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fibula-rasa · 2 months ago

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Cosplay the Classics: Nazimova in Salomé (1922)—Part 2

My cosplay of Nazimova as Salomé

As the studio system emerged in the American film industry at the start of the 1920s, many of the biggest stars in Hollywood chose independence. Alla Nazimova, an import from the stage, was one of them. In 1922, she made a series of professional and creative decisions that would completely change the trajectory of her career.

In part one of CtC: Nazimova in Salomé, I described how Nazimova’s independent productions were shaped in response to trends and ideas surrounding young/independent womanhood in America after World War I and the influenza pandemic. Here in part two, I’ll fit these productions, A Doll’s House and Salomé, into the broader context of the big-money business of film becoming legitimate in America.

While the full essay and photo set are available below the jump, you may find it easier to read (formatting-wise) on the wordpress site. Either way, I hope you enjoy the read! Oh and Happy Bi Visibility Day to all those who celebrate!

My cosplay of Nazimova as Salomé

Artists United? Allied Artists and the Release of Salomé

When Nazimova made her screen debut in War Brides (1916), the American film industry was undergoing a series of formative changes. Southern California became the center of professional filmmaking in the US—fleeing New Jersey (where War Brides was filmed) largely because of Thomas Edison’s attempts to monopolize the business. Preferences of audiences and exhibitors shifted away from one and two-reel films and towards feature-length films. The Star System emerged in full force. Nazimova soon relocated to Hollywood, signed a contract with Metro, and reaped the benefits of this boom period for American film artists.

The focus on feature-film production and the marketing of films based on the reputations of specific filmmakers or stars required a greater initial outlay of resources—time, money, and labor. But, it also paid dividends—the industry quickly grew into a big-money business. The underlying implication of that is that a larger share of the profits were shifted from the people doing the creating (artists and technicians) and towards other figures (capitalists). In practice, this also meant film companies would become eligible for listing on the stock exchange and could secure funding from banks and financial institutions, both of which were rare or impossible before the mid-1920s. The major players on the business end of production, distribution, and exhibition, therefore, wanted to consolidate their power and reduce the power and influence of the filmmakers.

To illustrate how momentous this handful of years was in the history of the US film industry, allow me to highlight a few key events. Will Hayes’ office was set up in 1922 to make official Hollywood’s commitment to self-censorship. Eastman Kodak introduced 16 mm film in 1923, a move which, while making filmmaking more accessible and affordable, also widened and formalized the division between the professional industry and amateur filmmaking. Dudley Murphy’s “visual symphony” Danse Macabre[1] was released in 1922—considered America’s first avant-garde film. Nazimova’s Salomé was considered America’s first art film from its initial release in 1923. That these labels were deemed relevant in this period illustrates the line being drawn between those films and film as a conventional, commercial product. The concept of art cinemas in the US was first proposed in 1922 spurring on the Little Cinema movement later in the decade.

from Danse Macabre

from Salomé

As any industry matures, both the roles within it and its output become more starkly delineated. That is to say that, as the US industry began differentiating between art/avant-garde/experimental film and commercial film, the jobs within professional filmmaking also became more firmly defined. Filmmaking has always been a collaborative art, but in the period prior to the 1920s, it was common for people in film to do a little of everything. As a result, what sparse credits made it onto the final film didn’t necessarily reflect all of the work that was done. To illustrate this using Nazimova,[2] at Metro, she had her own production unit under the Metro umbrella. While her films were “Nazimova Productions,” she didn’t have full creative control of her films. However, Nazimova did choose her own projects, develop said projects, and contribute to their writing, directing, and editing. When those films were released, aside from the “Nazimova Productions” banner, her only credit would usually be for her acting. Despite that impressive level of creative power, the studio still had the ultimate say on whether a film got made, and how it would be released. As studios grew and tightened control of their productions, this looser filmmaking style became much less common.

The structure of the industry at this time was roughly tripartite—production, distribution, and exhibition. Generally speaking, the way studio-made films traveled from studio to theatre—before full vertical integration—was that the production company would make available a slate of films of different scales. (Bigger productions with bigger names attached would have a special designation and come with higher rental fees.) Famous Players-Lasky was the biggest production house at the time, though other studios, like Metro, were quickly catching up. Distribution companies would then place this slate of films on regional exchanges, centered in the biggest cities in a given region. Exhibitors (this could be owners of chains like Loew’s in the Midwest and Northeast, the Saengers around the gulf coast, or individual theatre owners) could then rent films through their local exchanges. (This was an ever-shifting industry, so this process was not true for every single film. This is only meant as a quick overview of the system.) As the 1920s wore on, exhibitors began entering the production arena and producers further merged with distribution companies and exhibition chains. Merger-mania was the rule of the day.

My cosplay of Nazimova as Salomé

As merger upon merger took place and a handful of businessmen tried to monopolize the industry, American filmmakers responded by championing the artistic legitimacy of filmmaking in the US. Leading this charge were the very filmmakers on whose backs the big business of film had been built. As noted in Tino T. Balio’s expansive history of United Artists, The Company Built by the Stars:

…Richard A. Rowland, president of Metro Pictures, proclaimed that ‘motion pictures must cease to be a game and become a business.’ What he wanted was to supplant the star system, which forced companies to compete for big names and pay out-of-this-world salaries for their services. Metro, he said, would thenceforth decline from ‘competitive bidding for billion-dollar stars’ and devote its energies to making big pictures based on ‘play value and excellence of production.’”

It’s notable for us that these ideas were espoused by Rowland, head of the studio where Nazimova was currently one of those “billion-dollar stars.” (“Billion-dollar” is obviously a massive overstatement.) It was a precarious time for any filmmaker who cared about the quality and artistry of their work. It was this environment that birthed United Artists, a new production company built around the prestige and reputation of its filmmakers, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith. As the statement announcing the formation of UA detailed:

“We also think that this step is positively and absolutely necessary to protect the great motion picture public from threatening combinations and trusts that would force upon them mediocre productions and machine-made entertainment.”

It’s an accurate assessment of industry trends at the time. If the desired product is a high-quality feature-length film, production is necessarily more expensive. As the UA statement intimates, monopolizing the entire industry and sacrificing quality for quantity to fill the exchanges and theatrical bills was the studio heads’ solution to rising costs. Not a great signal for filmmaking as art in America.

My cosplay of Nazimova as Salomé

So, Nazimova was in good company when she chose to go independent, believing in film as art and that American moviegoers deserved better than derivative, studio-conceived films. Some of the other artists who went independent included George Fitzmaurice (one of the most revered directors of the silent era, though most of his films are now sadly lost), Charles Ray, Max Linder, Norma Talmadge (in alliance with Sam Goldwyn), and Ferdinand Pinney Earle (whose massive mostly-lost artistic experiment Omar Khayyam, I profiled in LBnF). If these filmmakers shared the motivation of UA to create higher-calibre productions, where would the money come from? For Nazimova, the answer was her own bank account.

In 1922, Nazimova’s final film for Metro, Camille (1921), was still circulating widely due to the rising popularity of her co-star, Rudolph Valentino, after the release of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Sheik (1921). While Nazimova had the funds to complete A Doll’s House and Salomé, there was no sure bet for the films’ releases. Nazimova’s initial concept for her independent productions was the “repertoire” film. This scheme would have seen A Doll’s House released as a shorter film with Salomé as a feature and the two could be rented as a package by exhibitors. It was a creative response to growing tensions between producers and exhibitors over a practice called block booking. Block booking was a strategy studios employed to leverage the Star System to its fullest. They would take the most in-demand films associated with the biggest drawing stars and only make them available in a package deal with productions that were perceived as less marketable. Nazimova was aware that her films at Metro had been rented this way (as the special feature). It’s not completely clear from my research if the decision to release Salomé and A Doll’s House as two features was creative, practical, or a combination of the two. The “repertoire” concept may not have gone according to plan, but it was an early indication that Nazimova was well-informed of the nuances of distribution and exhibition.

