When an article features Terry Crews and mentions Rosey Grier, I'm going to be all the way in for clicking THAT. When that article fully displays the principle and ever-perfecting manhood, well pre-dating Crews' current testimony before the Senate, and how sumptuously he expresses not only his humanity but his convictions, I all but weep. He's proving what we know - and most need to know. Additionally, he's funny as hell.
A joke I heard on Twitter once: "White people upset about BET asking, 'Why don't we have White Entertainment Television?' ... We do, it's HGTV." Worth the click because sometimes online discourse is fertile.
In other TV musing, something struck me about Pose recently. Having watched other Ryan Murphy works, I knew early on that the discussion I'd seen regarding how unrealistic Pose is was almost funny: Murphy's not interested in realism, he presents setpieces, and he does that nicely if you choose to take it on his/those terms. (Feud felt intentionally setbound; even outdoors scenes are claustrophobic and closed-in. That plays to the emotional worlds of the Crawford and Davis characters in play.) For Pose, the archness is not as visually obvious, so I've seen complaints about, say, just how glamorous the scene is made to look, or the opening sequence for the series itself, where "real" historical costumes are stolen from a museum for a gay ball. Preposterous! And duh. Here is the thing: Pose is 80s TV. Figuratively (it's set in the late 80s) and literally (its emotional beats are ALL Very Special Episode-worthy). The depth of plotting is *veeeerryyy* much like 80s TV - sitcom or drama. The pacing is extremely 80s; when TV took time to lay things out. For many, this seems slow or dry or even insulting (making the implicit explicit). But this is so, so true to its time. It takes the 80s seriously, AND it tells stories no network (remember, we really had three back then) would have told in the time itself. I kind of think that's genius, and it's not Murphy's first time reining pace enough to slow things down like this. Given his current influence, you wonder how this might bear out in others' work. Imagine a vogue for *less* cinematic TV; imagine the VSE's regaining ascendance. I've seen surprising amounts of ink on VSEs over the past couple of years. My guess is nostalgia is bringing it back, in service of subjects even the original concept never served.
Leaping from television to literature, who has read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? I actually re-read it a year or two ago, and - forget Jurassic Park - this book will scare the willies out of you, in both its plague-ridden timelines. So reading about the extraction of leprosy from centuries-old skeletal remains ISN'T HORRIFYING AT ALL. Just as long as you haven't read the wrong books. Yeep.
Finally ... hmm, and more hmm. Yes, fella babies, it's Adventures in Science Reporting again!
I have written in the past about Penelope's ancestry, and as little obsessed as I am with pedigree, it's not beyond me to admit fascinated with the idea my beloved Pariah descending from millennia of fascinating forerunners. Oddly enough, it seems like cancer is about all we really have left of pre-contact canine breeds. Still - being a critical thinker - it is hard not to wonder about previous DNA studies, pointing to modern Amercan dogs' long history here. Hmmmm. Keep us posted, Dr. Ostrander.
Showing posts with label dubious entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dubious entertainment. Show all posts
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Monday, October 23, 2017
Preying Animals
Again.
And again. And again. And again. And again.
The Weinstein (etc. etc. etc.) scandal in Hollywood might seem to beg comment from a blogger such as myself, but the simple fact is my main reaction to the whole thing was, for a good while, mere exhaustion. The fact that MEN are surprised and offended ... I don't know. Maybe it's nice. But there isn't a woman I know who's taken aback at the information unearthed so far. No, not even the scope.
Remember, kids: we just watched a proudly bragging sexual predator take the White House. Oh yeah, and the supposed fall of Bill Cosby, though that story seems to have been forgotten ("Thanks again, Trump's distracting Tweets!") You think we are shocked about a movie mogul?
Watching the astonishment of *men*, who rather loudly insist upon swearing they had NO IDEA about all this, might be almost be amusing for some, but - again - merely a bit tiring for me. Talk about bad acting: "gents", you are either criminally incompetent, intellectually compromised, or lying your asses off. (Same goes for women.)
So, why am I bringing it up at all?
The drumbeat right now is all about men in power taking advantage of women who cannot reasonably consent, given that consent requires autonomy, and so few have it in the situations encountered.
That is an important dynamic to consider, it's important to fight.
But I know this: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT METED OUT ONLY BY THE ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL.
For men power comes in other forms, and other magnitudes, than Trump or Weinstein or congressmen or kings.
Sexual harassment comes from the contractor at work, whose only power lies in the fact of his maleness and his speaking up after-hours in a deserted office. Sexual harassment comes from an awful lot of guys at work, in fact - just everyday guys in cube farms - the guy leaving anonymous notes which are TERRIFYING evidence of being covertly *watched* by unknown eyes, the guy cornering a woman in the break room. It comes on the street. It lives in every possible environment.
It could by ANY guy. That's what's got me mad: that in sanctioning this "Hollywood is the dangerous place" "Powerful men are the ones to watch out for" groundswell, we are safely defining boundaries around predators, pointing to the most unusual varieties as if they encompassed all the perniciousness women face every day. And thereby nullifying the fact that indeed it IS every day. Everywhere. Not just these rich monsters. NOT just desperate actresses.
It's every woman. And it is, potentially, every man we meet.
It is pissing me off that the sudden vogue for pearl-clutching focuses so narrowly, so significantly, on plutocrats alone.
Not all power comes in the form of famous men using women who think they need these men in order to advance in an industry - or politics. These situations are not limited to the casting couch, or to some town or business the majority of people aren't in.
And not all blame belongs to these wealthy ... "exceptional" ... men.
#NotAllMen? Sure. Certainly not anyone I'd even call a "man".
But more than just a few, kids. And not just the one percent. Not by a long damned shot.
And again. And again. And again. And again.
The Weinstein (etc. etc. etc.) scandal in Hollywood might seem to beg comment from a blogger such as myself, but the simple fact is my main reaction to the whole thing was, for a good while, mere exhaustion. The fact that MEN are surprised and offended ... I don't know. Maybe it's nice. But there isn't a woman I know who's taken aback at the information unearthed so far. No, not even the scope.
Remember, kids: we just watched a proudly bragging sexual predator take the White House. Oh yeah, and the supposed fall of Bill Cosby, though that story seems to have been forgotten ("Thanks again, Trump's distracting Tweets!") You think we are shocked about a movie mogul?
Watching the astonishment of *men*, who rather loudly insist upon swearing they had NO IDEA about all this, might be almost be amusing for some, but - again - merely a bit tiring for me. Talk about bad acting: "gents", you are either criminally incompetent, intellectually compromised, or lying your asses off. (Same goes for women.)
So, why am I bringing it up at all?
The drumbeat right now is all about men in power taking advantage of women who cannot reasonably consent, given that consent requires autonomy, and so few have it in the situations encountered.
That is an important dynamic to consider, it's important to fight.
But I know this: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT METED OUT ONLY BY THE ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL.
For men power comes in other forms, and other magnitudes, than Trump or Weinstein or congressmen or kings.
Sexual harassment comes from the contractor at work, whose only power lies in the fact of his maleness and his speaking up after-hours in a deserted office. Sexual harassment comes from an awful lot of guys at work, in fact - just everyday guys in cube farms - the guy leaving anonymous notes which are TERRIFYING evidence of being covertly *watched* by unknown eyes, the guy cornering a woman in the break room. It comes on the street. It lives in every possible environment.
It could by ANY guy. That's what's got me mad: that in sanctioning this "Hollywood is the dangerous place" "Powerful men are the ones to watch out for" groundswell, we are safely defining boundaries around predators, pointing to the most unusual varieties as if they encompassed all the perniciousness women face every day. And thereby nullifying the fact that indeed it IS every day. Everywhere. Not just these rich monsters. NOT just desperate actresses.
It's every woman. And it is, potentially, every man we meet.
It is pissing me off that the sudden vogue for pearl-clutching focuses so narrowly, so significantly, on plutocrats alone.
Not all power comes in the form of famous men using women who think they need these men in order to advance in an industry - or politics. These situations are not limited to the casting couch, or to some town or business the majority of people aren't in.
And not all blame belongs to these wealthy ... "exceptional" ... men.
#NotAllMen? Sure. Certainly not anyone I'd even call a "man".
But more than just a few, kids. And not just the one percent. Not by a long damned shot.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Collection
Marine biology geekness: Oct Tale of Two Cities
... Octlantis and Octopolis. I am not making this up. Even Sponge Bob
isn't making everything up. Huh! (Plural-wise, though, they missed
opportunities to use the super-fun word, "octopodes" ... oh well.) The
click beyond - biomimetic architecture. SO COOL, and finally that word escapes Star Trek babble. Yay!
And next, a tale of two dirties. It was a big deal around here - front page news - when Dirt Woman died. And there was a sort of bookend appropriateness to Hef, that dirty old man, dying right after. I won't link HH's obits; if you cared, you've read them - and I, frankly, do not. But Donnie? Yeah. RIP, with Dave Brockie, Donnie.
Sentence #2 above ... nobody has lost sight of the ravaging effects of wealth disparity, not only in the United States, but worldwide. As our lifestyles have diverged, the working class and poor have been left so far behind the famed one-percent, and the effect has been devastating. A worthwhile read (and possible TBR pile toppler) from The Atlantic - Politics must be affirmative. Opposition is a mood, not a program. (Personally, I'd put "obstructionism" in where opposition stands, but the point is well taken.) Two clicks beyond, for those really interested in layered views.
So what *does* bullying cost? Well, $276M in one single state alone - and that's just the K-12 educational budget. Add bullying in the work place, and the price of bullying becomes, at least for my wee and paltry brain, inconceivable. The cost in lives, of the contributions of those who are silenced, to the wellbeing of our community and culture ...
