A Pillow for Your Thoughts

Since this site is dedicated in part to illuminating ideas and work by, for and about women, I thought I might shed some light on a writer who was a sharp and unapologetic chronicler during an enlightened era of art, literature and culture.

Foreshadowing Candace Bushnell and a wealth of web-loggers (bloggers), Sei Shonagon (Sei) was a court lady to Empress Sadako of Japan during the Heian period which lasted from 794-1885. Sei was a prolific chronicler of everyday life. These observances constitute The Pillow Book, which conceptually inspired a film by Peter Greenaway.

Sei’s writings are composed of lists of such wonderful subjects as Hateful Things, which today might be an interesting companion to Martha Stewart’s “good things,” bleh. I kid. I love Martha. In this section she writes of lovers and morning afters, bad manners and ill-fitting attire. This passage is endlessly quotable so I’ve selected a few that inspired in myself a particularly slow, ongoing head-nod of recognition, ‘you said it grrrrl.’

An admirer has come on a clandestine visit, but a dog catches sight of him and starts barking. One feels like killing the beast.

A certain gentleman whom one does not want to see visits one at home or in the Palace, and one pretends to be asleep. But a maid comes to tell one and shakes one awake, with a look on her face that says, “What a sleepyhead!” Very hateful.

One is in the middle of a story when someone butts in and tries to show that he is the only clever person in the room. Such a person is hateful, and so, indeed, is anyone, child or adult, who tries to push himself forward.

The sound of dogs when they bark for a long time in chorus is ominous and hateful.

And finally, my favorite,

Sometimes one greatly dislikes a person for no particular reason-and then that person goes and does something hateful.

“The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.”

-Louise Brooks

Welcome to the Machine

In the case of film people v. hd people, I fall firmly on the filmic side of the divide. The richness, the texture of image produced by a crappy super 16 camera is unmatched by this slick futuristic technology!

Watch and compare the trailers for THE EXILES and THE MIDNIGHT KISS. Both are low budget, black and white. They are separated by about forty years but each is set in Los Angeles. The trailers show similar shots from atop Mulholland Drive and downtown. I challenge anyone to a thumb war who claims THE MIDNIGHT KISS looks and feels better.

Perhaps the advent of digital technology is democratizing, but is that really a good thing? Film advances cinematic Darwinism. It is too expensive and fragile and temperamental for everyone to use. I hear progress is being made, new lenses et all that allow a filmmaker to mimic the look of film on HD. Here’s hoping that the soulfulness film can capture may be rendered unto HI DEF.

Full of Secrets

What is it about black bobs and bangs that the hairstyle reappears continually in films, crowning the think tanks of spirited characters? I submit for evidence the following images:

The original and our favorite, Louise Brooks. Still inspiring citizen gals to chop it off.

Chantal Goya. Ye-Ye chanteuse and star of Masculin, Feminin. she. is. so. cute.

Audrey Hepburn in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Curly-cue bob. Perfect for luncheon with Gary Cooper.

The Grease 2 cheerleader twins. Annoying? Yes, but those kicky bowl cuts scream 'don't mess.'

The Mrs. Mia Wallace. Knows how to twist.

Horror Heroine DEUX

In the lexicon of horror films that dot the storied galaxy of this film industry, the presence of positive female imagery is almost nil. In one way or another, either as victim or perpetrator, the inarguable traits that characterize females and femininity are used to incite fear, revulsion and carnal bloodshed in audiences. The audiences for horror films (and any unqualifiedly chick flick) have always been assumed by marketing managers to consist of males, age 18-34. These are films made by men, for men, at women’s expense; THEY WERE (are) EXPENDABLE.