Nazimova’s need for proper distribution was met by United Artists’ distribution subsidiary, Allied Artists. United Artists’ first few years were a struggle. Fairbanks, Pickford, and Griffith[3] needed significant time and money to finish the high-quality productions that they promised and Allied was their solution. This distribution arm would release the work of other independent talent using the same exchanges as UA, but under a different banner. Though Allied used UA’s exchanges for distribution, the subsidiary had its own staff. Allied having different branding would also protect the prestige of the UA name. (An unkind, but not entirely inaccurate summary: the money your work brings in is good enough for us, but your work is not.) Allied would have a full release slate to generate the revenue that UA needed to remain in operation.

Nazimova was one of the filmmakers who signed a distribution deal with Allied and had reason to regret it—though she and Charles Bryant didn’t openly rag on UA/Allied.[4] Notably, Mack Sennett had arranged the release of Suzanna (1923) through Allied and was vocal about the company bungling its release. Differences over distribution and exhibition would also lead to Griffith’s exit from the company and a major rift between Chaplin and Pickford-Fairbanks. After 1923, Allied reduced its operation, at least in part because of the bad reputation they were garnering with other filmmakers. Despite numerous independents losing money on productions released through Allied, by 1923, Allied had netted UA 51 million dollars in revenue!

Trade ad for Salomé from Motion Picture News, 10 March 1923

The questionable deals that these independent filmmakers received with Allied are often mentioned in discourse about the period, but very, very rarely does anyone offer details of what Allied’s inadequate distribution looked like. Using the information available to me via Lantern, I collected and analyzed data regarding the release and exhibition of Nazimova’s final two Metro films and both of her Allied films.[5] Looking at the trade publications Exhibitor’s Trade Review, Moving Picture World, Motion Picture News, and Exhibitors Herald, I categorized every item I found about the release or exhibition of Billions (1920),[6] Camille, A Doll’s House, and Salomé. The “release” items are primarily advertisements, reviews, and news items about release dates or pre-release screenings. The number of these items for all four films were comparable.

The items in the “exhibition” category, however, reveal a marked difference between the Metro and Allied releases. This category includes items like first-run theatre listings, exhibitor feedback, and advertising advice for theatre owners. Only counting exhibition items from the first two years (24 months) from the initial release of each film, Billions and Camille had twice as many items as A Doll’s House and Salomé!

While this isn’t necessarily hard data on how many theatres ran each film, it is a rough indicator of how well the films circulated. This data suggests that neither A Doll’s House or Salomé had distribution comparable to the Metro films. In order to compensate for the Rudy factor—Valentino’s major rise to stardom in 1921—which could have affected Camille’s numbers in a big way, I included Billions as well. Billions was sold as a special (a bigger production with premium rental fees) on Nazimova’s name alone. It was not especially well received. Exhibitors/theatre owners had mixed feelings on the film because Nazimova’s previous film, Madame Peacock (1920), had underperformed. Many exhibitors viewed Billions as an improvement, though it still did not meet their perception of Nazimova’s standard of quality. Despite that, Billions had 76 exhibition-related items across its first 24 months of availability to Camille’s 80.

To get a little deeper into this data, I wanted to see how the feedback from exhibitors and theatre owners compared. I broke down the exhibitor feedback for each film as positive, middling, or negative based on how the exhibitors assessed audience response and/or box office receipts. (I discounted feedback that only reflected theatre owners’ own personal assessment of the films without mention of their patrons or receipts.) Positive feedback could be good reception and/or good receipts, middling suggests only average business and no noteworthy reception, and negative indicates poor response and/or poor ticket sales. Since there are so many more items about Camille and Billions than A Doll’s House and Salomé, I compared ratios as an indicator of exhibitor satisfaction. The results were truly surprising.

Theatre owners who rented Salomé may have been in significantly smaller numbers than those who ran Camille, but their satisfaction with ticket sales and audience feedback was roughly equivalent. (Though slightly more positive for Salomé!) The numbers for Billions line up with the qualitative assessment I summarized above, displaying a roughly equal 3-way split. A Doll’s House was the most divisive with the highest proportion of negative feedback of the four films, yet with a higher proportion of positive feedback than Billions.

Taking all of this into account, it’s clear that Salomé did not flop because it was too artsy or esoteric for the American moviegoing public. Such assumptions are obviously not very thoughtful or informed by reliable data.[7] A more historically sound reading is that, as professional filmmaking matured into a “legitimate” industry in the US, the various arms of the business were rigidly formed to fit conventional output. The conservatism that this engendered made the American industry ill-equipped at marketing anything too unconventional or experimental. While Hollywood insiders were lamenting European filmmakers artistically outdoing Americans—especially following the US release of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)—very few people with the power to shape the industry did anything to support experimentation. Given this environment, Salomé could only have been produced independently, but the quickly ossifying distribution and promotional systems didn’t have the range to give it a proper release. Two films contemporary to Salomé, Beggar on Horseback (1925) and The Old Swimmin’ Hole (1921) offer further evidence of the industry’s limitations.

The Old Swimmin’ Hole is a feature-length production by Charles Ray, experimental in that it uses no intertitles. The story is simple and familiar with Ray playing the Huck-Finn-type character he was well known for. Ray’s experiment was not an expensive one and the film was successful. However, decision makers at First National, the film’s distributors, felt that The Old Swimmin’ Hole was simply too complex for small-town Americans to comprehend and it wasn’t released outside of cities. To put it plainly, the distributor’s unfounded concept of ignorant yokels meant that a film about country living was largely inaccessible to anyone actually living in the country. Though the film was well received and turned a profit, this distribution decision likely limited its audience as well as possible revenue from small-town exhibition.

Stills from The Old Swimmin’ Hole from Motion Picture Magazine, April 1921

Beggar on Horseback was produced by one of the biggest studios in Hollywood, Famous Players-Lasky, and distributed by Paramount. Starring comedian Edward Everett Horton, Beggar was an expressionist comedy based on a popular play. The film had a popular star, popular source material, and was made and released by a major company, but Beggar was apparently too unconventional for that major company to adequately market it. (Unfortunately, only a few minutes of the film survive, so we can’t fully reassess it unless more is found/identified!)

Stills from Beggar on Horseback from Picture-Play Magazine, August 1925

With all these complicating factors at play, how might have Salomé found its audience in 1922-3? Nazimova and Charles Bryant had innovative ideas for the film’s release that might have done the trick, if they had been able to act on them. Nazimova and Sam Zimbalist had finished cutting Salomé in late-spring 1922. Having spent practically all of her money to finish the film, and following A Doll’s House’s disappointing results, Nazimova was eager for Salomé to hit theatres. Though the film was in the can and private preview screenings had been held by Bryant by summer ‘22, Salomé wouldn’t be released until February of 1923. In studio filmmaking, holding a film in extended abeyance wasn’t ideal but it was not disastrous. Studios had significantly more resources and revenue streams than independent producers. If, for example, the release of Billions had been delayed for seven months, Nazimova still had two films on the Metro exchanges (and therefore in theatres) and Camille would have entered production in the meantime. But for Nazimova as an independent producer, this situation was wholly untenable. (In fact, Pickford, Fairbanks, and Griffith were in a similar untenable situation when they founded Allied.)

Initially, Bryant proposed roadshowing Salomé. Roadshowing is a release strategy for notable film productions where a film is toured around major cities, often with in-person engagements by stars, writers, and/or directors. Nazimova expanded the idea of touring with Salomé not simply as a roadshow, but paired with a short play in which she would star. Double the Alla, double the fun. As far as I can tell, there isn’t publicly available information about why Salomé wasn’t roadshowed. However, we do know that Griffith, as the only non-performer in UA, wanted to utilize different approaches for the release of his films—like roadshowing—and it became one of the major points of disagreement with his fellow UA decision makers. That could be taken as an indication that something similar might have occurred with Nazimova and Allied.

As time dragged on without a release date for Salomé and Nazimova returned to theatrical work—openly admitting to audiences that she was broke—Bryant took matters into his own hands. At the end of December 1922, Bryant negotiated with the owner of the Criterion Theatre in New York City for Salomé to run on New Year’s as a special presentation. In two days, Salomé grossed $2,630, setting records for the theatre. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $48,988.96. It was successful enough that the owner of the Criterion opted to hold the film over. This bold move must have lit a fire under Allied’s tuckuses, as Salomé finally had its first-run release a little over a month later.

