His character Sherlock, in the series named aptly, is simultaneously brilliant and insane. Luckily for those he encounters, Sherlock chooses to use his mental capacity for good purposes (mostly). The same cannot be said for John Harrison, Cumberbatch’s character in the most recent Star Trek film. Harrison depicts the evil possibilities of brilliant insanity and, damn, Benedict’s cheekbones sure make evil attractive.

Coming soon: An Ode to Benedict’s Cheekbones

Benedict’s characters are not the only ones who embody this pair of traits. What is it about raw brilliance and pure insanity that go so well together? One of my favorite quotes from the movie Easy A is as follows:

Brandon: I can’t decide if you’re a genius or a lunatic
Olive: Don’t they sort of go hand in hand?

Yes, Olive, they do.
But, why?

Perhaps intelligence drives people to insanity. Perhaps having such a level of knowledge makes you see the world differently, makes your head twist and throb and desperately look for an escape. Being knowledgeable isn’t easy. They do say ignorance is bliss after all.

Maybe it’s knowledge that makes the brilliant go mad.
Maybe it’s the opposite.

Maybe those who are mad have the capacity to see things. To understand things. To gain knowledge that the sane just can’t grasp.

The brilliant are mad. The mad are brilliant.

The problem here is that brilliant is something we are told to strive for, to appreciate, to cultivate. The connotations with insanity are almost completely the opposite. Insanity is to be avoided, repressed, and frowned upon. We view brilliance as a royal dinner and insanity as the scraps in the garbage. We strive for the former and brush aside the latter with a displeased grimace. We cannot isolate these traits.

Admit it, the brilliant are off their rockers. Think about Einstein. Galileo. Van Gogh. Plath. We can have a world of sane people of average intelligence or we can have an oasis of mad geniuses. Brilliance sans insanity just doesn’t yield the same results.

Maybe the burden of brilliance is that these geniuses see the wrongs of the world and the pitfalls of humanity. Some of them are driven insane by this, driven to stick their heads in ovens or cut off their own ears. Others of them are insane enough to think they can change it. After all, “the people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do”.

I don’t know why genius and insanity go hand in hand.
But I know that they do.

And maybe that’s not so bad. Embrace your inner madman:

“You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Not quite Benedict Cumberbatch but, I mean, Johnny Depp…

A seasoned driver, my dad owns the leftmost lane, pushing eighty miles per hour, only in front of us appears some bozo clocking sixty. Rules of the road state that such dillydallying has no business in the passing lane. Sooner or later, the driver wises up and changes lanes, restoring order to the universe.

Drivers and passengers alike, a self-righteous brood, cannot resist the opportunity to spite those who make mistakes behind the wheel. Perhaps the most spiteful yet seemingly innocent of maneuvers is that of the “look,” to speed up, slow down, or do whatever it takes to make eye contact with the wrongdoer, and upon seeing his or her face, you say to yourself, “Aha! You would be a horrible driver!”

And so, as is tradition, as we pull ahead, I turn to catch a glimpse of the slowpokish culprit. What do I expect? As per usual, probably some hotshot yacking away on his cell phone, or even better, a gaggle of lip-syncing teens. But what do I see, instead? A young woman wearing a headscarf.

As only generalizations can be made through car windows, I assume that she is Muslim. And just as quick as I am to assume, I become disturbed by the fact that in turning to say “Aha! You would be a horrible driver,” I accidentally forge a connection between poor driving and her supposed religion.

What’s more disturbing is that, perhaps to rid myself of guilt, I look to my dad as if to say, “Aha! You would make a derisive comment about Muslim drivers!” He doesn’t make the comment, however, and I don’t know why I would expect that of him, because in no way is he that type of person, and neither is my mom. Nor are we that talkative of a family, and yet the already quiet car ride becomes uncomfortably silent.

