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aaknopf · 5 years ago

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Today we present a preview of a major new biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet, coming this fall. Through committed investigative scholarship, Heather Clark is able to offer the most extensively researched and nuanced view yet of a poet whose influence grows with each new generation of readers. Clark is the first biographer to draw upon all of Plath's surviving letters, including fourteen newly discovered letters Plath sent to her psychiatrist in 1961-63, and to draw extensively on her unpublished diaries, calendars, and poetry manuscripts. She is also the first to have had full, unfettered access to Ted Hughes's unpublished diaries and poetry manuscripts, allowing her to present a balanced and humane view of this remarkable creative marriage (and its unravelling) from both sides. She is able to present significant new findings about Plath's whereabouts and her state of health on the weekend leading up to her death. With these and many other "firsts," Clark's approach to Plath is to chart the course of this brilliant poet's development, highlighting her literary and intellectual growth rather than her undoing. Here, we offer a passage from Clark's prologue to the biography, followed by lines from one of Plath's celebrated "bee poems."

from Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

The Oxford professor Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf’s biographer, has written, “Women writers whose lives involved abuse, mental-illness, self-harm, suicide, have often been treated, biographically, as victims or psychological case-histories first and as professional writers second.” This is especially true of Sylvia Plath, who has become cultural shorthand for female hysteria. When we see a female character reading The Bell Jar in a movie, we know she will make trouble. As the critic Maggie Nelson reminds us, “to be called the Sylvia Plath of anything is a bad thing.” Nelson reminds us, too, that a woman who explores depression in her art isn’t perceived as “a shamanistic voyager to the dark side, but a ‘madwoman in the attic,’ an abject spectacle.” Perhaps this is why Woody Allen teased Diane Keaton for reading Plath’s seminal collection Ariel in Annie Hall. Or why, in the 1980s, a prominent reviewer cracked his favorite Plath joke as he reviewed Plath’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Collected Poems: “ ‘Why did SP cross the road?’ ‘To be struck by an oncoming vehicle.’ ” Male writers who kill themselves are rarely subject to such black humor: there are no dinner-party jokes about David Foster Wallace.

Since her suicide in 1963, Sylvia Plath has become a paradoxical symbol of female power and helplessness whose life has been subsumed by her afterlife. Caught in the limbo between icon and cliché, she has been mythologized and pathologized in movies, television, and biographies as a high priestess of poetry, obsessed with death. These distortions gained momentum in the 1960s when Ariel was published. Most reviewers didn’t know what to make of the burning, pulsating metaphors in poems like “Lady Lazarus” or the chilly imagery of “Edge.” Time called the book a ��jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bale across the literary landscape.” The Washington Post dubbed Plath a “snake lady of misery” in an article entitled “The Cult of Plath.” Robert Lowell, in his introduction to Ariel, characterized Plath as Medea, hurtling toward her own destruction.

Recent scholarship has deepened our understanding of Plath as a master of performance and irony. Yet the critical work done on Plath has not sufficiently altered her popular, clichéd image as the Marilyn Monroe of the literati. Melodramatic portraits of Plath as a crazed poetic priestess are still with us. Her most recent biographer called her “a sorceress who had the power to attract men with a flash of her intense eyes, a tortured soul whose only destiny was death by her own hand.” He wrote that she “aspired to transform herself into a psychotic deity.” These caricatures have calcified over time into the popular, reductive version of Sylvia Plath we all know: the suicidal writer of The Bell Jar whose cultish devotees are black-clad young women. (“Sylvia Plath: The Muse of Teen Angst,” reads the title of a 2003 article in Psychology Today.) Plath thought herself a different kind of “sorceress”: “I am a damn good high priestess of the intellect,” she wrote her friend Mel Woody in July 1954.

Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote of Sylvia Plath, “when the curtain goes down, it is her own dead body there on the stage, sacrificed to her own plot.” Yet to suggest that Plath’s suicide was some sort of grand finale only perpetuates the Plath myth that simplifies our understanding of her work and her life. Sylvia Plath was one of the most highly educated women of her generation, an academic superstar and perennial prizewinner. Even after a suicide attempt and several months at McLean Hospital, she still managed to graduate from Smith College summa cum laude. She was accepted to graduate programs in English at Columbia, Oxford, and Radcliffe and won a Fulbright Fellowship to Cambridge, where she graduated with high honors. She was so brilliant that Smith asked her to return to teach in their English department without a PhD. Her mastery of English literature’s past and present intimidated her students and even her fellow poets. In Robert Lowell’s 1959 creative writing seminar, Plath’s peers remembered how easily she picked up on obscure literary allusions. “ ‘It reminds me of Empson,’ Sylvia would say . . . ‘It reminds me of Herbert.’ ‘Perhaps the early Marianne Moore?’ ” Later, Plath made small talk with T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender at London cocktail parties, where she was the model of wit and decorum.

Very few friends realized that she struggled with depression, which revealed itself episodically. In college, she aced her exams, drank in moderation, dressed sharply, and dated men from Yale and Amherst. She struck most as the proverbial golden girl. But when severe depression struck, she saw no way out. In 1953, a depressive episode led to botched electroshock therapy sessions at a notorious asylum. Plath told her friend Ellie Friedman that she had been led to the shock room and “electrocuted.” “She told me that it was like being murdered, it was the most horrific thing in the world for her. She said, ‘If this should ever happen to me again, I will kill myself.’ ” Plath attempted suicide rather than endure further tortures.

In 1963, the stressors were different. A looming divorce, single motherhood, loneliness, illness, and a brutally cold winter fueled the final depression that would take her life. Plath had been a victim of psychiatric mismanagement and negligence at age twenty, and she was terrified of depression’s “cures,” as she wrote in her last letter to her psychiatrist—shock treatment, insulin injections, institutionalization, “a mental hospital, lobotomies.” It is no accident that Plath killed herself on the day she was supposed to enter a British psychiatric ward.

Sylvia Plath did not think of herself as a depressive. She considered herself strong, passionate, intelligent, determined, and brave, like a character in a D. H. Lawrence novel. She was tough-minded and filled her journal with exhortations to work harder—evidence, others have said, of her pathological, neurotic perfectionism. Another interpretation is that she was—like many male writers—simply ambitious, eager to make her mark on the world. She knew that depression was her greatest adversary, the one thing that could hold her back. She distrusted psychiatry—especially male psychiatrists—and tried to understand her own depression intellectually through the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Erich Fromm, and others. Self-medication, for Plath, meant analyzing the idea of a schizoid self in her honors thesis on The Brothers Karamazov.

Bitter experience taught her how to accommodate depression—exploit it, even—in her art. “There is an increasing market for mental-hospital stuff. I am a fool if I don’t relive, or recreate it,” she wrote in her journal. The remark sounds trite, but her writing on depression was profound. Her own immigrant family background and experience at McLean gave her insight into the lives of the outcast. Plath would fill her late work, sometimes controversially, with the disenfranchised—women, the mentally ill, refugees, political dissidents, Jews, prisoners, divorcées, mothers. As she matured, she became more determined to speak out on their behalf. In The Bell Jar, one of the greatest protest novels of the twentieth century, she probed the link between insanity and repression. Like Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, the novel exposed a repressive Cold War America that could drive even the “best minds” of a generation crazy. Are you really sick, Plath asks, or has your society made you so? She never romanticized depression and death; she did not swoon into darkness. Rather, she delineated the cold, blank atmospherics of depression, without flinching. Plath’s ability to resurface after her depressive episodes gave her courage to explore, as Ted Hughes put it, “psychological depth, very lucidly focused and lit.” The themes of rebirth and renewal are as central to her poems as depression, rage, and destruction.

“What happens to a dream deferred?” Langston Hughes asked in his poem “Harlem.” Did it “crust and sugar over—/ like a syrupy sweet?” For most women of Plath’s generation, it did. But Plath was determined to follow her literary vocation. She dreaded the condescending label of “lady poet,” and she had no intention of remaining unmarried and childless like Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. She wanted to be a wife, mother, and poet—a “triple-threat woman,” as she put it to a friend. These spheres hardly ever overlapped in the sexist era in which she was trapped, but for a time, she achieved all three goals.

They thought death was worth it, but I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet Over the engine that killed her— The mausoleum, the wax house.

from “Stings” by Sylvia Plath

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

Learn more about Heather Clark

Share this poem and peruse other poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series

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#poetry #poetry month #poem-a-day #sylvia plath #red comet #heather clark #National Poetry Month

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dk-thrive · 5 years ago

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I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.

George Orwell, 1984. (Signet Classic January 1, 1961) Originally published June 8th 1949.

#George Orwell #mind #funny #insane #crazy

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blogparanormalexpresso2stuff · 4 years ago

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Preceding the Travel Channel’s James Fox Phenomenon pastiche Wednesday night (12/30/20) were several UFO program airings, one of which recaptured the Betty/Barney Hill episode and the tapes that Psychiatrist Benjamin Simon made during his regressive hypnotic session(s) with them, plus a recall of the Hickson/Calvin Parker event with Calvin offering his remembrance.

Both “stories” strike me as significant, not necessarily extraterrestrial abductions but something more profound and intriguing, in a number of ways.

While many – my pal Claude Falkstrom for one – eschew hypnotism as a reliable mechanism for determining accurate memories or providing reliable information dredged up from the unconscious recesses of one’s mind, hypnotism can, if conducted under the auspices of a professional medical practitioner, can and will produce “accurate” details of an alleged past event.

Yes, such recalled information will be encompassed by other non-pertinent details that have accumulated in a person’s psyche. But a true professional can separate the wheat from the chaff, and psychoanalysis only dispensed with hypnosis as a workable psychiatric tool – replacing it with Freudian free association – after claims of hypnotic flaws became rampant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_association_(psychology)

Listening to tapes of Barney Hill’s hypnotic “trance” with Dr. Simon shows (proves?) that Barney (via his unconscious) really did think (or have) a terrifying event took place between him and some alien life forms (not necessarily ETs).

Those thinking that Barney Hill’s experience was an unconscious concoction derived from fictive art forms: TV shows or movies and/or sci-fi tales (books and magazines), even pollution from his wife Betty’s involvement or interest in sci-fi materials, are far from a correct interpretation of the hypnotic-tape sessions.

The tapes indicate a strong, accurate account of what Barney Hill seems to have experienced during his (and Betty’s) alleged abduction in 1961.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill

That the Betty/Barney Hill shared experience was an occasion of folie à deux is possible but seems unlikely as Barney’s hypnotic session indicates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux#:~:text=Folie%20%

C3%A0%20deux%20('madness,from%20one%20individual%20to%

20another.

Betty’s taped session mimics Barney’s in some ways but her accompanying comments cause me some caution about the experience as she related it:

“He then tested her nervous system and he thrust the needle into her navel, which caused Betty agonizing pain, whereupon the leader waved his hand in front of her eyes and the pain vanished.

The examiner left the room and Betty engaged in conversation with the "leader." She picked up a book with rows of strange symbols that the "leader" said she could take home with her. She also asked from where he came, and he pulled down an instructional map dotted with stars.” [From Wikipedia]

The so-called Amniocentesis that Betty was subject to, years before it was used by human doctors …..

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003921.htm

…. is interesting of course but a book? Books are an evolutionary item of Earth’s humankind and societal inventiveness, a unique process of inventiveness, here, on this planet.

And trade routes between planets? A sci-fi concept that represents Earthian activity that derives from exigencies unique to this planet:

https://sites.google.com/a/sunsetparkhighschool.org/health10global/

cultural-diffusion

These elements within Betty Hill’s hypnotic remembrance cause hesitancy that evokes a possibility that Nick Redfern has noted:

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/06/betty-and-barney-hill-an-alien-abduction-and-mk-ultra/

Whatever really occurred with Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, one can say, rather seriously, that something happened. What that something was remains open to scrutiny.

With the truly bizarre 1973 Charlie Hickson and Calvin Parker event ….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascagoula_Abduction

…. we discover details that I once attributed to a true folie à deux episode, but have since changed my opinion.

The change came about by information in Calvin’s second book (brought to my attention by Philip Mantle, Calvin’s book publisher) telling that there were credible witnesses to some of the initial activity Calvin (and Charlie, before he died) related and insists happened as they say it did.

I’m convinced that the dramatic and truly frightening Pascagoula scenario was something truly out of the ordinary and unlikely a MK-Ultra “experiment.”

But who really knows?

Weird paranormal and ufological activity have been mucked up by “interferences” of government and military boobs who’ve played with humans for years, testing the waters of “insanity” and/or behavior to what ends that also remain unanswered.

At any rate, in both the Hill’s “abduction” and the Pascagoula barbaric escapade, something happened. It really did.

RRRGroup at Friday, January 01, 2021

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theothersideofthecinema · 4 years ago

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The Captive Lover – An Interview with Jacques Rivette, Frédéric Bonnaud

(September 2001)

Translation by Kent Jones

This interview was originally published in Les Inrockuptibles (25 March 1998) and has been republished here with the kind permission of the author.

* * *

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to. I try to stay attentive to all the greats and also the less-than-greats. Which I do, more or less. I see a lot of movies, and I don’t stay away from anything. Jean-Luc sees a lot too, but he doesn’t always stay till the end. For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave. And the fact that I see so many films really seems to amaze certain people. Many filmmakers pretend that they never see anything, which has always seemed odd to me. Everyone accepts the fact that novelists read novels, that painters go to exhibitions and inevitably draw on the work of the great artists who came before them, that musicians listen to old music in addition to new music… so why do people think it’s strange that filmmakers – or people who have the ambition to become filmmakers – should see movies? When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. Their films would probably be better if they’d seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much. Actually, it’s when you see too little that you run the risk of being influenced. If you see a lot, you can choose the films you want to be influenced by. Sometimes the choice isn’t conscious, but there are some things in life that are far more powerful than we are, and that affect us profoundly. If I’m influenced by Hitchcock, Rossellini or Renoir without realizing it, so much the better. If I do something sub-Hitchcock, I’m already very happy. Cocteau used to say: “Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself.” You can always try.

Europa 51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

Every time I make a film, from Paris nous appartient (1961) through Jeanne la pucelle (1994), I keep coming back to the shock we all experienced when we first saw Europa 51. And I think that Sandrine Bonnaire is really in the tradition of Ingrid Bergman as an actress. She can go very deep into Hitchcock territory, and she can go just as deep into Rossellini territory, as she already has with Pialat and Varda.

Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

I’ve never had any affinity for the overhyped mythology of the bad boy, which I think is basically phony. But just by chance, I saw a little of L’Armée des ombres (1969) on TV recently, and I was stunned. Now I have to see all of Melville all over again: he’s definitely someone I underrated. What we have in common is that we both love the same period of American cinema – but not in the same way. I hung out with him a little in the late ’50s; he and I drove around Paris in his car one night. And he delivered a two-hour long monologue, which was fascinating. He really wanted to have disciples and become our “Godfather”: a misunderstanding that never amounted to anything.

The Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang, 1948)

The poster for Secret Défense (1997) reminded us of Lang. Every once in a while during the shoot, I told myself that our film had a slim chance of resembling Lang. But I never set up a shot thinking of him or looking to imitate him. During the editing (which is when I really start to see the film), I saw that it was Hitchcock who had guided us through the writing (which I already knew) and Lang who guided us through the shooting: especially his last films, the ones where he leads the spectator in one direction before he pushes them in another completely different direction, in a very brutal, abrupt way. And then this Langian side of the film (if in fact there is one) is also due to Sandrine’s gravity.

The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

The most seductive one-shot in the history of movies. What can you say? It’s the greatest amateur film ever made.

Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946)

I knew his name would come up sooner or later. So, I’m going to speak my peace at the risk of shocking a lot of people I respect, and maybe even pissing a lot of them off for good. His great films, like All About Eve (1950) or The Barefoot Contessa (1954), were very striking within the parameters of contemporary American cinema at the time they were made, but now I have no desire whatsoever to see them again. I was astonished when Juliet Berto and I saw All About Eve again 25 years ago at the Cinémathèque. I wanted her to see it for a project we were going to do together before Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974). Except for Marilyn Monroe, she hated every minute of it, and I had to admit that she was right: every intention was underlined in red, and it struck me as a film without a director! Mankiewicz was a great producer, a good scenarist and a masterful writer of dialogue, but for me he was never a director. His films are cut together any which way, the actors are always pushed towards caricature and they resist with only varying degrees of success. Here’s a good definition of mise en scène – it’s what’s lacking in the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Whereas Preminger is a pure director. In his work, everything but the direction often disappears. It’s a shame that Dragonwyck wasn’t directed by Jacques Tourneur.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

It’s Chandler’s greatest novel, his strongest. I find the first version of the film – the one that’s about to be shown here – more coherent and “Hawksian” than the version that was fiddled with and came out in ’46. If you want to call Secret Défense a policier, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just that it’s a policier without any cops. I’m incapable of filming French cops, since I find them 100% un-photogenic. The only one who’s found a solution to this problem is Tavernier, in L.627 (1992) and the last quarter of L’Appât (1995). In those films, French cops actually exist, they have a reality distinct from the Duvivier/Clouzot “tradition” or all the American clichés. In that sense, Tavernier has really advanced beyond the rest of French cinema.

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Of course we thought about it when we made Secret Défense, even if dramatically, our film is Vertigo in reverse. Splitting the character of Laure Marsac into Véronique/Ludivine solved all our scenario problems, and above all it allowed us to avoid a police interrogation scene. During the editing, I was struck by the “family resemblance” between the character of Walser and the ones played by Laurence Olivier in Rebecca (1940) and Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941). The source for each of these characters is Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, which brings us back to Tourneur, since I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is a remake of Jane Eyre.

I could never choose one film by Hitchcock; I’d have to take the whole oeuvre (Secret Défense could actually have been called Family Plot [1976]). But if I had to choose just one film, it would be Notorious (1946), because of Ingrid Bergman. You can see this imaginary love affair between Bergman and Hitchcock, with Cary Grant there to put things in relief. The final sequence might be the most perfect in film history, in the way that it resolves everything in three minutes – the love story, the family story and the espionage story, in a few magnificent, unforgettable shots.

Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1966)

When Sandrine and I first started talking – and, as usual, I didn’t know a thing about the film I wanted to make – Bernanos and Dostoyevsky came up. Dostoyevsky was a dead end because he was too Russian. But since there’s something very Bernanos-like about her as an actress in the first place, I started telling her my more or less precise memories of two of his novels: A Crime, which is completely unfilmable, and A Bad Dream, a novel that he kept tucked away in his drawer, in which someone commits a crime for someone else. In A Bad Dream, the journey of the murderess was described in even greater length and detail than Sandrine’s journey in Secret Défense.

It’s because of Bernanos that Mouchette is the Bresson film I like the least. Diary of a Country Priest (1950), on the other hand, is magnificent, even if Bresson left out the book’s sense of generosity and charity and made a film about pride and solitude. But in Mouchette, which is Bernanos’ most perfect book, Bresson keeps betraying him: everything is so relentlessly paltry, studied. Which doesn’t mean that Bresson isn’t an immense artist. I would place Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) right up there with Dreyer’s film. It burns just as brightly.

Under the Sun of Satan (Maurice Pialat, 1987)

Pialat is a great filmmaker – imperfect, but then who isn’t? I don’t mean it as a reproach. And he had the genius to invent Sandrine – archeologically speaking – for A nos amours (1983). But I would put Van Gogh (1991) and The House in the Woods (1971) above all his other films. Because there he succeeded in filming the happiness, no doubt imaginary, of the pre-WWI world. Although the tone is very different, it’s as beautiful as Renoir.

But I really believe that Bernanos is unfilmable. Diary of a Country Priest remains an exception. In Under the Sun of Satan, I like everything concerning Mouchette [Sandrine Bonnaire’s character], and Pialat acquits himself honorably. But it was insane to adapt the book in the first place since the core of the narrative, the encounter with Satan, happens at night – black night, absolute night. Only Duras could have filmed that.

Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1959)

I’m going to make more enemies…actually the same enemies, since the people who like Minnelli usually like Mankiewicz, too. Minnelli is regarded as a great director thanks to the slackening of the “politique des auteurs.” For François, Jean-Luc and me, the politique consisted of saying that there were only a few filmmakers who merited consideration as auteurs, in the same sense as Balzac or Molière. One play by Molière might be less good than another, but it is vital and exciting in relation to the entire oeuvre. This is true of Renoir, Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Dreyer, Mizoguchi, Sirk, Ozu… But it’s not true of all filmmakers. Is it true of Minnelli, Walsh or Cukor? I don’t think so. They shot the scripts that the studio assigned them to, with varying levels of interest. Now, in the case of Preminger, where the direction is everything, the politique works. As for Walsh, whenever he was intensely interested in the story or the actors, he became an auteur – and in many other cases, he didn’t. In Minnelli’s case, he was meticulous with the sets, the spaces, the light…but how much did he work with the actors? I loved Some Came Running (1958) when it came out, just like everybody else, but when I saw it again ten years ago I was taken aback: three great actors and they’re working in a void, with no one watching them or listening to them from behind the camera.

Whereas with Sirk, everything is always filmed. No matter what the script, he’s always a real director. In Written On the Wind (1956), there’s that famous Universal staircase, and it’s a real character, just like the one in Secret Défense. I chose the house where we filmed because of the staircase. I think that’s where all dramatic loose ends come together, and also where they must resolve themselves.

That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977)

More than those of any other filmmaker, Buñuel’s films gain the most on re-viewing. Not only do they not wear thin, they become increasingly mysterious, stronger and more precise. I remember being completely astonished by one Buñuel film: if he hadn’t already stolen it, I would have loved to be able to call my new film The Exterminating Angel! François and I saw El when it came out and we loved it. We were really struck by its Hitchcockian side, although Buñuel’s obsessions and Hitchcock’s obsessions were definitely not the same. But they both had the balls to make films out of the obsessions that they carried around with them every day of their lives. Which is also what Pasolini, Mizoguchi and Fassbinder did.

The Marquise of O… (Eric Rohmer, 1976)

It’s very beautiful. Although I prefer the Rohmer films where he goes deep into emotional destitution, where it becomes the crux of the mise en scène, as in Summer, The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediathèque and in a film that I’d rank even higher, Rendez-vous in Paris (1995). The second episode is even more beautiful than the first, and I consider the third to be a kind of summit of French cinema. It had an added personal meaning for me because I saw it in relation to La Belle noiseuse (1991) – it’s an entirely different way of showing painting, in this case the way a painter looks at canvases. If I had to choose a key Rohmer film that summarized everything in his oeuvre, it would be The Aviator’s Wife (1980). In that film, you get all the science and the eminently ethical perversity of the Moral Tales and the rest of the Comedies and Proverbs, only with moments of infinite grace. It’s a film of absolute grace.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)

I don’t own a television, which is why I couldn’t share Serge Daney’s passion for TV series. And I took a long time to appreciate Lynch. In fact, I didn’t really start until Blue Velvet (1986). With Isabella Rossellini’s apartment, Lynch succeeded in creating the creepiest set in the history of cinema. And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground. Only the first part of Lost Highway (1996) is as great. After which you get the idea, and by the last section I was one step ahead of the film, although it remained a powerful experience right up to the end.

Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990)

Definitely Jean-Luc’s most beautiful film of the last 15 years, and that raises the bar pretty high, because the other films aren’t anything to scoff at. But I don’t want to talk about it…it would get too personal.

Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)

Along with Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), it was the key French film for our generation – François, Jean-Luc, Jacques Demy, myself. For me, it’s fundamental. I saw Beauty and the Beast in ’46 and then I read Cocteau’s shooting diary – a hair-raising shoot, which hit more snags than you can imagine. And eventually, I knew the diary by heart because I re-read it so many times. That’s how I discovered what I wanted to do with my life. Cocteau was responsible for my vocation as a filmmaker. I love all his films, even the less successful ones. He’s just so important, and he was really an auteur in every sense of the word.

Les Enfants terribles (Jean Cocteau, 1950)

A magnificent film. One night, right after I’d arrived in Paris, I was on my way home. And as I was going up rue Amsterdam around Place Clichy, I walked right into the filming of the snowball fight. I stepped onto the court of the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre and there was Cocteau directing the shoot. Melville wasn’t even there. Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there’s no doubt he’s influenced every one of my films. He’s a great poet, a great novelist, maybe not a great playwright – although I really love one of his plays, The Knights of the Round Table, which is not too well known. An astonishing piece, very autobiographical, about homosexuality and opium. Chéreau should stage it. You see Merlin as he puts Arthur’s castle under a bad charm, assisted by an invisible demon named Ginifer who appears in the guise of three different characters: it’s a metaphor for all forms of human dependence. In Secret Défense, the character of Laure Mersac probably has a little of Ginifer in her.

Cocteau is the one who, at the end of the ’40s, demonstrated in his writing exactly what you could do with faux raccords, that working in a 180-degree space could be great and that photographic unity was a joke: he gave these things a form and each of us took what he could from them.

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

I agree completely with what Jean-Luc said in this week’s Elle: it’s garbage. Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag. On top of which the actress is awful, unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time. That’s why it’s been such a success with young girls, especially inhibited, slightly plump American girls who see the film over and over as if they were on a pilgrimage: they recognize themselves in her, and dream of falling into the arms of the gorgeous Leonardo.

Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997)

Wild Man Blues (1997) by Barbara Kopple helped me to overcome my problem with him, and to like him as a person. In Wild Man Blues, you really see that he’s completely honest, sincere and very open, like a 12-year old. He’s not always as ambitious as he could be, and he’s better on dishonesty than he is with feelings of warmth. But Deconstructing Harry is a breath of fresh air, a politically incorrect American film at long last. Whereas the last one was incredibly bad. He’s a good guy, and he’s definitely an auteur. Which is not to say that every film is an artistic success.

Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)

I like it very much. But I still think that the great Asian directors are Japanese, despite the critical inflation of Asia in general and of Chinese directors in particular. I think they’re able and clever, maybe a little too able and a little too clever. For example, Hou Hsiao-hsien really irritates me, even though I liked the first two of his films that appeared in Paris. I find his work completely manufactured and sort of disagreeable, but very politically correct. The last one [Goodbye South, Goodbye, 1996] is so systematic that it somehow becomes interesting again but even so, I think it’s kind of a trick. Hou Hsiao-hsien and James Cameron, same problem. Whereas with Wong Kar-wai, I’ve had my ups and downs, but I found Happy Together incredibly touching. In that film, he’s a great director, and he’s taking risks. Chungking Express (1994) was his biggest success, but that was a film made on a break during shooting [of Ashes of Time, 1994], and pretty minor. But it’s always like that. Take Jane Campion: The Piano (1993) is the least of her four films, whereas The Portrait of a Lady (1996) is magnificent, and everybody spat on it. Same with Kitano: Fireworks (1997) is the least good of the three of his films to get a French release. But those are the rules of the game. After all, Renoir had his biggest success with Grand Illusion (1937).

Face/Off (John Woo, 1997)

I loathe it. But I thought A Better Tomorrow (1986) was awful, too. It’s stupid, shoddy and unpleasant. I saw Broken Arrow (1996) and didn’t think it was so bad, but that was just a studio film, where he was fulfilling the terms of his contract. But I find Face/Off disgusting, physically revolting, and pornographic.

Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

His work is always very beautiful but the pleasure of discovery is now over. I wish that he would get out of his own universe for a while. I’d like to see something a little more surprising from him, which would really be welcome…God, what a meddler I am!

On Connaît la Chanson (Alain Resnais, 1997)

Resnais is one of the few indisputably great filmmakers, and sometimes that’s a burden for him. But this film is almost perfect, a full experience. Though for me, the great Resnais films remain, on the one hand, Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) and Muriel (1963), and on the other hand, Mélo (1986) and Smoking/No Smoking (1993).

Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

What a disgrace, just a complete piece of shit! I liked his first film, The Seventh Continent (1989), very much, and then each one after that I liked less and less. This one is vile, not in the same way as John Woo, but those two really deserve each other – they should get married. And I never want to meet their children! It’s worse than Kubrick with A Clockwork Orange (1971), a film that I hate just as much, not for cinematic reasons but for moral ones. I remember when it came out, Jacques Demy was so shocked that it made him cry. Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it’s great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001 (1968).

Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997)

I think it’s magnificent, I think that Costa is genuinely great. It’s beautiful and strong. Even if I had a hard time understanding the characters’ relationships with one another. Like with Casa de lava (1994), new enigmas reveal themselves with each new viewing.

The End of Violence (Wim Wenders, 1997)

Very touching. Even if, about halfway through, it starts to go around in circles and ends up on a sour note. Wenders often has script problems. He needs to commit himself to working with real writers again. Alice in the Cities (1974) and Wrong Move (1975) are great films – so is Paris, Texas (1984). And I’m sure the next one will be, too.

Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997)

Great, one of the most beautiful Almodóvars, and I love all of them. He’s a much more mysterious filmmaker than people realize. He doesn’t cheat or con the audience. He also has his Cocteau side, in the way that he plays with the phantasmagorical and the real.

Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)

I didn’t expect it as I was walking into the theater, but I was enraptured throughout the whole thing. Sigourney Weaver is wonderful, and what she does here really places her in the great tradition of expressionist cinema. It’s a purely plastic film, with a story that’s both minimal and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, it managed to scare the entire audience, while it also had some very moving moments. Basically, you’re given a single situation at the beginning, and the film consists of as many plastic and emotional variations of that situation as possible. It’s never stupid, it’s inventive, honest and frank. I have a feeling that the credit should go to Sigourney Weaver as much as it should to Jeunet.

Rien ne va plus (Claude Chabrol, 1997)

Another film that starts off well before falling apart halfway through. There’s a big script problem: Cluzet’s character isn’t really dealt with. It’s important to remember Hitchcock’s adage about making the villain as interesting as possible. But I’m anxious to see the next Chabrol film, especially since Sandrine will be in it.

Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

I’ve seen it twice and I like it a lot, but I prefer Showgirls (1995), one of the great American films of the last few years. It’s Verhoeven’s best American film and his most personal. In Starship Troopers, he uses various effects to help everything go down smoothly, but he’s totally exposed in Showgirls. It’s the American film that’s closest to his Dutch work. It has great sincerity, and the script is very honest, guileless. It’s so obvious that it was written by Verhoeven himself rather than Mr. Eszterhas, who is nothing. And that actress is amazing! Like every Verhoeven film, it’s very unpleasant: it’s about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that’s his philosophy. Of all the recent American films that were set in Las Vegas, Showgirls was the only one that was real – take my word for it.I who have never set foot in the place!

Starship Troopers doesn’t mock the American military or the clichés of war – that’s just something Verhoeven says in interviews to appear politically correct. In fact, he loves clichés, and there’s a comic strip side to Verhoeven, very close to Lichtenstein. And his bugs are wonderful and very funny, so much better than Spielberg’s dinosaurs. I always defend Verhoeven, just as I’ve been defending Altman for the past twenty years. Altman failed with Prêt-à-Porter (1994) but at least he followed through with it, right up to an ending that capped the rock bottom nothingness that preceded it. He should have realized how uninteresting the fashion world was when he started to shoot, and he definitely should have understood it before he started shooting. He’s an uneven filmmaker but a passionate one. In the same way, I’ve defended Clint Eastwood since he started directing. I like all his films, even the jokey “family” films with that ridiculous monkey, the ones that everyone are trying to forget – they’re part of his oeuvre, too. In France, we forgive almost everything, but with Altman, who takes risks each time he makes a film, we forgive nothing. Whereas for Pollack, Frankenheimer, Schatzberg…risk doesn’t even exist for them. The films of Eastwood or Altman belong to them and no one else: you have to like them.

The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)

I didn’t hate it, but I was more taken with La Femme Nikita (1990) and The Professional (1994). I can’t wait to see his Joan of Arc. Since no version of Joan of Arc has ever made money, including ours, I’m waiting to see if he drains all the cash out of Gaumont that they made with The Fifth Element. Of course it will be a very naive and childish film, but why not? Joan of Arc could easily work as a childish film (at Vaucouleurs, she was only 16 years old), the Orléans murals done by numbers. Personally, I prefer small, “realistic” settings to overblown sets done by numbers, but to each his own. Joan of Arc belongs to everyone (except Jean-Marie Le Pen), which is why I got to make my own version after Dreyer’s and Bresson’s. Besides, Besson is only one letter short of Bresson! He’s got the look, but he doesn’t have the ‘r.’

* * *

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themoonsbeloved · 6 years ago

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Women like me have been keeping a secret. It’s a secret so shameful that it’s hidden from friends and lovers, so dark that vast amounts of time and money are spent hiding it. It’s not a crime we have committed, it’s a curse: facial hair.

What can be dismissed as trivial is a source of deep anxiety for many women, but that’s what female facial hair is; a series of contradictions. It’s something that’s common yet considered abnormal, natural for one gender and freakish for another. The reality isn’t quite so clearcut. Merran Toerien, who wrote her PhD on the removal of female body hair, explained “biologically the boundary lines on body hair between masculinity and femininity are much more blurred than we make them seem”.

About one in 14 women have hirsutism, a condition where “excessive” hair appears in a male pattern on women’s bodies. But plenty more women who don’t come close to that benchmark of “excessive” still feel deeply uncomfortable about their body hair. If you’re unsure whether your hair growth qualifies as “excessive” for a woman, there’s a measurement tool that some men have developed for you.

In 1961, an endocrinologist named Dr David Ferriman and a graduate student published a study on the “clinical assessment of body hair growth in women”. More specifically, they were interested in terminal hairs (ones that are coarser, darker and at least 0.5cm/0.2 inches in length) rather than the fine vellus hairs. The men looked at 11 body areas on women, rating the hair from zero (no hairs) to four (extensive hairs). The Ferriman-Gallwey scale was born.

It has since been simplified, scoring just nine body areas (upper lip, chin, chest, upper stomach, lower stomach, upper arms, upper legs, upper back and lower back). The total score is then added up – less than eight is considered normal, a score of eight to 15 indicates mild hirsutism and a score greater than 15 moderate or severe hirsutism.

Most women who live with facial hair don’t refer to the Ferriman-Gallwey scale before deciding they have a problem. Since starting to research hirsutism, I’ve received over a hundred emails from women describing their experiences discovering, and living with, facial hair. Their stories loudly echo one another.

Because terminal hairs start to appear on girls around the age of eight, the experiences start young. Alicia, 38, in Indiana wrote, “kids in my class would be like, ‘Haha look at this gorilla!’”, Lara was nicknamed “monkey” by her classmates while Mina in San Diego was called “sasquatch”. For some girls, this bullying (more often by boys) was their first realization that they had facial hair and that the facial hair was somehow “wrong”. Next, came efforts to “fix” themselves.

Génesis, a 24-year-old woman described her first memories of hair removal. “In fourth grade, a boy called me a werewolf when he saw my arm hairs and upper lip hairs … I cried to my mom about it … she bleached my lower legs, my arms, my back, my upper lip and part of my cheeks to diminish my growing sideburns. I remember it itched and burned.”

After those first attempts come many, many more – each with their own investment in time, money and physical pain. The removal doesn’t just make unwanted hair go away, it raises a whole new set of problems, particularly for women of color. Non-white skin is more likely to scar as a result of trying to remove hair.

"Instead of reading or finishing homework on the car drives to school growing up, I would spend the entire length of the drive obsessively plucking and threading my mustache. Every day." – Rona K Akbari, 21, Brooklyn

On average, women with facial hair spend 104 minutes a week managing it, according to a 2006 British study. Two-thirds of the women in the study said they continually check their facial hair in mirrors and three-quarters said they continually check by touching it.

The study found facial hair takes an emotional toll. Forty percent said they felt uncomfortable in social situations, 75% reported clinical levels of anxiety. Overall, they said that they had a good quality of life, but tended to give low scores when it came to their social lives and relationships. All of this pain despite the fact that, for the most part, women’s facial hair is entirely normal.

"If I know I have visible facial hair, I’m much more reserved in social situations. I try to cover it up by placing my hand on my chin or over my mouth. And I’m thinking about it constantly." – Ashley D’Arcy, 26

"Meanwhile, my 95-year-old demented, deaf and blind Italian aunt sits in a nursing home, and whenever I visit, she points to and rubs her chin, which is her way of communicating to take care of the hair situation. That’s how I know she’s still in there and she cares. I hope someone returns the favor in 40 years." – Julia, 54

There are, however, some medical conditions which can cause moderate or severe hirsutism, the most likely of which is polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, which accounts for 72-82% of all cases. PCOS is a hormonal disorder affecting between eight and 20% of women worldwide. There are other causes too, such as idiopathic hyperandrogenemia, a condition where women have excessive levels of male hormones like testosterone, which explains another 6-15% of cases.

But many women who don’t have hirsutism, who don’t have any medical condition whatsoever, consider their hairs “excessive” all the same. And that’s much more likely if you’re a woman of color.

The original Ferriman-Gallwey study, like so much western medical research at the time, produced findings that might not apply to women of color (the averages were based on evaluations of 60 white women). More recent research has suggested that was a big flaw, because race does make a big difference to the chances that a woman will have facial hair.

In 2014, researchers looked at high-resolution photos of 2,895 women’s faces. They found that, on average, the white women had less hair than any other race and Asian women had the most. But ethnicity mattered too – for example, the white Italian women in the study had more hair than the white British women.

"But more than a gender thing, for me my hair was about race/ethnicity. My hairiness really solidified how different I was from my peers. I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. And although my school was pretty diverse, the dominant beauty norm was to be blonde and white." – Mitra Kaboli, 30, Brooklyn

These numbers might be helpful to women like Melissa who said her facial hair meant “I felt inferior, I was a ‘dirty ethnic’ girl”.

But giving reassurance to ethnic minorities probably isn’t why this research was undertaken. The study was funded by Procter & Gamble, the consumer goods company worth $230bnwhich sells, among other things, razors for women. They know that female hair removal is big business.

Over the years, as women showed more of our bodies – as stockings became sheer and sleeves became short, there was pressure for these new exposed parts to be hairless. Beginning in 1915, advertisements in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar began referring to hair removal for women. Last year, the hair removal industry in the US alone was valued at $990m. The business model only works if we hate our hair and want to remove it or render it invisible with bleach (a norm just as unrealistic as hairlessness – brown women rarely have blonde hair).

When did we sign up to an ideal of female hairlessness? The short answer is: women have hated our facial hair for as long as men have been studying it. In 1575, the Spanish physician Juan Huarte wrote: “Of course, the woman who has much body and facial hair (being of a more hot and dry nature) is also intelligent but disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly, has a deep voice and frequent infertility problems.”

These signposts are strictest when it comes to our faces, and they extend beyond gender to sexuality too. According to Huarte, masculine women, feminine men and homosexuals were originally supposed to be born of the opposite sex. Facial hair is one important way to understand these distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal”, and then police those boundaries.

Scientists have turned their sexist and homophobic expectations of body hair to racist ones, too. After Darwin’s 1871 book Descent of Man was published, male scientists began to obsess over racial hair types as an indication of primitiveness. One study, published in 1893, looked for insanity in 271 white women and found that women who were insane were more likely to have facial hair, resembling those of the “inferior races”.

These aren’t separate ideas because race and gender overlap – black is portrayed in mass media as a masculine race, Asian as feminine. Ashley Reese, 27, wrote “part of my self-consciousness about my facial hair might also tie into some ridiculous internalized racism about black women being less inherently feminine”. While Katherine Parker, 44, wrote, “It makes me feel very confused about my gender.”

Some women are pushing back. Queer women – those who are questioning heterosexual and cisgender norms – are already thinking outside of the framework that shames female facial hair. Melanie, a 28-year-old woman in Chicago explained that as a queer woman “there is less of a prescription for what I should embody as a woman, what attraction between my partner and I looks like, which has helped immensely in coming to terms with my facial hair”.

Social media accounts like hirsute and cute, happy and hairy and activists like Harnaam Kaur are resisting these norms too, by shamelessly sharing images of hairy female bodies. And even women who aren’t rejecting these standards outright, feel deeply ambivalent about them. “I understand, on a rational level, how inherently misogynistic it is to expect women to be constantly ripping hair out of themselves, hair that grows naturally, wrote one woman who, like many I heard from, asked to remain anonymous. “But I can’t bring myself to accept it and let it grow.”

Another wrote: “It’s one thing to be a little heavy, or short, or both. But facial hair? That’s pushing it.”

I’m not about to judge any woman for removing her facial hair. Despite knowing that I don’t need “help”, I still go to see a beauty “therapist” each month. I pay huge sums so she can zap me with a laser that damages my hair follicles. I’ve signed up for a solution, even though I know that the problem doesn’t really exist. I lie there wincing with each shock as she asks me about my weekend and says “Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to do your arms too? They’re very hairy.”

#hirsutism #racism #sexism #misogyny #patriarchy #homophobia #pcos

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crowdvscritic · 5 years ago

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round up // MARCH + APRIL 20

You don’t need me to tell you it’s been a weird couple of months, nor do you need me to talk about anything that rhymes with shmorona or shmyrus or shmovid-shmineteen.

The short summary of this time for me (and as it’s relevant to this Round Up): I’ve watched a lot of movies. At the time of publishing this piece, I’ve watched almost 100 while staying inside. As always, I’ll only be highlighting titles new to me, but if you need even more recommendations for movie night, read all the way to the end for more.

March + April Crowd-Pleasers

Agatha Christie Movies

Turner Classic Movies broadcasted Murder She Said (1961), Murder Most Foul (1964), and Ten Little Indians (1965) in March, and I’m only a few movies away from becoming an Agatha Christie junkie. Margaret Rutherford is a delight as the elderly, self-appointed detective Miss Marple in the latter two films. Full disclosure: I’m thinking of becoming a spinster detective aided by my librarian gentleman friend after watching them.

NBC Comedy Night Done Right Podcasts: Office Ladies and The Darkest Timeline

I rewatched all of Community the week after it dropped on Netflix, and it was even better than I remembered. Oh, and then Joel McHale and Ken Jeong decided to randomly start a podcast with hours of meandering memories from making the show? Sign me up for that study group.

If you like your podcast retrospectives a little more structured, try Office Ladies, co-hosted by real-life besties Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (aka Pam and Angela on The Office). They invite friends who made the show to join the conversation, but I also could just listen to their BFF banter about bread making and Game of Thrones all day.

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Lizzo and Harry Styles Singing “Juice”

I mean…do you really need me to explain why this is here?

The Other Guys (2010)

I’m really late to the party on this one, but I can confirm it’s still funny. Bonus: It’s a great movie for a Netflix Party. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

This Personality Test

One of my favorite online retailers, ban.do, shared this, and then another friend forwarded it to me, and I know why it’s going viral. Call it the pop culture version of Myers-Briggs because it types your personality based on books, movies, and TV shows like Harry Potter, Parks and Recreation, and Pride and Prejudice, just to name a few. Speaking of Pam from The Office, apparently we’re 89% alike? I’m flattered!