You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt.
--RIP, Dirt Woman
And next, a tale of two dirties. It was a big deal around here - front page news - when Dirt Woman died. And there was a sort of bookend appropriateness to Hef, that dirty old man, dying right after. I won't link HH's obits; if you cared, you've read them - and I, frankly, do not. But Donnie? Yeah. RIP, with Dave Brockie, Donnie.
The Americans of, say, 1970 genuinely had more in common with each other than will the Americans of 2020. Their incomes banded more closely together, and so did their health outcomes. Almost all adults lived in married households; almost everyone watched one of three television evening news programs. These commonalities can be overstated, but they can also be overlooked. ... One more thing they had in common: a conviction that the future would be better than the past.
Sentence #2 above ... nobody has lost sight of the ravaging effects of wealth disparity, not only in the United States, but worldwide. As our lifestyles have diverged, the working class and poor have been left so far behind the famed one-percent, and the effect has been devastating. A worthwhile read (and possible TBR pile toppler) from The Atlantic - Politics must be affirmative. Opposition is a mood, not a program. (Personally, I'd put "obstructionism" in where opposition stands, but the point is well taken.) Two clicks beyond, for those really interested in layered views.
Pointing to the economic costs of bullying—in tandem with highlighting the psychological, physiological and academic ramifications—can be an effective way to garner high-level attention and spur positive change.
So what *does* bullying cost? Well, $276M in one single state alone - and that's just the K-12 educational budget. Add bullying in the work place, and the price of bullying becomes, at least for my wee and paltry brain, inconceivable. The cost in lives, of the contributions of those who are silenced, to the wellbeing of our community and culture ...
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Television Watching 2
At the same time I am eliminating certain kinds of entertainment, I'm also analyzing what stays, and why it's worthwhile. What I'm realizing is it's simultaneously unsurprising and completely unexpected what "works" for me entertainment-wise, ethically speaking. One stupendously trashy show has struck me particularly.
Among the unsurprising keepers - and unembarrassing ones - are Luke Cage, with some of the best women characters I've seen in a long time, a killer soundtrack, and a team of black writers filling out a fully realized world it's exciting to learn about and inhabit for a while. Jessica Jones and Agents of Shield too, yeah. Trek, of course, but I won't bore anyone with the details; that's another tag entirely. On my DVD shelf are the queasily balanced Caprica (strong female characters, sure, but a creepily sexualized teenager at the center, and an entire ensemble of absolutely bat-splat crazy people all-round) and Battlestar Galactica (I am not overjoyed with the gender issues and the fact it's an overwhelmingly white, eurocentric show, though it really began to explore these things at least, which so much television fears to).
Of course, few people embarrass themselves by liking Luke Cage, a well-received entry in a Marvel Universe which has been well loved as well as blockbuster successful.
Meanwhile, few people would ADMIT what I am about to, but I have to for the purposes of this post.
I watch The Royals. I watch it gleefully, in tandem with a friend of mine whom I shall not name unless they choose to out themselves, and reveling in its soap operatics, its tonguey-cheekiness (sometimes exposing actual nether cheeks - so naughty!), and ... well, I mean. Dame Joan Collins.
Here's the thing about The Royals. Lambasted in a hurry by everyone in need of protecting their cred against its excesses, laughed at for being unrealistic (that's the POINT, rather), and avoided by all except apparently enough millions of viewers to keep it afloat, the series is on its way into a third season and shows no sign of dying on the vine.
This show is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it's Grand Guignol. It's sumptuously daft, and not pretending remotely to be anything else. It is stocked entirely with ham in every casting, and home to more pouty lower lips than I've seen anywhere else on TV - and that is saying something. It's actually got a bit of heart here and there, and the delirious sets and costumes and performances are just right for the madness of the politics and deception around which the whole thing swirls prettily, like a gaudy fan.
Politics and deception have always made good tube. Dynasty hasn't even got a patch on Her Joanness in this gig. Most addicting-cinematic-TV of the 21st century has traded in exactly this sort of GOTCHA plotting. Joss Whedon has made a career out of it, and everybody likes him.
Not so The Royals.
Which is a shame. Not only is the show a lot more fun than the darker takes on murder and mayhem currently on offer (it doesn't hurt your heart to watch it), it's just as valid in honest ways.
And some other ways too, where there are dark shows doing the same thing and failing in important ways.
To wit: the women.
The Royals is outright run by women. The Prime Minister, the Queen, the Princess, the scheming would-be consorts of the on-again/off-again male heir, the million thieves and killers and hangers-on and lovers and exes ... the only characters here who actually move any pieces on the board are the women.
Oh, sure, current-King Cyrus is a gas to watch, for his chin alone. He's up there with Bruce Payne for greasily gluttonous scenery sneer-chewing, and I adore him all to bits.
But it's the tragically-eye-makeupped, colt-legged Princess Eleanor who's learning her way around real power. It's her mother, Queen Helena, played (if not simply embodied) by the sounds-Patrician-to-most-Americans Elizabeth Hurley, who has the will to do literally anything. It's the Queen's secretary, Rachel, who will pop your eyes with her understated outrages.
And even more importantly: most of the men are merely sitting around looking pretty. Prince Liam is all but non-present even when he tries to look determined. Jasper, the youngest and most impressively-eyebrowed security detail, who spends his time caroming through multiple roles only hoping to be near the princess, all but has "Mr. Fanservice" written all over his wonderfully cliche'd role as would-be protector. And his chemistry with her works both on the swoony and the emotional level.
Even the older fellows, especially those security gents, are awfully nice to look at, for those of us a bit leery of leering at the twentysomethings.
And all of them exist only in relation to the actions of the women, even the king, even the craggy fall guy so dedicated to The Crown that he sticks with being the fall guy even when he's given a pass.
In terms of its gender prominence and sexual politics, The Royals is an outstandingly progressive show. It's still a bit white (some of the people of color from season 1 seem to have disappeared entirely; including a very nice pretty security guard I rather miss) - I mean, if we've rewritten the royal family this radically, why not break the Caucasian monotony - but at least it's forward-looking on something, anything, in a world where we continually regress, culturally. And it's not a small thing. Women are, after all, a significant part of the world population. At least, two key women in The Royals are Black and Indian.
In a world where embarrassing discussions abound regarding Prince Henry's girlfriend, picking apart her ethnicity as if it is in any way relevant to anything at all, it's not the worst thing to see women in the royal milieu living entirely NOT on the terms of any men anywhere.
Imperfectly acted? At times. Overheated? Yes, please, and do turn it up. Ludicrous? Indeed, and loving it. This is a hilarious show, and means to be. Yet its reputation, as far as I have seen, has been formed by people dumb enough to think it is dumb enough to take itself seriously.
It's also a good laugh, and provides a few wonderful things to guess about along the way.
Among the unsurprising keepers - and unembarrassing ones - are Luke Cage, with some of the best women characters I've seen in a long time, a killer soundtrack, and a team of black writers filling out a fully realized world it's exciting to learn about and inhabit for a while. Jessica Jones and Agents of Shield too, yeah. Trek, of course, but I won't bore anyone with the details; that's another tag entirely. On my DVD shelf are the queasily balanced Caprica (strong female characters, sure, but a creepily sexualized teenager at the center, and an entire ensemble of absolutely bat-splat crazy people all-round) and Battlestar Galactica (I am not overjoyed with the gender issues and the fact it's an overwhelmingly white, eurocentric show, though it really began to explore these things at least, which so much television fears to).
Of course, few people embarrass themselves by liking Luke Cage, a well-received entry in a Marvel Universe which has been well loved as well as blockbuster successful.
Meanwhile, few people would ADMIT what I am about to, but I have to for the purposes of this post.
I watch The Royals. I watch it gleefully, in tandem with a friend of mine whom I shall not name unless they choose to out themselves, and reveling in its soap operatics, its tonguey-cheekiness (sometimes exposing actual nether cheeks - so naughty!), and ... well, I mean. Dame Joan Collins.
Here's the thing about The Royals. Lambasted in a hurry by everyone in need of protecting their cred against its excesses, laughed at for being unrealistic (that's the POINT, rather), and avoided by all except apparently enough millions of viewers to keep it afloat, the series is on its way into a third season and shows no sign of dying on the vine.
This show is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it's Grand Guignol. It's sumptuously daft, and not pretending remotely to be anything else. It is stocked entirely with ham in every casting, and home to more pouty lower lips than I've seen anywhere else on TV - and that is saying something. It's actually got a bit of heart here and there, and the delirious sets and costumes and performances are just right for the madness of the politics and deception around which the whole thing swirls prettily, like a gaudy fan.
Politics and deception have always made good tube. Dynasty hasn't even got a patch on Her Joanness in this gig. Most addicting-cinematic-TV of the 21st century has traded in exactly this sort of GOTCHA plotting. Joss Whedon has made a career out of it, and everybody likes him.
Not so The Royals.
Which is a shame. Not only is the show a lot more fun than the darker takes on murder and mayhem currently on offer (it doesn't hurt your heart to watch it), it's just as valid in honest ways.
And some other ways too, where there are dark shows doing the same thing and failing in important ways.
To wit: the women.
The Royals is outright run by women. The Prime Minister, the Queen, the Princess, the scheming would-be consorts of the on-again/off-again male heir, the million thieves and killers and hangers-on and lovers and exes ... the only characters here who actually move any pieces on the board are the women.
Oh, sure, current-King Cyrus is a gas to watch, for his chin alone. He's up there with Bruce Payne for greasily gluttonous scenery sneer-chewing, and I adore him all to bits.