These sorts of situations happen all too often. You’re presented with the ingredients necessary to bake the perfect stereotype and must decided whether or not to feed your subconscious appetite for prejudice. Then again, woe is me, the white male, who can run as many stop signs as he’d like, and in the end, I’d be seen as nothing more than a bad driver. Anyone other than a white male, however, cannot so much as drive the speed limit without providing an opportunity to be stereotyped.

Is it me or does there exist an unhealthy correlation between driving and one’s predisposition for prejudice? Not even the most forward-thinking of individuals can consider themselves impartial when navigating the New Jersey Turnpike. Will Google’s self-driving cars yield a generation more tolerant of others? I don’t even think I’m joking.

But anyway, there we are, heading south on I-90. What can we do but continue to drive? I mean, we have the right of way.

GO TO THE HOWARD THURMAN CENTER

on all those letters. My college experience would be nothing without the Howard Thurman Center and the family that came with it.

I say this because without the Howard Thurman Center, I probably would not be at Boston University anymore. I had a rough first year at BU – and that is by no means an uncommon experience. BU is big, intimidating, and takes a while to get used to. The learning curve of transitioning from high school to college is high no matter how badass you think you are. At the end of the first semester I cried in my mother’s lap, wanting to transfer. The one thing that got me back for a second semester: Coffee and Conversation at the HTC. I realized that if I decided to leave BU someone in that group would know I was missing. That got me to come back. Whether I was friends with everyone in that group or not, we all knew each other, and there was a bond. I decided to give BU another chance, and I decided to make a real effort to have a different experience. That decision changed everything.

Howard Thurman believed that there are two complementary facets to life: the Inward Journey, in which you learn who you are, and the Search for Common Ground, in which you make meaningful connections with others. That is how I see my involvement with the Center.

Sophomore year I became a Student Ambassador for the HTC, and a whole new world opened up to me. Suddenly I found my mentors, my brothers, my sisters, and Ms. Kennedy. The turn-around from my freshman year of sitting sullen in my room, to my sophomore year of motivation, barely makes sense as I look back on it. I was driven by the people around me – people who motivated me by virtue of their own motivation. I wanted to be like them, to impress them, to hold my own. The Ambassador program was my Inward Journey. I have often been lost and confused, but for the past 3 years I have continuously found myself in the Ambassadors – immersed in Thurman’s philosophy. My mentors have helped shaped me, and I have worked on shaping myself by trying to mentor others in the past year.

The following summer, I joined Culture Shock. In many ways Culture Shock has been my community at Boston University. In Culture Shock we weren’t brothers and sisters, or even mentors and mentees – we were equals, driven by the same need to express ourselves. To me, Culture Shock has always been about the Search for Common Ground, and making meaningful connections. While I have certainly grown as a writer, I have, more importantly, made profound connections with people I would not otherwise have met. It is largely because of CS that I have become close with Jeff, Ceci, and Emily - three friends whom I have truly come to love, and upon whose friendship I depend.

There are a few things to say.

To BU students: find your community. It doesn’t have to be the Howard Thurman Center; the important thing is that you find your equals. Find the people with whom you can stay up till 3am, whose personalities move you, who fascinate you, and who find you equally fascinating. For me, it was Culture Shock. But BU is big, and I promise that there is a place for you.

To the HTC Ambassadors: never stop believing that we are a family, and never stop using your family to continue your Inward Journey. The beauty of family is that we have each other no matter what – and that is how I feel about all of you. I’m leaving Boston, but I will always have for you the unconditional love that was given to me when I became an Ambassador.

To the Culture Shock writers: keep pushing each other to be better. You are incredible artists, and I know that many of you will one day make a living doing what you now do as a hobby. Push each other to be better people. CS is unique in its combination of truly powerful persons – use your mutual admiration to grow. I will continue to read your work, and continue to be flabbergasted at the talent with which I have been surrounded.

