A Study Guide to The Piano (1993) as Watched on Netflix

ENGL 567: Half-Sleeping through Movies On Sunday Afternoons
Dr. Greenlaw



The Piano (1993)
Writer and Director: Jane Campion
Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh
Editing: Veronika Jenet
Music: Michael Nyman
Cast: Holly Hunter (Ada); Harvey Keitel (Baines); Sam Neill (Stewart); Anna Paquin (Flora); Kerry Walker (Aunt Morag); Geneviève Lemon (Nessie); Tungia Baker (Hira); Ian Mune (Reverend); Peter Dennett (Head Seaman); Te Whatanui Skipwith (Chief Nihe)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS ABOUT CHARACTER AND PLOT

1) Many critics describe Holly Hunter's character of Ada as intuitively feminist. How do you reconcile that with the fact that she doesn't speak for most of the movie. I mean, she barely even makes facial expressions. I know she's dealing with a lot of shit but doesn't she seems like kind of a frosty box?

2) Anna Paquin, barely 11 years old, won an academy award for her role as Ada's daughter, Flora. Although she did a passable job, are child actors ever really good? Don't they always seem kind of fake? Can you argue that the Academy Award for best supporting actress really have gone to Rosie Perez for her work in Fearless?

3) How did you feel upon seeing Baines' (Harvey Keitel) bare buttocks? How did your feelings change when you realized you would also be seeing his penis?

4) Consider the scene at the climax of the movie, where Stewart chops off his wife's finger. Wasn't that part cool? Why couldn't the whole movie be like that?

5) WHY WOULD SHE CHOOSE HARVEY KEITEL OVER SAM NEILL? HAS ADA MCGRATH EVEN SEEN JURASSIC PARK?


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS ABOUT SYMBOL AND THEME

1) Sometimes when watching a movie we don't particularly enjoy, we are overtaken by a masochistic urge to finish it rather then abandoning the viewing experience halfway through. What inspired you to finish the movie? Where you encouraged by extenuating circumstances (snacks, a particularly comfortable pillow, mild wine hangover)?

2) Is there a certain mount of prior knowledge the viewer should be expected to bring to the viewing experience? Or is it reasonable for the viewer to be 45 minutes into the film before realizing it takes place in New Zealand?

3) While filmed in English, The Piano is still technically a foreign film. Does that make it permissible to alter the viewing experience by turning on the subtitles? How thick and/or mumbly do the actor's accents have to be before the use of subtitles is validated?

4) What is the deal with the piano? I mean, seriously. Who cares?

5) In the coda of the film, Ada is revealed to be wearing a prosthetic metal finger in place of the one that was chopped off. Was your first thought "F yeah Terminator"? Did this reaction make you rethink your decision to watch a costume drama in place of the sci-fi you've been shoveling in your eyeholes all summer?

Huntsville, Alabama

It was late May, the weekend before Matt was scheduled to fly to Pittsburgh. We had one last full weekend together, and we returned to our favorite early-relationship past time: the day trip.

"Let's go to Hendersonville, or Columbia" Matt suggested, perusing a list of the strange little cities that circle Nashville.

"No," I said."Let's go to Alabama."





Alabama is less then a 2 hour drive south of Nashville. Matt and I had traveled through The Heart of Dixie only once before, on our great Southern roadtrip of 2007. Matt remembered driving through the cities. I mostly remembered the creepy rest stops, and having this song stuck in my head for hours and hours:





We decided to chart a bee line south for Huntsville, Alabama with a few stops for flea markets and whatever else we came across. For the uninitiated, Huntsville is mostly known for two things.

1) As "Rocket City" it is the largest hub of NASA activity in the country. Here, shuttles and rockets are designed and manufactured and astronauts are trained. It is estimated that 1 in 3 people in Huntsville is an engineer.

2) The location of the "bed intruder" news story, and consequent viral autotune video.





I packed a variety of snacks, Matt wrote down the directions, and we were off.

Our first stop was the state welcome center, and its attendant rocket.





Next we aimed for the Huntsville Flea Market. On our way there we got sucked into the vortex of the Hard Times Thrift Shop. We made a u-turn on whatever route we were driving and checked it out.





The Hard Times Thrift Shop was a combination of everything awesome and terrible about off-brand thrift stores. Architecturally it was phenomenal. The whole thing was housed in a collection of ramshackle buildings mended and expanded with whatever oddball materials were accessible. The main building used to be a roadhouse bar, and there were little hints of it still in the corners and rafters. This building was surrounded by a half-dozen one-room wooden shacks, each housing a different seller.