Onward (2020)

Apparently even Tier 2 Pixar can make me sob. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

The Banker (2020)

Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Mackie are phenom in this historical drama about a story I wasn’t familiar with, and Nicholas Hoult is an actor that can get me to watch pretty much anything. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

Happiness Continues (2020)

Did I dance and sing and jump around the living room with sisters while reliving this concert together? I’m not saying I did not do that. Crowd: 10/10 // Critic: 7/10

Kill Bill (2003-04)

Quentin Tarantino movies are hit-or-miss for me, but, boy, these two volumes hit just right. Uma Thurman’s Bride is complex and relatable and insanely cool, aka the perfect center for a complex, satisfying, and insanely cool action saga. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

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A Parks & Recreation Special (2020)

I have no novel thoughts on why this was such a warm hug, but I’m so grateful this reunion was as beautiful as a desert fox.

March + April Critic Picks

The Man in the High Castle (2015-19)

Imagine a world where the Axis Powers won World War II, and you’ve got a great premise for a thought experiment and for a TV series. This Amazon Prime show made me realize I’ve had the privilege to never need to think much about this scenario, and while we’ve got a host of problems in 2020, this realistic (and addicting) drama dwarfs them with this what-could-have-been scenario. The series didn’t quite stick the landing that the first season promised, but the characters and performances are top-notch start to finish, the world building takes a careful attention to detail, and the dialogue is just as powerful for what isn’t being said in each scene.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Some movies important to the history of cinema taste like vegetables to my modern sensibilities—this Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical wasn’t one of them thanks to dance routines that still marvel and jokes that are still funny. Plus, you can enjoy Ginger Rogers singing the stage classic “We’re in the Money.” Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

Reply All episode #158 “The Case of the Missing Hit”

I’ve recommended Reply All before, but this strange pop culture mystery is as curious as any true crime story you’ve listened to.

Alyosha by Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery (2015)

Great soundtrack for a rainy day.

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“Inside Friend” by Leon Bridges ft. John Mayer

Dream team.

Emma. (2020)

An aesthetically-pleasing Jane Austen adaptation that catches both the author’s snarky and romantic sides. This article from Verily captures why Emma Woodhouse is an Austen heroine that resonates so much today. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Who would have thought my French-speaking sister who has trouble sitting still through movies would be the one to introduce me to the mind of Agnès Varda? Her heroine Cléo is fashionable and eccentric and flighty, but most of all, she’s vulnerable as we watch in near-real time the two hours leading up to her getting test results back from her doctor. A lovely cinéma vérité look at 1960s Paris. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 10/10

Double Indemnity (1944)

A salesman and his lover plot to kill her husband for the insurance money—it doesn’t go as planned. (Who woulda thunk?) A piece of advice: Don’t start a drinking game for every time Fred MacMurray calls Barbara Stanwyck “baby”—you won’t remember anything past the premise I just described tomorrow. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

The Women (1939)

An 100% female cast leads a story written by women adapted from a play written by a woman. While some of the setting details are dated, the questions these women (played by Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Godard, Joan Fontaine, and more) are asking about marriage, family, independence, and a woman’s place in society are the same today. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 9/10

Also in March + April…

I’m keeping track of everything I’m watching while staying inside in a Letterboxd list made up mostly of favorites and feel-goodies I’m rewatching if you need more recommendations.

My friends at ZekeFilm and I wrote up two sets of recommendations of what to watch while staying inside.

In the mood for a new release? If you’re considering the new Ben Affleck drama The Way Back, you can read by ZekeFilm review to see if it’s up your alley.

On SO IT’S A SHOW?, Kyla and covered one of the greatest movies of all time, one of my most favorite movies of all time, and a movie about a horse. Oh, and a few conspiracy theories!

Photo credits: Office Ladies, Personality Test, Reply All, Alyosha. All others IMDb.com.

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buddaimond · 6 years ago

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Robert Pattinson’s Favourite Movies: 15 Titles the Actor Wants You to See *as of June 2018

1. One flew over the cuckoo's nest (1975)

“A lot of that kind of ‘putting your middle finger up to the world’ attitude — not that I really have that, but…I used to be so timid, and that was one of those films that [helped me break out], by pretending to be Randle,” Pattinson told Rotten Tomatoes.

2. Breathless (1961)

Like many film lovers before him, Pattinson cites Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” as the movie that got him fascinated by the director and the French New Wave. The actor calls the movie “one of the best [representations] of the relationship between women and men.”

3. The exorcist (1973)

Most people love “The Exorcist” because of its scares, but Pattinson names it one of his favorite movies of all time for one reason: Linda Blair. “[I choose] ‘The Exorcist’ because I love Linda Blair,” Pattinson told Rotten Tomatoes. “She’s my ideal woman.”

4. Julia (2008)

Erick Zonca’s crime thriller stars Tilda Swinton as an alcoholic who becomes entangled in a plan to kidnap one of her fellow A.A. member’s son from his wealthy grandfather. Pattinson refers to Swinton’s work as “one of the great performances” and lamets the fact the movie is “kind of criminally underseen.”

5. Headhunters (2012)

Before breaking out in the U.S. with “The Imitation Game,” Morten Tyldum directed Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the action thriller “Headhunters.” “It’s an insane chase movie that goes very, very, very dark,” Pattinson told Rotten Tomatoes. “I love it when a story, when you really break down someone’s essence, and that is their fatal flaw. It’s just so simple.”

6. The devils (1971)

Ken Russell’s controversial “The Devils” is one of Pattinson’s favorite movies to revisit. “I love his movies,” Pattinson said of the director. “A lot of [his films are] performance-based; all these directors get these incredible performances. Oliver Reed in ‘The Devils’ is unreal. That could literally play now and it would still be subversive.”

7. The beat that my heart skipped (2005)

Pattinson holds Romain Duris’ performance in Jacques Audiard’s “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” in high regard. “Watching his performance was kind of like, ‘That is a performance which I would love to get anywhere close to,'” Pattinson said about watching the movie as a teenager.

8. Arizona Dream (1993)

Emir Kusturica’s “Arizona Dream” features the pairing of Johnny Depp and Vincent Gallo, and Pattinson said he couldn’t get enough of watching their chemistry. “It was also another early influence,” Pattinson told Rotten Tomatoes. “I love Gallo’s performance when he’s talking about how all the greatest actors have New York accents, and he’s demonstrating to Johnny Depp’s character how to order drinks as a true New Yorker. It’s funny.”

9. Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Pattinson envies Jean-Paul Belmondo for being the coolest actor who ever lived. In addition to “Breathless,” the actor names Belmondo and Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou” as one of his favorites. “He’s cooler than Bogart!” Pattinson said.

10. Ivan's XTC (2002)

Bernard Rose’s “ivan’s xtc.” is an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” that went largely unnoticed at the box office, but Pattinson says it’s one of his favorites. “It’s amazing,” Pattinson said. “Danny Huston should have gotten nominated for an Oscar for it. It’s about an agent in Hollywood, and it’s kind of a dumb movie before Huston comes in, and then literally is the best example of one performance elevating a movie.”

11. First name: Carmen (1983)

Pattinson’s love of Jean-Luc Godard continues with “First Name: Carmen,” which won the Golden Lion at the 1983 Venice Film Festival. “Halfway through, it turns into the most heartbreaking, serious thing that you’ve ever seen — out of nowhere!” Pattinson told Rotten Tomatoes. “You’re suddenly so attached to these characters.”

12. Le souffle (2001)

“It’s a fucking amazing movie,” Pattinson said of Damien Odoul’s coming-of-age movie. “I think it’s kind of quite related to ‘Good Time’ as well. It’s just incredibly, beautifully shot.”

13. Corky Romano (2001)

The Chris Kattan–starring “Corky Romano” was a notorious box-office flop, but that hasn’t stopped Pattinson from loving it all these years. “Literally, that’s one of the only films I’ve pissed my pants at,” Pattinson said. “Like, I actually pissed my pants.”

14. White Material (2009)

One of the reasons Pattinson jumped at the chance to star in Claire Denis’ upcoming science-fiction movie “High-Life” is because he’s long admired her movies. He told the LA Times the Isabelle Huppert–starring “White Material” inspired him as an actor. “I love a lot of Claire Denis’ stuff,” he explained. “I can’t think of a better word than ‘singular.'”

15. The lovers on the bridge (1991)

Leos Carax is another foreign director Pattinson credits as inspiring him as an actor. The actor picked “The Lovers on the Bridge” as his favorite Carax title when speaking to the LA Times. “I like a lot of English-language movies from the ’70s, which everybody likes, but among more recent films, for some reason, a lot of French movies,” he said. “They’re more operatic. They’re not afraid to be emotionally operatic. I like that.”

Photo by Richard Gianorio (23.06.2018)

Rob’s favourite movies list updated every year :

Robert Pattinson’s Five Favorite Films with Rotten Tomatoes (Aug.2017)

Deep Breath, Damien Odoul, 2001

Arizona Dream, Emir Kusturica, 1993

Julia, Erick Zonka, 2009

The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Jacques Audiard, 2005

Headhunters, Morten Tyldum, 2012

Ryan Fujitani (from Rotten Tomatoes): Just for the fun of it, I want to tell you what you picked last time. In 2008, you picked One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Exorcist, the Godard film Prénom Carmen, Corky Romano, and then you picked Ivans XTC, the Danny Huston film.

Robert Pattinson: I mean, to be honest, that’s probably still pretty close to what my five favorite films would be. I was just watching Corky Romano again. [laughs]

RF: And actually, when you talked about Godard last time, you also mentioned Arizona Dream, and you specifically talked about ordering drinks the way Vincent Gallo does as well. It’s clearly something that stuck with you.

Pattinson: [laughs] That’s how little I’ve developed in 10 years. I’m exactly the same.

Rob’s favourite five shared with Le Cinema Club during Cannes (May 2017)

Jimmy P. , Arnaud Desplechin, 2013

Embrace of the Serpent, Ciro Guerra, 2015

Vengeance Is Mine, Shōhei Imamura, 1979

Days of Being Wild, Wong Kar-wai, 1990

Come and See, Elem Klimov, 1985

Photo by Richard Gianorio (23.06.2018)

From the article (published on 22.06.2018), the compiled list of 15 movies Rob recommends, 10 were previously mentioned to Rotten Tomatoes, and these 5 are new ones, and I am going to include my guess on these new additions:

2. Breathless (1961) - Research with Kristen’s role as Jean Seberg

6. The Devils (1971) - Research for his role in The Lighthouse, or just admire the director

12. Le souffle (2001) - Research for Good Time

14. White Material (2009) - Research for High Life

15. The Lovers on The Bridge (1991) - Very french, Juliette Binoche, interesting director, need I say more?

Another interesting note, his other old favourite Pierrot le Fou (1965) whose main actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (Rob: “He’s cooler than Bogart!”) is the co-lead of Jean Seberg in Breathless (1961). AND Breathless’ director Jean-Luc Godard also directed Pierrot le Fou (1965) and First name: Carmen (1983) on his list . Rob has admired Godard for a very long time (LA Time). Small web of connections huh?

#Robert Pattinson #Favourite Films #IndieWire #New Favourite got us Breathless

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bremser · 7 years ago

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Hiroshima

The Peace Memorial Museum is the perfect-sized building, that is, not too large. It’s a Shinto temple filtered through Corbusier. When I visited earlier this year, part of the museum was under renovation, the exhibit took about an hour.

The exhibit opens with two small antechambers of photographs. The first is a grid of photographs of the mushroom cloud from various angles. There's a New Topographics feel to this grid. These photos show different perspectives on the cloud, but none of the photographers were far enough way to capture the shape we all recognize. The grid turns the views into a cubist rendering and I was left with the curiosity the photographers must have experienced: What just happened? What am I looking at?

The second space has one large square photograph by Yoshito Matsushige. This is one of the remarkable stories of 20th century photography that I wasn't aware of before visiting. There are five known frames taken inside Hiroshima that day, taken by Matsushige with a 6x6 camera. He developed them in a river. In an interview, Matsushige said he would have taken more photographs of people, but he felt they were so ravaged that they might attack him. Despite his own exposure, he lived until 2005 (aged 92).

I stood in front of this photograph for several minutes. Unlike the grid of mushroom clouds, you are no longer at a safe distance. The enlargement shows damage to the negative. Everyone has their back turned to the camera and, based on Matsushige's story, that makes sense. It's a powerful photograph because it doesn't feel composed. It doesn’t feel like he was chasing the most shocking scene he saw that day. You feel his caution. It feels like a random moment. The chaos of the composition builds on the mushroom cloud grid, it's very ominous, you know that you have not seen the worst.

The rest of the exhibit is a mix of artifacts, information graphics and smaller photographs. There are many photographs of victims suffering with burns. Around the perimeter of several galleries are outfits of damaged clothing. These are stories of children in school uniforms that made it home, dying of burns and radiation. Hiroshima is a large story to tell, with global implications that are relevant to this moment, but at times it feels like a museum about burning children alive.

The exhibit lighting is very dim, I'm guessing to protect the artifacts and maintain atmosphere. I haven't been to the concentration camps, but I imagine it's like this: You find yourself quietly weeping with people from all around the world.

As a child, first grasping to understand the effects of a nuclear bomb, the thing that fascinated me was that you can be incinerated in an instant. "Vaporized" is not the most accurate word, but it's a word often used. A human life turned to dust, something out of science fiction. The fire bombing of Tokyo also killed a staggering number of people, but what makes nuclear war different is speed and intensity. A city and it's population turned to dust, not over days, but in seconds. There's a corner of concrete from a bank where supposedly you can see the shadow of a person incinerated. It's a very faint fixed shadow, perhaps not the most accurate word, but a photographic representation of a human life vanished.

They also have figures, people with sheets of skin peeling off, with a painted scene of the city burning in the background. The models and the concrete shadow feel like exhibits from a previous era and hopefully will be updated. It’s difficult to imagine what would be a 'successful' exhibit at Hiroshima. The challenge is to not allow the museum to feel entirely historical, to calmly present the threat we live with, with the evidence of that day.

Hiroshima altered my perspective. There are other large, civilization-threatening problems that we read and think about more frequently, because they are all easier to consider than nuclear war. We rationally know how small probabilities work over time. The stakes are always Hiroshima. And it’s insane that each generation has passed this shrieking, awful horror down to the next.