This past weekend I went to Detroit to interview for teaching positions. I found in that city a quality that I have long loved about Boston: pride. Pride in your city and the people who live and work there. I am excited to go to Detroit. But I am also proud of having been a son of Boston for the past four years, if only an adoptive son. My grandfather always said that your children are only ever on loan – at some point they grow up, move out, and start their own life. Perhaps it is the same with cities. It is time for me to move out. But moving out doesn’t mean you stop loving the people who raised you, or the place you came from.

Thank you Boston, thank you BU, and thank you Howard Thurman Center family.

Then, at some point, we lose our Theory of Mind.

Of course, we don’t lose it. It’s still there, logically. But we forget, and at some point everyone else becomes one-dimensional mass again.

***

Two summers ago I saw an elderly man when I was at the mall with my mom. It was early noon, and he was just sitting there in the food court, alone, eating Cinnabon and reading a section of the newspaper. The rest of the paper was scattered on the table in various stages of being read.

It made me sad to watch him. It seemed as if he had been sitting there for 50 years, except 50 years ago the food court was full of his friends. They had slowly passed until all that was left was him, his Cinnabon, and a section of the newspaper. He seemed lonely, but he must’ve felt that he was too old to do anything other than what he had done for the past 50 years. So he sat there.

It dawned on me that he had had a life before this moment. That things had happened to him in the 70-odd years that had led to this moment of our intersection, and that he must occasionally think about these things. That he was not just an actor or prop in my story. I wondered what thoughts he had that might comfort him in his loneliness. I wondered whether he considered the various roads he might have taken, whether he tried to map out how he had gotten to this place – the way I often wonder how I got to where I am. Most of all, I wondered if I would ever be him. Whether one day I would sit down and find myself in his place – not knowing how I got there.

I’ve been mulling over this realization since that summer – that for a split second I had regained my Theory of Mind. That for a split second, I understood that the old man had thoughts just like I did. That he must occasionally think about the various events that had led him to that day in the mall, much in the same way that I wonder how I got to be 22.

***

In the past two days my thoughts about the old man, and Theory of Mind, have come back to me in various ways: once at a retreat, and then at a poetry reading.

At the retreat we, as an ethnically and internationally diverse group, talked about perception: how we tend to think of people in single dimensions. We don’t consider the things we do not see, and we assume that what we do see the defining quality of the person. At the poetry reading we, a bunch of poets at every stage from enthusiast to master, talked about reaching people through art: how we all have something within us that wants to reach out, that just needs some urging. We can make meaningful connections with others when we realize their complexity, and really understand that they’re people too.

In both cases the same topic was brought up, but talked about in different ways. Not once was Theory of Mind mentioned, but words like complexity and dimensions and facets and experiences were used a lot. I couldn’t help thinking about that one time in the mall.

And I had another realization – that I was not the only one who had been considering the regaining of the Theory of Mind.

***

There are over 7 billion people in this world, all with lives as complicated as my own. Yet not a single one has had an identical experience.

But most of the time, I don’t really think about it. Most of the time, I hear my voice in my head and I know I exist and that I have thoughts. I think therefore I am. Everyone else, is everyone else.

I go on trains and I’m surrounded by people. It is a strange thought when I realize that the person sitting next to me has worries, experiences, loves, drunken stories. Thoughts – perhaps not thoughts about me, but maybe an assignment, or a love poem, or a much-missed dog at home.

Most of the time, when I look out on the crowd in a public square I see people, not persons.

***

I think we struggle with the Theory of Mind because of the vastness of it all.

If you realize that every single person is more than the single dimension that you see right this second – that they have countless dimensions and character traits – it’s all a bit overwhelming. If you realize that everyone has had just as many experiences as you, your interaction with each of them seems infinitely complex. It becomes difficult to interact with anyone.

It’s easy to think of people in one dimension: the blind man on the T, the heavy-set girl in the front of the class.

With your friends you may think of a few more dimensions, and certainly the amount of dimensions speaks to how close you are.

But for most people, one dimension is enough. Anything more takes up too much time and operating space, and you have things to do in very little time.

Consider that they probably think of you the same way. And think about how much more there is to you – your moods, your decisions, your doubts, your secrets – that most people never see. Think about everything you don’t see in another person’s life.