But it's the tragically-eye-makeupped, colt-legged Princess Eleanor who's learning her way around real power. It's her mother, Queen Helena, played (if not simply embodied) by the sounds-Patrician-to-most-Americans Elizabeth Hurley, who has the will to do literally anything. It's the Queen's secretary, Rachel, who will pop your eyes with her understated outrages.
And even more importantly: most of the men are merely sitting around looking pretty. Prince Liam is all but non-present even when he tries to look determined. Jasper, the youngest and most impressively-eyebrowed security detail, who spends his time caroming through multiple roles only hoping to be near the princess, all but has "Mr. Fanservice" written all over his wonderfully cliche'd role as would-be protector. And his chemistry with her works both on the swoony and the emotional level.
Even the older fellows, especially those security gents, are awfully nice to look at, for those of us a bit leery of leering at the twentysomethings.
And all of them exist only in relation to the actions of the women, even the king, even the craggy fall guy so dedicated to The Crown that he sticks with being the fall guy even when he's given a pass.
In terms of its gender prominence and sexual politics, The Royals is an outstandingly progressive show. It's still a bit white (some of the people of color from season 1 seem to have disappeared entirely; including a very nice pretty security guard I rather miss) - I mean, if we've rewritten the royal family this radically, why not break the Caucasian monotony - but at least it's forward-looking on something, anything, in a world where we continually regress, culturally. And it's not a small thing. Women are, after all, a significant part of the world population. At least, two key women in The Royals are Black and Indian.
In a world where embarrassing discussions abound regarding Prince Henry's girlfriend, picking apart her ethnicity as if it is in any way relevant to anything at all, it's not the worst thing to see women in the royal milieu living entirely NOT on the terms of any men anywhere.
Imperfectly acted? At times. Overheated? Yes, please, and do turn it up. Ludicrous? Indeed, and loving it. This is a hilarious show, and means to be. Yet its reputation, as far as I have seen, has been formed by people dumb enough to think it is dumb enough to take itself seriously.
It's also a good laugh, and provides a few wonderful things to guess about along the way.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Television Watching
Television Without Pity was a bit of an addiction of mine in its day, and after re-watching Battlestar Galactica a year or so back, I hit up TWoP for its recaps.
Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...
The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.
Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.
Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.
Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.
Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.
Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.
Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.
Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.
None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.
I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.
Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."
I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.
The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.
I don't want to be diverted anymore.
Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...
The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.
(H)is new plan is to strike a chord with the common man, which is funny because he totally had that, by virtue of being a sexy smart celebrity, until he put everybody in concentration camps.
Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.
Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.
Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.
Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.
Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.
Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.
Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.
None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.
I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.
Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."
I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.
The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.
I don't want to be diverted anymore.
Friday, September 2, 2016
Collection
Unless my writer friends are in need of a plot bunny, they might not want to click just yet ... but this is the fascinating story of a woman who, for a time, was held to be the longest-lived person in the world - and that isn't even the interesting part. It's a story of madness, mystery, heartbreak, and a lady's own loveliness, and I wish we could know more.
Nobody EVER knows what others think of them, not really. But some of us get to be comfortable because what we don't know isn't likely a threat. This is why I am PRIVILEGED. And this is why we need to acknowledge that people of color are not.
Nobody EVER knows what others think of them, not really. But some of us get to be comfortable because what we don't know isn't likely a threat. This is why I am PRIVILEGED. And this is why we need to acknowledge that people of color are not.
Semi-related news ... how Ariel is not the only Disney Princess who gave up her voice. The charts alone here are eye-opening (... whether it's mouth-closing is up to us). I TOLD y'all we've regressed in gender roles since I was a kid. And: as "the default is white" in the creation of characters in popular entertainment - it's also overwhelmingly male, even in products with pink labels on them.
Also: I think I really am going to have to become addicted to that Tumblr. Because, laughter sometimes is the best medicine, particularly for the ailments of our society.
Quote of the day:
Meanwhile, over on The History Blog ... million year old mammoth tusks. The reason I post this is that JUST last night, Mr. X and I were discussing a mastadon tusk present in the estate of a recently-deceased relation, and "how do you determine value, how do you sell such a thing?" I told him, as it happens, I am very much in need of a mastadon tusk to decorate my about-to-be-waterproofed-and-then-cleaned-and-organized basement. I think it would be JUST the thing to hang over the washer and dryer.
Finally, the Caustic Cover Critic is back, and there is madness and lust and all sorts of lurid fun to be had. Some great Roald Dahl covers, and more.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
--Mike Tyson
Meanwhile, over on The History Blog ... million year old mammoth tusks. The reason I post this is that JUST last night, Mr. X and I were discussing a mastadon tusk present in the estate of a recently-deceased relation, and "how do you determine value, how do you sell such a thing?" I told him, as it happens, I am very much in need of a mastadon tusk to decorate my about-to-be-waterproofed-and-then-cleaned-and-organized basement. I think it would be JUST the thing to hang over the washer and dryer.
Finally, the Caustic Cover Critic is back, and there is madness and lust and all sorts of lurid fun to be had. Some great Roald Dahl covers, and more.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Faces of Death
We've got to start off with the following phrase: the denial of human creatureliness. My stars, what a great twist of words, as cruel as any knife.
A few days ago, doing those things we do that we don't share with most others - showering and getting a look at my body's age and particulars - I was thinking, as I have before, of how I wish it were a different sight. Thinking about how age has changed things, how annoying bodies can be, not trapped in amber and constantly energetic and healthy got me to thinking (a) of all those things we are told we can do about that and, inevitably, (b) the people who do the most to give some plausible lie to the necessity of age and our animal nature.
If I'm honest, Dita von Teese actually occurs to me most often when I think about these things. She actually is lovely, but the image she's crafted - I sometimes wonder how well it will age. Perhaps it is her vintage spin that makes me look to the ways some of the Hollywood glamour goddesses who inspired her ended up; and at forty-four, you wonder how much mileage is left in her career of being alluring. The Kardashians are an industry, and nobody expects humanity of them, so contemplating how they age just means looking at Momma K and shrugging a bit.
But the fundamental point is, artifice is the denial of the animal.
There are times I revel in artifice. But the thing with me is, there are also times I revel in being an animal - in the biological status of my existence, as much as the spiritual or intellectual (or silly). In some ways, the best PART of getting dolled up (and note the word choice there, hah) is the way we start off - sweaty, sparse-eyebrowed, with imperfect skin and no ornament. For me, "gooping up" as my friend TEO and I used to call it, is an emphasis of artificiality, not of myself. When I go out in any sort of drag, it's not a presentation of myself, but of the things I like or find funny or a neat idea I had with hair or makeup, something archly and specifically NOT myself.
Anyone who believes I have purple hair - or those eyelashes - is not my responsibility to counsel.
Anyone who believes I am significantly younger than I am - well, I have two lovely parents certainly to thank. Assuming we take the cultural worship of youth as read.
For those less than eager to take on the entirety of the paper whose abstract is linked above, consider this. An interesting look at death, indeed, and possibly informative of more than America's own current state of politics.
The old "May you live in interesting times" joke comes to mind. Not only because ALL times for humans have been interesting, harrowing, joyous, and terrifying all at once, but because the first and foremost draw of Trumpery has been how interesting he is. He's entertainment, as well as a valve for the release of all those unseen things we hold inside; hatred and anger and fear. He's a really big show.
It is common received wisdom that art and comedy are born out of our knowledge of death. Fashion and cosmetics are too, which is interesting given their connection to human sexuality, itself the only means toward immortality in providing for procreation.
Politics is death. And sometimes suicide is the way humans meet death.
I both revel in my creatureliness and play with those toys of denial. Most of us do the same in one way or another, saving contemplation of death for special occasions, but not actively denying it. Life just doesn't leave time for it, mostly. We get caught up in the day-to-day, and that works both in our favor and against us - it is all to easy to forget to deal with those parts of life that have to do with its cessation.
It is perhaps precisely because all times are interesting that we simultaneously gorge on it, and then need to retreat from it, and on a humankind scale this leads us to bewildering socio-political behavior. American media would have it that the Brexit vote came largely because people voted for exit thinking "this will never happen" and now they all wish they could take it back. How far this gibes with reality is debatable, but not a debate I wish to be party to. It's an interesting sort of finger-shaking version of "journalism" (a word that's been in scare-quotes for years now), but a curious look at the fear of death in itself. A few weeks go, Brexit looked like Roman decimation in broadcast media; right now, we're forgetting about it and "la-la-la-I-cant'-hear-you"-ing all the way to Sodom, most of the day-after pearl-clutching forgotten, at least amongst us unwashed masses. There isn't time to think about it.
Three days ago, I'd never heard of this dang Pokemon walking game, and now it is EVERYWHERE, both in hilarity and more finger-wagging ("don't play Pokemon games in the Holocaust museum" was an actual thing this morning).
Fantasy is our way of denying death - if we focus on what we find most beautiful, desirable ... death loses its hold in our minds, because those things are as strong for us as the unknowable inevitabilities of our bodies.
By writing, I revel in the creatureliness of my characters, and my own - and because I write fiction, I can deny it ALL. Nothing is real, and if I write about those things that frighten me most, that is not real either.
This is the essential appeal of horror.
The ultimate fantasy is control.
We seem to be exerting the fantasy of control by going out of control an awful lot lately.
Why *wouldn't* people rather contemplate the curiously human and artificial face of a Jenner or Kardashian ... ?
(B)eing an animal is threatening because it reminds people of their vulnerability to death...