The goods however, were overpriced, boring or offensive. Pretty colored liqueur glasses for $15 a pop. Ceramic angels. A table full of mammy dolls that were clearly made in the 90's or later. A young couple tried to sell us a kitten, and a woman gave us the stink eye when I tried to take a picture of a creepy ventriloquist dummy. We beat a hasty retreat, happy to have seen the place, and satisfied enough to move on.

A little further down the road we found the Huntsville Flea Market proper. It was a very traditional flea market (swords, wigs, vinyl belts, incense, knock-off oriental carpets) and there was nothing much on interest there. We followed the long halls as they connected to other long halls, until we were so deep into the complex I suspected we had reached Moria. After checking out the old Zoltar machine we hit the road again.

Huntsville itself was a rainy ghost town. We had arrived on a Sunday afternoon and everything was shut down. We walked around downtown, looking in shop windows and imagining what this place was like / is like, when filled with people. Overhead the clouds grew threatening and thunder rumbled, echoing between the bank and the court house.






We found the home that Tallulah Bankhead was born in. A three-story stone building of apartments and houses still very much in use, it retained a turn of century charm that seems so rare these days.





On our way back to Nashville we cut through a part of Alabama that had been devastated by tornadoes just a week or two before. I gave Matt the camera and asked him to take a few shots as we careened by. I was eager to have a chance to see the destructive force of the tornadoes in detail, but I didn't want to stop and subject the locals to disaster tourism as they slowly moved debris and struggled to reclaim what was left of their homes.











People always remark on the odd selectivity of tornadoes, how they destroy one house but spare its neighbor, or demolish a kitchen but leave a glass vase sitting on the counter. That level of haphazard catastrophe was present here, where jumbles of wood and brick laid 20 yards from a garden of tomato plants, still upright in their cages. Nature has a blind eye, but a very precise hand. The sun began to dip as we discussed fate and chance on the drive home.

And that, my friends, was our trip to Huntsville, Alabama.

State of the Summer, 2011

People, I have not been keeping up with my blog. You know why? Because some shitty stuff has been going on.

Numero Uno: My darling husband and best friend is working 500 miles away this summer, and I haven't seen him for a month.

Numero Dos: My hard drive died and I spent about two weeks without a computer.

Numero Tres: My health has been kind of fucked.

The first two I can deal with. Being separated from your partner always sucks, but it's only temporary. In fact, in 10 days I will be leaving to spend a week and a half in Pittsburgh, in which we will be able to hang out ALL DAY! EVERY DAY! Until then there are phone calls, texts and emails to keep the fires warm. And while my hard drive was destined for that big garbage can in the sky, I am fortunate enough to possess both a external back-up drive and a warranty, so there is no harm done beyond a few corrupted photos (and I suspect most of those were of the cat).

Now the health issue, well, that's another story.

The diet I'm on sucks. It's necessary, but it sucks. My energy is low because the foods I can stomach are so nutritionally empty that even while taking vitamins I'm exhausted most days. I'm eating a lot of sugar because it's the only mildly indulgent thing I'm allowed - fruit smoothies, jello, marshmallows. I dream of green salads, wheat bread with a tooth to it, kale tossed with vinegar. I eat peanut butter on saltines, broiled tofu and bowls of low-fat cottage cheese. I'm found two decent vegetable dishes which don't upset my stomach, and I make them endlessly: roasted summer squash topped with a lick of goat cheese, and mushrooms sauteed with a little butter and garlic and served on toast. Other nights I eat things that come in boxes, heated up in my toaster oven. Pop tarts. Frozen pizzas. Veggie chicken nuggets, dipped in low fat mayo. Sometimes I cook things and I can't even bear to eat them. I sit them on the counter until they grow cold, and then I throw them away.

The reflux medication I've been on since March has stopped working, so now my tiny, ascetic meals are interspersed with bouts of reflux that extend to my sinuses and leave everything tasting and smelling like stomach acid. Often on the bus ride home I am closer to vomiting then wanting to cook up yet another tasteless meal.

As a cook, this is depressing. As a devotee of gastronomy, this is heartbreaking. And as a human being this is a level of frustration and self-loathing I have not experienced in many years.