In the 1920s, the first-run booking of a film was a crucial part of its further success. Concurrent nationwide release of films wasn’t the norm yet, and if a film was a big production, getting booked at high-capacity motion picture houses in major cities was a necessity. These big city releases would, in theory, generate interest in the film with exhibitors across the country and internationally. Basically, if you spent a lot on a movie but couldn’t land a first-run release, you weren’t likely to turn a profit or even break even. Salomé had a handful of first-run bookings and local reviewers from those cities believed the film would succeed. A reviewer from the Boston Transcript in February 1923 wrote:

“…this newest Salome is something far better than a photographed play. Considered both as picture acting, and as an interesting experiment in design, “Salome” is a notable production. It will have a far and wide reaching influence on future films in this country.”

But, as I mentioned, only a handful of first-run theatres played Salomé, and, taken collectively, the notices I analyzed from contemporary trades imply that it didn’t gain traction once it was made available beyond its initial run.

My cosplay of Nazimova as Salomé

During this regrettably short theatrical run, exhibitors and reviewers from trade publications advised that Salomé was a unique film that called for unique promotion. The overall assumption was that theatre owners knew their patrons and recognised whether out-of-the-ordinary movies were popular with them. Rather than purely judging a film’s quality, exhibitors and trade reviewers had concerns specific to exhibition when providing feedback. These concerns cannot be overlooked if you want to understand their assessments. For example, exhibitor feedback was very often informed by how high the rental fees were for a film, even if exhibitors don’t directly mention said fees. That is to say, a mediocre film might be rated highly if the rental fees were modest (and if block booking wasn’t an issue). Reviewers in the early 1920s, both for popular magazines and trade publications, were already accustomed to the formulaic nature of most studio output. Their reviews commonly expressed fatigue with studio films’ lack of originality. And, perhaps surprisingly, this sentiment was shared among theatre owners as well—particularly when a run-of-the-mill film was sold to them as anything other than a “programmer” (a precursor to B-movies).

What I have learned, not just by analyzing feedback for Salomé, but also for all of the films in my LBnF series, is that when a 1920s reviewer calls out bizarreness in a film, it’s not always a negative quality, even when the review isn’t positive. In the case of reviews written for exhibitors/theatre owners, focussing on what makes a movie different is purely pragmatic. It guides how exhibitors might market films to patrons and helps exhibitors judge if a film would be suitable for their audiences. And, from that same research, I’ve found significant indications there were numerous markets throughout the US that were hungry for novelty—contrary to what studio apparatchiks wanted to admit. So, pointing out Salomé’s bizarreness was a recommendation for those markets to consider renting it as much as it was a warning against renting for theatre owners who only had success with more conventional films.

Cover of the Campaign Book for Salomé reproduced in Exhibitors Herald, 9 February 1924

In the case of Salomé, reviews and feedback upon its release focused on two major points:

The film isn’t “adult” in nature. Well-known productions of Strauss’ opera and the 1918 Theda Bara film of the same name led to a presumption of salaciousness. (I talked a bit about that in Part One!)

The film deserves/requires a build up as an artistic event film.

Nazimova’s company helped exhibitors with the latter point in a few ways. The company provided Aubrey Beardsley inspired art posters conceived by Natacha Rambova and executed by Eugene Gise. They printed a book to guide promotion of an artistic spectacle. (So far, I haven’t been able to find a physical or digital copy, so I can’t assess how good the advice was!) Salomé was also distributed with an official musical score, apparently written for a full orchestra.

Art Posters designed by Rambova and painted by Gise as reproduced in Exhibitor’s Trade Review, 10 February 1923

The exhibitors who ran Salomé—and put at least some of this advice into practice—were satisfied with the business it did. By these accounts, the American moviegoing public was attracted by the novelty of Salomé, but what chance were they given to see it?

While this evidence of Allied’s poor distribution work may be circumstantial, it certainly complicates the narratives that Salomé was an unqualified flop or that average Americans weren’t (or aren’t) receptive to artistic experimentation. Given that Nazimova was not the only independent filmmaker who suffered from Allied’s inept distribution, it does seem like the underwhelming business Salomé did was due more to a poor choice of business partners than to any quality of the film or of American moviegoers. That said, with the increasing monopolization of the industry, Nazimova did not have a wealth of options.

Though Salomé was made and released at an tumultuous period for the US film industry, it did eventually find its audience through circulation in art cinemas. As the gap between experimental/avant-garde film widened in the US and the professional industry became less and less tolerant of departures from convention, Americans concerned with film as an art form rallied around amateur filmmaking clubs and art cinemas began popping up in cities by the middle of the decade. Salomé played in these theatres even after the advent of sound—occasionally even today. This is likely the key reason that Salomé survives and we’ve been able to continue to enjoy and reevaluate it one hundred years later.

Salomé is a significant film made at a significant moment in American film history. Nazimova took a major risk in going independent and personally funding two artistic projects. These films were founded on the beliefs that American moviegoers wanted art made by human beings with unique imaginations, feelings, sensibilities and that there was an audience for more than derivative, “machine-made” film. In my opinion, through close analysis of the circumstances of Salomé‘s release, we can see that Nazimova was likely correct, but didn’t get a genuine chance to prove it in her lifetime. Additionally, it’s important to note that Nazimova’s risks did not “ruin” her as is occasionally said. The state of her finances were more greatly affected in the 1920s by her fake husband’s habit of spending her money and by getting swindled by a pair of con artists over her estate, The Garden of Alla. Soldiering on, Nazimova continued to work in both theatre and film for the rest of her life and found more stability with the partner she would meet at the end of the 1920s, Glesca Marshall.

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Once I finished this “Cosplay the Classics” entry, I realized that it would way too much for me to include a section on another relevant topic to Salomé: Orientalism in Hollywood. But, I feel that the topic is too important to just edit that writing out. Look out for a shorter “postscript” entry soon!

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Footnotes:

[1] Danse Macabre is also thought to be a major influence on Walt Disney animating to music, as seen in “Silly Symphonies” and later Fantasia (1940) and Disney’s other musical anthology features. It was also in this period that Disney fled from his debtors in the Midwest to California with his first “Alice” movie. However, the wide-ranging effects of Disney’s business practices were not felt until much later, so that’s another story for another time!

[2] Nazimova was one of a handful of women in Hollywood at the time who held significant creative power. June Mathis and Natacha Rambova, both of whom Nazimova regularly worked with, Mary Pickford and her regular tag-team partner Frances Marion are among some of the others.

[3] Chaplin wouldn’t produce a film for UA until 1923’s A Woman of Paris, as he was fulfilling a pre-existing contract with another studio.

[4] According to Gavin Lambert’s biography of Nazimova (which I discussed as a largely unreliable source in Part One), Robert Florey supposedly advised Nazimova against signing with them, citing Max Linder and Charles Ray as artists who had been “ruined” by their deals. However, the timeline does not quite match up. Though Florey did visit the set of Salomé, Nazimova had already signed the Allied deal by then and Ray had not finished The Courtship of Miles Standish (1923) when Salomé was in production. In fact, there was almost a year and a half between the completion of Salomé and the release of Standish. Whether this was a lapse of memory by Florey or misreporting by Lambert, I can’t be sure.

[5] Originally, I wanted to include Madonna of the Streets (1924) in my comparisons but, at the moment, Lantern has gaps in their Moving Picture World archive for 1924-5. I didn’t want to draw conclusions from incomplete data.

[6] Billions was also a Rambova-Nazimova collaboration. Rambova designed a fantasy sequence for the film.

[7] A mindset that’s still common among commercial media outlets today unfortunately. I could rant and rant about “content” and “content creation” all day but that’s another story for another time.

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Bibliography/Further Reading

(This isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers what’s most relevant to the essay above!)