--multiple authors, see link above
A few days ago, doing those things we do that we don't share with most others - showering and getting a look at my body's age and particulars - I was thinking, as I have before, of how I wish it were a different sight. Thinking about how age has changed things, how annoying bodies can be, not trapped in amber and constantly energetic and healthy got me to thinking (a) of all those things we are told we can do about that and, inevitably, (b) the people who do the most to give some plausible lie to the necessity of age and our animal nature.
 |
| Image: Wikipedia Obvious choice? Heck yes. |
If I'm honest, Dita von Teese actually occurs to me most often when I think about these things. She actually is lovely, but the image she's crafted - I sometimes wonder how well it will age. Perhaps it is her vintage spin that makes me look to the ways some of the Hollywood glamour goddesses who inspired her ended up; and at forty-four, you wonder how much mileage is left in her career of being alluring. The Kardashians are an industry, and nobody expects humanity of them, so contemplating how they age just means looking at Momma K and shrugging a bit.
But the fundamental point is, artifice is the denial of the animal.
There are times I revel in artifice. But the thing with me is, there are also times I revel in being an animal - in the biological status of my existence, as much as the spiritual or intellectual (or silly). In some ways, the best PART of getting dolled up (and note the word choice there, hah) is the way we start off - sweaty, sparse-eyebrowed, with imperfect skin and no ornament. For me, "gooping up" as my friend TEO and I used to call it, is an emphasis of artificiality, not of myself. When I go out in any sort of drag, it's not a presentation of myself, but of the things I like or find funny or a neat idea I had with hair or makeup, something archly and specifically NOT myself.
Anyone who believes I have purple hair - or those eyelashes - is not my responsibility to counsel.
Anyone who believes I am significantly younger than I am - well, I have two lovely parents certainly to thank. Assuming we take the cultural worship of youth as read.
For those less than eager to take on the entirety of the paper whose abstract is linked above, consider this. An interesting look at death, indeed, and possibly informative of more than America's own current state of politics.
Study subjects who were prompted to talk about their own death later rated their support for Trump 1.66 points higher on a five-point scale than those who were prompted to talk about pain generally.
--Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post
The old "May you live in interesting times" joke comes to mind. Not only because ALL times for humans have been interesting, harrowing, joyous, and terrifying all at once, but because the first and foremost draw of Trumpery has been how interesting he is. He's entertainment, as well as a valve for the release of all those unseen things we hold inside; hatred and anger and fear. He's a really big show.
 |
| Image: Wikipedia I chose this because it's about as dignified a shot of The Donald as I can find in fair use rules, and the juxtaposition with someone notorious for his flamboyant looks was irresistible. And he's really smiling. |
***
It is common received wisdom that art and comedy are born out of our knowledge of death. Fashion and cosmetics are too, which is interesting given their connection to human sexuality, itself the only means toward immortality in providing for procreation.
Politics is death. And sometimes suicide is the way humans meet death.
***
I both revel in my creatureliness and play with those toys of denial. Most of us do the same in one way or another, saving contemplation of death for special occasions, but not actively denying it. Life just doesn't leave time for it, mostly. We get caught up in the day-to-day, and that works both in our favor and against us - it is all to easy to forget to deal with those parts of life that have to do with its cessation.
It is perhaps precisely because all times are interesting that we simultaneously gorge on it, and then need to retreat from it, and on a humankind scale this leads us to bewildering socio-political behavior. American media would have it that the Brexit vote came largely because people voted for exit thinking "this will never happen" and now they all wish they could take it back. How far this gibes with reality is debatable, but not a debate I wish to be party to. It's an interesting sort of finger-shaking version of "journalism" (a word that's been in scare-quotes for years now), but a curious look at the fear of death in itself. A few weeks go, Brexit looked like Roman decimation in broadcast media; right now, we're forgetting about it and "la-la-la-I-cant'-hear-you"-ing all the way to Sodom, most of the day-after pearl-clutching forgotten, at least amongst us unwashed masses. There isn't time to think about it.
Three days ago, I'd never heard of this dang Pokemon walking game, and now it is EVERYWHERE, both in hilarity and more finger-wagging ("don't play Pokemon games in the Holocaust museum" was an actual thing this morning).
Fantasy is our way of denying death - if we focus on what we find most beautiful, desirable ... death loses its hold in our minds, because those things are as strong for us as the unknowable inevitabilities of our bodies.
By writing, I revel in the creatureliness of my characters, and my own - and because I write fiction, I can deny it ALL. Nothing is real, and if I write about those things that frighten me most, that is not real either.
This is the essential appeal of horror.
The ultimate fantasy is control.
We seem to be exerting the fantasy of control by going out of control an awful lot lately.
Why *wouldn't* people rather contemplate the curiously human and artificial face of a Jenner or Kardashian ... ?
Monday, July 11, 2016
Mondo Bond-o and Beyond(o)
Daniel Craig's Bond has been an interesting progression. Casino Royale felt, at its debut, very new and different. By Skyfall, Bondstalgia was in play, and that was kind of a lovely ride. For full pun effect:
Whether the nostalgia played SO well they decided to indulge in it to excess, or it's just been enough decades since Roger Moore that we can finally go for his era's over the toppery and sumptuousity ... Spectre brought me, at least, full circle in Bond-age.
I grew up on 70s Bond, Moore Bond, Sunday Night Movies on ABC edited and family Bond - the Bond who wore Sears Bend Over pants, the Bond whose bow tie, when he wore it, took up a fairly impressive segment of his height as a whole.
So Spectre's snowy, modernistic sets, its romping from Mexico to Rome to Austria to Tunisia and all the pauses in London in between ... I ate it all up, with a large spoon, and a smile on my face.
Craig's grittier, more realistic Bond is still good in my book. I was all aboard for Casino, and I'm one of the like three people, apparently, who liked Quantum of Solace and didn't even make fun of the title.
But Bond Guignol, the madness of some of the great entries in the franchise, the sharks-with-laser-beams-on-their-heads daft-ery that was the only way I could watch these movies as a little girl (what did I care about spies? but the eye candy was great fun!), has returned in full effect. Bond's brain is drilled, and he prevails. The bad guy dies, but we know how that can be. Craig recalls, for me, his amusing turn as Jemmie in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. His clear enjoyment in providing the spectacle is quite a bit of fun.
In short: I'm this fan. (Hit this link, seriously, it's very funny writing!)
Why the late, late movie review? Well, for one, it runs in my family. And also, I had a Spectre re-watch last night, first time since the theater, and I just had fun so it was on my mind. And also, with other new movies coming out and glimpses forward in the franchise - Craig will do a couple more, and it looks like we might have Cristoph Waltz back as Blofeld to join him.
And then there's Star Trek. Star Trek: Beyond is the focus of a certain trepidation amongst fans.
I'm one of those fans who prefers to know as little as humanly possible before I see a new film. I don't even much like knowing there may be division or doubt; I'm a great taker-as-they-come sort of fan, particularly when it comes to Trek. I'm passive in the extreme till my butt's in the theater seat and the endless previews are over. Unless grossly offended (and I have been, by Trek - I still think we need a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says CAN WE PLEASE STOP RAPING DEANNA?), I'm not just going to watch what you make, I'm almost certain to rewatch till whatever is produced is also pretty much committed to my memory.
With Bond and with Trek, my love is deep, and less concerned with market forces or even production values than the experience of a story. Give me a good one, I'm on board for the run.
I want this Beyond to be as good as Far Beyond the Stars. I want to be as excited as the day X and I finally saw the reboot together, and (yeah, I'm tellin' on him) he got a little misty at the birth of Kirk.
So far - not there. I'm not in that seat yet.
But we shall see.
.jpg/1280px-Aston_Martin_DB5_(Skyfall).jpg) |
| Image: Wikipedia |
Whether the nostalgia played SO well they decided to indulge in it to excess, or it's just been enough decades since Roger Moore that we can finally go for his era's over the toppery and sumptuousity ... Spectre brought me, at least, full circle in Bond-age.
I grew up on 70s Bond, Moore Bond, Sunday Night Movies on ABC edited and family Bond - the Bond who wore Sears Bend Over pants, the Bond whose bow tie, when he wore it, took up a fairly impressive segment of his height as a whole.
So Spectre's snowy, modernistic sets, its romping from Mexico to Rome to Austria to Tunisia and all the pauses in London in between ... I ate it all up, with a large spoon, and a smile on my face.
Craig's grittier, more realistic Bond is still good in my book. I was all aboard for Casino, and I'm one of the like three people, apparently, who liked Quantum of Solace and didn't even make fun of the title.
But Bond Guignol, the madness of some of the great entries in the franchise, the sharks-with-laser-beams-on-their-heads daft-ery that was the only way I could watch these movies as a little girl (what did I care about spies? but the eye candy was great fun!), has returned in full effect. Bond's brain is drilled, and he prevails. The bad guy dies, but we know how that can be. Craig recalls, for me, his amusing turn as Jemmie in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. His clear enjoyment in providing the spectacle is quite a bit of fun.
In short: I'm this fan. (Hit this link, seriously, it's very funny writing!)
Part of the pleasures of loving Bond is how the franchise provides a pocket history of half a century of the blockbuster-movie as an art form and as an ongoing concern. You watch the ’70s become the ’80s ... You watch film styles come, go, return.
--Darren Franich
Why the late, late movie review? Well, for one, it runs in my family. And also, I had a Spectre re-watch last night, first time since the theater, and I just had fun so it was on my mind. And also, with other new movies coming out and glimpses forward in the franchise - Craig will do a couple more, and it looks like we might have Cristoph Waltz back as Blofeld to join him.
And then there's Star Trek. Star Trek: Beyond is the focus of a certain trepidation amongst fans.