However, the worst thing I can do right now is to let my spirits flag. Holing up in my house watching movies and wishing things were different is not going to magically produce a solution. This diagnosis is not the end of anything - it's an opportunity to use my creativity and years of cooking experience to create new standby favorites that are both nourishing to my off-kilter body and unmistakably delicious. Right now I am walking a tight-rope, flailing my arms for anything to grab hold of. But what I really need is to find my own equilibrium, the innate balance within myself that will keep me steady, healthy and happy.

It's hard to give yourself a pep-talk without dipping too far into the corn, so please excuse me. I should probably resist anyways, since corn is on my no-no list.

Anyway, in the spirit of boot-strap pulling and rain-drop dodging, expect a flood of posts in the next few weeks on such diverse topics as Huntsville Alabama, the life cycle of cicada, and why I have a thing for hobbits. Till then, keep on (keeping on / chooglin' / secretly enjoying frozen pizza).

Gastroparesis (or, my stupid gross stomach)

I haven't been able to blog as much as I've wanted to lately. My photos and ideas are stacked up, just wanting for me to find a few hours to lay them all out. However, I've been a busy lady, and there have been some major changes over here.

Numero uno: My dearest man-friend and lovely husband Matt has left town for the summer. He's walking the cliffs and gullies of Pittsburgh and interning in the Office of the Public Defender. This is a wonderful development - it clears so many roads for future opportunities and cinches our return next summer. I will miss him dearly, along with Pittsburgh's steamy, green summer, but the sacrifice of time apart is nothing compared to the joy I feel at the thought of returning, of moving back to Pittsburgh, of standing in the doorway of a row house with my hands on my hips.

Numero dos: I have been dealing with some chronic GI health issues since 2007. One fine summer day four years ago a switch was flipped and my stomach became my most hated enemy. Over the years my symptoms shifted and I suffered through cycles of remission and reoccurance. I received diagnoses of gastritis and GERD, but diet changes and endless meds did nothing to eliminate the shadowy cause of all this pain. Last week I finally got in to see a respected GI specialist, and his diagnosis was swift and confident: Gastroparesis.

I suspect you are just as confused as I was. Although this condition affects one out of twenty-five people, I had never heard of it. Basically, it is a partial paralysis of the stomach caused by nerve damage. Often this nerve damage is caused by complications of diabetes. However, for many (like me), the cause is never fully known. But now that my stomach can't move very well, food just hangs out there. This is the really disgusting part. It also explains a lot, like why I have the magical ability to vomit up my breakfast at 2pm. It's not witchcraft people! My stomach is just that stupid and gross.

Since there is no direct treatment for the nerve damage and this is a chronic condition, the best thing I can do is dramatically change my diet. The doctor gave me a booklet explaining the virtues of a good blender and eating 6-8 tiny, annoying meals instead of three normal-sized, satisfying ones. But the best part was the recommended foods:

AVOID: raw vegetables, winter squash, whole wheat products, corn, brown rice, beans/peas/lentils, citrus fruits and berries, cruciferous vegetables, nuts and seeds, anything high in fat

EAT: white bread, white rice, pasta, vegetables that have been cooked to shit, cottage cheese, fruit and vegetable juices, yogurt, eggs, smoothies, low-fat cheese, potatoes sans peels, crackers Crackers CRACKERS

As a really goddamn healthy vegetarian, this diet was a total mindfuck. Suddenly, everything I ate regularly and relied on to keep me healthy was part of the problem. And everything I avoided was somehow good for me. All these years of eating crappy whole-wheat pasta for nothing! As much as I gave the whole thing the side-eye I made like a good patient and bought my cottage cheese and sourdough bread and protein powder. I drank some weird smoothies and broke my meals into little snacklets. I even bought out the kozy shack pudding cups for days when I can't stomach enough calories of white bread. But then something interesting happened.

I began to feel better.

A lot better.

No longer did I finish a meal only to suffer two hours of choking and reflux. No longer was I suddenly nauseous because I ate a handful of peanuts. It's been a dramatic and swift improvement, and such a deep relief. Although I can hardly eat like a normal person right now, I can finally go through a day without feeling ill.

Doctor, I'm sorry I gave you the side-eye. I just had no idea that white bread might actually be good for me.

