Here I sit, consumed with guilt, since I have not blogged in a whole week! I missed my weekly movie week date - not from lack of movies (I should be commenting on Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada [a very interesting movie, though one that I find it hard to write about without starting at the end; the reason is that it starts out looking like one kind of movie, and then somewhere in the middle becomes a different kind of movie - the real story of the film bercomes something different than you thought it was going to be. That should not be a surprise - it was written by Guillermo Arriaga, who also wrote Alejandro Inarritu's first two films (3 actually, since he's written Babel as well), which also shift meaning midstream, as well as - other things in common with this one. In fact, these three films could make a fine exhibit for the Schreiber theory - if not that the writer is more important than the director (since Jones and Inarritu have their own identities), certainly that writers have personalities that can be as strong as any director.] - or adding to my comments on L'Intrus, which I saw again [you can change "appears to be a masterpiece" to "is a masterpiece" - it didn't so much hold up to a second viewing as demand a third... but I think it is gone now.]... I also saw the new Harry Potter film, which was a reasonable diversion, but one in which the absurdity of the plotting in this book (in all the books) is particularly exposed to the light), but from sheer distraction and indolence. (You probably had forgotten that that was a parenthesis! ha! fooled you!)
I did not choose to blog my plumbing issues - clogged drains and all that. Because frankly those things would shatter the illusion that I live in a world of pure Thought and Contemplation of the Good and the Beautiful, placing me in the terrible mundane world of backed up pipes and soap scum. We wouldn't want that. We'll skip a discussion of what I ate for supper for the same reason.
So what is left? Danish Cartoons? (So very last week.) What is there to say? 1) the original stunt looks like a shameless provocation, worthy of the college republicans. 2) The protests are an excuse for various factions to rile up support for themselves and distract religious-minded dissidents from domestic politics. (See Juan Cole's piece in Salon.) It's something of a going trick - to direct Islamic anger away from the tyranny and corruption of Islamic governments by raving against Israel or the evil westerners. It comes of rather like an update ofMarx - religion is less the opiate of the masses than the crystal meth of the masses.
What else? Vanity Fair maybe? We got naked girls! We got a guy in a suit! We got Hollywood in a nutshell - girls to be looked at, men to look. The Guardian's blog rather neatly skewers the awful thing:
We can debate the semiotics of soft-core titillation until the cows come home. That doesn't alter the immediate, unedifying spectacle of a pair of chalky, corpse-like creatures being mauled by their "artistic director". Apparently there is still more of this necrophilia-chic inside the magazine, with one photo showing Angelina Jolie in a bath-tub. Perhaps she will be depicted as bloated, bedraggled and as white as a fish's belly, like that ghost-woman in The Shining.
There's actually not much to debate about the semiotics of that shot: a clothed man leering over 2 naked women who appear to have been coated in flour - who sit and lay there motionless, nude, subservient, staring at the camaera, while he leans over them, looking at them.... Has the principal of the male gaze - women as the object of the look, men as the bearer of the look - women as objects (looking very statue or doll-like here), men as subjects - ever been so clearly portrayed? And lest anyone miss the point - the big title attached to this bit of cheesy cheesecake is, "Tom For'd Hollywood." They belong to him! God.
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