I'm one of those fans who prefers to know as little as humanly possible before I see a new film. I don't even much like knowing there may be division or doubt; I'm a great taker-as-they-come sort of fan, particularly when it comes to Trek. I'm passive in the extreme till my butt's in the theater seat and the endless previews are over. Unless grossly offended (and I have been, by Trek - I still think we need a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says CAN WE PLEASE STOP RAPING DEANNA?), I'm not just going to watch what you make, I'm almost certain to rewatch till whatever is produced is also pretty much committed to my memory.
With Bond and with Trek, my love is deep, and less concerned with market forces or even production values than the experience of a story. Give me a good one, I'm on board for the run.
I want this Beyond to be as good as Far Beyond the Stars. I want to be as excited as the day X and I finally saw the reboot together, and (yeah, I'm tellin' on him) he got a little misty at the birth of Kirk.
So far - not there. I'm not in that seat yet.
But we shall see.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Glottal Start
A curious consequence of some recent binge watching - starting with BSG, and just finishing up Netflix's offering of Agents of Shield - has been noticing a single peculiarity of bad acting. It probably has a name in linguistics, but I am calling it a glotttal start.
If you've ever known a Manhattanite, you know one iconic American example of the glottal *stop*: when the name of the island is pronounced, the two Ts are a stop. "Manha'en."
The glottal is when the throat closes, and when this occurs at the opening of a word beginning with a vowel, it emphasizes the sound. Instead of riding a speaker's breath, it is pushed out. A harder sound.
For *every* (notice the emphasis here - you can read it as a glottal start) vowel-opening word to be *emphasized* *is* *unnatural* sounding. And, of course, now I'm hearing it everywhere. Indeed, an actor allowing a vowel opening to be - well, *open* - is almost exceptional.
Yet, even in fairly dramatic moments in reality, we don't use the glottal start that comprehensively. And so, in performance, a soft reading can be stronger than physical emphasis.
I'm beginning to class the glottal start with the inexperienced actor's bend-at-the-waist/wring-the-hands school of conveying drama.
If you've ever known a Manhattanite, you know one iconic American example of the glottal *stop*: when the name of the island is pronounced, the two Ts are a stop. "Manha'en."
The glottal is when the throat closes, and when this occurs at the opening of a word beginning with a vowel, it emphasizes the sound. Instead of riding a speaker's breath, it is pushed out. A harder sound.
For *every* (notice the emphasis here - you can read it as a glottal start) vowel-opening word to be *emphasized* *is* *unnatural* sounding. And, of course, now I'm hearing it everywhere. Indeed, an actor allowing a vowel opening to be - well, *open* - is almost exceptional.
Yet, even in fairly dramatic moments in reality, we don't use the glottal start that comprehensively. And so, in performance, a soft reading can be stronger than physical emphasis.
I'm beginning to class the glottal start with the inexperienced actor's bend-at-the-waist/wring-the-hands school of conveying drama.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Little Darlin'
At some point in the past month or two, I DVR'd "Little Darlings", a movie that horrified me when it came out. I was five years younger than the girls in this movie, but even by their own age, I was far too much the Good Girl to be able to stand the thought of a whole movie about a bet over losing virginity.
And so, I've never actually seen "Little Darlings."
Watching it today, as a bright and gusty warm winter Sunday wears into evening, the sight of Kristy MacNicol in her opening scene, walking through her neighborhood in jeans and a jean jacket, smoking took me SLAM back to the Marlboro Country where I grew up. (My high school had a smoking area. For students.) I dressed like that, I had the little scowl like that, I had the fluffy hair that looked different every day.
This is one of those movies I enjoy because it looks real, not production designed. Matt Dillon looks so much like the real live boys I crushed on and hung out with, his youth is almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. The girls in camp look like we did - thick-haired, thin-haired, fat, babyfaced, dorky. Beautiful.
One of the great highlights of the story is Sunshine, the hippie child who defends virginity in the end - and is, hilariously, played by Cynthia Nixon (later famous for her long run in, of all things, Sex and the City). She's rather more likable here.
The emotions, as they come in "Little Darlings", are raw and tender and bear all the importance of youth and first-ness. It's both perfectly nostalgic for those of us Of A Certain Age and acutely immediate; the performances really are good.
I recently re-watched "Valley Girl" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which also feature kids who look pretty much like we really did back then, and have a very particular feel that is specific not only to the time but to the movies of that period, which went in for a grimy sort of sexiness that has been lost, polished over and production designed and plastic surgerized out of all humanity.
Next up from the DVR: "Smile" - an earlier still peek into teenaged beauty pageants, where you can find Melanie Griffith, Anette O'Toole, and other stars in early roles. And Barbara Feldon, whom I wanted to be when I grew up when she showed up on my TV as Agent 99 in Get Smart.
Some of the details of films from the seventies and early eighties are shocking - the extreme ease of a guy who's been accused of sex with a student; the careless way sexually obsessed young boys stalk pageant girls; sex, and abortion, and the expectations we have now versus those in play decades ago. Some of the honesty is astonishing (the judges in "Smile" are both creepy and dead-on portrayals; the way kids who've been used badly deal with and consider sex; the gender roles).
I think I need to actually collect these movies, instead of parking copies/taking up space in the DVR. Will have to look on Amazon streaming or get them on blu-ray.
And so, I've never actually seen "Little Darlings."
Watching it today, as a bright and gusty warm winter Sunday wears into evening, the sight of Kristy MacNicol in her opening scene, walking through her neighborhood in jeans and a jean jacket, smoking took me SLAM back to the Marlboro Country where I grew up. (My high school had a smoking area. For students.) I dressed like that, I had the little scowl like that, I had the fluffy hair that looked different every day.
This is one of those movies I enjoy because it looks real, not production designed. Matt Dillon looks so much like the real live boys I crushed on and hung out with, his youth is almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. The girls in camp look like we did - thick-haired, thin-haired, fat, babyfaced, dorky. Beautiful.
One of the great highlights of the story is Sunshine, the hippie child who defends virginity in the end - and is, hilariously, played by Cynthia Nixon (later famous for her long run in, of all things, Sex and the City). She's rather more likable here.
The emotions, as they come in "Little Darlings", are raw and tender and bear all the importance of youth and first-ness. It's both perfectly nostalgic for those of us Of A Certain Age and acutely immediate; the performances really are good.
I recently re-watched "Valley Girl" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which also feature kids who look pretty much like we really did back then, and have a very particular feel that is specific not only to the time but to the movies of that period, which went in for a grimy sort of sexiness that has been lost, polished over and production designed and plastic surgerized out of all humanity.
Next up from the DVR: "Smile" - an earlier still peek into teenaged beauty pageants, where you can find Melanie Griffith, Anette O'Toole, and other stars in early roles. And Barbara Feldon, whom I wanted to be when I grew up when she showed up on my TV as Agent 99 in Get Smart.
Some of the details of films from the seventies and early eighties are shocking - the extreme ease of a guy who's been accused of sex with a student; the careless way sexually obsessed young boys stalk pageant girls; sex, and abortion, and the expectations we have now versus those in play decades ago. Some of the honesty is astonishing (the judges in "Smile" are both creepy and dead-on portrayals; the way kids who've been used badly deal with and consider sex; the gender roles).
I think I need to actually collect these movies, instead of parking copies/taking up space in the DVR. Will have to look on Amazon streaming or get them on blu-ray.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Not Because I'm Christian ... Because I'm a Writer (and a Viewer)
With the latest biblical video game coming soon to a cineplex near you, I’ve been thinking about storytelling as an author and as a moviegoer. Biblical stories have lent themselves to embroidery and retelling since the beginning; perhaps not least because the stories themselves almost ostentatiously offer a paucity of detail. Jewish scholarship for millennia have built upon the bare bones of the Tanakh (having grown up highly Judeo-adjacent, you’re not going to catch me writing the term “OLD Testament” thoughtlessly I hope), and gentiles have been in on the same game for centuries now.
Centuries ago, when I was a liddle-*liddle* kid, some of the first stories that caught my imagination were those of Genesis. Because of those tantalizing voids in these stories, I became obsessed with backstory. Not even “WHY, WHY?” – though these stories beg the profoundest of moral questions, given their fundamental position in the Bible – but “WHAT ELSE?”
These questions absorbed me, and once I got old enough for purty, midcentury modern aesthetics, diaphanous costumes, Anne Baxter, and movies to arrest my attention, “The Ten Commandments” fixated me to no small degree. Its annual event-viewing at Passover and Easter time always stopped me in my TV-viewing tracks, even when I was too young to stay up past Moses’ banishment from Egypt. (Much like Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind, there were great swaths of this we-watched-it-every-year-when-it-aired movie I never knew existed. Beyond Maria’s getting married, Dorothy’s beauty makeover at the Emerald City, and Scarlett being widowed, there were realms unknown.)
For me, that movie’s always been about Anne Baxter’s dramatic smoker’s voice, allure-as-evil, a fancy palace, exotic locale and time, and pretty costumes. And Yul Brynner, who is OSUM and a biscuit.
That was really the cinematic point: wish fulfillment. Ten Commandments and every 1950s biblical/historical epic involving any amount of sand or religiosity (see also They Egyptian, a nonbiblical story but one so seriously Judeo-Christian it actually used sets and cast left over from Ten Commandments, and closed with a fascinating piece of 19th-20th century spiritual theorizing that captivated me at the time) was cartoonishly unrealistic, providing a great deal in the Booming Elocution department, even more in production design joy for the crew, and a curiously contemporary brand of fantasy most people find has aged amusingly in sixty or so years.
