#shooting oscar was reprehensible

[its-a-branwen-thing]

On Fear

I want to talk about fear and Ironwood here (yes, I know, don’t we all) as well as Oscar (he was a highlight for me this season) because I think these two carried a lot of the Volume’s scenes in their dynamic. They were just...so well written and their conflict was so wonderfully dynamic. 

It’s long so, under the cut

Ozpin’s speech at the end, regarding fear, really struck me as something directly relating to Ironwood’s character’s actions, specifically two of those fears:

Fear of Loss

“You can’t just go dark in the field like that!”

“It is so good to see you all.”

“Get a communication tower up in the sky, higher than the Grimm can survive...so we never lose contact with each other again.”

Ironwood seems to reflect on this sentiment...a lot. He cares about his team. He hugs Qrow and tells him it’s good to see him again. He’s relieved to see the students again, he grants them their licenses to help with the coming conflict. He trusts them to make the choices...he ultimately will make for them. But it seems so prevalent throughout this and even the last volumes that Ironwood functions at his worst when alone. He was called paranoid, and his control is fairly absolute. Sure he gathered a team, but they did not offer him guidance they offered him loyalty, blind obedience, and trust. The latter is important in that it’s what Clover says before his death. That he trusts James with his life. (more on that...in a separate post)

But he seems fearful of being left alone. Of being in the dark without the guidance of others. He was desperate to call Ozpin back, to consult with him, and Oscar served, to him, as a poor substitute. Ironwood says he had to make his own plan in Ozpin’s absence and he did--and it was an arguably good plan (without the stress on Mantle part). But the crux of it is that he wants to make sure they wouldn’t lose contact again, none of them. Because being alone is one of Ironwood’s greatest fears.

Fear of Failure

“Some things matter more, I think. Keeping our humanity...it’s what makes us different from her.”

“Sometimes I worry that’s her greatest advantage. Without humanity does she still feel fear? Does she ever hesitate? When Salem hit Beacon, even with all my ships, all my soldiers, I was no match for her. I’ve never felt so helpless. The way she...told me she was there.”

This is key to Ironwood’s turn. I loved that it was planted in the season relatively early. I love that Cinder placed the chess piece in his office as a reminder. And I love that we saw that foreshadowing without really knowing what it meant outside of showing us his realized fears. Of Salem winning. Of his failure to stop her. And in the end, he was proven to be correct in that fear. And it was what ultimately lead to him turning his back on the unity of his allies and trusting only in his own judgement. Because Ozpin is gone. He is surrounded by yes-men and fledgling huntresses and huntsmen outside of Qrow, who he has a rocky relationship with at best when it comes to judgement calls, even if, and I’ll reiterate this again, Qrow always seems to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“We have to stop Salem. Nothing matters more.”

“The path you’re heading down where you’re the only one with the answers, where you do the thing you think is right no matter the cost, it’s not going to take you anywhere good.”

-----

Now I want to move into the finale because, once again, these two stole the show outside of Penny and Winter and the maiden powers.

“It was smart of you, not to bring the lamp down here. I wouldn’t trust me either right now.”

This exchange occurs after what is, by all accounts, Ironwood’s fall. It’s after he thinks Winter is behind him only to realize it’s Oscar (looking suspiciously like a certain Headmaster). Ironwood knows he looks bad. Ironwood knows he’s now the enemy of our protagonists. But he’s made it clear time and time again that he doesn’t care what people think of him. What matters, always, is that he does what he thinks is the right thing to defeat Salem. It’s the climax of this volume. It rips Qrow and Clover apart. It rips RWBY and the Ace Ops apart. They have different views of what the right thing is. But what Oscar says during his first exchange in the Vault with Ironwood really cements the idea of loyalty, which is unconditional for Ironwood, and trust, which is unconditional for Oscar (and now, hopefully, Ozpin).

“I am not going to end up like Lionheart. Do you believe in me?”