Yoshito Matsushige at the Atomic Photographers Guild

John Hersey's book-length history of the atomic bombing, published a year after the bombing

Shōmei Tōmatsu’s photographs Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document 1961

Michael Lewis writing about the Department of Energy

#notes #hiroshima

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thekillerblogofkillers · 7 years ago

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William MacDonald (1924-2015)

William MacDonald, also known as “the Mutilator” was possibly Australia’s first serial killer. He was born in Liverpool, England in 1924 and between 1961 and 1962 MacDonald terrorised Sydney, Australia with a series of gruesome murders before being arrested while working as a porter at a railway station. His MO was to select male victims at random, lure them somewhere dark, stab them dozens of times in the head and neck and then sever their genitalia.

In 1943, when MacDonald was 19, he was enlisted in the Army and transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers. One night, MacDonald was raped in an air-raid shelter by one of his corporals – he felt traumatised at first, but later decided he had enjoyed the experience, which preyed on his mind for the rest of his life. MacDonald was discharged from the Army in 1947 and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia. He was committed to a mental asylum for a few months and was treated with daily electroconvulsive therapy.

In 1949 MacDonald emigrated from England to Canada and then to Australia 6 years later. He hadn’t been in Australia long before he was arrested and charged with touching a detective’s penis in a public toilet. He was placed on a 2 year good behaviour bond. In 1961, MacDonald moved to Sydney and became well known in the parks and public toilets in his area (popular meeting places for gay men).

MacDonald’s murder spree began in Brisbane in 1961, where he befriended 55-year-old Amos Hurst outside the Roma Street Railway Station. They went drinking in a local pub, and afterwards went back to Hurst’s apartment to continue drinking. Once Hurst was intoxicated, MacDonald began to strangle him. Hurst was too drunk to realise what was happening and eventually began to haemorrhage, blood pouring from his mouth and onto MacDonald’s hands. MacDonald then punched Hurst in the face, killing him. Five days later he saw Hurst’s obituary in the newspaper. It said he had died accidentally. MacDonald breathed a sigh of relief, as he had been living in terror of being arrest, although he was sure nobody had seen him leave Hurst’s apartment.

On 4 June 1961 police were called to the Sydney Domain Baths, where they discovered the nude body of a man who had been stabbed over 30 times, and had had his genitalia completely removed. Alfred Reginald Greenfield was the second victim of the killer soon to become known as “the Mutilator.” Greenfield had been sat on a park bench in Green Park, just opposite St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst, when MacDonald approached him and struck up a conversation. MacDonald offered Greenfield a drink and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the promise of more alcohol when they got there. Once there, MacDonald waited until Greenfield was asleep, then stabbed Greenfield to death. The savagery of the first blows severed the arteries in Greenfield’s throat. MacDonald then removed the victim’s clothing, severed his genitals, and threw them into Sydney Harbour.

Third victim William Cobbin was also stabbed repeatedly and mutilated. His body was discovered in a public toilet at Moore Park. MacDonald had been walking down South Dowling Street when he met 55-year-old Cobbin. He lured his victim to Moore Park, where they drank beer in a public toilet. Just before the attack, MacDonald ominously put on his plastic raincoat. Cobbin was sat on the toilet seat when MacDonald used an uppercut motion to stab Cobbin in the neck with a knife, severing Cobbin’s jugular vein. Cobbin tried to defend himself, but MacDonald was frenzied, stabbing his victim multiple times, covering the toilet cubicle with blood. MacDonald then severed Cobbin’s genitals, placed them and the knife into a plastic bag, and left. On the way home MacDonald washed the blood off his hands and face.

On March 31, 1962, in Darlinghurst, New South Wales, fatally wounded Frank McLean was found by a man out walking with his wife and child. He was the victim of an interrupted assault committed by MacDonald. The man found McLean still breathing, but bleeding heavily, and went to get the police. Earlier that day, MacDonald bought a knife from a sports shop in Sydney. That night MacDonald left his hotel in Darlinghurst ad followed McLean past the local police station. MacDonald began a conversation with McLean and suggested they go drinking around the corner in Bourke Lane. As they entered the lane, MacDonald plunged the knife into McLean’s throat. McLean tried his hardest to fight back, but was too drunk to do so. He was then stabbed in the face and punched, which forced him off balance. However, the assault was interrupted by a young family approaching and MacDonald hid himself. After the man and his family had left to summon police, MacDonald returned to his half-dead victim, pulled him further into the lane and stabbed him again. He pulled down McLean’s trousers, cut off his genitals and put them into a plastic bag which he took home and disposed of the following day. Due to the way in which the victims’ genitals had been removed from multiple bodies, police at one point thought that they may be looking for a surgeon, and local doctors found themselves under investigation.

After being fired from his job at the local post office, where he was using the name Alan Edward Brennan, MacDonald went into business alone. He bought a mixed business store in Concord, again under his assumed name, where he intended to sell sandwiches and other sundries, living in the rooms above the store. He only lived there for about a week after paying the deposit.

On Saturday 6 June 1962, MacDonald went to a wine bar where he met 42-year-old James Hackett, a homeless petty thief who had just been released from prison. The pair went back to MacDonald’s new home and continued to drink. After a short time, Hackett fell asleep on the floor. MacDonald got a boning knife that he used in his delicatessen and stabbed Hackett in the neck. The blow went straight through his throat. Following the first blow, Hackett woke up and tried to protect himself by pushing the knife back into MacDonald’s hand and cutting it badly. MacDonald then upped the ferocity of his attack, eventually hitting Hackett’s heart, killing him immediately. He continued to stab his victim until he had to take a break. Hackett’s blood was all over the apartment. The knife was blunted, so MacDonald wasn’t able to sever his victim’s genitals, and so he fell asleep. When he woke up he was lying next to Hackett’s body, covered in sticky, drying blood. The pools of blood soaked through the floor and into the shop underneath. He cleaned himself up and went to the hospital to get his hand stitched, telling the doctor he had cut himself in his shop. After cleaning up the blood, MacDonald kept Hackett’s corpse under the shop. He fled to Brisbane, believing that the police would soon come looking for either him or Hackett.

3 weeks later, neighboured noticed a foul odour coming from the shop and called the health department, who called the police. On 20 November 1962 police found the decomposing corpse, which could not be identified. An autopsy confirmed that the body was of a male in their forties, which matched the description of the store’s owner, Alan Edward Brennan (MacDonald’s alias). In July, police still had not connected the case with the 3 previous Mutilator killings.

After some investigation, the victim was misidentified as Alan Edward Brennan, and a notice was published in a newspaper obituary section. This was read by his former colleagues at the post office, who attended a small funeral for him. At this time, MacDonald was living in Brisbane before moving to New Zealand, believing that the police were on his trail. He felt the urge to kill again, but for some reason felt that he needed to return to Sydney to do it. When there, he ran into former workmate John McCarthy, who said, “I believed you had died,” at which MacDonald replied, “Leave me alone,” and ran away. He then went to Melbourne. McCarthy went straight to police to tell them he had seen Brennan, who was presumed dead. They did not believe him at first, accusing him of having had too much to drink. He was told to go home and sleep it off. They even called him crazy. He went back again, sober, the following day to explain what he had seen, but they still didn’t believe him. McCarthy decided to go to the Daily Mirror newspaper to speak to crime reporter Joe Morris. McCarthy told his story and the reporter believed him and filed a story under the headline “Case of the Walking Corpse.” The publication of this article forced police to exhume the corpse. The fingerprints proved that the body belonged to James Hackett, not William MacDonald. On closer examination, police discovered that the body had several stab wounds and mutilation of the penis and testicles, linking this death to the notorious Mutilator.

The Sydney police got an identikit picture of MacDonald, which was circulated to every newspaper in the nation. MacDonald had taken a job in Melbourne, on the railways, being hired as “David Allan”. MacDonald tried to disguise himself by dyeing his hair and growing a moustache, but he was instantly recognised by his colleagues. Melbourne police arrested him as he collected his weeks’ wages. When he was questioned, MacDonald admitted to the killings, saying he had an irresistible urge to kill. He said that he was a victim of rape as a teenager, and was inflicting his revenge on victims he chose at random. MacDonald claimed that due to his schizophrenia, he heard voices telling him that his victims were the corporal who raped him as a teenager. He was charged with 4 counts of murder and his trial began in September 1963. MacDonald pleaded guilty on the grounds of insanity and testified to every grisly detail, including how blood had sprayed over his coat as he was castrating his victims, how he put their genitals in plastic bags and took them home. Some jurors fainted and had to be escorted from the courtroom. The jury chose to ignore the evidence from psychiatrists and handed down a guilty verdict. Mr Justice McLennan said that this was “the most barbaric case of murder and total disregard for human life” that had come before him in his many years on the bench. MacDonald showed no signs of remorse and made it clear that if he was free, he would continue killing. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences with the strong recommendation that he never be released.

MacDonald was imprisoned at Long Bay Hospital, a division of Long Bay Correctional Center, but was soon declared insane and transferred to a secure mental hospital. MacDonald was in prison for so long that he became completely institutionalised, and was the longest continuous serving inmate in the New South Wales prison system. He said in 2003, “I have no desire to go and live on the outside. I wouldn’t last five minutes.” MacDonald died May 12, 2015, aged 90, while still in prison. At the time of his death MacDonald had been the oldest and longest-serving prisoner in custody in NSW.

#william #macdonald #australia #liverpool #serial killer #mutilator #genitals #murder #insane

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recklesstreacherous · 7 years ago

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Oh my gosh, Rebekah Harkness had such a messy and sad life www(.)nytimes(.)com/1988/05/22/books/is-there-a-chic-way-to-go(.)html?pagewanted=all

Thanks for linking this article! I love reading about her… and yes, she did have a very unique and tragic life. I’d love to watch a documentary about her.

_______________________________________________________________________‘IS THERE A CHIC WAY TO GO?’A week after her death on June 17, 1982, the mortal remains of Rebekah Harkness were toted home by her older daughter Terry in a Gristede’s shopping bag. The ashes were placed in a $250,000 jeweled urn made by Salvador Dali. They didn’t fit: “Just a leg is in there, or maybe half of her head, and an arm,” said one of Rebekah’s friends. Several hours later, the top of the urn - called the Chalice of Life - was somehow, by unknown agencies, uncovered. “Oh, my God,” said a witness. “She’s escaped.”

This post-mortem mischief was going on at Harkness House, the East 75th Street town house headquarters of the Harkness Ballet Foundation, which Mrs. Harkness had modeled on the St. Petersburg Ballet School. The building, according to Craig Unger, the author of this rich-man/eye-of-the-needle biography, was in a state of putrefaction, “crumbling like Tara after the Civil War.” Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness’s friends were pillaging, “grabbing things right and left.”

Rebekah’s younger daughter Edith, a failed suicide who had spent many years in mental institutions, took only her mother’s pills: Seconal, Nembutal, Valium, Haldol, Librium and various painkillers - 40 vials in all. Allen Pierce, Rebekah’s son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. Bobby Scevers, Rebekah’s lover, 25 years younger than she and a self-declared homosexual, pronounced her children “the most worthless, selfish, useless creatures I’ve ever seen.” (Mr. Scevers has a stunning way of placing himself squarely in the center of every sentence he utters; he appears to believe that Rebekah Harkness’s death happened more to him than to her.) If I report on the demise of the multimillionaire patron of the dance dry-eyed, it is because I am confident in the belief that nothing we say about the dead can prejudice the Defense or tip the Scales of Judgment. I myself wouldn’t give the time of day to anyone who cleaned her pool out with Dom Perignon, put mineral oil in the punch at her sister’s debutante ball and (all in the middle of the Great Depression) got tossed off an ocean liner for shouting obscenities, throwing dinner plates at an orchestra of Filipinos gamely playing the American national anthem, and offending the sensibilities of her fellow passengers by swimming nude - for which actions she counted herself witty. (I do admit, however, that I’d go a long way to read a sentence like this, spoken by Bertrand Castelli, the co-producer of “Hair,” about the time he made love to Rebekah Harkness in her office: “It was as if we were two camels in the desert who suddenly know that the only way to make an oasis is to really talk sense.” After his brief interlude in the oasis, Mr. Castelli was made the artistic director of the Harkness Ballet. “Kiss me,” she commanded. “The others, they just know how to bite.”) Craig Unger, a former editor at New York magazine, appears to be dazzled by all this, although it is sometimes hard to tell whether his breathlessness arises from approval, disapproval, sadness, awe or simple bewilderment. Mr. Unger, who records interviews uncritically and unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his subject.

Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. She went to Fermata, a South Carolina finishing school that had sheltered Roosevelts, Biddles and Auchinclosses. There she delighted, as she wrote in her scrapbook, in setting out to “do everything bad.’' After her divorce from W. Dickson Pierce, an upper-class advertising photographer, she chose for her second husband the Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, who enjoyed a lofty social status, as her own family did not. He appears to have been an embarrassing sort of man; he wrote and privately published a book called ’'Totem and Topees,” which he described as a “conglomeration of uninteresting misinformation,” and followed that with a book called “Ho hum, the Fisherman,” which, he said, did not “have the excuse even of literary merit.” We are told by Mr. Unger - who is an uncomfortable stranger in the world of the rich, unused to deciphering nuances of caste - that the Harknesses’ seven-year marriage was a happy one. Little evidence is given in support of this thesis except that the two wrote a song together called “Giggling With My Feet.”

After she was widowed, Mrs. Harkness renovated her Rhode Island house; she installed 8 kitchens and 21 baths. This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis. She had a salon of sorts. She traveled a lot.

She fancied herself a composer.

She acquired a guru, also a yogi.

She married again. And again.

She was surrounded by a group her son Allen described as “all the fairies flying off the floor, the blackmailing lawyers, the weirdos, the people in the trances.” “We were the favorites,” says a dancer. “We were the loved ones.” In 1961, Rebekah Harkness became the sponsor of the late Robert Joffrey’s small ballet troupe. She did this in grand - if occasionally Marie Antoinette-ish -style. Generous, wasteful, willful, demanding and delusional, she broke with Joffrey to form the Harkness Ballet when he refused to perform the compositions she insisted on writing. In the eyes of many, she had betrayed him. “Costumes, sets, musical scores,” Mr. Unger writes, “many of the best dancers, the entire repertory - even the works choreographed by Joffrey himself - were owned by her foundation.”

“You see,” she said. “Money can buy anything.” It bought her the services of George Skibine, Marjorie Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, Erik Bruhn and Andy Warhol, but it did not guarantee her success. Mr. Unger tells us that under the direction of the dancer-choreographer Larry Rhodes the company began to garner critical raves - whereupon Mrs. Harkness fired him. Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had “descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,” and in 1975 it folded. She had spent the 1987 equivalent of $38 million on a failed enterprise. She rang J. D. Salinger’s bell dressed as a cleaning lady, having conceived the harebrained scheme that the reclusive writer’s short stories be put to music.