And yet, the current crop of setpiece dramatics, nominally Biblical stories, are very much the same. Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings place an emphasis on CGI dramatics, the high-intensity visuals and action born of a generation’s ever more sophisticated video game aesthetics, and a manner of world-building (and, even sixty years on, STILL casting) having little to do with the people of Bronze Age and even pre- or quasi-historical Mesopotamia. The new tellings just as lacking in story as Heston’s bombasity; only the eye-candy has changed and the spectacle delivered via a different state of the arts.
I like a good CGI popcorn flick – give me a Marvel film and I’m there, uncritical, ready to partake and ooh at the gee-whiz. I’m a great, uncritical audience. But.
But. When it comes to Noah and Moses and tales which almost predate themselves, in terms of the cultural significance and enticing hints of ancient life in the Fertile Crescent … what wouldn’t I give for a quiet, intimate film, focusing on imagined *people* more than spectacle and thrill … ? A movie looking at the strange and dark tales of the patriarchs, men (and those glimpsed women, as storied as the men) whose legacy seems to be revered not because they were moral but because they lived at the dawn of a spiritual civilization we carry unto this day.
I’ve learned that this is not necessarily usual – but, from my smallest childhood, the entire contents of those stories were taught to me in Sunday school. The nakedness, the murder and polygamy and incest, the child and human sacrifice. The special, spiritual morality of Abraham, who married his own half-sister, then used her beauty for gain and deceived kings through her, was lost on me and always has been – but, having gotten some age on me, the idea of his being a prophet of G-d intrigues me. We’re all flawed, but all we know of Abraham is his flaws, all but unallayed by the assurance of his peculiar rectitude. The binding of Isaac alone has provoked us intellectually, emotionally, and socially for thousands of years.
At bottom, it’s a queasy thing, really. I was ENTERTAINED by this lurid stuff, this first literature I ever knew – Noah, having a bad relationship with his boys, Lot procreating with his daughters (after having offered them up as sexual sacrifices in Sodom), parent after parent scheming against each other due to favoritism amongst their children. And Jacob, and his favoritism amongst his wives.
I never even got as far as the Midrash, where we are told those wives were *all* sisters, where we elucidate the idol worship bewilderingly present throughout the families (not just households) of the matriarchs and patriarchs. Where the women unnamed take on lives and even speak.
Even for the sources who originally wrote down these traditions, always, there has been *more* …
And yet always less than we seem to come up with – the porcine performances (ironic, all things considered) and splashy visuals, the impressive story*telling* that omits human stories.
Tucked into the annual memories of my childhood, quiet amid the saturated brightness of movies shared every year, and my enduring fascination with Hebrew Biblical films … there is a false memory, one that cannot have happened (indeed, is not remembered at all by my mother), of one movie I watched with my mom one single time. It is the memory of sharing faith and mother-daughter time, one couched in a generation’s depth of warm feelings – one I found, somewhere in my thirties, never happened.
For some reason, I recall it as happening upstairs in the bedroom at my grandmother’s house in Ohio. I was unwell or perhaps just petulant that day, and on my own up there. There’s this strongly affectionate recollection that we watched a movie alone together, that I remembered for years as being called “Ruth and the Bible.” Its actual title, almost certainly, was The Story of Ruth, and – as I read about it today – I see that not only was the lead role played by an Israeli woman, but its reviews praise it in a noticeable way: It was called “refreshingly sincere and restrained” and “commendably unepic” …
Now – one – this makes me highly eager to see this film again (probably to own it, to love it, to name it George – heck, I already renamed it once).
But, two, I am struck by the longing for a Biblical story to be told, to be portrayed, on a quiet, intimate level.
There is not much in the story of Ruth, which could be Blowed Up Real Good by Hollywood, and though there has been a surge in interest in the nature of the love between Ruth and Naomi (lesbianism seems not to have made it into the variety of entertaining sexuality within the Holy Scriptures), this does not beg for special effects, and so the only production-design hope for it would lie in a story of lushly attractive white girls getting their languid on in appealingly exoticized gauzy accoutrements, while Boaz stands by fascinated at this dynamic and perhaps sweatily drops a few grains for the gleaning. Ahem. He may not do this in Bitchin’ Velvet, but one has faith in the resurgent fashion for men in long hair, and that surety in Hollywood, the currently-sellable, pretty and white boy.
It could be done – and it could be done inexpensively. But would it make any money?
One has to wonder. And maybe order the DVD of that movie I affectionately recall sharing with my mom, in a time and a place it could not have happened.
The formative tales, too, could be told with this intriguing closeness, with attention to aspects other than the pyrotechnics of miracle and divinity. Perhaps there is no other audience who would be fascinated to look into a world not peopled by obsessively styled white people, inhabiting a world in which NONE of our social assumptions holds – about family, about marital arrangements, about day-to-day life and the religion and superstition permeating an existence nowhere near so thoughtless and easy as the modern middle-class is today. Perhaps there’s no money in world-building designed to explore, to understand – only production design and gee-whizzery.
Gee, but I’d give a buck to sink down into a movie like that. Would you?
Centuries ago, when I was a liddle-*liddle* kid, some of the first stories that caught my imagination were those of Genesis. Because of those tantalizing voids in these stories, I became obsessed with backstory. Not even “WHY, WHY?” – though these stories beg the profoundest of moral questions, given their fundamental position in the Bible – but “WHAT ELSE?”
These questions absorbed me, and once I got old enough for purty, midcentury modern aesthetics, diaphanous costumes, Anne Baxter, and movies to arrest my attention, “The Ten Commandments” fixated me to no small degree. Its annual event-viewing at Passover and Easter time always stopped me in my TV-viewing tracks, even when I was too young to stay up past Moses’ banishment from Egypt. (Much like Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind, there were great swaths of this we-watched-it-every-year-when-it-aired movie I never knew existed. Beyond Maria’s getting married, Dorothy’s beauty makeover at the Emerald City, and Scarlett being widowed, there were realms unknown.)
For me, that movie’s always been about Anne Baxter’s dramatic smoker’s voice, allure-as-evil, a fancy palace, exotic locale and time, and pretty costumes. And Yul Brynner, who is OSUM and a biscuit.
That was really the cinematic point: wish fulfillment. Ten Commandments and every 1950s biblical/historical epic involving any amount of sand or religiosity (see also They Egyptian, a nonbiblical story but one so seriously Judeo-Christian it actually used sets and cast left over from Ten Commandments, and closed with a fascinating piece of 19th-20th century spiritual theorizing that captivated me at the time) was cartoonishly unrealistic, providing a great deal in the Booming Elocution department, even more in production design joy for the crew, and a curiously contemporary brand of fantasy most people find has aged amusingly in sixty or so years.
And yet, the current crop of setpiece dramatics, nominally Biblical stories, are very much the same. Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings place an emphasis on CGI dramatics, the high-intensity visuals and action born of a generation’s ever more sophisticated video game aesthetics, and a manner of world-building (and, even sixty years on, STILL casting) having little to do with the people of Bronze Age and even pre- or quasi-historical Mesopotamia. The new tellings just as lacking in story as Heston’s bombasity; only the eye-candy has changed and the spectacle delivered via a different state of the arts.
I like a good CGI popcorn flick – give me a Marvel film and I’m there, uncritical, ready to partake and ooh at the gee-whiz. I’m a great, uncritical audience. But.
But. When it comes to Noah and Moses and tales which almost predate themselves, in terms of the cultural significance and enticing hints of ancient life in the Fertile Crescent … what wouldn’t I give for a quiet, intimate film, focusing on imagined *people* more than spectacle and thrill … ? A movie looking at the strange and dark tales of the patriarchs, men (and those glimpsed women, as storied as the men) whose legacy seems to be revered not because they were moral but because they lived at the dawn of a spiritual civilization we carry unto this day.
I’ve learned that this is not necessarily usual – but, from my smallest childhood, the entire contents of those stories were taught to me in Sunday school. The nakedness, the murder and polygamy and incest, the child and human sacrifice. The special, spiritual morality of Abraham, who married his own half-sister, then used her beauty for gain and deceived kings through her, was lost on me and always has been – but, having gotten some age on me, the idea of his being a prophet of G-d intrigues me. We’re all flawed, but all we know of Abraham is his flaws, all but unallayed by the assurance of his peculiar rectitude. The binding of Isaac alone has provoked us intellectually, emotionally, and socially for thousands of years.
At bottom, it’s a queasy thing, really. I was ENTERTAINED by this lurid stuff, this first literature I ever knew – Noah, having a bad relationship with his boys, Lot procreating with his daughters (after having offered them up as sexual sacrifices in Sodom), parent after parent scheming against each other due to favoritism amongst their children. And Jacob, and his favoritism amongst his wives.
I never even got as far as the Midrash, where we are told those wives were *all* sisters, where we elucidate the idol worship bewilderingly present throughout the families (not just households) of the matriarchs and patriarchs. Where the women unnamed take on lives and even speak.
Even for the sources who originally wrote down these traditions, always, there has been *more* …
And yet always less than we seem to come up with – the porcine performances (ironic, all things considered) and splashy visuals, the impressive story*telling* that omits human stories.
Tucked into the annual memories of my childhood, quiet amid the saturated brightness of movies shared every year, and my enduring fascination with Hebrew Biblical films … there is a false memory, one that cannot have happened (indeed, is not remembered at all by my mother), of one movie I watched with my mom one single time. It is the memory of sharing faith and mother-daughter time, one couched in a generation’s depth of warm feelings – one I found, somewhere in my thirties, never happened.