Lost, but Not Forgotten: A Doll’s House (1922)

“Nazimova in Repertoire” in Motion Picture News, 29 October 1921

“Alla Nazimova Plans for Her New Pictures” in Moving Picture World, 29 October 1921

“Nazimova Abandons Dual Program for Latest Film” in Exhibitors Herald, 24 December 1921

“Plays and Players”in Photoplay, February 1922

“PICTORIAL SECTION” in Exhibitors Herald, 4 February 1922

“New Nazimova Film May Be Roadshowed“ in Exhibitors Herald, 15 April 1922

“Newspaper Opinions” in The Film Daily, 3 January 1923

“Splendid Production Values But No Kick in Nazimova’s ‘Salome’” in The Film Daily, 7 January 1923

“Claims “Salome” Hit New Mark at N. Y. Criterion” in Exhibitors Herald, 27 January 1923

“Salome” in Exhibitors Trade Review, 20 January 1923

“Nazimova in SALOME” in Exhibitors Herald, 27 January 1923

“Nazimova Appeals To Exhibitors In Behalf of ‘Salome’” in Exhibitor’s Trade Review, 27 January 1923

“Novelty Features Paper and Ads for ‘Salome’” in Exhibitor’s Trade Review, 10 February 1923

“SALOME’ —Class AA” from Screen Opinions, 15 February 1923

Nazimova: A Biography by Gavin Lambert (Note: I do not recommend this without caveat even though it’s the only monograph biography of Nazimova. Lambert did a commendable amount of research but his presentation of that research is ruined by misrepresentations, factual errors, and a general tendency to make unfounded assumptions about Nazimova’s motivations and personal feelings.)

Lovers of Cinema: The First American Avant-Garde 1919-1945 ed. Jan-Christopher Horak (most notably, “The First American Avant-Garde 1919-1945” by Horak, “The Limits of Experimentation in Hollywood” by Kristin Thompson, and “Startling Angles: Amateur Film and the Early Avant-Garde” by Patricia R. Zimmermann)

United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars, Vol. 1 1919-1950 by Tino Balio

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 22, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to rack up endorsements and delegates since President Biden’s surprise announcement yesterday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. As of tonight, Harris has the support of at least 2,471 delegates, more than the 1,976 she will need to secure the nomination.

Endorsements have also continued to mount, with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund all endorsing her.

Labor unions have also backed her: the AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris. So did the Service Employees International Union, with 2 million workers, as well as the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 metal workers and miners, and the Communications Workers of America. Other unions endorsing Harris include the American Federation of Teachers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Money continues to roll in. Since Biden’s announcement, Harris and the Democrats have raised about $250 million in donations and pledges. More than 888,000 were from small-dollar donors. Volunteers are also joining the Harris campaign, which said that more than 28,000 people have signed up to work on the campaign in the day since Biden passed the torch. Today, Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” as a campaign song, and TikTok users have jumped on the Harris trend.

Harris is keeping some of the key infrastructure of Biden’s campaign. She has announced that Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez-Rodriguez and Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will remain in their positions. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced today that she, too, will stay on as co-chair for Harris’s campaign as she was for Biden’s.

Harris spoke today at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, smoothing the transition from Biden’s campaign to her own. “I know it’s been a rollercoaster and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions about this,” Harris said. “We love Joe and Jill. We really do. They truly are like family.” Biden called in to the meeting from Delaware, where he is isolating as he recovers from Covid, to thank the staff. “I know it’s hard, because you’ve poured your heart and soul into me, to help us win this thing,” Biden told them, but added: “The name changed at the top of the ticket. The mission hasn’t changed at all.” Biden told Harris: “I’m watching you kid, I love you. You’re the best, kid.”

Harris went on to indicate that she will be taking the fight for the presidency aggressively to Trump, highlighting his criminal behavior. “Before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United States Senator,” she said today, “I was the elected Attorney General, as I've mentioned, to California, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”

She was clear, though, that the fight is not just about Trump; it is about “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country…. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.” She promised to continue the work of building the middle class, protect abortion rights, enact commonsense gun safety legislation, and protect voting rights. She contrasted the Democrats’ vision of “a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law” with the Republicans’: “a country of chaos, fear, and hate.”

Biden’s announcement and Harris’s rapid consolidation of support and money appear to have blindsided the Trump-Vance campaign. MAGA Republicans have responded with scattershot arguments that suggest they had not thought through a scenario in which Biden would step down, an omission so astonishing it perhaps suggests they could not imagine a presumptive nominee voluntarily giving up power.

Without a coherent strategy, MAGA Republicans today have been all over the map, suggesting among other things that Biden’s voluntarily stepping down from his presumptive nomination is a “coup” and that Harris is a “D[iversity] E[quity and] I[nclusion] hire.”

For a party that is offering voters a popular set of policies, the opposing party’s nominee shouldn’t matter all that much, but Trump policies and the Trump campaign’s Project 2025 are both so unpopular that operatives intended to run not on policy but by firing up their base against Biden himself. In The Atlantic yesterday, journalist Tim Alberta explained that the entire Trump campaign apparatus was focused on Biden and that putting extremist Ohio senator J.D. Vance on the ticket “was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.”

Now the energy appears to have shifted. As Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic, operatives staged the Republican National Convention of just last week to project strength and power, and Trump’s rambling and incoherent performance there seemed “deranged, sinister, and frightening.” Now, Applebaum wrote, “it just looks deranged,” as Biden’s decision to step away from power contrasts powerfully with Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to power with the Big Lie while he calls up his threadbare descriptions of national carnage.

The change Applebaum identified dovetailed neatly with a new political action committee started by conservative lawyer George Conway to highlight Trump’s “mental unfitness for office.” Frustrated by the apparent unwillingness of the press to cover Trump’s mental health while it focused on President Biden’s, Conway formed the “Anti-Psychopath PAC” to highlight Trump’s mental state. “The failure to treat Trump’s behavior as pathological has led the media and the country, perversely, to treat it as normal,” Conway told The Independent, and said that Project 2025 should be seen as an extension of Trump’s malignant narcissism “because basically he wants to turn the government into a mechanism for retribution.”

A post on Trump’s social media feed tonight suggested that Trump recognizes that being the oldest candidate ever nominated for the presidency is a campaign issue. The post said that “Lyin’ Kamala Harris…has absolutely terrible pole [sic] numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP! Be careful what you wish for, Democrats???”

Today, Trump’s vice presidential pick Vance gave his first campaign speech at his former high school in Middletown, Ohio. There, dressed in a blue suit with a red tie that echoed Trump’s signature look, Vance spoke of his history in the town and promised that he and Trump are “ready to save America.” But his lack of experience on the campaign trail showed in his delivery, and the Fox News Channel, which was covering the speech, cut away from it while he was speaking.

Media outlets gave more attention to the Ohio state senator who preceded Vance, George Lang, who began a chant of “fight, fight, fight” and told the audience: "I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I'm afraid if we lose this one, it's going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved." He later posted on social media that he regretted his “divisive remarks.”

Later in the day, Vance spoke in Radford, Virginia, where he said that “[h]istory will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America.” He continued: “Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer of the Washington Post reported today on a different kind of jockeying in the 2024 presidential race. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently been in talks with Trump about dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in exchange for a position in a Trump administration. Kennedy, who opposes vaccines, is interested in a portfolio that covers health and medical issues.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters from an American #Heather Cox Richardson #election 2024 #Biden Harris #teamwork #grassroots #blue wave

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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There were many takeaways from the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. As a number of expected policy issues dominated the conversation, Harris effectively filled in the blanks for voters on her strategies to fix the economy, restore reproductive rights, and address immigration and border security concerns. Many in the media have commented on her strong performance, but the crowning moment of the night was Taylor Swift’s immediate political endorsement of Kamala Harris. The American pop superstar has not only surpassed other artists in music awards and public reach, but has become one of the most influential figures to young people and others who are equally inspired by her talent and grit.

Many have been waiting for the endorsements of well-known and influential artists like Swift and Beyoncé. My colleague, Darrell West, forecasted that the blessings of these artists could shift the campaign in Harris’ favor. In recent months, Beyoncé has quietly supported the vice president by allowing her music to be played at campaign rallies. And immediately following the debate, Taylor Swift not only endorsed Harris for president, but also signed her lengthy post as “Childless Cat Lady” to mimic Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance’s widely ridiculed reference to women without children.

But within her endorsement, Swift also sent a loud message to Trump, those in Big Tech, and others who willingly use artificial intelligence (AI) to extract, clone, and mimic content and the likenesses of celebrities like her. She shared her own fears about AI after being a recent target of the Trump campaign and vowed to be more vocal in efforts to thwart misinformation—an issue that has continued to fester in the absence of congressional action.