“I do believe in you. But not only you. I think the best thing you could do is sit down and talk to the people you’re most afraid to.”

And Ironwood does talk to the people he’s most afraid to. He sits down with Robyn, he sits down with RWBY, and he eventually reveals Salem to the people of Atlas and Mantle. It’s a brilliant misdirect because even though he does work with others in his plan, it’s on his own terms. We think we win it after E10, but in E11 the truth is revealed once more. Ironwood has to do the right thing now. And he’s made it clear it doesn’t matter the cost. Because he doesn’t trust in the judgement or opinions of his team. He trusts only in his own not because he’s villainous, but because he is bearing the weight of decisions he thinks only he can bear. (It’s called Atlas for a reason, I’m sure)

Lionheart was a coward. But so is Ironwood, if not in the way he imagines himself to be. He is stalwart against Salem. And when she is in his office, he refuses to yield, even though he is clearly terrified. He stands by his rejection of her offer. Ironwood is such an amazingly complicated anti-villain because he’s expressly that: a good man pushed to the brink and making heinous choices likely because he doesn’t want others to have to make them. We don’t necessarily see him as a full-on villain until he pulls the trigger on Oscar. And even than, I can’t be the only one who felt bad knowing Salem was bearing down on both cities, Winter lost the maiden powers, and therefor their access to the relic, his army is spread too thin and is weary from the Grimm swarm, his top Ace Op is dead, and the rest of them are out of commission just like Winter. This is a terrible loss for Ironwood. And he’s lost the support of half of his friends. RWBY, JNR, Penny, Oscar and Ozpin, and even Pietro even if it was his fault. He has the Ace Ops, he has Winter, but the moment they open their mouths to resist an order or offer an alternative he won’t hear it. And the man who wanted so desperately to have communications spread across the kingdoms, who wanted to work with teams of trusted allies, who worried over the safety of friends--is now left alone having failed at trying to stop Salem. Because he bore the weight of it all himself instead of trusting others to bear it with him.

----

“Trust is what I’m hoping to fix. I know we can still figure this out. All of it, together. Please.”

“Do you intend to fight me?”

“No, that’s exactly what she wants. I guess it’s because of Oz but..holding it helps calm me down when I’m afraid.”

“You still think I’m afraid...”

“We all are. It’s what do in our fear that reve--”

“That’s easy for you to say! You can label me whatever you’d like but the fact of the matter is I was right. The minute I softened, let my guard down, that’s when Salem had her opening.”

“If you abandon Mantle you abandon our best chance of reuniting the world, you abandon Remnant, leaving millions to fend for themselves so a few can survive, what kind of--”

“All excellent philosophical points that won’t matter if Salem wins.”

The reason this quote slaps is because it’s what some of the audience is probably thinking. He’s right. Why does it matter if they’re all dead? But Oscar, RWBYJNR and Penny, and even Qrow, all seem to embody the idea that there are things that are more important that the “big picture” because without those smaller, simpler acts of human bravery, what are they even fighting for?

“Listen to me--”

“No, you listen. I am done letting others’ inability to see the big picture get in the way of doing what’s right.”

And that, friends, is what I call thematic justice. Ironwood cements his position opposed to our heroes by an act of betrayal so foreshadowed it might as well have been predicted by the opening (haha...ha). And how can we reconcile that act as an audience? It’s difficult, and I say this because I sympathize with Ironwood while also still maintaining my stance that RWBY’s being painted as correct is absolutely the correct take because Ironwood’s betrayal is what Salem wants. And he’s too blinded by fear to see beyond his own judgement, to trust in the judgment of others because he has been lied to and he has been manipulated. That’s what, I think, makes him so compelling and hard to let go of as a hero. Because he’s so familiar. To us. Because he’s thinking he’s strong enough to make the right decision while neglecting to be in conversation with anyone else. Remember, he brought his army to Vale too.