For some reason, I recall it as happening upstairs in the bedroom at my grandmother’s house in Ohio. I was unwell or perhaps just petulant that day, and on my own up there. There’s this strongly affectionate recollection that we watched a movie alone together, that I remembered for years as being called “Ruth and the Bible.” Its actual title, almost certainly, was The Story of Ruth, and – as I read about it today – I see that not only was the lead role played by an Israeli woman, but its reviews praise it in a noticeable way: It was called “refreshingly sincere and restrained” and “commendably unepic” …
Now – one – this makes me highly eager to see this film again (probably to own it, to love it, to name it George – heck, I already renamed it once).
But, two, I am struck by the longing for a Biblical story to be told, to be portrayed, on a quiet, intimate level.
There is not much in the story of Ruth, which could be Blowed Up Real Good by Hollywood, and though there has been a surge in interest in the nature of the love between Ruth and Naomi (lesbianism seems not to have made it into the variety of entertaining sexuality within the Holy Scriptures), this does not beg for special effects, and so the only production-design hope for it would lie in a story of lushly attractive white girls getting their languid on in appealingly exoticized gauzy accoutrements, while Boaz stands by fascinated at this dynamic and perhaps sweatily drops a few grains for the gleaning. Ahem. He may not do this in Bitchin’ Velvet, but one has faith in the resurgent fashion for men in long hair, and that surety in Hollywood, the currently-sellable, pretty and white boy.
It could be done – and it could be done inexpensively. But would it make any money?
One has to wonder. And maybe order the DVD of that movie I affectionately recall sharing with my mom, in a time and a place it could not have happened.
The formative tales, too, could be told with this intriguing closeness, with attention to aspects other than the pyrotechnics of miracle and divinity. Perhaps there is no other audience who would be fascinated to look into a world not peopled by obsessively styled white people, inhabiting a world in which NONE of our social assumptions holds – about family, about marital arrangements, about day-to-day life and the religion and superstition permeating an existence nowhere near so thoughtless and easy as the modern middle-class is today. Perhaps there’s no money in world-building designed to explore, to understand – only production design and gee-whizzery.
Gee, but I’d give a buck to sink down into a movie like that. Would you?
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Unexpected Movies
Last night, for Christmas Eve, as I stayed up far too late and got far too little done far too slowly, I had The Color Purple on through the evening. Thanks to the wonders of luddite technology, I haven't seen this movie in at least twenty years, and I have aged to suit it nicely. When I was younger, my experience of this movie was moored in the inexperience of pain and a great deal of white liberal privilege, and it seemed a very painful story. Now that I'm older, and can recognize the perspective from which I experience the story, it's so much easier to feel and to love the humor in the film. Oh, it got me gooey, and I relished that. I also relished Shug Avery, and the repetitive quirks of Whoopi Goldberg's performance.
When CP came out, she was considered a phenomenon, and the movie got a lot of people talking in hushed voices - then she did a lot of comedies that didn't make people lower their voices, and signed on for a talk show, and we forgot that she'd once been Oscar material. In its odd way, this serves the film, because it lives alone and on its own terms, not just one in a crop of hushed-voice bravura offerings which blur over time. The Color Purple, to be sure, is faded and filtered, but it's not washed out and it's not blurry.
Tonight, more spottily, I've been giving Forrest Gump its first honest chance in twenty years - or, really, the first honest chance I've ever given it. Sometimes, I choose to be willingly emotionally manipulated, and there are parts of this one I just didn't feel like resisting, after a nice day with my mom and stepfather, after a good holiday and on the night before I go back for two more days of work.
Gump was a film I HATED when it came out. It got so much hype (not in hushed voices, but overly-fast-talking-breathy ones) my natural resistance pushed back and I resisted it like I do Susan Sarandon. More to my personal taste, it was too sprawling, too episodic, too inclusive, and everything felt shallow.
Again, with experience and age, I find forgiveness a lot easier. For one things, I've lost some of my ability to rail against trivialities, and for another, I've come to recognize how collecting the right mass of trivialities along a timeline necessarily appeals to a generation of watchers. This doesn't make the movie feel any "deeper" when I watch it, but it does allow me to cherry-pick those signposts I recognize and care about along Forrest's long route, and to let them do their job, which is to take me to familiar places we all gather, as it were. "Ahh, yes - the smiley face advertising guy ..." "Ahh, yes - the soundtracks to the seventies and eighties ..."
The music, of course, is a particularly fiendish route into people's attention and even affection, and that is why this film, hitting so many "I REMEMBER THAT, TOTALLY" buttons, grips its fans by the throat and won't let go. Music is a commanding emotional manipulator, and it's one of the reasons I'm sometimes willing to forgive, as it were, entertainments I don't necessarily admire as a whole, nor perhaps find necessary.
Christmas, of course, is hardly the time for indulging in necessities; emotionally and spiritually, a certain indulgence marks the season (whether, religiously speaking, this is your bag or not is a different post of a different time).
When CP came out, she was considered a phenomenon, and the movie got a lot of people talking in hushed voices - then she did a lot of comedies that didn't make people lower their voices, and signed on for a talk show, and we forgot that she'd once been Oscar material. In its odd way, this serves the film, because it lives alone and on its own terms, not just one in a crop of hushed-voice bravura offerings which blur over time. The Color Purple, to be sure, is faded and filtered, but it's not washed out and it's not blurry.
Tonight, more spottily, I've been giving Forrest Gump its first honest chance in twenty years - or, really, the first honest chance I've ever given it. Sometimes, I choose to be willingly emotionally manipulated, and there are parts of this one I just didn't feel like resisting, after a nice day with my mom and stepfather, after a good holiday and on the night before I go back for two more days of work.
Gump was a film I HATED when it came out. It got so much hype (not in hushed voices, but overly-fast-talking-breathy ones) my natural resistance pushed back and I resisted it like I do Susan Sarandon. More to my personal taste, it was too sprawling, too episodic, too inclusive, and everything felt shallow.
Again, with experience and age, I find forgiveness a lot easier. For one things, I've lost some of my ability to rail against trivialities, and for another, I've come to recognize how collecting the right mass of trivialities along a timeline necessarily appeals to a generation of watchers. This doesn't make the movie feel any "deeper" when I watch it, but it does allow me to cherry-pick those signposts I recognize and care about along Forrest's long route, and to let them do their job, which is to take me to familiar places we all gather, as it were. "Ahh, yes - the smiley face advertising guy ..." "Ahh, yes - the soundtracks to the seventies and eighties ..."
The music, of course, is a particularly fiendish route into people's attention and even affection, and that is why this film, hitting so many "I REMEMBER THAT, TOTALLY" buttons, grips its fans by the throat and won't let go. Music is a commanding emotional manipulator, and it's one of the reasons I'm sometimes willing to forgive, as it were, entertainments I don't necessarily admire as a whole, nor perhaps find necessary.
Christmas, of course, is hardly the time for indulging in necessities; emotionally and spiritually, a certain indulgence marks the season (whether, religiously speaking, this is your bag or not is a different post of a different time).
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Borgias
I actually made attempts to watch this, but it was for me so bad as to be alienating. This review misses some of the worst production/performance/direction issues in favor of being drop-dead hilarious, but it's al*most* enough to make me wish I had someone else to watch it with if only to make fun of the series. Not really. It was just too bad to try. The writing dismissing it is in fact far too good for it. Still - worth a read.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Biblical Baddies - Dogs and Catties
My pets are evil little boogers, frankly. On a biblical scale, even.
Penelope and Gossamer have this tag-team act they have been working out together almost since day one together. Gossy knocks something down. Penny destroys it. They KILLED a really cool ring I had, custom made from a vintage old clip rhinestone earring mounted on a shank. I left it on the counter, Gossy thought it was a toy, Penny thought it was a snack. Bat, bat, BOOM, *nom nom nom* delicious plastic and rhinestones ...
Right little nimrods, my fur-bearing ones.
This morning, they were both downstairs and I was unnerved a little about Penelope being unsupervised, but she's come so far so fast I didn't chase 'em down. Turns out, Goss knocked down two of my four Gala apples and Penny was gnawing and batting them around all over the house. As messes go, not at all bad actually. But I lost my snacks! And one apple (I actually HAD 4) remains unaccounted for ...
I'm going to start calling Gossy "Eve".
And people thought GOSSAMER was a girly name.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Gossy
Kitty is fascinated by New Wave. After this shot he tried to eat the laptop. (The screen still is from Visage, "Fade to Grey")
Gnawing good musical fun!
Meanwhile, Pen lies on her sweet, clean blankie under her beloved end table, all cozy and cute - getting revenge on me for her bath today by farting up a storm.
Gnawing good musical fun!
 |
| Tum Pluckered Out from excitement |
Meanwhile, Pen lies on her sweet, clean blankie under her beloved end table, all cozy and cute - getting revenge on me for her bath today by farting up a storm.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Jaw-Dropping ... Entertainment
Staying home today for what was planned to be R&R time off, I've felt headachey and dizzy, and not even really worked on the revisions I should be doing in the absence of doing anything else.
I nearly squee'd when Jimmy Doohan cropped up in his guest run at TNG (LOVE Jimmy Doohan), then after that I caught Frank Langella on DS9. An accident of my multi-track streaming habits, but such a lovely one.
For my early evening's entertainment, we've moved on to a little something called "Angel". Not sure how I ran across it - probably an algorithm at Netflix - it is a period piece, after all.
As satires go, it's interesting. As romance goes, it's execrable and risible, of course. As a story about a WRITER goes ... it's autoerotic in the extreme. Mary Sue hates this girl, for being too successful, and having too self-satisfied a pouty-pouty-pout-mouthed pout. It's the story-of-a-writer aspect which actually informed my watching, and in fact made it possible for me to watch at all.
