Do you ever get confused between “lie” and “lay,” particularly in the past tense? How about the proper time to use “who” and “whom”? Does trying to explain past participles make your brain cells go on the fritz? The delightful film “Rebel with a Clause” tracks grammar guru Ellen Jovin as she travels with her pop-up “Grammar Table” to public spaces across all 50 states, answering people’s questions about everything grammar-related, and then some. The film will screen on Friday, March 14, at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center to kick off the Islanders Write weekend of free workshops. (See mvartsandideas.com/islanders-write.)
Jovin became enthralled with language as a tot. “Grammar terms were always very exciting to me,” she explains in the film, produced and directed by her husband, Brandt Johnson. She was particularly enthralled when she learned sentence diagramming in eighth grade. “[It was] a technical way of thinking about language, but also combined art, because you had to draw your lines and plan ahead and think spatially.”
In a recent interview, Jovin told me she spent a lot of time connecting with people about grammar online. “But the Grammar Table project came about in 2018 because of a whim. I thought it would be fun to be out on the street, talking to people about it.”
Johnson originally just hung around, watching the interactions with his wife. “I found them compelling, so beautiful, and the joy and connection happening in such a divided time was just amazing. I thought, ‘I want to start filming this, and have more people see what’s happening here.’” He was initially concerned that the process would make people self-conscious. “I didn’t want to mess it up. It seemed so pure. People were being open and vulnerable, open and connected … but we decided to do it, and I think it worked quite well.”
“Rebel with a Clause” opens in Decatur, Ala., with two young men standing in front of Jovin’s folding table, which bears a sign inviting folks to pose questions, vent, or lodge complaints. One of the men queries Jovin about whether the apostrophe comes before or after the “a” in “y’all.” When she says it is before, he exclaims, “Thank you! I hate when people use it after the ‘a.’ I can’t stand it.”
He is just one of the many everyday folks who chat with Jovin as she and Johnson traverse the country. Each discussion highlights a different grammar question. Commas seemed to trip people up. For example, say you have a sentence divided by an “and” or a “but” into two complete sentences. In this case, you would have a comma before the “and” or “but.” (“I got a new dress, but it ripped in the car door.” However, there is no comma in “I got a new dress but forgot it at home.”) Ever helpful, Jovin explains the subtleties of Oxford commas (or serial commas), favored by the “Chicago Manual of Style” and generally used in the publishing world. (“I hoped there was spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread for dinner.”) However, she adds that the “Associated Press Stylebook” prefers using the serial comma only if necessary for clarity, and is generally used in journalism.
One of my favorite segments in “Rebel with a Clause” is about regionalism and slang. In South Dakota, one man tells Jovin that instead of saying, “I lend it to them,” he says, “I borrow it to them.” A woman in Kentucky shares what I found to be a fascinating but a bit confounding image: “She’s as independent as a pig on ice.”
Throughout the film, we see how Jovin clearly adores discussing language with others, and her enthusiasm is contagious to both those she meets and us, the viewers. “I love the Grammar Table as much as I did the first day … It’s a transcendent joy for me to sit there and hear someone I didn’t know before … talk to me, and we share a laugh over some language point, and I know one more person in the world.”
Connecting through words is, in fact, at the heart of “Rebel with a Clause.” Jovin says, “We may disagree politically, but we can still talk about the construction of a sentence. It emphasizes what unites us rather than what divides us.”
Jovin reflects at the film’s end, “My hope for the future is that people will talk more to each other in public places, because the human heart longs for that. If we sit fragmented behind our computers and don’t engage with one another where we can see each other’s smiles and shake hands, it makes it hard for us to be reminded of what we have in common, and to see the best in people.”
“Rebel with a Clause” will screen on Friday, March 14, at 7:30 pm at the M.V. Film Center. For tickets, visit bit.ly/4hIifoL.