FAT GIRL, French title A Mon Soeur, by director Catherine Breillat is as close an approximation of a feminist horror film to be conceived to date. It pointedly refutes the feminist film theory put forth by Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” that determined a Lacan/Freudian interpretation domination of film criticism since its publication in 1975. The persistent reliance on this particular psychology might be viewed as flawed in itself since feminist film theory has been evolving for nearly forty years. Is it still necessary or even feminist to interpret every film in this way? A system that is reliant on a male theory that assumes films inherently possess a male gaze? As women, a minority majority, is this viewpoint ingrained or has it been indoctrinated? Regardless of its relevancy it is necessary to use this theory to posit FAT GIRL as a feminist horror film because it is the widely regarded standard bearer of feminist criticism.

FAT GIRL would not typically be categorized into the horror genre. Superficially it might be considered a coming of age drama yet, typical of Breillat, it revels in raw depictions of female sexual declaration and perversion. Twelve year old Anais lolls her portly visage about the gray seascapes at her family’s beach house while observing the gradual corruption of her lustful yet innocent older sister Elena. Anais’s physicality is instrumental to the film’s classification as a feminist horror film. She is for most of the film, wholly asexualized. Too young to be respectably objectified, too overweight to be idealized, too naive with which to be identifiable, the male gaze has no outlet on which to project itself. Elena serves as the representative of a traditional horror film victim: classically beautiful, promiscuous, and egotistical. Men want to be her and do her but because she is female, this simultaneous identification/objectification is also threatening. She thus must be destroyed.

This resolution manifests with the introduction of the character Fernando, a law student who’s additional purpose seems to be to exacerbate the mutual contempt residing beneath the surface of sisters’ relationship. Fernando sees the girls for nothing but their sexuality, Elena, and lack thereof, Anais. Anais bears witness to the her sister’s deflowering and all it’s twisted logic and anatomical tug-of-war power-plays.

photo courtesy of The Schlindz

She is now the voyeur. She has overtaken, or taken back?, the gaze from the presumptive male. We the audience must see from this moment on the events of the film through her eyes. Because she is disgusted and rendered sagacious by this scene of corruption, we may now admire and thus identify with her as a powerful character/heroine.

The stage is set, rockets boosted, for a third installment of this venture into FAT GIRL’s subversive charms. For now, let’s all go see THE LAST MISTRESS, the most recent film by Catherine Breillat, in theaters now.

Oh, My Lady Horror Film

Photo courtesy of The Schlindz

Last night over a bottle of Gewurztraminer I got to thinking. Every thought I had was genius. oh how I esteem you Wine, you oily agent of loquacious ramblings. Nonetheless, I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to create a horror film that is specifically female.

Horror is a difficult genre to crack and not end up on the misogynist side of the celluloid, as horror films are nearly universally anti-female. Woman as victim is usually the dictate, however when cast as the perpetrator the crimes often play off of male fears about women. For instance, CARRIE, a horror classic, might seem to be making a feminist statement with the character’s vengeful rath against her tormentors. However if we take a closer look we can see that Carrie’s ‘offenses’ are actually significant markers in female maturation. These are events that men do not experience and thus do not understand, for example: menstruation, the mental castigation among girl peer groups, the complex love/hate dynamic existent between mothers and daughters, and finally, the archetypal, subordinate role-bearer in traditional religious infrastructures.

The infamous shower scene in which Carrie gets her first period is the turning point in the film at which the audience now recognizes her as a freak, disgusting, sinful. This male fear of menstruation is resolved as this scene is echoed in the climax of the film. Soaked in blood, Carrie is made responsible for her own destruction. How does the joke go? I don’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn’t die?

This reading of the film is filtered through the now three decades old theory of feminine criticism. Centered around Freudian concepts of male identification, the male gaze, it is difficult to find a film that subverts the theory.

Well guess what I found. FAT GIRL (A Mon Soeur).

A bientot mes amies.

Pass the Bacardi

In honor of the recent Independence Day holiday, I bequeath unto you WE WERE STRANGERS, a lesser seen film from the oeuvre of John Huston.