What’s so conflicting about Ironwood is that this isn’t a malicious, evil dictator bent on ruling. Clover trusted him until the end. And it seems Winter does too. I doubt those are just pawns paying him lip service. Ironwood is a fearful man shouldering the responsibility of decision-making. This is a desperate hero we’ve followed who has fallen because all this time he’s shown to be a good man, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. After shooting Oscar, a child, I think it’s safe to say he’s officially become an antagonist because that act wasn’t just a stone-cold rejection of Ozpin’s ideals. It was attempted murder.

Ironwood does make the hard decisions. But he does it alone. And that doesn’t always make those decisions right.

Bruh, V8 is gonna hurt, isn’t it?

[aion-rsa]

The Public Enemy Solidified Gang Rule Under James Cagney for 90 Years

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William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) turns 90 this weekend. When the film first came out, a theater in Times Square showed it nonstop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The movie marks the true beginning of gangster movies as a genre. Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar may have hit theaters first, but The Public Enemy set the pattern, and James Cagney nailed the patter. Not just the street talk either; he also understood its machine gun delivery. His Tommy Powers is just a hoodlum, never a boss. He is a button man at best, even if he insisted his suits have six buttons.

The Public Enemy character wasn’t even as high up the ladder as Paul Sorvino’s caporegime Paul Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. But Cagney secured the turf Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello took a bullet to claim in Little Caesar, and for the rest of his career Cagney never let it go.

Some would argue genre films began in 1931. Besides mob movies, the year introduced the newspaper picture with Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page and John Cromwell’s Scandal Sheet; Universal Pictures began an unholy run of horror classics via Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, with the two turning Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff into household names; and Howard Hawks’ Scarface would land the knockout for the gangster genre, even if it didn’t get released until 1932.

Sadly, the classic “Gangster Film” run only lasted one production season, from 1930 to 1931, and less than 30 films were made during it. Archie Mayo’s The Doorway to Hell started the ball rolling in 1930, when it became a surprise box office hit. It stars Lew Ayres as the top mug, with Cagney as his sidekick. For fans of pre-Code Hollywood, it is highly recommended. It includes a kidnapping scene which results in the death of a kid on the street. Without a speck of blood or any onscreen evidence, it is cinematically shocking in its impact.

Both Little Caesar and The Public Enemy earned their street cred, defying the then-toothless 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, which preceded the Hays Code. After New York censors cut six scenes from The Public Enemy to clear it for release, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) set further guidelines for the proper cinematic depiction of crime.

Public Enemy director Wellman was an expert in multiple genres. He spit out biting satires like Nothing Sacred (1937) and Roxie Hart (1942), and captured gritty, dark realities in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He won his only Oscar for A Star Is Born (1937). The Public Enemy is the first example of what would be his trademark: stylish cinematography and clever camera-work. The dark suspense he captures is completely different from the look of German expressionism. It captured the overcast shadows of urban reality and would influence the look of later noir films. His main character would inspire generations of actors.

“That’s just like you, Tom Powers. You’re the meanest boy in town.”

Orson Welles lauded James Cagney as “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera.” Will Rogers said watching Cagney perform was “like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once.” The New York City born performer explodes in this movie. Even in black and white, Cagney’s red hair flares through the air like sulfur on a match. It turns out to be a slow burn, which will reach its ultimate climax in 1949’s White Heat. The Public Enemy is loaded with top talent, but you can’t take your eyes off Cagney. Not even for a second. You might miss some tiny detail, like the flash of a grin, a wink, or a barely perceptible glare.

Cagney had a simple rule to acting: All you had to do was to look the other person straight in the eyes and say your lines. “But mean them.” In The Public Enemy, the characters communicate without lines. When Tom and Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) sneak a peek into Larry the Limp’s casket, we understand this is the first time the two young thugs lost someone their own age. The scene barely implies how fortunate they are not to be in that box, but their curiosity is as palpable as the loss of their last shred of innocence.