She dyed chocolate mousse blue. She dyed a cat green.

She moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from one bank to another for the pleasure of confusing her accountants. She believed in reincarnation. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch.

Her daughter Terry gave birth to a severely retarded and disabled child. For a time, Rebekah Harkness appeared to be enamored of the passive child, called Angel. Her passion, such as it was, burned itself out quickly, coincidentally with the baby’s pulling a ribbon out of her hair. Bobby Scevers, Mr. Unger writes, “had no sympathy” for the child. “So absurd,” Mr. Scevers pronounced. “When they started talking about putting the nursery over my room … I just hit the ceiling. I don’t want this screaming baby over my room! … Let the little creature die!” When she was 10 years old, she did.

Her daughter Edith jumped off roofs, swallowed pills and managed not to kill herself. “How should she do it?” Rebekah Harkness asked. “Is there a chic way to go?”

She lived on champagne and injections - Vitamin B, testosterone, painkillers - as a result of which her bathrooms were splattered with blood and her muscles calcified. (“She walked,” an acquaintance said, “like Frankenstein.”) One could almost feel sorry for her.

At the very end, according to Bobby Scevers, as she lay dying of cancer, “It was complete chaos… . It was so wonderful - everybody running around signing wills and trying on different wigs.”

Her daughter Terry hired Roy Cohn in a (failed) attempt to have her will invalidated.

Her daughter Edith killed herself. (“I’m glad Edith is gone,” said the unquenchable Bobby Scevers.

“I can’t believe it took her this long to succeed.”) Her son Allen says the years he spent in prison were the happiest of his life. He likes to talk about blowing people away. Knowing all this (and much, much more; Mr. Unger withholds no ugly or racy detail), what is it exactly that we have learned? That money can’t buy happiness? That even the rich must die? These are facts of which we have already been apprised.

One sometimes wonders if the point of all these poor-little-rich-girl/boy biographies is to lull the rest of us into a false sense of security: She is so unlike us that we are not encouraged to reflect upon our own mortality, the contemplation of which is a healthy and necessary exercise. We are meant to take comfort and a measure of relief from our difference - though, as we know but do not frequently wish to remember, the grave awaits us all.

It would be interesting to see what a social historian, someone familiar with the hierarchies of caste and class in America - or, better yet, a novelist with a theological bent - would make of the raw material Mr. Unger has gathered. I am beginning to think that biography, especially the biography of such a chaotic personality as Rebekah Harkness, needs to be molded and informed by a novelist’s ordering imagination. It might also have been interesting to see how a feminist writer would have assimilated the facts of Rebekah Harkness’s sorry life. Might Mrs. Harkness be seen as a casualty of her own doomed and defiled expectations? Unfit for mothering, unfit for ordinary love, unfit - untrained - to be the caretaker of a great fortune, was she altogether silly or altogether bad? Was she power or pawn? And how in the world did she get that way?

It is possible to write an edifying biography about an unedifying life. Jean Stein and George Plimpton did that brilliantly in “Edie,” the biography of poor Edie Sedgwick. “Blue Blood” is edifying only insofar as it raises questions about what a biography should be. A terrible story is told here. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it.

#8 KITCHENS #21 BATHS

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fourteenacross · 8 years ago

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john is the most single and frustrated begrudgingly pre-law major there is is when he starts looking for a ghost bf

I have zero time to write this, if only because I know myself and I know it would sprawl into a huge, hundreds of thousands of words verse with a zillion side characters and side-stories and I already HAVE one of those, SO, here are MY THOUGHTS as not!fic:

John’s a senior studying some flavor of government, filled with dread as law school applications loom in the future, and preparing himself for three years of hell to achieve his father’s dream life, which looks nothing like his own dream life. He’s definitely not putting all his effort into classes because, god, he just doesn’t care, there are days he can barely get out of bed let alone write another fucking essay about some crusty old white dudes who liked to oppress people when they weren’t busy writing about freedom and justice. He barely has time for his friends, let alone time for dating, and he has A Reputation for going out for drinks, getting all up in some dude’s business and either beating the shit out of him or fucking him and then never seeing him again.

His friend Herc, FIT student by day, bartender by night, hears about some weird paranormal club meeting in the backroom of his bar and tries to talk the gang into attending. Lafayette and Martha are game, maybe because Herc promises them free drinks, but John has to be needled into coming along.

“Maybe you’ll meet a boy,” Martha says.

“It’s a ghost club,” John says flatly.

“Well, maybe you’ll meet a ghost boy.”

And they all have a good laugh at John’s expense and go to the dumb club meeting. There’s a lot of talk of ghosthunting and electromagnetic whatever the fuck and John keeps thinking about all the work he could be doing (read: sleep he could be getting) right up until they turn on a machine that’s supposed to attract ghosts. The lights in the room flicker as it whirs to life and John looks up automatically and almost shouts out loud when he sees the figure floating about three feet off the floor, regarding the machine warily. He turns to Laf to say something, but none of his friends look at all phased by what’s going on in the room. They mostly look bored. So do the rest of the people at the meeting.

It’s really only John’s years of reading the temperature of rooms at stupid political fundraisers with his father that keeps him from making a fuss. Because it’s clear to him that no one else can see what’s happening–no one else can see this guy, this ghost guy, poking ineffectively at the machine that’s supposed to be pulling ghosts towards them.

“Supposed to be.” It is. It is pulling ghosts towards them. This one, at least.

John’s about to chalk it all up to too little (too much?) sleep and the power of suggestion, when the ghost guy turns around and looks right at him.

“Oh wow,” the ghost says. “Can you actually see me?”

“I–” John starts to say, and Martha and Laf both turn to him. He shuts his mouth. The ghost looks at his friends, looks at the rest of the room, looks at the machine, and then looks back at John again.

“I’ll take that panicked look as a ‘yes,’” the ghost says dryly.

John needs to get some more sleep. That’s all. He needs to get some more sleep and this will all go away.

He excuses himself from the meeting, muttering an excuse to his friends, and high-tails it back to his dorm.

The ghost follows him.

“Are you going to answer me?” the ghost asks him.

“You’re not real, so no,” John says.

“You totally just did, though, so that means I have to be real, right?”

John doesn’t respond.

“Seriously, man, I’ve been trying to get people’s attention for decades. You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to in years, you can’t run away from me.”

“Watch me,” John says.

But the ghost is right and it follows him all the way back to his building and up the stairs and down the hall and into the single that almost makes his dad’s need to flaunt their wealth worth it. The ghost follows him right through the door–through the door, through the solid door that John tries to close in his face.

“Will you talk here?” the ghost asks. “Because I understand not wanting people to think you’re crazy, but…come on. We both know you can see me. Talk to me.” John squeezes his eyes shut. “Please.”

John hates being such a fucking soft touch.

He rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand and sits on his bed and then opens his eyes and looks nervously up at the ghost. He looks about the same age as John–Latino, with dark hair and eyes that somehow manage to be deep and dark even though he’s half-translucent. John compares his clothing to various movies and figures he must have died in the 1950s or 1960s.

“Okay,” he says. “Fine. Maybe if I embrace this insanity they’ll lock me up somewhere and my dad will forget about me completely.”

“You’re not crazy,” the ghost says. “Unless…unless I’ve finally gone crazy after years of being on my own and you’re a projection of my own mind, subconsciously trying to bring attention to your supposed insanity as an indicator that I’ve actually gone insane. Can ghosts go insane?”

John blinks at the ghost. The ghost blinks back.

“I’m John.”

“Alexander.”

The ghost–Alexander–looks away from John and glances around his tiny studio single, full of university-issued furniture and not as much personalization as there probably should be. When he’s done a full sweep of the room, his eyes land back on John.

“It’s, what, 2015?”

“2016,” John says, and the ghost nods.

“Right, right,” he says. “Sometimes I lose track. It’s been a long time.”

“When did you…die?” John asks.

“1961,” Alexander says. “Jesus, fifty-five years, now. Fuck.” Then he frowns apologetically. “Sorry. I’ve been floating around listening to people talk for fifty-five years and people certainly swear more than they used to, but that doesn’t make it polite.”

Somehow, John gets the impression that Alexander doesn’t much bother with polite anyhow. “S’okay,” John says. “If you’re going to be haunting my dorm room or whatever, you’ll hear worse.” Alexander smiles a little and it’s kind of cute and that is a stupid thing to think about a ghost boy who’s probably a hallucination. “Are you going to be haunting my dorm room? Why are you here?”

“Because I followed you home,” Alexander says, though that’s not the answer John is looking for and he clearly knows it. “Because…because you’re the first person in twenty years who’s been able to see me. Because you look slightly more willing to help than the last person. Because–fuck, I don’t know. I’m lonely.”

Closer, but still not the crux of the issue. “I mean,” John says hesitantly, “why are you…you know. Not…wherever ghosts go after they die?”

Alexander shrugs, his shoulders curling inward, his eyes cast downward.

“Dunno,” he says. “I thought, for a while, that I might be in hell. My personal hell, anyway. Not being heard–I mean, if Dante was constructing a punishment for me, that would be near the top.”

John nods slowly. “What happened?”

And Alexander tells him a very, very long story. About coming to America. About making a name for himself. About falling in love and getting married and fighting so hard to get to the top that he pissed off a few of the wrong people. About a shoot out with a guy who used to be his best friend. About bleeding out in an alleyway and never seeing his wife’s face again–never making anything of himself after years of fighting to be better than where he came from.

“Which is the irony of it all,” he tells John. “Because, fuck, if I’d have stayed on the island, I’d be just as likely to be dead, but at least I’d have been able to rise above my position, you know? Dying in America at fucking twenty-three years old without accomplishing anything just feels….” He shrugs. John wonders how it feels to want something that badly. He wonders if he’s ever wanted anything that badly in his life.

“Sorry,” John says when it’s clear Alexander has finished. “Is there anything–you said you needed help?”

That perks him right back up. “Yes! In my papers–I had a completed manuscript in my papers. A novel. It was all set to be published, but my wife never found the full manuscript even after going through all my papers, so it never was. And that’s all I want–I just want it found. I want it out there.” He’s quiet for a moment. “And I want…Eliza didn’t deserve to lose me like that. Eliza didn’t deserve a husband as reckless as I was. She deserved someone who would put her first, before his career. So I want…I want to say goodbye.”

Three years of classes at Columbia, four years of high school, an endless stream of sports teams and clubs and music lessons and parties and John has never felt anything like the tiny ember of excitement that’s burning in his chest, the one that’s slowly starting to ignite his whole body. He’s never heard or seen or done anything that’s made him this eager and excited. He wants to do this. He wants to help. He’s not sure why, but after years of doing things because he was told to, he’s suddenly got a purpose independent of what anyone else wants.

“Yeah,” he says, grinning slowly. “Yeah, okay, I’ll help.”

So over the next few weeks, Alexander stays in his dorm and occasionally follows him around the Columbia campus. He tells John more details about his life and John tells Alex details about his own. They stay up late talking and fall into a comfortable routine. John sees his other friends less and less and spends more and more time in the library searching for Alexander’s wife, trying to figure out what happened to her. Martha and Herc start to worry, but he comes up with flimsy excuses to stay away from the bar, half-hearted lies to get out of going to parties.

“I just hate thinking about you alone in your room,” Martha says to him after he declines the third invitation in a row.

He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s not alone–that maybe for the first time in his life, he’s opening himself up to someone else, telling them his secrets, forging the sort of connection he always thought didn’t exist outside of romance novels.

Romance novels. Why did he think that? It’s not a romance novel, he and Alexander, they’re just–well, they’re something like friends. They’re not–that would be stupid, he can’t fall in love with a ghost. With a straight ghost. Who talks about his wife like she was an angel on earth.

Fuck.

Because he is telling Alexander his secrets. About his father, about the way his family turned on him after James. About trying so hard to make up for one stupid mistake that he doesn’t know who he is or what he wants. About being so afraid to let anyone see him, the real him, because what if they realized he was nothing more than a directionless husk of a boy?

He even, one late night, tells Alexander about the one fantasy he does allow himself–the quiet thoughts that lull him to sleep at night, the dream of just fading from existence, drifting into nothing, being erased from the world. His friends wouldn’t miss him if he just went back and clipped his entire existence from history. James would still be alive. Maybe his father would be happy.

It’s embarrassing and selfish to say that to Alexander, he knows, Alexander, who so clearly yearns to be real again. Still, he sits and he listens to everything John says. The words pour out of him in the dark, the listlessness, the exhaustion, the fear. The only light in the room is the blinking blue light of his phone charger and the faint glow that Alexander gives off when the lights are low. Alexander listens, lying next to him, the edge of his body blurring into the bed. He’s facing John, his expression carefully blank.

“I’m sorry,” John murmurs. “God, how fucking–you don’t need to hear that. You don’t want to hear that.”

“I always want to hear from you,” Alexander says quietly.

“Not about this. How can you sit there and listen to me bitch about wanting to not be alive any longer when being alive again is all you want? Fuck, I wish we could switch places.”

“I don’t,” Alexander says. “I–I don’t think being alive would be half as good if you weren’t there with me.”

They’re both very, very quiet after that. John can hear his heartbeat loud in his ears. Alexander reaches out, slowly, as if to stroke the side of John’s face. John squeezes his eyes shut and shudders, his heart in his throat, hammering away, making it difficult to breathe.

“Alexander.”

“Ssssh.”

And John opens his eyes again to that same expression, that same fathomless gaze. He’s so close. He’s right there and John has never, ever wanted anyone like this. Not his roommate in boarding school who was beautiful and smart and wrote him love poems, not his Western Civ TA who had a musical laugh and delicate hands, certainly not any of the assholes he picks up at bars. This wanting feels like a physical thing, an ache that starts in his chest and rolls around his whole body, tugging at every part of him. He’s afraid to speak again, afraid of what sound might come out. He’s afraid to move, afraid to breathe. He thinks he might cry.

“Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Alexander tells him. “Just. The world needs John Laurens. I need John Laurens.”

And that heavy reminder falls down between them, cooling John’s flushed face, reminding him that Alexander is here because John is supposed to be helping him. John is supposed to be helping him find his wife.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The next day, he considers telling Martha what’s going on for the first time. She’ll probably think he’s crazy, but he needs to let this out, this torturous longing. He’s become accustomed to pouring his troubles out to be dissected, but this isn’t something he can lay at Alexander’s feet. That wouldn’t be fair. At the same time, what the fuck would Martha think if John were to tell her any of this? That he’s in love with a ghost. A married ghost.