Taylor Swift has been a target of deceptive AI

Swift has not been immune from deceptive AI-generated content. Earlier this year, she was the subject of explicit AI-generated images that were circulated across social media platforms, mainly X (formerly known as Twitter). Those posts received more than 47 million views in less than 24 hours, and that was before the account was suspended and the images were saved to be shared via other channels online. Issues of fake pornography and revenge porn on social media sites have served to embarrass female artists and business leaders. In the case of Swift’s sexually exploitative content, the hashtag #TaylorSwiftAI trended and led to a rush on her behalf for legal removal, which by then was too late, given the propensity of consumers to download objectionable content and share false information with their own networks.

At the heart of the controversy may have been a group of online users who started operating on Telegram, which is now facing legal scrutiny for allegedly facilitating illegal online activities. But what comes through in Swift’s denouncement of AI is that she has had enough of its harmful consequences, especially the disturbing deepfakes which reveal a troubling side of the internet where anyone can create and disseminate nude, pornographic, and photorealistic images or other content of celebrities with commercially available AI software. Some would argue that increased access to commercial technology is good for the public as we seek to make online tools more readily available to everyday people. In my new book, “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass,” I suggest that the shift from analog to digital services not only enabled disruption, but also enabled other uses of technology—some of which were unforeseen. But just because individuals have access to these potentially harmful tools, people like Swift are not necessarily endorsing bad behaviors.

It was the more recent use of her likeness and image that the Trump campaign shared which sent her over the edge. Various AI-generated images of her and her fans, known as “Swifties,” falsely showed them endorsing Trump for president. Many of these photos, which showed young women in T-shirts displaying a Trump endorsement, started on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, and quickly ended up on other platforms. But this type of inappropriate behavior was neither alarming nor unexpected by Trump allies and influencers. These AI-generated images are part of a long list of other AI-powered election disinformation, including a post which depicted Harris on the beach with now-deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. In the interest of not sharing more false information, I won’t be providing a link to this content.

In her social media post, Swift also made it clear that the deceptive and illegal use of her name and image by the Trump campaign was daunting. She shared on her post that “[i]t really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.” She followed this emotion by writing: “[t]he simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” which should prompt urgent actions to tackle this issue.

What Congress and the global public should take away from Taylor Swift

For years, Congress has debated over the most appropriate legislative measures to quell mis- and disinformation. In 2019, Congress introduced the first version of the DEEP FAKES Accountability Act, which was designed to establish criminal penalties for individuals thought to be producing deepfakes and other illegal content without related disclosure or digital watermarking to determine the provenance of content and urged the removal of such content by violators. In 2022, Congress introduced the Educating against Misinformation and Disinformation Act, which proposed a commission to support information and media literacy resources. That same year, the first version of the Algorithmic Accountability Act was introduced, and re-introduced in 2023, to address the impacts of AI systems to bring more transparency to automated systems, as well as improved auditing.

In addition to several other bipartisan bills to address deceptive AI-generated content, in summer 2024, a bill called the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED ACT) came out of the U.S. Senate to protect a range of creators. The proposed bill would combat harmful deepfakes, for which election manipulation could be considered a use case, and implement federal transparency guidance for making, authenticating, and detecting AI-generated content. The bill is specifically targeted to protect journalists, actors, and artists from AI-driven theft of their creative content.

But given that the presidential election is only two months away, the provision of legal protections is not in the immediate future. Instead, it is highly likely that there will be more, and not less, misinformation created and leveraged to wage character attacks and accelerate voter manipulation. In fact, the web of online misinformation is so strong that Trump’s false reference during the debate to the eating habits of Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio town went viral the minute he shared the conspiracy theory.

In their new book, “Lies that Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation,” co-authors Elaine Kamarck and Darrell West propose that everyday people need to better understand these falsehoods to effectively navigate the truth, and the only way that can be done is by educating citizens on what to look for and how to protect themselves. Taylor Swift may have started that process by stirring reactions even among legislators to do something about this growing problem. If her call to action is not enough, her fans will definitely be chiming in next.

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archergrid · 9 months ago

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“I had a dream. I was in a strange land. A vast wilderness. I went on and on, but met no one. I called, I shouted... but no one answered. I was alone.”

-Akira Kurosawa, Ran

<< Ch1-5 Ch 6-10>>

Chapter 1

Look, I get this question a lot for obvious reasons, so I know you won’t like the answer. It’s dissatisfying. But, because you asked, the best cybersecurity commercially available is something called an air-gapped computer.

An air-gapped computer has no network card. You won’t see a cerulean ethernet cord spouting from the stern of the case. There’s no hard, hollow plastic antenna to receive a wifi signal. It doesn’t have Bluetooth. My compsci professor at Tech explained it like this: there’s a literal wall of air—a gap—between the computer and anything that could inject it with compromising code. This abstinence-only approach makes air-gapped computers cheap, simple, and impenetrably secure.

But much like celibacy, not a lot of people opt for the air-gapped method. What’s the point of a computer, they ask, without e-mail and Twitter and porn? And I understand that. There were days I got so dog-tired of the manual data dumps, of examining each file down to the binary before connecting the USB, of hand-transcribing scraps of code onto sheets of paper, of the day-to-day ennui of existence inside those invisible walls. But when I broke into a system, all I saw back then was each and every way very, very bad things could get in.

The air wall was better. It let me breathe.

My laptop had to be online so I could access those vulnerable systems, but my desktop was air-gapped—a little black lockbox of my pdfs, jpgs, pngs, mp3s, mp4s, xls, txts, zips, bins, bats, dats, all my associate backgrounds and every line of my code. Knowing how safe they were in there calmed me at times like this, when I felt Julian Ek’s omniscient data network watching me like an enormous, electronic eye.

Notifications came like machine-gun fire into my phone. My apartment was dark, black under blackout curtains. I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing but automated search alert after automated search alert filling my notifications: ek trial, julian ek trial, ek trial update, ek trial verdict, ek inc, joseph chambers, joseph chambers shooting, joseph chambers deepfaEk, deepfaEk, deepfaEk scandal, deepfaEk shooting edit, deepfaEk trial. More and more, on and on. I With dread, I went to Twitter, and there it was in blue and white. #EkAcquitted. It was the #2 trending topic, below #NationalVideoGamesDay. My hands began to shake. It had to be misreported—a mistake. I searched “Ek trial” and clicked the first link, scrolling past Ashlan’s disbarment and the Marshals’ conspiracy convictions to read the 6 words I’d dreaded for 4 years.

Julian Ek acquitted on all charges.

Ek walked. I went to the Herald for nothing; became a fugitive for nothing. I gave up my parents, my friends, my condo—my dream job obviously. I blew my whole life up, and now I’m stuck here, all alone on the other side of the world. Jeopardy attached, meaning I was officially of no use to anyone; meaning I could never, ever go back home. This dusty, pitch-black 300-square foot apartment really was my life.

I was hyperventilating. Breath after keening breath, air refused to reach my lungs, only rattle in the back of my throat. My head and stomach and knees went fuzzy. My phone screen smeared as it slipped from my hands. I reached for it and missed. The clatter of it hitting the floor—the dull pain of my thigh hitting the floor too—degraded into garbling static as I sank into gasping, grasping unconsciousness.

#wlw #sapphic #lesbian #lesfic #lesbian fiction #sapphic romance #wlw romance #ff romance #lgbt romance #lgbt reads

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toxinellebug · 11 months ago

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Paris and the World under The Supreme’s Rule Headcannons

Back during WW2, when Marianne suggested to Wang Fu they should use the Miraculous, she of course meant using them to fight. Wang Fu decided to use them to make a wish;

World Peace.

The price?

World freedom.

So there are SOME good things… No war in Vietnam, no war in Isreal, and good news Americans; 9/11 never happened and school shootings do not exist because it is impossible for anyone to get a gun, not even hunters!

On the downside, no guns for hunting means wildlife conservation is a thing of the past. Animal overpopulation in addition to human deforestation has led to a significant decrease in food sources for wildlife, many of which have gone extinct due to starvation. Another plus side is there are no “slap on the wrist” punishments for criminals who assault women and children. Death penalty is a very effective way to prevent recurring crimes.

Prisons are also no longer a multi-million dollar drain on tax-paying citizens; no free room and board for criminals. They all have to work in labor camps to earn every morsel of food and live in 15 square foot cells.