It’s hard to think of other people as complex when we’re constantly struggling with our own complexity.

***

Theory of Mind is nothing new. Certainly the fact that we generally see people as one dimensional is not new either. Somehow, though, we keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. But I try to keep talking about it, hoping, rather selfishly, that by telling the stories I will become more aware and have more moments of clarity. Yet in those moments of clarity, I am also aware of how many people I let slip by – how many people I never noticed or acknowledged on the T.

I’m working on it.

My mother’s roses looked like these ones.

Yum!

Trust me. It wasn’t this bad.

Part II

I started putting handful after handful of the second pile onto the bonfire. I saw the flames rise, and it was the perfect background. We resumed our scene as the flames grew redder, matching the color of the forming dusk. By luck, the dusk brought a slight wind with it, which not only helped the flames grow but also dangerously edged them towards the rose bush. Unfortunately, I was too entranced by the crackle of the flames and the clash of the swords to notice the emerging danger. But Mama, who decided to check up on us, saw that the flames were directing their dehydrating and possibly flower-injuring heat to her prized roses.

“Adrienne!” she yelled, furiously charging to our direction.

My brother and I stopped in the middle of a clash and looked to our obviously fuming mother. What’s wrong? I nervously thought. She pointed at the disastrous event happening behind me. I turned around and saw the red orange waves flailing at the bush. My eyes grew in horror. Oh no!!!

When she got to the scene, Mama gave me “the look.” The resulting punishment, however, was not few stinging pinches to my side or wicked hand slaps to my buttocks region. No, it was more brutal. Mama told me to stand beside the rose bush and experience the fire myself.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to. Let’s just kill the fire.”

“No! Go and stand beside the plant,” she commanded, pointing at my spot. “Now!”

I indignantly set myself beside the bush. Once there, I immediately felt the searing heat all over my face, my arms and my legs. My eyes began to water. It was hot, too hot. Beyond the flames and the smoke, I heard her sermon.

“This is your problem. How many times have I told you to follow what I say? Is your head really that hard? It’s always in with one ear, out with the other for you. Nothing stays in,” she charged.

“I know. But I was going to kill the flam-,” I reasoned.

“Don’t make excuses,” she cut me off. “You are too careless. It’s all about having fun and playing for you, no? What about the roses?”

Her words hit me. I tried to keep the salty tears from running down my cheeks. I held on to them with the anger brewing inside me. I watched her interrogate my brother and give him three pinches to his side. But that was it. Nothing more.

“It’s not fair!” I screamed, jumping up-and-down out of anger and the thought that it might relieve the sting to my skin. “Why am I the only one here?! Biboy agreed to this too! He never gets in trouble! I’m always the one to take the hit!

She turned her gaze from my brother and glared at me. “Because you’re the older one. And I left you in charge here. I told you to be careful with the roses. But what did you do? You took advantage of that trust, and went your own way.”

By now, the tears were irrepressibly rushing down my steaming face. She saw them.

“You need to learn how to value and respect others, even plants. They would appreciate the care. And in turn they would respect and value you as well,” she counseled, calmer now.

“But why do I always get the punishment? Why can’t I be like Ate? You never punish her; you just talk to her. You even let her say something back,” I pursued, bringing in my seventeen-year-old sister to the ongoing back and forth.

“You’re not ready yet. You’re only ten years old. You would not understand,” she replied. “I told you that experience is the best teacher. Responsibility, respectfulness and the others – you need to experience them to learn them. You sister’s old enough to just be reminded of the traits she already knows; that’s why she doesn’t get pinch or slap or this anymore.”

I seemed to understand what she was saying, but I still thought that it was unfair.

“And you should know that your Ate also got pinches and slaps when she was your age. And Biboy is already getting some,” she added, hinting. “No one escapes them, Det.”