Fuck.

He takes a longer way back to his dorm after class and another unsuccessful afternoon cold-calling people who might have known Alexander’s wife. He’s walking down an unfamiliar corridor and his eyes fall on a notice board at the end of the hall. There’s a flyer advertising a movie night hosted by Dr. Burr.

And there’s no way–there’s no way that the Dr. Burr at his school is the same Burr that shot Alexander.

Right?

He rushes through the halls to the office number written on the flyer and nearly collides with a tall black woman in her mid-fifties when he gets there. She’s holding a keyring and looks startled.

“Uh,” he says, panting, “Dr. Burr?”

“Yes?” she says. “I’m sorry, are you a student of mine?”

“No,” John says. “Um. This is going to sound–does the name Alexander Hamilton mean anything to you?”

Dr. Burr stares at him for a moment, her mouth hanging open. Then she turns around and opens her office again and gestures for John to follow her inside.

Dr. Burr fills in some of the gaps of Alexander’s story, gives a slightly different perspective on the fight and all that came before between her father and Alexander. She tells John what came after, too, the parts that she knows. She cries a little, then gives John a phone number for Angelica Church, Alexander’s sister-in-law.

John is very, very slow in walking home after that.

This is what he was supposed to do. This is what he wanted. This is what Alexander wanted, this is why Alexander needed him. To find Eliza. And John has–or as good as, at least. Angelica, Dr. Burr assured him, would be able to contact Eliza. She saved all of Alexander’s things, Dr. Burr said. The manuscript was bound to be among them. Alexander would tell John where it was and John would tell Eliza and…that would be it.

Alexander would be gone.

When John gets to his dorm, Alexander is hovering near the door.

“You’re late,” he says, with some measure of concern.

“I…got caught up talking to a professor,” John says. It’s not a lie. Still, Alexander scrutinizes him.

“Something’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.” That’s an actual lie. “I’m just–I’m tired.”

“If it’s about what I said last night–”

“It’s not.” Not entirely, at least. “I’m glad–I’m glad you care. I’m glad someone cares. About me being alive or dead, I mean.”

Alexander shifts so that he’s floating closer to the ground, so they’re nearly eye-to-eye. It hurts to look at him.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” John manages to say, and is then saved by Alexander going off on a tear about how cinema has changed in the past fifty-five years.

That night is hard to get through, so hard that John knows that he can’t live like that, not even for another day. He feels cruel, keeping Alexander from the answers he seeks, so the next morning, when Alexander is wherever he goes when he’s not hanging around John’s room, John calls Angelica Church. It’s a very long, very convoluted phone call. She’s suspicious of him, suspicious–rightly so–of the story he makes up about how he knows where the manuscript is. She won’t give him Eliza’s number, but she invites him to come to her place in Manhattan so they can see Eliza together.

Then all that’s left is breaking the news to Alexander.

Alexander stares at him, later that day when he finally gets up the guts to tell him. He stares and then he grins and then he shoots around the room so fast that he’s barely more than a blur. He harangues John about when they’re leaving, tells John all manner of stories about Angelica. His mouth is going a mile a minute and John has to smile, even as he feels his heart breaking.

The trip over to Angelica Church’s place is tense. It’s hard for John not to look at Alexander on the subway, and looking at him has the dual problems of making his chest hurt and making him seem like a crazy person, his eyes tracking something that’s not there. It’s even harder not to look at him when they get to Angelica’s and Alexander shoots inside and starts looking around at every nook and cranny.

Ms. Church makes him sit down in the dining room and talks to him as she prepares tea. She tells him all about all of the wonderful things Eliza has been doing with her life–running a foster care and community center, starting a scholarship in Alexander’s honor, getting three degrees and raising a dozen foster children. She paints a picture of a smart, wonderful, kind-hearted, compassionate woman. Alexander’s perfect counterpoint. He wishes Alexander could have seen her accomplish all of this, and from the haunted look on his face, Alexander wishes it too.

“So,” Ms. Church says to him once she’s given him a cup of tea. “I may have not been entirely frank with you on the phone, Mr. Laurens.”

“I’m sorry?” John asks.

Before she can explain, he hears the door opening from the other room.

“Angelica,” a sweet voice calls from the hall, “they didn’t have those pears you like, so I–”

She stops short when she comes into the dining room. John has heard her described often enough that he recognizes Eliza Hamilton on sight, despite the fifty-five years that have passed. Even if he didn’t recognize her, he would have known it was her the moment Alexander began to cry.

“As it so happens, my sister and I live together,” Ms. Church says. To Eliza, she says, “Eliza, this is John Laurens. He says he–well, apparently he found some papers at Columbia that might help us locate Alexander’s lost manuscript.”

“Mrs. Hamilton, it’s nice to meet you,” John says, because he can’t say I’ve heard so much about you without sounding creepy or insane.

“Oh my word,” Eliza says. “I can hardly–how?”

John tells a mostly made up story about finding one of Alexander’s old notebooks in some library reading room. He tries not to watch the way Alexander flits around Eliza, eyes full of tears, reaching out for her. He’s afraid he’s going to be sick, and Eliza seems just as angelic as Alexander made her out to be. She doesn’t deserve that.

After some nosing around the attic room where Alexander’s things are and John making up even more stupid stories about how he knows as much as he does about Alexander, Alexander spots the box with the false bottom that holds the manuscript in question. John pulls it out and pops the hidden drawer out and Eliza bursts into tears.

“It’s so silly!” she says, trying to wave off John’s help. “It’s so very silly, but writing was so important to him–legacy was so important to him–that knowing that all these years have gone by without his story being told has weighed so heavily on me….”

“It’s going to be told now,” John assures her, and lets her hug him. He doesn’t look at Alexander. He can’t. “And,” he adds softly, so quietly that Ms. Church can’t hear, “he’d want you to know that he loves you–loved you–so much. And he regrets–regretted–everything happening the way it did. He thought you deserved more, better. And he’s sorry.”

Eliza pulls back and stares at him in wonder. John stares at his feet. He only looks up when Eliza pulls him into another hug.

He looks up just in time to see Alexander glowing gold, crying, smiling, and fading slowly from sight.

John manages to keep it together long enough to politely refuse a dinner invitation and a reward from Ms. Church and Eliza. He manages to keep it together long enough to get to the train. The second he sits down, however, the tears start. He hates himself for it, but he cries all the way back uptown to his dorm.

It’s so stupid. It’s so stupid. He never should have gotten attached. He never should have let himself get to know Alexander. He never should have let himself fall in love with a ghost. Fuck, it even sounds ridiculous.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye.

He hates himself, but that’s hardly new. He spent twenty-two years hating himself–these last few weeks of contentment were an anomaly. He keeps crying as he trudges down the sidewalks and up the stairs and fumbles for his keys.

There’s a noise on the other side of the door.

John freezes. Someone’s in his room. Someone broke into his dorm. Because this day isn’t fucking bad enough.

Well, fuck it. If there’s a burglar with a gun waiting inside for him, they’ll be doing him a favor at this point.

He puts his key into the lock and turns the knob, pushing it open carefully and then peering inside.

And then blinking.

And then rubbing his eyes.

And then blinking again.

“What…?” he manages to say, but no other words will come to him.

Alexander is sitting on his bed.

He’s not floating above it, glowing faintly. He’s not walking through it. He’s sitting on the mattress, his weight dipping it down on either side of him.

This has to be a dream. Maybe he fell asleep on the subway. Maybe there really was a burglar inside his dorm and he’s been shot and he’s dying.

“John,” Alexander finally says. He smiles slowly, smiles wide, smiles like his face is going to split in two.

“This isn’t–”

“John!” Alexander jumps to his feet and, wow, seeing all that action compressed into a human body is something else. Alexander nearly bounces across the room to him, vibrating with energy.

“No, this isn’t–I’m dreaming, this isn’t–”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Alexander says, and then he’s right in front of John, close enough to touch. “I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, I wanted to say goodbye, when I thought I was moving on I–” He stops short. “You’re crying.”

“You left,” John manages to croak. “You–you did what you needed to do, I did what you needed me to do, and then you were gone and I’ve never–fuck, I haven’t–you–” John gestures futilely and on a particularly sharp flail of his hand, he hits Alexander’s chest.

His solid chest.

John has to swallow around a lump in his throat as he flattens his hand out, presses it against Alexander’s chest, fingers spread.

“Yeah,” Alexander says, and his voice cracks a little as he says it.

“I–” John wants to wipe his eyes, but instead, he reaches out and touches Alex’s cheek, feels real, warm skin beneath his fingers. “I–”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know why,” Alexander says, and now he’s the one crying. “I just–I woke up here. Like this. And–I guess I’m getting a second chance.”

John tries to slow his breathing, the wild beating of his heart. He tries to pull himself together because his heart is jumping to wild conclusions and he’s just going to be disappointed again.

“Eliza–”

“Eliza–” Alex bites his lip. “I love Eliza so much. Endlessly. She was a better woman than I ever deserved. But she’s had a whole life, a whole long life without me. She’s nearly eighty and I’m twenty-three again and–I just–”

“I love you,” John blurts out. “I–it’s crazy, I’m crazy, I fell in love with…with a ghost! With a person who didn’t even exist, with someone who could never love me back and–”

“With someone who does exist,” Alexander assures him, covering John’s hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek. “With someone who does love you back. John….”

John can’t stand it another second, he thinks he might explode if he doesn’t kiss Alexander, so he does. He kisses him and wraps his arms around him, around Alexander, around the solid, real Alexander in his room. The solid, real Alexander that he has here in his arms.

And they make out and have sex and the next day they spend all day in bed making up an elaborate story that explains where the hell Alexander came from and then John introduces him to the rest of the gang and tells them Alex was his secret long-distance boyfriend and that’s why he’s been so weird.

And, idk, they get Alexander papers somehow and he enrolls in Columbia and finishes his degree in two years while John puts off law school to figure out what he really wants to do with his life. And things aren’t perfect, but they’re good and that’s better than it’s been for John for a really long time and he’ll happily take it.

The end, etc.

#replies #hamilton #lams #alexander hamilton #john laurens #fic by me #ish #this isn't really fic #this is just like...a 5k word outline for a longer fic with some dialogue thrown in #but whatever #the redacted boys

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marymosley · 5 years ago

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From Nuking Hurricanes to Friending Kim Jong Un, A Credibility Bill Comes Due For Trump

At the G7 meeting, President Donald Trump enlisted First Lady Melania Trump to vouch for his view that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is a person with “tremendous potential” after spending time with him. The problem is that the First Lady has never met Kim Jong Un, as the White House later embarrassingly admitted. It was a signature moment for the President who has been struggling to convince people that he never suggested nuking hurricanes despite multiple alleged sources saying that he raised the idea repeatedly. The problem is really not the importance of the First Lady vouching for Kim Jong Un or even nuking hurricanes, the problem is that Trump has made so many false statements (including statements contradicted on videotape) that it is no longer possible to simply take his word for it that he never raised the truly insane idea of nuking hurricanes. It is amazing how Trump’s denial did not seem to have any real impact on the coverage. The credibility bill has come due for the President.

At the G-7 (Group of Seven) summit, President Donald Trump declared “Kim Jong Un — who I’ve gotten to know extremely well; the first lady has gotten to know Kim Jong Un, and I think she’d agree with me — he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential.”

For Trump, it was a relatively small misfire. However, it was coming at a time when he was denying a shocking report that he suggested the possibility of exploding nukes to stop the formation of hurricanes. Axios reported that Trump made the proposal to senior Homeland Security and national security officials and cited multiple sources.

The president later called the story “ridiculous.” “The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”

For any other president, the denial would have been enough to knock down a story of a clearly moronic proposal. However, Trump has lost that credibility cushion.

While Francis W. Riechelderfer, the head of the U.S. Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service), once raised the idea in 1961, it would cause untold environmental harm. It is chilling that if any modern president would even contemplate such an act. As NOAA wrote on its FAQ page “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

The more worrisome fact for the White House is that this story is considered plausible and that the President’s denial had no impact on the news cycle. That is why President speak carefully. They know that credibility, once lost, is difficult to regain . . . particularly when you need it the most.

I truly do not know the truth of this matter and that disturbs me a great deal. Like many Americans, it is not clear who or what source can be trusted. With some media now openly anti-Trump, it is difficult to trust the reporting. Yet, the President himself shows a continuing lack of concern over the accuracy or truth of statements. That leaves the public with little ability to discern fact from fiction — a dangerous position for any democratic system.

From Nuking Hurricanes to Friending Kim Jong Un, A Credibility Bill Comes Due For Trump published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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lucids · 6 years ago

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I think it interesting Stan Lee called the comics 'X-Men' ... Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, all dropped their given last name and replaced it with the letter 'X', to symbolism dropping the slave master's last name (all kidnapped Africans were renamed to their oppressor's names), until the black people named themselves, for themselves. The U.S. Nation of Islam was doing this even before the 1960s and before the Civil Rights Movement.

The X-Men "... was a good metaphor for ... the Civil Rights Movement in the country at that time." Stan Lee

Articles:

“Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or color of their skin,” Lee said 2017 video published by Marvel. “The only things we don't have room for are hatred, intolerance, and bigotry.”

The greatest manifestation of that idea was the X-Men. Introduced in September 1963, the X-Men were a team of teenage mutants, led by their teacher and mentor Professor Charles Xavier, who fought super-criminals and other mutants, led by Magneto, bent on the destruction of humanity. But rather than be a black-and-white battle between good and evil, the X-Men had a wrinkle: mutants were hated by the “normal” humans they defended.

“I loved that idea,” Lee told the Guardian in 2000, as the first X-Men movie hit theaters. “It not only made them different, but it was a good metaphor for what was happening with the Civil Rights Movement in the country at that time.”

That metaphor extended to the characters themselves, with Professor X and his vision of harmonious human-mutant coexistence standing in for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while Magneto’s rigid attitude toward the defense of mutantkind reflected the philosophy of Malcolm X. The Sentinels, a brand of massive mutant-hunting robot, were introduced two years later as readers watched on TV as black Americans were beaten and abused by white police officers.

“Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today,” Lee wrote in December 1968. “[I]t’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if a man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.”

Although he was deeply influenced by the Civil Rights struggles unfolding around him in the 1960s, Lee was more of a chronicler than an activist.

