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Being a stranger is a weird, almost uncomfortable concept for me. I cannot pinpoint a specific time in my life when I felt this way. That is not to say that I have never felt out of place. I have felt bizarre many times: Drama Club auditions, various social gatherings, competitions, and so on. The reason there is no pinpoint time to focus on is because I have always been a stranger. I have not always been uneasy, but I have always been on the outside. My entire conscious life has been me with dealing with the fact that I am not part of the consensus. Some of it is from unfortunate circumstances, while most of it is my own doing. The best place to start with my constant and continuous stranger-dome is where it most likely began.

I was not unique to begin with, my birth was ordinary and easy and I was born normal and healthy. My unfortunate “uniqueness” started when I began to try to communicate with others. I was far from normal in that aspect. For some unexplained reason, whenever I tried to talk, it came out a gargled mess. I was speaking a foreign language while still speaking my native tongue. The only person who could understand me was my sister, and she had to become a translator for me. I was effectively mute without my sister. I don’t know what kind of lasting psychological impacts this has had on me, all I know is that this was my first encounter with a life-long problem of trying to connect with people.

Of course, since very few people could understand me as a child, I was placed in a speech pathology course from first to fifth grade. I rather like the course. My teacher was nice and fun and I had two other people in the class to become friends with. Unfortunately, that would change too. I would once again become an outsider. In third grade, one of the other students no longer had to take the class, and in fourth grade, neither did the other. I was alone in that class. I did not feel unique and special, I felt strange and like a failure. Eventually, though, I learned to take solace in it and cherish it as an important time when I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed about my speech. Life continued to changed, though. I had to move on to sixth grade where I could no longer take the speech classes. I had to continue being a failure at the basic human skill of speaking, and I still feel to this day that I am not an ordinary English speaker, I have an accent, even within my own family, and I still often have trouble with my pronunciation.

Sixth grade was an important year, not only for my loss of speech pathology, but also for my acceptance. This deceptive writing is not meant to say that I finally felt like less of a stranger. No, I still felt uneasy every day. The uneasiness just originated from a new source. In sixth grade I learned to accept the fact that I was gay. The ramifications of this, I can still feel today. I had always known I was gay in some capacity, but sixth grade is the year I finally accepted that I wasn’t bicurious or bisexual, but gay. This was not a beautiful moment where I truly became myself, like some movies have one believe. This was shaking nervousness that terrified me. I was not like everyone else, I was further alienated from the people that I wanted nothing more than be close to. To borrow a title from author Robert A. Heinlein, I was a stranger in a strange land. I could no longer lie to myself and be what everyone thought I was.

Even though I was able to accept the fact that I was no longer like everyone else, I could not admit it to others. I was stuck in a perpetual limbo where I was an aberrant, but not one that was readily visible. I was lost in my own mind and terrorized by the thought of what people might do if they found out. This terror was short lived, though, as I quickly realized that most of the people I cared about would still care for me, whether I was gay or not. But even though the terror of repercussion subsided, I was still terrified of telling anyone, and I still am. I still have my life firmly rooted in this preconstructed closet and only a few people have glimpsed inside. And while the previous sentence may cause others to believe that I was able to overcome this terror, they were misinformed. Only one of these glimpses were truly of my choice. Most of them were of some indecipherable obligation I felt to tell those people. I am still terrified of escaping this shallow place I’ve been hiding in and the only reason I even chose to discuss it is because of this concerning obligation I feel.

And the separation doesn’t end there, nor is it my greatest separation. In high school, I started to have, what I think, are very concerning thoughts about myself. At this time of my life, I started to realize that I didn’t feel like everyone else. I wasn’t having these hills and valleys of emotions that others seemed to have. They were truly happy or genuinely sad. I’m not sure if I’ve really felt these emotions in their fullest forms. I have laughed and I have cried, but I never seemed to be happy or sad. I was simply content. I didn’t have any hills or valleys, I only had a plain. Nice for grazing, but not very life affirming. This became the most absolutely horrifying of my aberrancies. How can I truly be a person if I don’t have these emotions? Am I simply struck with an empty depression that I’m not aware of, or am I truly without these ranges of emotion?

Perhaps the most pathetic thing about it is that I now crave some sort of emotional reaction. I feel empty and the only thing I truly want is to feel something other than the emptiness. I want to be in love, I want to be happy, I even want to be depressed, because at least it is something other than the utter flatness. I feel like I’m not actually living, that I am something different from everyone else and it’s not something I enjoy. Even as I was writing this, I wished I was in such an emotionally vulnerable state that I could cry, but I am unable. This is not my emotional vulnerability, this just an expression to me.