“No one escapes them, Det” rang in my head. I looked up at her, wiping my tears. By now,her glare had softened into a caring gaze, and she finally told me to come back to her side. Mama then asked me to help put out the fire, and re-hydrate the rose bush, especially its flowers. Before handing me the pail of water, my brother splashed some to my face. It felt good after the whole incident, so I held back from yelling at him for doing it. I guess that was his way of saying “sorry.”

When we finished, our trio walked back inside the house for dinner. We sandwiched Mama in the middle; my brother held on to her left hand, while I wrapped my arms around her waist.

“I don’t want the roses to die. They look and smell really good,” I told her.

“I think they’ll survive. They’ve been blooming their way through this hot summer, so I’m sure they’re going to be fine,” Mama agreed.

“How about the avocado?” I asked.

“Well, we water and fertilize it regularly. And now we just smoked it. So maybe it can thank us by giving us fruit, right?” Mama said.

“I guess. But we should smoke it again to make it healthier,” I suggested.

Mama looked at me and smiled. “Tomorrow. But for now, let’s have some spaghetti.”

Thanks, Mom.

Well, the other day, my friends and I were talking about how avocados actually grow on trees, and I remembered this memoir I wrote for a class once, and I would like to share it with you. It’s all about a little girl, a stubborn avocado tree and learning a life lesson. 

N.B. This is not the garden in the story. But it looks like it.

Here is Part I

Summer afternoons in tropical Philippines are always stagnantly humid and scorching hot. It seems like the sun enjoys  punishing us poor souls for living in the equatorial region. At least that was what it felt like one summer afternoon before I started fifth grade.

While I was rapidly losing water and wits, the flowers were in full bloom and the Bermuda grass that carpeted our garden was a healthy green. Even the mango and guava trees bore fruit in the dehydrating weather. This was all thanks to my mother and her magical green thumb. But Mama herself was not pleased at all. She was a perfectionist, you see, and the ever fruitless avocado tree was a huge wart in her garden. She tried to fix the problem that day, and she placed me in charge to execute the plan. I was finally given the chance. The middle-child, who always wanted the same trust the oldest gets and the attention the youngest receives, was finally going to shine. It was about damn time. But the only problem was, I did not shine; I burned instead.

Our veranda was failing in its secondary purpose of making the place cooler. I was hopelessly swaying back and forth on the rocking chair to generate some breeze for myself. But the to and fro feat only gave out warm, muggy air, and a squeaky noise. And I had enough of it. Frustrated and consequently bored, I walked over to my seven-year-old brother who was digging up the soil with his Batmobile.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Burying The Joker. He just died. Batman killed him,” he said, in a matter-of-fact way.

“Do you want me to get a flower for him?” I inquired, wanting to be of some use to the ongoing ceremony.

My brother nodded, and so I walked over to the rose bush. I saw my mom looking up at the avocado tree just beside the roses, and heard her threaten it, “It’s been three summers already. All you do is stand there and grow leaves and flowers, but no fruit. Should I have you taken down?” Then she gave the poor tree “the look.” Oh no, I thought. When you get Mama’s signature razor-sharp glare, you clearly did something wrong and there is no escaping punishment. I walked up to her and asked what was happening. She said she was going to smoke the tree in a few minutes.

“Smoke? Why?” I inquired, curious.

“I called your Lolo, and he told me that we should smoke it. Smoke helps the flowers become fruits,” she answered, scouting the tree’s white flowers.

My grandfather was a skillful gardener so everyone in the family trusted him when it came to plant problems like this one. Mama explained the plan – she needed to build a bonfire of dead leaves, twigs and branches at the foot of the avocado tree so that the smoke could rise up and envelop the leaves and the flowers. The idea was adventurous, so I asked her if my brother and I could help. Mama hesitated for a moment, but ultimately agreed.

“But you’re in charge,” she warned.

I nodded gleefully, and asked if I could snatch off one rose.

“Just one, and not from the bunch that’s still blooming,” she said.

I quickly grabbed a rose and skipped my way back to my brother. I waved the rose at him, and set it down where the funeral mound was. “Rest in peace, Joker,” I declared.