This film goes well beyond escapist fantasy and into delirium. The costumes, the color schemes and saturation, the hilarious rear projections, the giddy Victorian homoerotic overtones, the ostentatiously silly plot and characters. The astonishing cleavage. The appallingly bad climactic smooch-age. The birds, the cats, the wolf hound(s).
For your histfic lover, it's almost an antidote to those cliches and must-haves so many productions, good and bad, come equipped with (did I mention the costumes, the dreamy color?). It's odd, though - as candy-coated as so much of it is in terms of production, the end result isn't actually all that funny. Not everyone involved, perhaps, knew it was a satire. You spend the first twenty minutes thinking, "Surely this is a joke" - not "Oh this is a good joke!" There's fun in the honeymoon montage, and the early-70s-sitcom "oh your pet died" switcharoonie, but there is a certain cognitive dissonance in those facets which are actually earnest.
Watch this one for the hilarity of the depiction of the publishing industry. Watch it for the eye candy. Watch it with someone, or a whole group of writers (SBC - we should really have movie night!)
(As a side note - right to the end, the extent to which this resembles "Lillie", Francesca Annis' portrayal of The Jersey Lily is pretty amazing. Sadly, no Peter Egan here though. I love Peter Egan.
I nearly squee'd when Jimmy Doohan cropped up in his guest run at TNG (LOVE Jimmy Doohan), then after that I caught Frank Langella on DS9. An accident of my multi-track streaming habits, but such a lovely one.
For my early evening's entertainment, we've moved on to a little something called "Angel". Not sure how I ran across it - probably an algorithm at Netflix - it is a period piece, after all.
As satires go, it's interesting. As romance goes, it's execrable and risible, of course. As a story about a WRITER goes ... it's autoerotic in the extreme. Mary Sue hates this girl, for being too successful, and having too self-satisfied a pouty-pouty-pout-mouthed pout. It's the story-of-a-writer aspect which actually informed my watching, and in fact made it possible for me to watch at all.
This film goes well beyond escapist fantasy and into delirium. The costumes, the color schemes and saturation, the hilarious rear projections, the giddy Victorian homoerotic overtones, the ostentatiously silly plot and characters. The astonishing cleavage. The appallingly bad climactic smooch-age. The birds, the cats, the wolf hound(s).
For your histfic lover, it's almost an antidote to those cliches and must-haves so many productions, good and bad, come equipped with (did I mention the costumes, the dreamy color?). It's odd, though - as candy-coated as so much of it is in terms of production, the end result isn't actually all that funny. Not everyone involved, perhaps, knew it was a satire. You spend the first twenty minutes thinking, "Surely this is a joke" - not "Oh this is a good joke!" There's fun in the honeymoon montage, and the early-70s-sitcom "oh your pet died" switcharoonie, but there is a certain cognitive dissonance in those facets which are actually earnest.
Watch this one for the hilarity of the depiction of the publishing industry. Watch it for the eye candy. Watch it with someone, or a whole group of writers (SBC - we should really have movie night!)
(As a side note - right to the end, the extent to which this resembles "Lillie", Francesca Annis' portrayal of The Jersey Lily is pretty amazing. Sadly, no Peter Egan here though. I love Peter Egan.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Speaking of Historical Myths
One of my "FAVORITE" movies ... Ugh. As if Mel Gibson weren't bad enough - bray-fart. Deliver me, always, from that flick.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Music, Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, and My (Lack of) Cool
A friend and I got in a chat about music recently, and it illustrates about me one of those "I contain multitudes" aspects which I cultivate and love for keeping me from sinking into (pop-/cultural) stagnation, but of which I tend not to make a very public point. I tend to be extremely sensitive to my state of privilege and the extent to which moving outside its generally-defined boundaries is less a mark of nonconformity or sensitivity, and more a mark of cultural appropriation. So, while I sometimes enjoy surprising people by knowing diddly-squat about those things outside my prescribed limits (and knowing nothing about, say, Josh Grobin and many of those things I am supposed to give a crap about), I never ever claim ownership nor expertise on art, and particularly music, especially that born of those lacking the level of entitlement my pigmentation and luck confer on me.
Friend: i actually rediscovered one very good song recently
Friend: not sure if you would like it though
D: ohh what?
D: Unless it's greasy contemporary country I'm probably in
D: :-D
Friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEHTTFOwsDs
Friend: its a hip hop song, but done with piano
Friend: and its more moving than most
Friend: its brings most people to tears or goosbumps
D: I love hip hop. And rap.
D: It's a little sad, but I love Ice T and Snoop
Friend: lol
Friend: not really sad there, more funny
D: well it might make THEM sad!
D: :-)
Friend: lol
D: Nas is a good one for giving the occasional emotional goosebump too
Friend: oh yeah he is
D: That is one SMART man
D: Who is this? I'm not recognizing
Friend: group by the name of atmosphere
D: very nice
Friend: he does a number of soulful songs
D: His voice is sharp
D: A lot of hip hop has become so produced its essence is lost
Friend: which is why i hunt down the good ones
Friend: k'naan is also a good one
D: but you go back and listen to OLD scool - Rakim, or some of the guys like Nas who eschew new production and glitz
D: it can really get you
D: Rakim is dizzying.
Friend: need to look him up
D: Definitely
D: "Lyrics of Fury" will not lull you or feel beautiful but I think it's probably elementally Rakim
D: he's failry early - and you can hear the forms which have since been used and debased
D: It's perhaps a bit odd for me as a middle-aged, privileged white woman to act like I know anything, but when I really started listening I also did some reading as well because I wanted more than just to graze the edges.
D: "It Was a Good Day" is a hair-raising song whose popularity sometimes obscures its power I think. Coolio has done the same to himself. He has serious talent but his hooks are so infectious you can miss it.
At the end of the day, it's all very self-congratulatory for a woman like me to preen about ... not precisely being a woman like me ... but it doesn't make me something *else* in any honest sense. The culture of rap and hip hop aren't the fashion accessory some have succeeded in making out of it, and I don't want to be the insufferable dilettante accessorizing with cred I cannot legitimately earn.
So I like what I like. Sometimes, I make a point of learning a little bit about it, out of respect and interest (this moves far beyond music; as a history and research geek, I've studied everything from the art and histopry of sari, to 19th-century jewelry, to the history of Catholicism in an effort to understand different things). But usually, I just like what I like. The Ices T and Cube can do with that what they like, which would probably be ignoring nits like me. But I hope it legitimizes me, if not as a member of something I'm not, then at least as a consumer - and a member of the *whole* world I do live in.
Friend: i actually rediscovered one very good song recently
Friend: not sure if you would like it though
D: ohh what?
D: Unless it's greasy contemporary country I'm probably in
D: :-D
Friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEHTTFOwsDs
Friend: its a hip hop song, but done with piano
Friend: and its more moving than most
Friend: its brings most people to tears or goosbumps
D: I love hip hop. And rap.
D: It's a little sad, but I love Ice T and Snoop
Friend: lol
Friend: not really sad there, more funny
D: well it might make THEM sad!
D: :-)
Friend: lol
D: Nas is a good one for giving the occasional emotional goosebump too
Friend: oh yeah he is
D: That is one SMART man
D: Who is this? I'm not recognizing
Friend: group by the name of atmosphere
D: very nice
Friend: he does a number of soulful songs
D: His voice is sharp
D: A lot of hip hop has become so produced its essence is lost
Friend: which is why i hunt down the good ones
Friend: k'naan is also a good one
D: but you go back and listen to OLD scool - Rakim, or some of the guys like Nas who eschew new production and glitz
D: it can really get you
D: Rakim is dizzying.
Friend: need to look him up
D: Definitely
D: "Lyrics of Fury" will not lull you or feel beautiful but I think it's probably elementally Rakim
D: he's failry early - and you can hear the forms which have since been used and debased
D: It's perhaps a bit odd for me as a middle-aged, privileged white woman to act like I know anything, but when I really started listening I also did some reading as well because I wanted more than just to graze the edges.
D: "It Was a Good Day" is a hair-raising song whose popularity sometimes obscures its power I think. Coolio has done the same to himself. He has serious talent but his hooks are so infectious you can miss it.
At the end of the day, it's all very self-congratulatory for a woman like me to preen about ... not precisely being a woman like me ... but it doesn't make me something *else* in any honest sense. The culture of rap and hip hop aren't the fashion accessory some have succeeded in making out of it, and I don't want to be the insufferable dilettante accessorizing with cred I cannot legitimately earn.
So I like what I like. Sometimes, I make a point of learning a little bit about it, out of respect and interest (this moves far beyond music; as a history and research geek, I've studied everything from the art and histopry of sari, to 19th-century jewelry, to the history of Catholicism in an effort to understand different things). But usually, I just like what I like. The Ices T and Cube can do with that what they like, which would probably be ignoring nits like me. But I hope it legitimizes me, if not as a member of something I'm not, then at least as a consumer - and a member of the *whole* world I do live in.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Ancient Horns
Monday, May 28, 2012
In Honor of Beer
Beer has NEVER been my drink, and never will be - yet I admit a certain fascination with its history. If you want to hear something about the stuff before it was canned and cold, take a spin and give it 43 minutes or so. "How Beer Saved the World."
Beer even gave us writing ... so it says. So I can be grateful for that. (Feel free to assume my indulgently skeptical *eyebrow* here.)
Beer even gave us writing ... so it says. So I can be grateful for that. (Feel free to assume my indulgently skeptical *eyebrow* here.)
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