Cagney was originally cast as Matt, and scenes were shot with him in the role. The parts were switched mid-production, but they didn’t reshoot the flashback scenes, making it look like the pair swapped bodies between 1909 and 1915. It’s a shame because Frankie Darro, who plays the young Matt, made a career out of playing baby face Cagney, and later joined the East Side Kids franchise.

Former “Our Gang” actor Frank Coghlan Jr. took on the role of young Tom. He takes the lashes from his cop father’s belt, backtalking him the whole time. Tom Powers is reprehensible. He never says thank you and doesn’t shake hands. He delights in the violence and sadism. Powers doesn’t go into crime because of poverty; he just can’t be contained. Cagney’s mobster mangles, manhandles, maims and murders, and still needs more room in his inseam. 

Dames, Molls, and Grapefruits

Besides defying the ban on romanticizing criminals, both The Public Enemy and Little Caesar broke sexual codes. There are explicit signs that Rico Bandello represses his sexuality in Caesar. Scenes between him and his friend Joe, and his gunman Otera, thinly veil homoerotic overtones. Public Enemy’s Powers, by contrast, subtly encourages the gay tailor who is openly hitting on him.

There are strong indications Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) is grooming Tommy and Matt for more than just fenced goods. Look at the way Putty sticks his ass in Powers’ face while he is shooting pool. Putty Nose’s execution at the piano is creepily informed by the unspoken sins between the men. Tommy relishes the kill.

However, Tommy doesn’t relish being manhandled when he’s too drunk to notice. While the gang goes to the mattresses in the movie’s gang war, Tommy is raped by Jane (Mia Marvin), his boss Paddy’s girl. Powers protests the best he can, but the camera angles leave no doubt. Tommy wakes up hungover, horrified, and feeling impotent. Matt, however, has no trouble getting “busy” with his girlfriend Mamie, played by Joan Blondell, in one of the scenes trimmed by the censors.  Blondell, Jean Harlow, and Mae Clarke, who plays Tommy’s girlfriend Kitty, represent a glitzy cross-section of white Roaring Twenties glamour. In the opening credits, when Harlow and Blondell smile at the camera, male audience members of the time blushed.

Harlow was Hollywood’s original “Blonde Bombshell,” starring in the movie that coined the term. Her earthy comic performances would make her a major star at MGM, but she was a dud to critics of The Public Enemy. Hers was the only part which was criticized, and the reviewers were brutal, declaring her voice untrained and her presence boring.

Harlow’s greatest asset had to be contained within the Pre-Code era. Straddled with a wordy part as a slumming society dame, she is directed to slow her lines to counter the quick patter of the rest of the cast. Yet Harlow uses that to her benefit in the film’s best moment of sexual innuendo. While telling Tommy about “the men I’ve known,” she pauses, and appears to be calculating them in her head before she says, “And I’ve known dozens of them.” When an evening alone with Tommy is cut short, Gwen’s exasperation over the coitus interruptus is palpable. Members of the Catholic Legion of Decency probably had to go to confession after viewing the film for slicing.

Most people know The Public Enemy for the famous grapefruit scene where Powers pushes a grapefruit into his girlfriend’s face. “I wish you was a wishing well,” he warns, “so that I could tie a bucket to you and sink ya.” Tommy treats women like property. They are status symbols, the same as clothes or cars. Kitty’s passive-aggressive hints at commitment get on Tom’s nerves. He can only express himself through violence. There are rumors Cagney, who would go on to rough up Virginia Mayo in White Heat and brutalize Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, didn’t warn Clarke he was going to use her face as a juicer. According to the autobiography Cagney by Cagney, Clarke’s ex-husband Lew Brice loved the scene so much he watched it a few times a day, timing his entrance into the theater to catch it and leave.

Both actors have said it was staged as a practical joke to see how the film crew would react. It wasn’t meant to make the final cut. Wellman told TCM he added it because he always wanted to do that to his wife. The writer reportedly wrote the scene as a kind of wish-fulfilling fantasy.

