{"id":299,"date":"2010-05-13T02:11:05","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T02:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.wordpress.com\/?p=299"},"modified":"2010-05-13T02:11:05","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T02:11:05","slug":"greenberg-the-feckless-indie-male","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/13\/greenberg-the-feckless-indie-male\/","title":{"rendered":"&quot;Greenberg&quot; &amp; the Feckless Indie Male"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So this weekend I caught Noah Baumbach&#8217;s new film <em>Greenberg<\/em> in a St. Louis theater, the day after I rewatched the Coen Brothers&#8217; <em>A Serious Man<\/em>, which is better, true, but also not really a fair comparison, because who can compete with the Coen Bros? (And <em>A Serious Man<\/em> would be even better seen at midwestern urban theater, as that&#8217;s the background of the film.) But I liked <em>Greenberg<\/em> and Ben Stiller is good in it, even if it&#8217;s not the kind of film you fall in love with: It does make you think. A.O. Scott praises it in a NY Times magazine piece about the Gen-X midlife crisis (http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/09\/weekinreview\/09aoscott.html?pagewanted=2), which is both accurate and slightly off-target. Why off target? I doubt Baumbach really means a character as distinctive as Greenberg to be emblematic or archetypal. That said, sure, I know guys (and gals, unfortunately) like Greenberg, and usually can&#8217;t stand to be around them. But he&#8217;s watchable, in his passive\/aggressive, shooting-himself-in-the-foot kind of way. \u00a0The party scene is worth the movie, when Ben Stiller does coke with a bunch of twentysomethings, complaining about how disconnected they are, when they appear more respectful and well-adjusted than he is. And Greta Gerwig, as the lovable &amp; sad Florence, steals the show.<br \/>\nBut Greenberg really made me think of the Feckless Indie Male, a subspecies I noticed often this spring term, in my student fiction: the guy who thinks too much, who doesn&#8217;t act, but gets lost in irony and posturing, leading a life of little significance. That&#8217;s between the lines of A.O. Scott&#8217;s Gen-X rant, though it&#8217;s a different generation altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this weekend I caught Noah Baumbach&#8217;s new film Greenberg in a St. Louis theater, the day after I rewatched the Coen Brothers&#8217; A Serious Man, which is better, true, but also not really a fair comparison, because who can &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/13\/greenberg-the-feckless-indie-male\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}