(Marinette’s Grandmother is currently serving time in a labor camp)

There aren’t really much in the way of trials either… You are arrested for a crime, presented with the facts/evidence, then sentenced.

There are no homeless wandering streets, begging for hand-outs. There are special labor camps for the impoverished where they are assigned tasks that meet their physical and mental abilities, snd are paid enough to afford them cheap living quarters, approximately 130 square feet in size, and the most basic of food stuffs and hygiene products to keep them alive. No, they cannot refuse.

Remember, the Supreme knows best.

Project Oxygen is a go- several small parks have been “re-habilitated” into giant filters and fresh air is beginning to be sold in fancy plastic bottles thanks to Bertrand King. He’s been trying for a while to convince Gabriel that Adrien should do commercials for Project Oxygen, as it would be great for the boy’s career…. But Gabriel always comes up with an excuse to get out of it. The latest being that it wouldn’t match with Adrien’s new look.

Audrey Bourgeois ADORES Adrien’s new look! It’s so much more bold and edgy! Also, the latest fashion trend is not glitter, it’s metal studs- industry and progress in a sleek, metallic form.

Audrey is home more often than Andre, who could be gone for months at a time working on one of his movies. But of course he still handles important paperwork and does video calls to check on hotel and sends lots of very expensive gifts to his little Princess.

Chloe is even more abusive and demanding of Sabrina, and poor Sabrina puts up with it for her father’s sake-

There has been a lot of vandalism lately (thanks to Shadybug and ClawNoir) and talk that Enforcers just aren’t as effective at keeping the order as they used to be. Word is that tech Giant Tsurugi is in the process of designing new automatons that will be more efficient (and less costly) than human Enforcers. Who knows? There may even be a surge of Enforcer lay-offs if the project becomes successful. Chloe has hinted that she MIGHT be willing to put in a good word with Daddy, should Mr. Raincomprix be one of the many Enforcers who finds himself out of a job. The Hotel could always use more security guards/bouncers. But since Daddy ONLY hires the most DEDICATED employees… Well, how can Chloe possibly make a recommendation if she’s not sure Sabrina’s dad would REALLY give it his all? So Sabrina bends over backwards until she breaks and then some to keep Chloe happy.

Officer Raincomprix is also uneasy about talks of future layoffs, and as such, has become harsh in Enforcing law and order. No little wrong doing goes unnoticed or forgiven. No leniency. (Think Roger-cop without the Akuma).

Rose is not that perky. Under the Supreme, there is no socialist nonsense like Universal Healthcare, so medicines, doctor visits, prescriptions, hospitals… it’s all crazy expensive just like in the USA. This means, in order for Rose to be able to attend a private school like Francois Dupont; her parents work a LOT of overtime and pinch pennies whenever they can. So it’s very lonely at home and in this universe, Rose has not (yet) met Juleka (as stated in previous headcannon). Instead of Unicorns, Rose’s favorite animal is the Caladrius, (a mythological bird that can heal any illness). Though unicorns and kittens are still in her top five favs.

Rose doesn’t see the word through rose-colored glasses. She can’t see the silver-lining in ever raincloud… Instead, she tries to make it herself; if there is no positive, she will just have to invent one! It’s more work, and exhausting, but she HAS to, otherwise she’d drown in depression. Rose’s illness is kept a secret, not because she fears people will treat her with pity, but that she fears people will look down on her; like she’s a burden on her parents, like it’s annoying to have to put up with her weakness.

(I’ve actually been sick myself, since xmas day in fact- perhaps as punishment from the universe for making ClawNoir cataclysm Santa Claus)

Penny is Bob Roth’s personal servant- er, I mean, assistant… which means she’s also gopher for XY. (There is no woman in Paris more miserable than Penny).

Jean-Pierre Monlataing is still an Art teacher at Francois Dupont… and he teaches traditional art styles. Helping students practice time-honored techniques through repetition and standardization. Graffiti is not art, so no spray-paint cans in his classroom! Alix Kubdel is his most troubled student. Marinette does not attend art club. Nathaniel shows great talent for portraits.

Jalil strives to be better than his father; he admire Nathalie Sancoeur and hopes to rise to her position of Director of the Louvre someday.

Directors of Museums are prestigious positions you have to work hard your whole life to even be considered for, as The Supreme appoints them. As far as the public knows, this is for the sake of preserving history as well as ensuring that dangerous ideas from the past do not repeat themselves and inspire anarchy in young, impressionable minds.

The reality is that they are searching for clues to missing Miraculous.

The Supreme has already taken steps to ensure the Prodigious will never pose a threat to his power (Temple and access to cave have been destroyed and the bracelet has been confiscated and placed in a secure location).

But there are still most likely Miraculous scattered across the earth. Gems that, if fallen into the “wrong hands” could disrupt the peace and order that the Supreme has worked hard to maintain.

Marianne intends to find these Miraculous first… if only she had the help of someone younger and more physically up to the challenge.

When Gabriel/Betterfly/Hesperia forms “The Resistance” and Marianne is introduced to their ranks, this is exactly the plan she suggests in order to take down The Supreme and give power back to all the people.

She only has a few clues on where to start searching though.

…Fun fact, if you were to unify the Ladybug miraculous of creation with the Eagle miraculous of freedom, you would get Ladybird- determined to create a new, free world.

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averseunhinged · 7 months ago

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*runs at full speed shrieking through the room and hurls wip at the curse*

If you’d told Klaus a month ago that he’d be spending a Tuesday evening in January winding his Land Rover through one of the poshest areas of the Hollywood Hills, submitting himself to more security checkpoints than Buckingham Palace, shouldering a provisional contract and an NDA so dense and complicated that even Finn, the dullest, most detail-oriented entertainment attorney Klaus had ever known, had been winded by it, and getting an uncomfortably thorough pat down from a woman whose physique put Finn's wife, a former professional wrestler, to shame, he would have called you delusional.

It's a pity he can’t tell Rebekah he’s been conscripted into the Fang Bunny Army. He's lived through five or six rounds of his sister’s membership. Of every album release becoming an event, every award on par with a coronation, every tour a gauntlet of ticket sale shenanigans and elusive meet-and-greet passes, weeks of outfit crises, and transportation horrors. Bekah would shriek herself hoarse when she found out he hadn’t so much as hinted at having been personally summoned by her favorite popstar.

It isn’t only the money that's brought him to this point. For the first time in years, he feels truly intrigued by a potential project. His bread and butter might be plentiful and filling, but his greatest achievement to date is an obnoxiously catchy, instantly recognizable twenty second loop from Kitten Crashers, a cat racing game from 2011, that rarely leaves the trending sounds list on both TikTok and Instagram. It's work, and he's glad to have it, but it isn't high profile by any stretch of the imagination. Not anywhere near the level of Caroline Forbes.

Her teen years spent playing the shrewish, older sister on some Disney Channel nightmare and later a starring turn in Vampires of Venice Beach, an inexplicable mega-hit at the box office, it included an original ballad by Caroline herself on the soundtrack. Critics weren't kind to the song, but it was everywhere you turned for over a year. Their assessment wasn’t entirely incorrect. The melody was banal and the instrumentation derivative, but there was something to the lyrics and more than something to Caroline's voice. The song netted her first Grammy nomination. It was by no means her last.

Which is to say, he's not sure why he's being escorted by security into an old mansion in the Hills. He does just fine these days with scores and commercial background music and thirty second hooks for social media, but he's not famous for it. He'd barely been famous before The Originals had flamed out spectacularly. He and Elijah are far better off without differing opinions on creative direction and an unfortunate predilection for falling for the same woman at the same time. The fallout from the Petrova twins had been explosive and there hadn't been any option but to break up the band at that point. His fifteen minutes certainly aren't anything to recommend him to one of the most successful recording artists of the 21st century.

He's shown into a beautifully restored and tastefully appointed room that is mostly end to end glass, looking out over both an outdoor space and a lot of the city in the valley below, blurring in the golden sodium light of late afternoon. The man who'd taken charge of Klaus at the entrance to the house hasn't bothered introducing himself with the sort of smarmy assuredness Rebekah laps up, always to her detriment, gestures disinterestedly to a bank of comfortable seating where someone has obviously been working all day. There are notebooks, binders, an assortment of pens and highlighters, a MacBook, and two tablets on the coffee table. Two guitars sit in stands: a newer Martin with an intricate floral inlay and a vintage Gretsch he desperately wants to put his hands all over. Propped up in one corner of a sprawling couch is the same brilliant cobalt Jumbo she's famously played since she was eighteen. The woman in question is pacing by the pool, phone in hand, having an animated conversation.