I have always been a stranger and I probably will always be a stranger. The most telling aspect of this is that when I moved into the dorm, I felt no different than when I did at home. I believe the reason behind that is because I have lived as a stranger my entire life. Being in a strange place is nothing new to me. This disheartening truth is a constant to me. I am a stranger no matter where I go, no matter who I am with, and no matter what I am doing.

This year, the University of Michigan Department of Theatre and Drama turned 100. Additionally, it marks Arthur Miller’s 100th birthday and 125 years of acting classes at the University available to be take for college credit. As a result, the theater department has put on numerous special events to mark this very special anniversary including producing Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in the theater on North Campus named after the playwright.

Many people know Arthur Miller from high school English class where they (most likely) begrudgingly read Death of a Salesman. Death of Salesman was and is more than a Pulitzer Prize winning drama, the work gets to the core of what it means to be an American and to have the chance to fight for and earn the American Dream. Though commonly listed as one of the most influential American plays of the 20th century, Death of a Saleman was not what established Arthur Miller as one of the preeminent playwrights of the 20th century – rather it was All My Sons written in 1947 that produced such a reputation.

To those unfamiliar with Arthur Miller’s life, the celebration of Arthur Miller and the University of Michigan’s Theatre Department may seem to be a case of convenient timing – however – Arthur Miller’s connection to the University of Michigan is much more. After graduating from high school in Brooklyn, Miller worked numerous menial jobs to afford tuition at the University of Michigan. It was here where Arthur Miller studied Journalism and wrote for the Michigan Daily, and where he wrote his first play No Villain which after winning the Avery Hopwood Award prompted him to consider a career as a playwright rather than a journalist. After his graduation from the University in 1938, Arthur Miller maintain strong ties to the University establishing two awards named after the playwright and lending his name to the theater built on North Campus in 2007 – the only theater in the world that bears his name.

As we mark 100 years of Michigan Theatre and of Arthur Miller, it is important to remember that 100 years from now we might well be celebrating the next great mind who graduated from this institution. For it is the opportunities which this University provides that helps it’s students develop into their full potential, potential that one day may change the way people see the world just as Arthur Miller has.

So last night I watched an episode of the ABC sitcom The Middle where everyone in the family seemed to forget something at the end of the school year. Axl, the oldest, forgot to do his community service; Sue, the middle child, didn’t receive perfect attendance because everyone in the school forgot her; and Brick forgot to write in a daily journal for the entire school year. In order to move to the fourth grade, he had to write down everything that happened during the entire year, and his mom, bless her heart, was going to write down every single page so that he could move on.

The entire time, though, I felt myself sympathizing with the mom, Frankie, the most (as I often do). She stayed busy the entire three days until the end of school, helping her kids do what they had forgotten, and yet the entire time she kept asking her husband questions – “Where’s my phone?” she asked at one point, talking to him from her silver cell phone in her hand. “I must have left it in Brick’s classroom, hold on I have to turn back.”

This doesn’t feel uncommon to me. Not to brag, but I have a pretty good memory – I owe it to my theatre and piano years, where I had to memorize lines and music seemingly every week. But there’s always that one time, that one day, where I lose my head and forget everything.

It seems to me, though, that this is a trait that might be somewhat common in artists/creative people. Or rather, perhaps it’s a stereotype. We’ve got so much going on in our heads, from stories we wanna write to drawings that have to get on the page. Our grand vision is way more important than that lunch date, right?

Which is all to say, of course, that little did I know when I was watching that ironic episode last night, that I myself forgot to write my column, when it was supposed to be posted last night. I’m only what – 11 hours shy of being on time?

But I have to say – if that episode of The Middle taught me anything at least, it taught me that everything works out in the end, am I right?

Ah me. Let’s hope next week in the midst of these crazy midterms, I won’t forget again. No promises though.

 

The elementary school I went to had a program allowing students to eat lunch at home. So, every now and then, I would sign out at the front office and make my two blocks walk back home. Like a master of timing, my mother would have already finished cooking a nice plate of spaghetti, or some Korean dish, and before I sat down at the table, I would run over to the living room and tune the CRT television to Cartoon Network so I could watch reruns of old cartoons while eating. At which point I would rush back to the table and sit in expectancy for the meal my mother was bringing and the shows that would begin playing.

At the time, there were a slew of great cartoons that were new, for instance, Dexter’s Laboratory, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Fairly Oddparents, Arnold, and many others. But the show that I probably watched the most during my lunchtime visits, was the Hannah-Barbera classic, Scooby Doo, Where Are You!

But it is only now that I begin to wonder why I liked it so much, the sort of questioning that is lost to a child who is just enjoying it, not dissecting it. But at the same time, I wasn’t stupid back then, I think. I knew that the story had a formula, that the monster would be unmasked after Freddie’s plan went awry thanks to Scooby and that the person would be some man or woman who appeared earlier in the episode. After a while, the show is no longer creepy, but that is okay, because I don’t think that was the point. I think Courage the Cowardly Dog was supposed to be creepy. But the adventures of the Mystery Gang were just that, adventures.

