Things that Make Me Go *Sob*

I’m getting soft in my early middle age, or late youth, or whatever we’re calling it when we’re afraid to admit that we’re approaching 35 and haven’t started nearly enough of the things we wanted to do with our lives, if we’re even sure what those are. I’m tearing up at nearly everything I read in the newspaper or see on Youtube or on TV all of the sudden, and this is strange because I’m generally turned off by media that tries to evoke that kind of response.

The last time I cried in a movie was E.T., so I tend to judge every subsequent attempt to make me cry by this standard:

I call it the Gertie Metric because Mom, Michael, and even Eliot’s tears didn’t bother me at all, but the moment Gertie started crying, the six-year old version of me lost her shit in a crowded theatre, much to my parents’ embarrassment.

In retrospect, I was kind of an easy mark at six years old. The adult me scoffs at my younger self, wondering why I fell for the “cute kid crying” trick, until I remember that scene is the most effective use of that trick in the history of film. Now, when I see someone else try to use it, I just roll my eyes. Whatever. It’s not Gertie.

Case in point: I abhor the promo for The Choir that seems to run every other commercial break on BBC America.  The promo consists of a bunch of clips from the show, about a  Clay Aiken lookalike choir director named Gareth Malone who takes a bunch of schoolkids with no previous training (sniffle) to the World Choir Olympics in China (aaww), intercut with quotes from positive reviews of the show, which try really hard to convince me that the show will wrench a tear from my eye and warm my cold, stony heart, and at the very end, they throw in the “cute kid crying” trick:

Whatever. He’s not Gertie. It’s not that I don’t want to sympathize with this kid, but the whole commercial is just trying too hard. There is no way I’m going to cry at this show.

This is not to say that the show doesn’t legitimately tug at my heartstrings. It’s just that when it does, it just ends up making me angry. I’m already annoyed that Malone, who purports to be about encouraging everyone to sing, held auditions, and that even the embarrassing auditions were aired, American Idol-style. Way to go, show; that’s totally gonna encourage the rejects to keep singing.

Then, in the first episode, Malone tells a tone-deaf kid not to sing on the recording they have to send to China, which is pretty brutal, but not as brutal as sending that same kid a copy of the recording on CD as a Christmas present. All the while, the producers are getting footage of this kid attending extra practice sessions and working on that Lion King song on his own at home because he just wants to get better so he doesn’t let anyone down. The Choir isn’t about encouraging everyone to sing; it’s about finding kids who already have talent and making them into winners. Put another way, it’s about leaving out the kids who get in the way of winning.

How is that any different from American Idol? Oh, right. It’s actually more cruel than Idol, because these kids didn’t really ask for it. You came to their school, inserted yourselves into their lives, and now you’re profiting from them, but it’s OK because some of them got a trip to China. It makes me so angry I could cry, show, but I refuse to let you have the satisfaction.

This is not to say that the BBC hasn’t ever made me cry (see also: early regeneration), or that I don’t cry at reality TV shows. James May, for example, has me crying on the regular these days. You may know him from the Three Stooges-style car porn of the BBC’s Top Gear (he’s the nerdy one with the floppy hair), but I’m absolutely loving his new show, James May’s Toy Stories.

The show is formulaic, but it’s a formula that works: every week, May chooses a new toy, preferably one with a rich history. He interviews an expert on that toy, comes up with a big project involving that toy, and then crowdsources the production of the project, making sure to include both kids and adults. He gives at least two incredibly awkward motivational speeches to the folks who help him, and at least once during the course of an episode, the project appears to be on the verge of collapse. The finished product manages to bring me to tears every time, by virtue of the size and scale and awesomeness of it all.

This week’s episode was about Plasticine. May crowdsourced a flower garden, made entirely of Plasticine modeling clay, for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The garland hanging on the door was made by some ladies at a Hindu temple. There’s sushi, made by sushi chefs, on a picnic blanket under the tree. Some of the flowers were made by schoolchildren, some were made by attendees at a Home Expo, and the poppies were made by elderly veterans. Sure, artists from the studio that makes Wallace and Gromit helped out, and the bust of William Harbutt, the inventor of Plasticine, was sculpted by Jane McAdam Freud (Lucian’s daughter, Sigmund’s great-granddaughter, for those keeping track), but two thousand normal folks were involved in putting this together. May takes all comers, and even refers to it as “the People’s Plasticine Garden” in the episode. Every time I look at the garden, or the reconstructed Brooklands racing circuit, made of tracks for Scalextric toy cars, or the life-sized Lego house, the awesomeness of it all brings a little tear to my eye.

Most of all, James May gets me to cry because he’s doing it right. While he recruits a few ringers, he invites people who aren’t artists, and who may not have “talent,” to make art, and he includes all of them in these massive, celebratory pieces. He educates his audience about toys that may have fallen out of fashion, teaches a little something about history, and models the power of crowdsourcing and community-building.

I learn something from watching May convince ordinary people to help build stuff, which is more than I can say for Gareth Malone’s project. That’s why May gets the waterworks. When Malone takes the kids who can’t hold a note, carry a tune, or hear tone, teaches them to sing, and carries them to China, I might be willing to shed a tear for him. Until then, whatever. He’s not Gertie.