The other man doesn't bother going all the way to the open doors before bellowing, "Wrap it up, gorgeous! Your five o'clock's on time."

Without turning around, the queen of Spotify lifts one hand and presents them with her raised middle finger.

"She'll be with you in a moment," the man says, mild and amused, on his way out of the room. "Don't worry. You're probably already in her good books. Loves punctuality, that one. Bit of a freak that way."

Even though Klaus knows how all of this works, the photoshoots and the costumes, the makeup and wigs, he's still a little surprised by how different she is in person. She looks well enough when she trots inside, but she's still barefoot in leggings and an old, worn soft shirt, advertising the Mystic County Sheriff's Department softball team in faded, cracking letters. Her blonde curls are piled artlessly on top of her head, and there's red irritation around her eyes, nose and mouth from wearing and removing stage makeup every day for months on end.

"Hey, I'm Caroline," she says, as though her name hasn't been synonymous with breathy, acoustic pop for the past decade, and waves a little awkwardly.

"Klaus Mikaelson," he replies automatically, as though she doesn't know who's been delivered to her very nice home with its very expensive view. And then she smiles at him with her own, slightly imperfect teeth, and the only thought he has is oh no. He digs his own grave when he, without any higher cognitive input whatsoever, says, "You must never meet my brother."

#kitten crashers should exist for realsies #i want it #i think i posted part of this somewhere before #but do not remember when or where #so if it's familiar that's why #PRESENT TENSE IS MY PERSONAL CRUCIBLE #I WILL OVERCOME IT #OR CRY TRYING #also i'm moving house rn and it's murdering me ded #hopefully back to regularly scheduled fandoming in a couple of weeks #klaroline wip wed #fu curse

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good-old-gossip · 8 months ago

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For the last few months, people around the world have been closely following the ongoing brutality of the war in Gaza. Pictures of Palestinians fleeing south and looking for relatives under the rubble, videos of children searching for food and water — these and more have been circulating on social media and news networks every day since October 7.

But these images are practically nowhere to be found in the Israeli media. Most Israeli news outlets rarely even update the number of Palestinian casualties — which has surpassed 30,000 — nor do they inform their viewers that approximately 70 percent of the victims of the Israeli offensive are women and children.

The meta-narrative presented by the Israeli media defines Hamas’ attack on southern Israel as the genesis and the heart of the current geopolitical crisis. Every day there is a new angle on the events of October 7: new footage of the Hamas raids on the kibbutzim, testimonies of soldiers who participated in the battles, or interviews with survivors. Moreover, Israeli journalists cover current events in Gaza almost entirely through the single lens of October 7 and its ripple effects.

This is a conscious decision by the Israeli media. In an interview for TheNew Yorker, Ilana Dayan, one of Israel’s most highly-regarded journalists, explained, “We interview people about October 7 — we are stuck on October 7.” Oren Persico, a staff writer at The Seventh Eye, an independent investigative magazine focused on freedom of speech in Israel, told +972, “There is a cycle where the news outlets refrain from confronting the public with the uncomfortable truth, and as a result, the public does not ask for it.”

This cycle is understandable, to a certain extent. The October 7 attack was perhaps the greatest calamity in Israel’s history. On the deadliest day for the Jewish people since 1945, more than 1,200 Israelis were killed, and 243 were taken as hostages to Gaza, most of them civilians. For the first time in the state’s history, an enemy temporarily conquered Israeli-controlled territory. Jewish Israelis are continuing to process this national trauma and have, as a result, yet to regain their sense of security. News outlets, therefore, not only feed the public with a particular narrative but also objectively reflect the public sentiment.

Still, in the past five months, the Israeli media has done much more than merely reflect Israeli society back to itself. The media, and TV news in particular, has taken active steps to position itself as the embodiment of Israeli patriotism. It is defining what is in the public interest, drawing the boundaries of legitimate political discourse, and presenting only a certain truth to Israeli citizens. This position serves both their own commercial interests and the national interests stated by the government and the military. In so doing, TV news broadcasts are constantly walking a thin line between propaganda and journalism.

To understand why the Israeli media covers the Gaza war in this fashion, it is crucial to comprehend the historical trends in the media and its role in shifting Israeli public opinion to the right. The media became an indelible part of a cycle in which Israelis become increasingly nationalistic and militaristic, which makes them hungry for news that celebrates the war and obscures or even omits coverage of its costs. The public receives only this celebratory narrative, and the cycle continues.

To unpack this reality, the following analysis focuses primarily on TV news — which is the predominant medium through which Israelis consume news. But the same pattern is manifested in all other forms of media, making the cycle pervasive.

Transforming the media landscape

Until the 2000s, mainstream TV news was considered a stronghold of the secular liberal Zionist elite. This elite controlled the government-funded public broadcasts, which had monopoly on broadcasting until the 1990s, and then later privately owned Channel 12 and Channel 13.

All of these channels generally targeted a centrist, mainstream audience, and generally speaking, they rarely challenged the Israeli occupation, the settler movement, or the wrongdoings of security forces. They had much stronger teeth when reporting on other liberal issues like government corruption, gender equality, and in recent years LGBTQ+ rights. Similar attitudes existed in written media, with the notable exception of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz, which publishes more rigorous journalism about Palestinian issues. Yet it is worth noting that despite the high name recognition that Haaretz enjoys abroad, it has a relatively small Israeli audience — roughly 5 percent of local newspaper readers.

In the past two decades the news scene in Israel has undergone tectonic shifts. It has transformed from a largely centrist institution into a polarized field: one pole is an overtly right-wing machine, and the other is apologetically centrist, fearing to be perceived as too leftist.

Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, he has been a fierce critic of mainstream media, calling it a far-left and untrustworthy source of information. (This obsession with the media underlies the corruption charges he is facing, all of which relate to his attempts to influence Israeli media to obtain flattering coverage.) After his first ouster, in the 1999 elections, Netanyahu determined that reshaping Israeli media was imperative in order for him to return to power.

He accomplished this goal by creating an independent amplifier for himself and his views that bypassed mainstream media outlets. In 2007, Netanyahu allegedly convinced Sheldon Adelson to establish the free daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, which gradually became the most widely-read newspaper in Israel. Until Adelson’s death a few years ago and subsequent changes to its editorial staff, the paper was unfailingly sympathetic to Netanyahu.

The prime minister has also been keen to reshape the TV news ecosystem because of its consequential role in influencing public sentiment. Under the control of his Likud party, the Ministry of Communications promoted regulatory changes that allowed Channel 14 to transform itself from a “heritage channel” (licensed to broadcast programs about Judaism) to a full-blown news channel providing hours of coverage a day, making it an Israeli version of Fox News. Amid the political polarization over Netanyahu and the judicial overhaul, Channel 14’s popularity grew, especially among Netanyahu supporters, making it second only to Channel 12 in viewership.

These structural changes coincided with a change in the composition of journalists in Israel. As Israeli society has become more right wing over the past 20 years, especially on the Palestinian issue, there has also been an increasing number of journalists who are right-wing religious Zionists, many of them settlers.

Persico, of The Seventh Eye, said that these changes “create two parallel universes with parallel fundamental presumptions, divided between Bibist and just-not-Bibist.” But even on mainstream channels, he continued, “inciting statements that were once heard only in religious Zionist synagogues’ weekly pamphlets can now be heard by prominent editors and journalists.” For example, on Channel 12, only some correspondents and guests advocate for reestablishing settlements in Gaza, whereas on Channel 14, they do so more explicitly and extensively.

Embracing propaganda

After the 2014 Gaza War — in which 68 Israelis and over 2,200 Palestinians were killed — Dana Weiss, a leading correspondent for Channel 12, lamented that one of the lessons from the coverage of the war is that Israeli media should do more to highlight the voices of Palestinians in the Strip. “The inclination of Israelis to listen to the hard questions is fading away,” she warned.

