his car into a frozen lake, which surely killed him in time, due to his advanced age and feeble state. Did Frosty go to help the man? Of course not. All Frosty cares about is the profligate extention of his unnatural, eternal lifespan. He doesn't concern himself with human existence, they're all mayflies to the immortal homunculus dubbed Frosty. Of course, the narrator tells us Twitchell somehow survived, and changed his business strategy to making sleds. Sleds?! From Our Benevolent Lord Twitchell?! I don't believe you for a goddamn second, you irredeemable snow-gremlin!

So next time you're skidding hopelessly down a poorly plowed road into certain death, or angrily shoveling your driveway for the third time that week, you can thank your good friend Frosty for stifling progress back to the Ice Age. And maybe, just maybe, you'll remember the man, the legend, who looked at the state of things and said, "No thank you, I think I can fix that." Our fallen hero, Mr. Twitchell.

Sympathy for Raquelle

I've been watching a show called Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse lately. And you could say I've thought a little about it. In the same way that Newton thought a little about Calculus. It's a show about Barbie, living but also still a doll, with her family and friends, where every incarnation of the Barbie doll is canon.

The closest this show has to an antagonist is Barbie's frenemy, Raquelle. She, like every other character, seems to be fabulously wealthy with supermodel good looks. And yet, she's always trying to steal Barbie's spotlight (or boyfriend). Why? Isn't a life free of labor enough for her?

Let's begin by examining the object of Raquelle's ire, the very doll herself, Barbie. Barbie has had over 126 careers over her lifetime, and not because she gets fired a lot, she just gets bored. Nothing seems beyond the scope of her purview. Supermodel, racecar driver, even astronaut are just things Barbie did before she got tired of them. She has a network of devoted friends, a brand of clothing shops, impeccable judgement, loving sisters, and apparently the best boyfriend ever created. Despite being filthy rich and talented, Barbie retains her gracious nature, always willing to help a friend (or frenemy) in need. Barbie is the Übermensch, surpassing the limits of human development, never even deigning to seek reprisal for wrongs done against her. The next stage of humanity, a paragon of valor, ingenuity, and fashion.

Let me ask you something: How do you compete with the Übermensch? The short answer is: You can't. The rest of Barbie's friends are content being her cronies, ready at her whim to shower her with praise or bask in her glory. All except Raquelle. She's not content with her station in life. She wants more, she needs to surpass everyone's favorite polymath. But that's impossible. Barbie is perfect in every way (except for baking) and Raquelle has few, if any, skills. During Barbie's brief absence due to super fashion heroics, Raquelle was left to fill the void, but failed in every aspect. She can't act, be a runway model, or even advertise perfume.

The only time Raquelle seemed to prevail over Barbie was when Barbie let her. Having a bad hair day, Barbie decided to let Raquelle win for once, but her ever-adoring fandom refused to recognize Raquelle until Barbie faked a compliment. Barbie can't lose, the most Raquelle can hope for is a consolation prize. For poor Raquelle, this isn't close to a fair fight. Barbie's the dealer, and Raquelle knows the house always wins.

If only achievement were enough for Raquelle. When she found her way into an alternate dimension with a dull, self-deprecating Barbie, Raquelle quickly made her way to the top. A profitable boutique, zealous fans, the works. But it wasn't enough. Without the real Barbie to triumph over, it was all for naught. Raquelle doesn't want to be Barbie, she needs to beat Barbie.

So what recourse does she have? Raquelle can't submit herself to the will of Barbie, to her mass of weak-willed sycophants. She's unable to even enjoy simple companionship, Barbie's boyfriend Ken being really the only guy in town apart from Raquelle's brother, Ryan. Thus, bitterness. Scheming. Trying to find the one chink in Barbie's armor, the only specialization the queen has overlooked.

Can you blame her? She has her eyes set on stardom, but is destined for mediocrity. Nothing she tries ever succeeds, so she's stuck, mired in Barbie's gargantuan shadow. She seems full of herself, but it's just a front, a facade to convince herself life is still worth living. She's tired, and angry, and alone. All she wants is someone to acknowledge her existence, to stop looking in a mirror to prove she's real. She can't escape Barbie any more than she can escape her own inadequacy.

We may hate Raquelle. We may scorn and ridicule her. But what she represents is a fundamental part of the human experience. Through her spite and envy, she's the most human character in Malibu. She has foibles, tribulations, and nearly every single one of her enterprises ends in abject failure. Her far-fetched dreams remain unfulfilled, until all that is left is a sneering cynic who only longs for some attention. When we watch Raquelle, who's really looking into a mirror?