Delicious Dinners #2

Tonight we have the outstanding raw Tuscan kale salad, served with tofu marinated in an Italian-style vinaigrette. The warm, chewy tofu is a perfect compliment to the crisp, lemon-scented salad, and the whole thing is an antidote to steamy, summery, Southern evenings. To seal the deal, kale just came into season and my favorite stand at the Nashville Farmer's Market surprised me with a basket of the most tender, mild, little baby kale I've ever eaten. This lovely green is only going to be in season until mid to late June, so hit up your local farmer's market and make this asap!






Raw Tuscan Kale Salad With Pecorino

as published in the New York Times, recipe by Melissa Clark

Ingredients

1 bunch kale (they recommend Tuscan kale, common kale works fine)
1 thin slice country bread (part whole-wheat or rye is nice), or 1/4 cup homemade bread crumbs (coarse)
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely grated pecorino cheese, more for garnish (pecorino is a bit rich for my blood [$$$] so I replaced it with Gran Queso by Roth Käse.)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for garnish
Freshly squeezed juice of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste.


Directions

1. Trim bottom 2 inches off kale stems and discard. Slice kale, including ribs, into 3/4-inch-wide ribbons. You should have 4 to 5 cups. Place kale in a large bowl.

2. If using bread, toast it until golden on both sides. Tear it into small pieces and grind in a food processor until mixture forms coarse crumbs.

3. Using a mortar and pestle, or with the back of a knife, pound garlic into a paste. Transfer garlic to a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup cheese, 3 tablespoons oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper flakes and black pepper, and whisk to combine. Pour dressing over kale and toss very well to thoroughly combine (dressing will be thick and need lots of tossing to coat leaves).

4. Let salad sit for 5 minutes, then serve topped with bread crumbs, additional cheese and a drizzle of oil.



Italian Tofu

from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Ingredients

1 pound extra-firm tofu, drained and pressed
1/2 cup white cooking wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons Bragg Liquid Aminos or soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, smashed
A big pinch each dried basil, marjoram, and thyme

Directions

Prepare the marinade by combining all ingredients in a wide shallow bowl.

Cut the tofu widthwise into eight equal pieces. Marinate for at least an hour, flipping after 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Place the tofu on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Flip over and bake another 10 minutes. Place in the broiler for about 3 more minutes for extra chewiness. Sometimes I cheat and cook it using only the broiler, which leaves the outside slightly crisp and the inside dense and chewy.

The Kentucky Derby

John, our Master of Ceremonies, dishes out mint julips.





He was very proud of his cheerful jacket, a hand-me-down from his grandfather.





Behold, the most exciting two-minutes in horse-racing.





I was disappointed that I never got to see the part where they put the wreath of roses around the horse's neck.


Instead we got ice cream at Bobbie's Dairy Dip.





And in lieu of roses I enjoyed peonies from the backyard.

Walking in [the] Memphis [Zoo]

Last weekend my buddy Sharon and I took a road trip to Memphis. The drive crisscrossed miles of woods and farmland, swollen rivers and road-killed armadillos. Our final destination: the Memphis Zoo.


The zoo was founded in 1906, and the original entrance still stands within the park.




The current zoo entrance looks a little different.




It is clear how much money has been invested into the zoo. Most of the exhibits had been redesigned within the past 20 years, and the enclosures are creative, beautiful and very humane.




However, some animals are still waiting for their new homes. An extensive new hippo exhibit is slated to open later this year. Be patient, girls.




Here is one of the two pandas currently on loan from China. Their enclosure is inside of a sprawling Chinese-themed exhibit built to resemble the Summer Palace.




We caught feeding time at the very popular polar bear exhibit.




Not all the animals were so active.




This komodo dragon's name is Hollywood Jeff. Best name.




While searching for the "Animals of the Night" building, we found this abandoned aviary. Inside stood what appeared to be a small stone altar.




Here is Sharon entering the Animals of the Night, where we saw our first live armadillo of the day. They also had a floor to ceiling glass box filled with thousands of cockroaches.




On our drive home we were persuaded by some very corny signs to stop into Hurricane Mills, TN, birthplace of Loretta Lynn. This is the entrance to the Loretta Lynn Kitchen.



Sharon: What are "Loretta Lynn Food Products"?
Me: I dunno but I think they might be made FROM Loretta Lynn.


They had a buffalo too. Seriously, Hurricane Mills was pretty weird. We ate some mac & cheese at the Log Cabin Restaurant and peaced.




The End.