But in the nationalist climate created in the aftermath of October 7, coverage of the devastation Israel is unleashing in Gaza is nowhere to be found. Some journalists even cast doubt on whether the media should publish stories that might damage national morale.

From the very beginning of the war, TV news channels have spearheaded the hasbara effort in Israel. Hasbara — which means “explaining” in Hebrew — is used to describe pro-Israel advocacy, but is essentially doublespeak for propaganda. Elements of hasbara appear in every TV news channel. For example, since October 7, each channel’s logo has been modified to now include the Israeli flag and the government slogan “Yachad Nenatzeach” (“Together we shall win”).

As part of this hasbara, all mainstream news networks portray Israel as the ultimate victim, and the Hamas attacks as having demonstrated unparalleled brutality. This victimhood is an exclusive status: it leaves little to no room for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, nor the level of the humanitarian crisis they are facing. Israeli mainstream TV news rarely shows any documentation of the rubble in Gaza or the magnitude of displacement and destruction there. When it does, the responsibility for these losses is laid at Hamas’ feet.

Anyone who challenges this narrative is targeted. For example, when UN Secretary-General António Guterres explicitly condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack but said that it “did not happen in a vacuum” — referring to Israel’s 56-year-long occupation as crucial context — the Israeli media pounced.

Instead of providing an honest explanation of his internationally mainstream position, Israeli journalists competed with one another to most harshly criticize Guterres. Almog Boker, one of the most popular correspondents on Channel 13, claimed that the UN chief was “justifying Hamas’ atrocities.” A headline in Ynet read, “Why Does the UN Secretary-General António Guterres Dislike Israel So Much?” Even Channel 12 described his statements as “outrageous.”

The army is the source

The close interaction between the Israeli media and the military, unsurprisingly, creates several critical blind spots in covering the reality in Gaza. The presence of international media was practically non-existent for the first weeks of the war, and most international journalists left Gaza for their own safety. The Israeli bombardment, and the intermittent electricity and communications blackouts, have hindered the ability of local Palestinian journalists to report.

As the ground invasion progressed, the Israeli army allowed some journalists — both Israeli and international — to enter Gaza, but only if they were accompanied by the military. Such tours are usually directed by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, meaning the journalists are unable to interview Palestinians directly or to independently access ruined sites. They can see merely what is presented to them.

The military’s influence goes far beyond controlling access to information. For the first three months of the war, the head of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Daniel Hagari, conducted daily press conferences that were broadcast live on every channel during primetime. These press conferences included updates on the state of the war, but only sporadically contained instructions for the public or genuinely newsworthy information. Although Hagari was broadly viewed by the Israeli public as a reliable source of information, especially relative to the lack of public trust in the government, his unnecessary but constant presence gave the army control over the narrative in the news.

Furthermore, military correspondents, who largely rely on the Israeli army as their main source, are constantly praising the military. This is not a new trend. Even before the war, military correspondents often published IDF statements verbatim, and without mentioning that the military was the sole source of information. They also fiercely amplify the supposed successes Israeli forces have made in Gaza and advocate for continuing the operation.

The same is true of many other journalists and the media establishment as a whole. This is in part a byproduct of receiving their journalistic education through the Israeli military itself. The standard training for many journalists in Israel is at Galatz, the Israeli army radio, not at universities or local newspapers. Indeed, Galatz selects dozens of newly-conscripted Israeli soldiers to work at the station as part of their mandatory service. These soldiers receive unparalleled and highly-valued training and experience, which makes them particularly appealing for later occupational recruitment when they finish their service.

Persico emphasized the importance of this background, arguing that “generations of Israeli journalists were raised [professionally] under this military supervision, which trained them to think that there are things they cannot publish.” As a result, this education has over time shattered the fundamental conception of journalistic independence in Israel.

Pushing false narratives, dehumanizing Palestinians

In addition to omitting crucial coverage of Palestinian lives, Israeli media also plays an active role in creating outright false perceptions of the war and Palestinian public opinion.

A major difference between international and Israeli coverage of the war, for example, is the issue of Hamas’ legitimacy among Palestinians, which has become a recurring fixation of the mainstream media in Israel. There is certainly criticism of Hamas among Gazans for failing to guarantee security or to provide humanitarian assistance during the war. But the Israeli media portrays Hamas as on the cusp of losing all its standing among Palestinians.

On Channel 12, Ohad Hemo and Ehud Yaari, the leading Arab and Palestinian affairs correspondents in Israel, reported that tensionsbetween Gazan civilians and Hamas are intensifying. According to them, Gazans have said that “instead of ‘hello,’ the most common phrase on the street between people is ‘may God take revenge against Hamas.”

A few weeks ago, Israeli TV channels circulated a clip of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Khan Younis through a humanitarian corridor chanting, “The people want to take down Hamas.” None of them mentioned, as revealed by +972, that they were forced to do so by Israeli soldiers in order to be let through. Even if the media was unaware of this, any decent journalist should have questioned the chanting’s significance as an indicator of Hamas’ legitimacy, especially given that the videos were taken by soldiers and that the Palestinians were at the mercy of the Israeli military.

The narrative of Hamas’ supposedly imminent collapse was reinforced by other footage, such as videos of Palestinians in northern Gaza surrendering their weapons to Israel. Initially, news channels quickly amplified that “hundreds of Hamas militants are surrendering in northern Gaza.” A few days later, however, national security officials estimated that out of those hundreds, only 10 to 15 percent were actually Hamas militants. The rest were ordinary civilians who had not fled south, as the army had ordered them to.

Another example is the notion that the Israeli military is closing in on Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas’ Gaza branch and one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack. These types of pieces have been running for months now. In December, in a video that sparked much mockery, Adva Dadon, a journalist with Channel 12, aired a story titled “In the house of Sinwar,” documenting an Israeli raid on what was said to be one of his homes. She even lifted a pair of shoes from the rubble and claimed it belonged to Sinwar — a statement that was quickly debunked.

Most disturbingly, Israeli TV news takes an active role in dehumanizing Palestinians. Channel 14 has consistently promoted abominable views — such as calling for the annihilation of Gaza, and describing all Gazans as terrorists and legitimate targets — which are parroted by leading anchors and correspondents. Because of these recurring statements, Channel 14 was even cited several times in South Africa’s complaint to the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. These types of statements are not the exception, and in fact appeared on mainstream TV news as well.

Moreover, mainstream news refuses to report the number of Palestinian casualties, claiming that the numbers of the “Hamas-run” Health Ministry cannot be trusted — even though they were historically accurate and the Israeli army itself relies on them. Channel 14 used the numbers released by the Health Ministry, but defined all the thousands of Palestinians killed as “terrorists.”

Government talking points

To some extent, the undercurrents we see in Israeli media coverage of the war also appear on social media — a central method of news consumption, especially among the younger population. On social media, algorithms are designed to create an echo chamber with a parallel universe, and its personalized nature exacerbates the isolation of Israelis both from each other and from the rest of the world. For instance, even when Israelis on social media are exposed to non-Israeli coverage of the war, it would likely be through pro-Israeli mediating agents explaining it is merely enemy propaganda.

Israeli mainstream media creates another echo chamber for Israelis that amplifies government talking points and bears little resemblance to the information landscape of the rest of the world. Unlike Israeli news, international media is currently much more focused on the magnitude of the devastation in Gaza and its connection to the long-term oppression of the Palestinians. At the same time, there is much doubt globally if Israel’s war objectives are even feasible — but this doubt is hardly aired in Israel.

Thus, while Israeli TV channels have not been forced to boost the government’s line of thought, doing so has certainly served their own interests in maintaining high ratings. This strategy worked: a Hebrew University poll found that since the beginning of the war, mainstream media news consumption has more than doubled, and exposure to all major news networks has increased. Among the Jewish population, the popularity of Channel 12 has skyrocketed, especially among viewers affiliated with the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

These shifts are not a deviation from the norm. They are the apex of historical transformations that have fundamentally changed Israeli media and TV news, combined with outlets’ ad-hoc decision to display and prove their patriotism. Unfortunately, if coverage of the Gaza war is any indication, these trends are likely to continue, aggravating the ever-propelled cycle that pushes the Israeli media and the Israeli public to be more right-wing, conformist, militaristic, and nationalistic.

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