My brother and I now had to make the bonfire. Since it was a general gardening afternoon, there were already raked triangular mounds of dead leaves and twigs all over the garden, so we just needed to transport each mound to the avocado tree. When we had set up two fat piles of dead organic materials by the trunk, Mama came over with a pail of water and started to ignite one of the mounds.

“Okay, Det, if the bonfire is running out, add three handfuls to it from the other mound. Don’t put too much at once though because it would create flames rather than smoke. And we only want smoke, not flames. If the bonfire gives off flames, sprinkle a little water over it to kill them off,” she instructed thoroughly.

“I got it, Ma. Don’t worry,” I smiled at her.

“Good. Well, I’m going back inside to get ready for dinner. When you finish, put the entire bonfire out with the water, and come back inside,” she said.

I nodded again.

“And take care of your brother, and watch out for the roses!” she exclaimed as she walked away from us.

“I will! Oh, I want spaghetti for dinner!” I yelled back.

And then it was just my brother and me. For some time, we just sat there cross-legged on the Bermuda grass looking after the smoke. Then we finally got bored, so we each picked up a wooden stick and became sword fighters. We fought around the garden – zigzagging our way through the two Indian trees, Clunk! clashing our swords by the bougainvillea, Thwack! and circling around the bonfire, Crack! We were enjoying the act so much that we got caught up in it. My brother and I decided that smoke in the background was cool, but fiery flames would be more awesome. We grinned at each other mischievously.

“Wait! But Mama told you only smoke,” he hesitated.

“Don’t worry. A few small flames are not that bad. Plus, I’ll kill them off after,” I reasoned.

“Fine,” he gave in. “Flames would be so cool!”

Non emergencies, however, are not their specialty. You don’t see many pictures of me, Culture Shockers, because I fight an ongoing battle with Acne Vulgaris – the grandiose medical term for pizza face. I’ll spare you the gruesome pictures but just imagine my normally fair, Slavic complexion turning the color and consistency of a blood orange.

“Sup, guys? What? What is a ‘discretion?’” – Google Image Search

Where most people might shrug it off and develop a personality, I was obsessed with finding an instant cure. Antibiotics, it turns out, are incredibly effective at killing the germs that cause acne. So long as you replace the bacteria in your gut that help you digest it’s an easy fix (a daily yogurt is enough to solve the deficiency). If you’re a forgetful idiot (like me) then prepare yourself for constant tiredness. If you’re allergic to Tetracyclines in general (me again) then you might find yourself wearing tin foil hats and peeing in jars.

And I’m only half joking. Antibiotic-induced paranoia is a real thing. Coupled with the effects of marijuana (which is basically the second source of air pollution in Boston) it can develop into full-blown panic attacks. Having a hard time focusing in your Chem lecture? Try 20 mg of adrenaline. Sure it might destroy your kidneys and sense of well-being, but the brain memorizes everything in survival mode.

The most common bond molecules share is their valence electron, factored in with their predisposition to  - WOLVES?

Worst yet, the changes are gradual; the drug is cumulative so it takes months to identify side-effects. That’s also about the time that benefits become visible. Sure, your skin will be flawless but your brain will be marinated in crazy sauce – then the acne will come back.

Not that it’s all bad. I ended up running the 2012 Boston Marathon on a charity bill – not because I felt compelled to better myself or go the distance, but because the 12 or so hours a week it took for me to train was 12 less hours talking to people whom I was convinced thought of me like a freshly laid poo.

“Excuse me, but your face is proof that life is unfair. You should really get that checked out.”

*As of publishing this I have since switched medications (and started running in the mornings, which is surprisingly effective – your skin needs sunlight, who knew?) and noticed significant changes for the better. Still, it was a dick of a thing to get through.*

If there’s anyone out there feeling reclusive because of their skin, take my advice: don’t take anyone’s advice on this matter. It’s your body, decide for yourself what does and doesn’t work. Get outside and be social if you can but don’t be afraid to hole yourself up for a while too, at least until you heal.