WE WERE STRANGERS takes place during the Cuban political uprising of 1933 in which (dictator) Gerardo Machado was usurped by the forces of the Cuban people. The United States kept rather mum on the matter, seeing as the government had a sweet contract that allowed them to operate a massive military base on the island, among other favorable measures. The base was and is located on Guantanamo Bay.

So China Valdès (the sublime and, I guess, Asian-y Jennifer Jones) is the sister of an assassinated revolutionary law student. She decides to take up the cause by joining forces with Cuban ex-pat Tony, a hardened tough from the streets of Spanish Harlem, as he molds together an ambitious plot to lure every major politico in power into a cemetery so he can promptly blow them away. Fleshed out by a poetic melange of supporting revolutionaries the film is tense, suspenseful and poignant. Even if the pacing is a tad labored, Huston and cinematographer Russell Metty have provided us with gorgeous, slightly deviant images. The smothering confinement of the group’s hideout is reconciled with certain shots that are so epic they might have been spliced from TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.

I especially appreciated the quiet tone of dissidence in this film. It speaks of it’s time, bravely produced during the McCarthy era, and for us now; a country trapped in a flailing legacy of nation-building.

Salud!

Cuba Libre: 2 oz. Light Rum, juice of 1/2 a lime, Coca-Cola. Pour lime juice into a highball glass over ice cubes. Add rum, fill with cola, stir, and serve.

Lollygagging

In the meantime . . . Here’s a scene with the terrifying reform school mistress from DIARY OF A LOST GIRL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.” 

                                                                       -James Agee

Zinone is NOT a Vegetable

Whenever I hear the name Stephanie Zinone, I think of zucchini. The more logical phonetic association would be Zamboni.

Stephanie Zinone does not, of coarse, have anything to do with zucchini save for their slender figures, ’snappy’ attitudes, boring counterparts (Sandy, cucumbers) . . . wait a minute!

For those of you unfamiliar with Stephanie Zinone, Steph, she’s the main female protagonist in one of the greatest, least heralded films ever, EVER, made. GREASE 2.

To a certain type of young girl, this movie easily surpasses it’s predecessor. You see, GREASE 2 is for the girl who will someday walk that thin line between good and bad, rules or no rules, taste and tack. Actually no, she always has taste. She just doesn’t want to look like a cupcake. She likes to wear all black like one of the boys, just as long as the look is fitted, and there are ankle booties involved. She’s “lookin for a dream on a mean machine, with hell in his eyes.” Most importantly, she does not change for a dude, a greaser, the leader of the T-Birds. Sandy changed. She started smoking, got PERMED!, basically threw away her whole credo (goodie-goodie) for a wuss of a boy, who wouldn’t even acknowledge that what they’d shared at the beach was special, just to look cool in front of his friends at the pep rally!

All Steph wants is a guy as cool as herself. Though I’m a tad conflicted about Maxwell Caulfield (he’s more believable as Rex Manning in EMPIRE RECORDS) as a legitimate Cool Rider, the character Michael Carrington is actually a great guy. He’s intelligent, tutoring Steph on the subtleties of Hamlet, and is really sweet when she says something totally dumb (but that’s only because she’s so distracted by the mystery bike rider that keeps showing up). He’s hardworking, writing all those papers for the T-Birds. He plays the piano, builds his own bike, runs track, and he can jump!

I realized while watching this movie on television up in a cabin, in a forest in Guerneville, CA, that together with Regina from NIGHT OF THE COMET, Steph provided me with my earliest female style influences. Not just style as in clothes, though I have been aiming to achieve both of their signature looks since 1984, but in attitude and confidence, and fabulous hair. Full Disclosure: from 1999-2001 my hair more accurately resembled that of Robert Plant.

This may be the first of many posts on GREASE 2. I’ve only just begun to plunge this overflowing toilet. Thanks be to The Schlindz for inspiring this venture. Thank you to the folks as well, for allowing me to spend eighty-four dollars on a Betamax copy of GREASE 2 when I was four years old. Keep up the good work.