No theater for any dream
“That's the difference between you and me, obviously.” – Tess Tyler
Dear friends,
Have you ever felt void among a crowd seemingly coming from a different universe?
A friend invited me to a musical showdown that he conducted, themed Disney 101.
I embarrassingly counted in my head a handful of soundtracks that I know as a bunch of teenagers wearing Mickey ears and Hannah Montana wigs started showing up.
A fan gathering was unexpected.
It was strangely out of touch being present with people whose childhood was formed and heavily impacted by Disney shows – they knew the name of Sharpay’s dog, they chanted Beauty and the Beast theme song, and they cried as Prince Eric didn’t recognize Ariel.
Only when I was in grade 10 did my family have cable TV – too late to build any connections with Zack and Cody or know who London Tipton was. I did watch some Disney movies, however, High School Musical and Camp Rock, thanks to a classmate’s bootleg DVDs. And that was it.
That night, I was mesmerized, not only by the showmanship but also by how Disney magic spells collectively casted on those audiences’ lives.
They seemed to be born and raised in a cultural environment alien to mine.
A friend told me about his adolescence in Hanoi, hopping from this boutique cinema to another. There were a couple of them back in the day, a kind of cinema paradiso for those dreamy, culturally ravenous souls, I guess.
He told me about his first date with a highschool sweetheart at Vincom Ba Trieu’s Megastar (now CGV cinemas) – once the capital’s cool kid hub – watching James Cameron’s Avatar.
I haven’t ever watched any of Cameron's films, except for Titanic. It was a fall afternoon when I was seven; mom cut some mooncakes and three of us watched the movie from a DVD she borrowed elsewhere. As Jack and Rose were about to have sex, mom asked me to go brewing some tea.
There was only one cinema in my hometown – a ramshackle building with a huge signboard read in outdated Vietnamese – rạp chiếu bóng (for cinema) instead of rạp chiếu phim. They screened state-funded, patriotic propagandas on the Vietnam war with shabby techniques and make-believe smoke effects. Have you ever heard of Rặng trâm bầu?
Once in a while, when commercial movies were shown, the cinema was packed with hundreds of people. They sat on chair arms, stood along isles or even entered the broadcast room for a clear view of the screen.
Những cô gái chân dài (Girls with long legs) by Vũ Ngọc Đãng was among a few of those. It followed a small town girl moving to the city to become a model with all its excitement and temptation. The scandalous synopsis drew people to the screening with the hope to save themselves from daily patterns of boredom and expose them to a whole new world where lush life was a staple.
I remember nothing about the film except for how dad planned an exit in case of fire and a character, before leaving a restroom, stopped for three seconds to adjust a towel ends to make sure they were even.
I’ve hung towels properly like that ever since.
As the musical showdown came to an end, the MC read some “confessions” sent by the audience, praising how wonderful marvelous splendid Disney was.
It brought me back to another fall day in East Village at a brunch restaurant when I gave a studio buddy my Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney-Chase co-branded Visa card to split the bill.
“Don’t you have any problems with Disney?,” he asked, glimpsing my card.
“No. No, not really. I got it because it looks cute. Why ask?,” I responded.
“I was laid off by ESPN,” he shrugged.
Only later that day I found out ESPN belonged to Disney.
Till next time,
T.
This week’s top picks
Disneyland, seen from afar: The Florida Project
For whenever you feel unworthy and disposable of yourself. Joan Didion’s On Self-respect.
It is the phenomenon sometimes called alienation from self. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the spectre of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that one's sanity becomes an object of speculation among one's acquaintances. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961
Yiyun Li and Brad Listi. A lot of reflection (and advice) on writing.