But never, and I repeat never lose contact. Talk to someone, anyone, be it friends or parents or strangers online just to keep a dialogue. The people who care are the ones who don’t mind not talking face-to-oily face.

Refugees are expensive

Refugee camps and areas of concentration, courtesy of the Washington Post

While the violence has mostly stayed within the borders of Syria, the conflict’s effects are felt throughout the region. Over a million Syrians have fled the country since the conflict began, a figure which has more than doubled since just December. And of course, those people aren’t just leaving one country: they’re entering another, which might not be able to shoulder that burden. Water supplies are running low in Jordan. As of early March, Turkey alone had spent $600 million on the 300,000 refugees within its borders. If you’ve ever wondered where the money the US spends on foreign aid goes, this is one of the answers. Close to $800 million was given by the US last year to the UNHCR, which is the UN’s refugee agency.

But refugees aren’t always benevolent guests, to say nothing of their monetary cost. A violent protest took place at a camp last month in Turkey, after which, Turkey had to deny that those involved had been deported, which would go against UN convention. A riot at a camp in Jordan this month resulted in injuries for 10 security officers and outrage among Jordanians. Refugees who don’t live in camps compete with locals for jobs and housing, pushing rent prices higher and worsening the existing unemployment problem in these countries. The estimated 400,000 refugees in Lebanon represent nearly 10 percent of that country’s population. It would be as if 31 million refugees showed up in America.

Nothing is black and white

Since the conflict began, the US has been ideologically behind the rebels in their fight to overthrow the rule of a dictator.  Ostensibly, we’re quite fond of democracy. But unlike the similar circumstances two years ago in Libya, US support for the rebels has been limited to talk and aid in the form of food and medicine. The US and EU so far have flatly refused to give the rebels arms, let alone further intervention. Syria’s ties to both Iran and Russia make arming the rebels a tricky prospect politically, but this is a matter that gets more convoluted still.

While not killing his own citizens, Bashar Al-Assad seeks international support for his side of the war. This might seem like a farcical proposition; a dictator violating human rights is beyond the help of any PR firm. Even Russia has stopped supplying his forces with arms. Since he can’t win favor on his own merits, he’s followed the footsteps of countless presidential candidates in trying to discredit his opposition. The US isn’t going to side with him, but if he can persuade Western countries to stop aiding the people trying to overthrow him, he’ll take it.

The formerly private regime has become all too happy to tell American reporters how Syria is “the last real secular state in the Arab world.” That quote comes from their intelligence minister, in a New York Times story that focuses on prisoners of war whom Western journalists were allowed to interview. The prisoners—coerced or otherwise—gave an image of the rebels that Assad would like to broadcast to the world; they admitted to raping civilians, holding radical Islamist beliefs, and hating America. And to a certain extent, it’s not an inaccurate image. The US has already labeled one group among the rebels as terrorists, allied with Al Qaeda, and the UN has acknowledged the humanitarian failings of the rebels. Maybe the hesitance to arm the rebels stems from a memory of how the US funded the Taliban to fight off the Soviet Union in the 1980s. 

Freedom fighters, or terrorists? Both?

However, the Assad regime’s attempts to win over the West may have lost whatever slim chance they had at success after last week, when the US State Department publicly stated, albeit not convincingly, long-held allegations that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons against the rebels. President Obama and his administration have said multiple times in the past that the use of chemical weapons marks a “red line,” and to cross it would be “unacceptable.” But the administration has never clarified how the US would respond to the threshold being crossed. I guess we’ll find out soon.

Update: In the time between writing and publication, the UN determined that chemical weapons were indeed used in Syria…by the rebels. The situation isn’t going to become less complicated any time soon. 