They were mysteries and as a child, I was taken along for the ride each time. I didn’t care about whether or not the monsters weren’t real. All I cared about was that I got to go to a new place, meet new characters, see a new “monster”, and most importantly experience a new adventure. That was the appeal of the series – that in its simplicities was its holistic bundle of entertainment.

So let’s talk about the Looney Tunes.

This was never on during my lunch trips, but whenever it was on I was watching it. I would never change the channel, even if I had seen The Rabbit of Seville 10 times already. And thank God that Cartoon Network had the colored shorts at the time. Otherwise, who knows when I would have been exposed to it? I had many Looney Tunes favorites when I was growing up: Rabbit of Seville, Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century, One Froggy Evening, Feed the Kitty, What’s Opera, Doc?, and Duck Amuck. If you haven’t seen these, please go and do so right away.

If I am going to talk about how simplicity made Scooby Doo enjoyable, then how can I skip one of the most simplistic cartoons of all time? Helmed, of course, by the genius of Chuck Jones. Simplicity and minimalism runs rampant in his work. Everything from the characters themselves to the gestures and expressions they make. Let’s take Wile E. Coyote for example; he wants to eat the Road Runner and his trust in ACME and his faith in his own plans is his undoing. Never is his suffering brought on directly due to the Road Runner. Then, there is Pepé Le Pew; a skunk that just wants love, but when he receives it, he runs from it. Of course, Bugs Bunny is perhaps the simplest in that the one rule he revolves around is that he must be provoked to get involved. I don’t think any show has been able to create such complete characters with such simple guidelines.

Daffy Duck is my favorite character. Ever since I was little, I related to him the most. Bugs was too smart, but Daffy, Daffy was human, he failed, over and over again, but at the same time, he never gave up. He wanted glory, but couldn’t have it, he wanted riches but remained poor – a duck of great ambition yet forever cursed by the animators to never see success. This was what Jones was so good at, creating honesty and thus, believability, in his characters and in his drawings.

The expressions that were featured on the characters, before they got hit by a train, before they fell 10 stories, when the realized something important, and many other poignant yet brief moments of time, are all so minimalistic. And so many of them are done with just the eyes. Even outside the realm of cartoons, how actors use their eyes in film reveals so much. When I was in Korea this summer, as I walked by my mother watching Korean Drama’s I noticed that all the actors did the same thing. They opened their eyes as wide as they could in moments of shock, sadness, horror…basically, the same expression was used for one too many emotions. But Jones had variation in his emotive arsenal. Just look at the episode called Feed the Kitty where the bulldog goes through so many expressions with its eyes.

When it gets caught putting the kitten in the flour bin, he does a “Who. Me?” look.

Then there is his worried look as he believes the kitty is in danger of being turned into a cookie…

…that is eventually followed up by his look of complete sadness, as he believes the kitty is dead.

Then there is the happiness of finding the Kitty once again.

Jones was an expert of going through various emotions in such a short amount of time. In the short I just mentioned, I went through laughter to choking up in a matter of a minute! Of course this was in part due to Jones’ masterful use of expressions, but also timing. He was easily one of the most efficient animators in terms of timing (my moms cooking wasn’t the only timely thing I would mention in this post). Especially, with gags. He played with expectancy, so that he would wait for the last possible moment before releasing the build-up in order to get to the punch line. Never did he remain too long on the build-up and never was the punch line too sudden. It was always perfect.

I am talking about these cartoons at this time because I recently finished watching Rick and Morty, which is, I think many people would agree with me, a staple in modern era cartoons, and it got me thinking about the classics and got me asking the most rudimentary question – why does this work?

Does the simplicity found in Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo work in the same manner for the successful cartoons of today? I would say yes. Let’s look at Rick as an example. Rick is a complex character with complex emotions, but that complexity sprouts from very simple human characteristics – he is sad, lonely, and his vast intellect leaves little for him to enjoy. Of course there are some characters in the show that are much simpler, like Mr. Meeseeks (he just wants to die after accomplishing his one task). The humor of the episode Meeseeks and Destroy stems from the simplicity of that character. Although the ones summoned by Beth and Summer finish their seemingly hard tasks quickly, the one summoned by Jerry cannot do the far more mundane task of taking two strokes off Jerry’s golf game – so the Meeseeks goes crazy and summons more Meeseekses (what is the plural of Meeseeks?) to help, making the situation all the more crazy. Although the show can seem, at times, to be the unrestrained and unfiltered imagination of co-creator Justin Roiland, it never fails to remember that what makes a cartoon, or any form of art, succeed, is simplicity at its core and fundamentals. But that is the trick isn’t it? Never in the history of mankind, has it been easy to create simplicity in an artistic medium.