Sunday, January 20, 2008

Storms and Movies

I know I've been scarce with posting. I've had a few extra things going on in the background and I've had trouble getting adjusted to the anti-depressant I've been taking. I am starting my third month on it and I'm still not sure the benefits are worth the side effects I seem to have. Month one was okay. Month two, all I wanted to do was sleep when I came in from work. The medicine has calmed my thoughts down somewhat and has made me a bit more mellow, but the truth is, I am already pretty darn mellow. But the price for the calmness is my creativity. It just seems to run out the door when I get on this stuff. I thought the cost of coping with the depressive thoughts was too high on me physically and emotionally. It was hard work, but I was coping. Now I don't have to work at coping with depression, but it comes at the cost of expressing myself creatively. I'm not so sure that is a worthwhile investment for me.

In other news, if any of you get the chance to see an independent film called Little Chenier, go see it. The brother and sister team who wrote the screenplay and produced the movie are from here. It does a fairly good job of giving a peek into Cajun life and the story is a good one. There are a couple of places where the plot turns in directions that you just can't imagine. The ending turned out so totally unexpected that I walked out of the theater madder than an old wet hen about it all! I saw the movie again with my mother and daughter and all is now well, since I already knew what was going to happen!

Always when I see a movie like this, (or a movie about Southerners) the first thing to irritate me is the accent. Cajun accents sound different depending on what area of the state they are from. Be forewarned, the accents in the movie sounded slightly off to our ears, especially to the ears of the woman I work with, who is Cajun. I think part of the problem is that they tend to exaggerate it a bit. One of the quirks of Cajun pronunciation is that many of them can't (or don't) pronounce the "th" sound, so that "three" sounds like "tree", or "third" sounds like "turd" (which was always entertaining to us as youngsters). In the movie, I noticed it a lot with the word "think", as in "Ya tink we'll ever get rain again?" Anyway, in real life, the Cajun accent is melodic and beautiful to hear, especially from the older folks.


I've lived and worked around Cajuns all my life, but I am not Cajun. I was pretty much unaware of the lifestyle depicted in the movie before the last few years, when my son was staying with my Cajun father-in-law and crabbing with him. He was staying in
Pecan Island which is up the road from Grand Chenier. Little Chenier is somewhere in there, close to Grand Chenier. The map shows the route we would take to go visit him. All the area along the coast was devastated by Hurricane Rita. They had finished filming the movie a month before Rita came through. At the end of the movie there is a before and after photo of Little Chenier Road.

This is a photo I'd taken of the post office in Grand Chenier, about a month before the storm.

7 comments:

  1. I know what you mean about the accents. Southern accents aren't quite right in most films. They are pretending and it sounds like they are pretending!

    On another note, I do know what you mean about the creativity edge going with the anti depressant. I have heard it from several folks who take it and have experienced it some myself. But.... when I consider the alternative....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will have to look for that film.

    Your meds should not make you feel like that at all. You must go back to the doc and get them adjusted. It might take several tries but it can be done. The first med I was on made me just float. NOTHING at all mattered. I called my doc and she knew immediately that there were problems. In my case, they switched my meds. They may just need to adjust yours.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting movie! You're right about the accents.

    Have you seen the TV show Friday Night Lights? I've been impressed that they've managed to get the Texas accents pretty close to right.

    Here's hoping the meds do their job and free you up to do yours!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh yeah.. Southern and Texas-southern accents are the WORST most of the time! Cajun comes in almost dead even though with Southern accents sucking in movies. I am guessing most others do also but since I didn't spend my life hearing much of anything but "Texan" and Cajun, I have no idea how off anything else might be, lol. Although the current trend of some advertisers using *British* in commercials really hurts my ears.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree completely with flutterby about the British-ish accents in commercials! They drive me BONKERS!

    Annie, maybe you just need to schedule time to DO creative-type things to get yourself jumpstarted again. Depression can also interfere with one's creativity. Actually, any change can interfere -- so I wouldn't be too fast to change meds if what you have is working well otherwise.

    And have you noticed that the Cajun "t" for "th" is on the soft "th" sounds -- but it becomes "d" on the hard "th" sounds .. like "dere it is."
    ;-D Maybe that's just a general coastal southern thing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'll have to wait for netflix. That sucks, about the drugs messing with your creativity.

    ReplyDelete
  7. hey sweetie - as someone who has "been there, still doing that" with anti-depressants, i am thinking a phone call to your doc is in order simply to have your meds adjusted.

    please -- do NOT go off without having a sort of weaning-off period - your doctor would tell you how to do that - and there are plenty of meds out there that help with depression and anxiety; simply because he prescribed one for you doesn't mean you need to stay on that particular one.

    (can ya tell i have done this once or twice?)

    hope all else is well. will pray for your creative side to rear itself once again...

    pen

    ReplyDelete

Don't just sit there staring, say something!