That’s the second sentence in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and a severely dumbed-down version of it is the second sentence of the new film adaptation. So perhaps I should give director Baz Luhrmann the benefit of the doubt. What would a wealthy Australian know about the failed promise of the American Dream? Maybe they don’t teach the book in high school down under, where an English teacher would have politely informed him what it’s all about. Whatever the case may be, Luhrmann, who previously directed Moulin Rouge, does not seem to have grasped The Great Gatsby at any level beyond the most basic plot.

The first hour or so resembles nothing so much as a cartoon, a Bugs Bunny exaggeration of the roaring 1920s. The characters are larger than life, even those that aren’t supposed to be, and nothing is left subtle. It becomes clear early on that the movie doesn’t trust its audience to understand anything that isn’t spelled out. Tom Buchanan’s racist rant is highlighted by jabs at his black servant, and the nature of his relationship with Myrtle Wilson is made painfully clear by off screen moaning.

Where this heavy-handedness helps the film is in the massive parties. In these raucous scenes, the movie finally has subject matter big enough to sate Luhrmann’s appetite. I saw it in 2D, but it’s impossible not to notice that this is a 3D movie, given the way the camera zips and zooms through these parties. The movie seems to celebrate with its characters, which is the first case (of many) of Luhrmann missing the point. Fitzgerald was denouncing this lavish lifestyle, not reveling in it.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Baz didn’t have fun.

I wrote just last week that “I have low expectations for the movie because it will inevitably leave out what made the book so good: not the scenes or characters, but the words.”  That prediction didn’t come true. In fact, the movie uses a surprising amount of language stripped straight from the book’s pages, especially when it comes to the narration. Often these words end up superimposed on the screen, which feels unnecessary. Perhaps it would have been more necessary in 3D.

Peter Parker wearing a sweater.

This has the weird effect of highlighting Nick Carraway, as though Luhrmann finished the book and found himself deeply curious about what happened to its narrator. That’s an unorthodox reaction, but it would make for an interesting interpretation and a clever addition to the film if Nick Carraway wasn’t portrayed by Tobey Maguire. Maguire is 37, and his character is 29, but on screen he’s imbued him with the boyish wonder and gawkiness of a freshman in college. His voice lends no gravitas to Fitzgerald’s words, and his narration constantly feels strained where in print the prose seems effortless. Of the main actors, Maguire is the only one not to adopt an unplaceable, possibly British accent. This would be to his credit, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s the result of his inability to talk in any way different than his own.

This movie is a car crash, which is to say that there are some reasons to keep watching. Leonardo DiCaprio was born to play Jay Gatsby, and in a movie named after him, that’s pretty important. He provides all the charm and glamour you could possibly ask for in that role. His first interactions with Carey Mulligan’s Daisy are genuinely touching, and the sole bit of humor to be found in two hours and 20 minutes. For a few minutes, the movie deflates its own sense of importance to operate on the human level, and here, where the characters feel for once like actual people, the movie succeeds. Mulligan isn’t spectacular, but she’s believable as Gatsby’s lost lover. Then, it’s back to the grandeur.

Given the remarkable scale that so much of the movie embraces, it’s surprising and disappointing that Luhrmann was content with making the final third of his movie nothing more than a love story. He treats Gatsby and Daisy as if they were star-crossed lovers, a 1920s version of Romeo and Juliet. For the record, I liked Romeo+Juliet, Luhrmann’s modern adaptation of that play, but here he’s telling the wrong story. He sees nothing untoward about Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, and expects viewers to feel bad when the relationship falls apart.

The Great Gatsby is a very hard book to film. Luhrmann accomplished maybe the hardest part in incorporating Fitzgerald’s language, which is why it’s so frustrating that the movie fails the simpler tasks of adapting this story. He read the words and understood that they were beautiful, but he never thought about what they mean. By boiling things down to a love story between Gatsby and Daisy, he ignores everything that the book and its characters represent. Luhrmann never addresses the themes of inequality, greed and the American Dream, all those things your high school English teacher told you the book was about. Jay Gatsby is reduced from an American Dreamer into a wounded lover. And in that role, there’s nothing great about him.