Born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York City on December 28, 1922, Lee got his start at Marvel thanks to his uncle Robbie Solomon in 1939, when it was still called Timely Comics. After working on monster books and various sundry titles with titans like Jack Kirby (who co-created Captain America in 1941 with Joe Simon), Lee seized comics’ Silver Age as Marvel’s in 1961 with the introduction of the Fantastic Four, which he co-created with Kirby. The team of superheroes, given strange and wonderful powers after being irradiated in an outer space accident, was full of the kind of showmanship, street-level mythicism, and pop sensibility that defined his life and career.

How the X-Men Reflected the Fight for Civil Rights

Picture this: A race of people who are cast out by the mainstream because of the way they were born or look or their culture. Those who oppose their existence wish to use them for their own selfish ends, while others simply want them all dead.

Among the oppressed number, there rise several factions of opposing views. One faction would like to show the rest of mankind that they are not to be feared and hated but simply wish to be left alone to live their lives as a part of society in peace and harmony. Those of an opposing viewpoint would like nothing more than to rise up and defend themselves against those who hate and fear them, shaking off the chains of oppression and marginalization by any means necessary.

Unfortunately, there are many ethnic and racial minorities across the globe who have had an ongoing dialectic of the sort mentioned above amid their ranks. Some have had this argument for centuries. As an African-American male, I’m reminded of the ongoing discussions regarding the descendants of slaves in America and their struggle for inclusion as full members in the grand democratic experiment. Through all the pomp and fury, we simply wish to be left alone to live our lives without any more catch-22s like the prison industrial complex, poverty pimps, predatory lending practices, drug wars, demagoguery and a list of other things.

This all relates to the Marvel Universe of mutants born with a genetic trait called an X-gene. It allows them to develop superhuman abilities such as flight, matter manipulation, energy projection, telekinesis and teleportation, among other attributes. Because of these traits, many are hunted down and lynched simply for being born with the X-gene. The racism and hatred they faced in their fictional world is similar to that faced by African Americans.

No idea is formed in a vacuum. For every film, television show, poem or, in this instance, comic book, the artists formed their creation by pulling inspiration from what they knew of the world. The X-Men and the concept of mutants were crafted by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1963 with the introduction of “X-Men” No. 1.

The ’60s were a turbulent time in America, with the civil rights struggle nearly 10 years in motion. At the launch of “X-Men” No. 1, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a year off. And it is clear that these characters were inspired by the turbulent times in which Lee and Kirby lived. During a 2000 interview with the United Kingdom news outlet The Guardian, Lee talked about his reasoning behind creating mutants and the overall story arc of the X-Men:

I couldn't have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or zapped with gamma rays, and it occurred to me that if I just said that they were mutants, it would make it easy. Then it occurred to me that instead of them just being heroes that everybody admired, what if I made other people fear and suspect and actually hate them because they were different? I loved that idea; it not only made them different, but it was a good metaphor for what was happening with the Civil Rights Movement in the country at that time.

The nonviolent philosophy incorporated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the self-improvement philosophy of Booker T. Washington, can be found in the X-Men’s teacher and benefactor Dr. Charles Xavier, affectionately known as Professor X. This is telling as well considering that followers of the Nation of Islam, effective players on the civil rights stage in the ’60s, used “X” to replace the American names with which they were born.

Source: https://www.theroot.com/how-the-x-men-reflected-the-fight-for-civil-rights-1790875215

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dazzledbybooks · 6 years ago

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I am so excited that MISCHIEF & MAYHEM by L.E. Rico is ON SALE for .99 today that I wanted to share the news! If you haven’t yet heard about this wonderful book by Author L.E. Rico, be sure to check out all the details below. This blitz also includes a giveaway for a $10 Amazon or B&N gift card, International, courtesy of L.E. and Rockstar Book Tours. So if you’d like a chance to win, enter in the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post. About the Book: Title: MISCHIEF & MAYHEM Author: L.E. Rico Pub. Date: July 9, 2018 Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC (Bliss) Formats: Paperback, eBook Pages: 315 Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo Welcome to Mayhem, Minnesota, home of the Knitty Kitty, The Little Slice of Heaven Pie Shop, and O’Halloran’s Pub—owned by the four young women known as The Whiskey Sisters. In the wake of her divorce, Jameson O’Halloran has gone man-vegan. And this is one diet she’s determined to stick with. Even when her long-lost ex-brother-in-law shows up looking like two scoops of double dutch dipped in chocolate… She’s not giving in. Been there and still wearing the messy T-shirt. It’s been a decade since Scott Clarke left his family and his hometown, never to return. But when tragedy strikes, he finds himself dragged back to the land of gossip, judgment, and the one woman he absolutely, positively, without a doubt can never have. His brother’s ex is off-limits. He just needs to keep repeating that to himself until it sinks in. Excerpt: The shelf is a little too high for my short self, and I’m only able to brush the dishes with my fingertips. “Oh, here, let me help you with that…” Before I can object, he’s standing behind me, reaching over me to get the dishes. For a brief second, his front is pressed against my back. His broad, muscled, perfectly sculpted front. I feel a wave of unwelcome warmth beginning under my collar and creeping up my neck. “Thanks…” I murmur awkwardly, keeping my back to him for a moment longer in an attempt to quash my blush. “Okay. I’m just going to grab a shower before my brother gets here, if you don’t mind.” “Nope. Not at all,” I say quickly. “You go right ahead.” Once he disappears around the corner, I silently smack my palm to my forehead. What was that, Jameson? Why the blush? He’s just your ex-husband’s brother, that’s all. This is insane. I’ve got to stop this childish behavior. No. More. Men. Remember? No thinking about men. No looking at men. No fantasizing about men. Especially not that man! I’m still shaking my head and silently berating myself when I hear him behind me. “Hey, Jameson, do you happen to know if my dad keeps an extra toothbrush around? I dropped mine in the toilet and…” I don’t hear the end of his sentence because, when I turn to face him, I suddenly can’t hear anything. I’m too entranced by the sight of him wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap… I am in so much trouble here. No men. No men. No men… I repeat the mantra over and over again in my head, but clearly the rest of my body isn’t getting the memo. Q&A With L.E. How did you pick Minnesota to be the location of the Story? L.E. (Lauren): My primary career is as a classical music radio DJ and when I was in my late twenties, I had the chance to work for a nationally syndicated service called Classical24—which happened to be based in St. Paul, MN. Even though I’d lived all over the east coast, I knew the Midwest was a whole other world, so I was pretty scared when I got there. But the Minnesotans welcomed me with open arms and helped me weather (pun totally intended) my first winters, buying and maintaining my first house and my ongoing struggle with depression. I had friends almost immediately and was totally enamored of the quirky, cool community around me. The polka mass at the local Catholic church, the obsession with hotdish, and the state fair—where everything is on a stick and Princess Kay of the Milky Way reigns supreme, were some of my favorites. Honestly, had I not met my husband and moved back to New York, I’d probably still be there now! Was it always your intention with this book to do it about a sister and then two brothers? L.E. (Lauren): Yes. We first see Jameson in book one, Blame it on the Bet and it’s clear that her marriage to Win is in trouble. Knowing that her book would be next, I was already concocting scenarios for her to find love after divorce and by having someone who’s been away for so long, I was able to use him to reintroduce the readers —who may or may not have read Blame it on the Bet—to the whacky town of Mayhem and its quirky residents. Plus, I knew it would make Win craaaazy! And that’s always a bonus :^) Was it always your idea to have different issues like stroke, adoption, working in foreign countries a part of the story or it just came as the story flowed? L.E. (Lauren): It all came as the story unraveled under my fingers. My characters often tell me what their stories are, believe it or not! I start off with a very basic idea of who they are and then the events just kind of unfold. Adoption played into this story. Was that something you researched or did you know someone who went through that? L.E. (Lauren): I have two uncles who were adopted—the youngest of whom is two years younger than me. He and I grew up more like brother and sister and we’re still very, very close today. And, while I didn’t purposely set out to write a story about adoption, it was easy to paint that kind of attitude that we were raised with—family is family is family, blood or not. In the case of my elder uncle, my grandparents had to fight for him when, mid-adoption, a “white” family was interested in taking him (my grandparents are Latino). Those were totally different times—even though it was just in 1961—and it was a battle but they never backed down. So this idea that Big Win and Marjorie would do whatever they had to do to adopt that child and keep him—and his identity—safe wasn’t foreign to me. Was the county fair always part of your original story? L.E. (Lauren): Ohhhhhh yeah… I’ve never seen anything like the Minnesota State fair. The food is all deep-fried and on a stick, the rides are amazing, there are people walking around in bee costumes for the honey judging. And, of course, there’s Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her royal court— the inspiration for my Princess Mary of Midwestern Dairy. They really do make a butter bust of her! How could I NOT include that?! Although, I have to admit that the float catastrophe was all mine. Do you have a process that you come up with when you are choosing names and personalities of your characters? L.E. (Lauren): I’ve run through most of the guy names I like so I sometimes use a name generator for help with that. I’ve got a ton of girl names, though. Sometimes I consult a baby names book. The personalities just kind of unfold as I write. I had a good idea of who Jameson, Win and Big Win were based on Blame it on the Bet. Scott was a mystery to me—I had to figure out what it was about him that kept him from coming home and confronting his past for a full decade. Oh, and then there’s little Jackson…God help us all. He was the most fun of all! I’m at a loss for what I’ll do with him as he gets older in the upcoming books! Do you use daily events sometimes as your inspirations? L.E. (Lauren): Oh, sure, all the time! The character of Bryan, Hennessy’s boyfriend, is basically me when I first moved to Minnesota. I was the fish out of water—especially when it came to things like winter preparedness and regional foods like lutefisk (yuck!) and cheese curds (yum!). But more than events it’s people I know who inspire my characters. Janet Lahti, the pie-making mystic is actually an aunt of mine. She’s a bit of a psychic and has had some really spooky occurrences over the years. Julie Freddino, aka The Knitty Kitty, is a girlfriend of mine who took up knitting and gave me a pussyhat last year. It gave me the idea for her business and she picked out her own purple hair. Did you always have big Win getting sick at the beginning in your draft? L.E. (Lauren): Oh, yeah. In the absence of the late “Pops” O’Halloran, Big Win is the paternal figure here. So when his life is in serious jeopardy, it’s a crisis that sucks them all in—the sisters, Win Jr, Scott—even Jackson is effected by the fall of his “goppa.” So it’s a good thread to bring them all together in shared fear and stress and grief. And with his life on the line, it was an opportunity for me to explore the kind of man he’d been when he was younger—when Scott and Win came along. It was also a chance to really see his incredible strength and the love that comes with that. Was that scene considered the hook to the story? L.E. (Lauren): I’m big on starting things right smack in the middle so that the reader is immediately thrown into the deep end. And that image of Big Win on the floor with Jameson giving him CPR and little Jackson wailing in the background—well, it doesn’t get a whole lot more high-stakes than that. When you began to write this book did you know it was going to be a romance and a mystery? L.E. (Lauren): Bringing Scott home was easy—his father’s health crisis put him in an impossible position. He had to come back. But that begs the question—if he’s such a great guy, why did he leave in the first place? So, yeah, it was kind of a mystery for me as well while I sorted out what kind of demons might make someone run away from their family—from their life—for a decade. When do you know that the time in the story calls for humor, like the float scene at the fair? L.E. (Lauren): Honestly, I didn’t even know I was funny until the reviews came in for book number one—Blame it on the Bet. So it was pretty scary approaching Mischief and Mayhem thinking I HAD to be funny. But I found my way. There were a couple of early drafts that were just way too dark and my editor helped me find my way back to a more lighthearted, funnier place—like Princess Mary showing up at the pub and the iguana on the plane. Of course, there’s always going to be something around the Knitty Kitty. But, yeah, that float scene—it was totally organic and it STILL cracks me up! If your book was made into a movie who would you have play… L.E. (Lauren): Yikes! This is always tough for me… Jameson: Rose Leslie Scott: Theo James Win Jr.: Alex Pettyfer Win Sr.: Treat Williams What song or songs best describes your couple or book as a whole? L.E. (Lauren): It’s the theme song from the prologue through to the epilogue—with a generation in between: “Make You Feel My Love” – Garth Brooks “Make You Feel My Love” – Adele What is your next project and when is due out? L.E. (Lauren): I’ve just released a new, non-Whiskey novel, Counterpoint about two concert pianists who bond over a tragic past, a dismal future, and their love for one another. 2019 will also see books for the remaining two sisters, Walker and Bailey. About L.E: Award-Winning author Lauren Rico also happens to be one of the top classical music broadcasters in the country. Her voice is heard nationally on SiriusXM’s Symphony Hall channel, as well as on radio stations in New York City, Charlotte, and Tampa. She’s even been known to accompany travelers as they fly the skies over Thailand, Oman, and China as part of the in-flight entertainment on several airlines. Her love and passion for classical music have allowed her to breathe new life into the stories of the great composers. And now Lauren is telling some stories of her own… Beginning with her erotic thriller, Reverie (Harmony House Productions, 2016), she set out to “put the sexy back in Bach,” creating a riveting tale of passion, deception and redemption set against the backdrop of an international music competition. She rounded out the trilogy with Rhapsody (Harmony House Productions, 2016) and Requiem (Harmony House Productions, 2017). From there, Lauren partnered with Entangled Publishing, LLC, to create the first in her Symphony Hall series of romance novels, Solo (Entangled Publishing 2017). Her most recent release, Mistletoe in Mayhem, is the third in the five-book Whiskey Sisters series (Entangled 2018). Upcoming projects include two more Whiskey Sisters romances, a follow-up to Solo and a super-secret, as-of-yet-unnamed thriller. Lauren hopes to bring classical music to a new audience by showcasing it in twisty, steamy stories that grab the reader and keep them turning pages — and YouTubing the music — into the wee hours. When she’s not on talking on the radio or typing on her laptop, Lauren enjoys time with her husband and spectacularly spoiled mini-schnauzer. Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Book Bub Giveaway Details: 1 winner will win a $10 Amazon or B&N gift card, International. a Rafflecopter giveaway The symbol of the Gallows Saint. About S.A.: S.A. Klopfenstein grew up on a steady dose of Tolkien and Star Wars. As a child, he wrote his first story about a sleepwalking killer who was executed by lethal injection. He lives in the American West with his wife and their dog, Iorek Byrnison. He can be found exploring the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, or daring the halls of the middle school where he teaches Language Arts. Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads Giveaway Details: 1 lucky winner will win a finished copy of THE SHADOW WATCH & THE RAGE OF SAINTS, US Only. a Rafflecopter giveaway

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