The screenplay was written by Harvey F. Thew. It was based on Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon. The unpublished novel fleshed out press accounts of the bootlegging Northside gang leaders, Charles Dion “Deanie” O’Banion, Earl “Hymie” Weiss, and Louis “Two-Gun” Alterie. Cagney based his Tommy Powers character on O’Banion and Altiere. Edward Woods was doing his take on Weiss. The book reflected the headlines in the Chicago papers, which reported Weiss smashed an omelet into his girlfriend’s face.

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The Public Enemy borrowed from the day’s headlines in other ways too. Hymie Weiss was assassinated in October 1926. It was the first reported “machine-gun nest” murder. It is recreated in the killing of Matt Doyle. While shooting the sequence, Cagney ducked real machine gun fire to bring authenticity to the scene. Also taken from real life is the fact that after O’Banion was killed in ‘24, Alterie’s first reaction was to do public battle with the killers. This is similar to Tommy’s final shootout at Schemer Burns’ nightclub headquarters.

Leslie Fenton’s dashing mob captain Nails Nathan (“born Samuel”) flashes the greatest grin in mob movie history. He is based on Samuel “Nails” Morton, a member of O’Banion’s mob. Both “Nails” were driven to their coffins the way it is depicted in The Public Enemy. The real Morton died in a riding accident in 1923, and “Two-Gun” Alterie and some of the other gang members went back to the stables, rented the horse which kicked Nails in the head, and shot the animal. Mario Puzo may have been inspired by this scene when he wrote The Godfather. It is not only tie to the Francis Ford Coppola movie. Oranges have as much vitamin C as grapefruits. Another similarity between the two films is the threat of being kidnapped from the hospital by a rival gang.

The Powers brothers’ relationship vaguely echoes the one between war hero Michael and Sonny Corleone, who believes, as his father does, soldiers were “saps” to risk their lives for strangers. Donald Cook, who played Mike Powers, didn’t pull any punches on the set. In the scene where he knocks Tom into the table before going off to war, he really connects. Wellman told Cook to do it without warning so he could get that look of surprise. Cook broke one of Cagney’s teeth, but Cagney stayed in character and finished the scene.

“It is a wicked business.”

After the stock market crash, get-rich-quick schemes seemed the only way through the Great Depression. The gangster was an acceptable headline hero during Prohibition because the law was unpopular with the press. But after 1929, the gangster became the scapegoat villain. The Public Enemy was the ninth highest grossing film of 1931. But the genre lost its appeal after April of that year, as studios pumped out pale imitations and audiences got tired of the saturation, according to the book Violence and American Cinema, edited by J. David Slocum. Religious and civic groups accused Hollywood of romanticizing crime and glamorizing gangsters.

The Public Enemy opens with a dire warning: Don’t be a gangster. Hoodlums and terrorists of the underworld should not be glamorized. The only MPAA rule the film didn’t break was portraying an alliance between organized crime and politics. The studios passed the films off as cautionary tales which were meant to deflate the gangster’s appeal by ridiculing their false heroism.

Through this hand-wringing, however, Cagney turns false heroics on its head with the comic brilliance of a Mack Sennett short. Stuck without a gun, he robs a gun store armed with nothing but moxie. Powers never rises in the organization. He takes orders and whatever the boss says is a good cut, only asking for more money once from Putty Nose. Unlike Rico, who rose to be boss among bosses, Powers has no power to lose. This is just the first gig he landed since he was a regular “ding ding” driving a streetcar, and it connected with audiences like a sock on the button. They identified with the scrappy killer, and it surprised them.

Even Gwen notices Tommy is “very different, and it isn’t only a difference in manner and outward appearances. It’s a difference in basic character.” Strict Freudians might lay this on his mother (Beryl Mercer), the greatest enabler Cagney will see until White Heat. Ma Powers’ little boy is a budding psychopath knocking off half the North Side, but look at the head on his beer. For audiences at the time, Tom was the smiling, fresh-scrubbed face of evil. He is consistently unsympathetic but likable from the moment he hits the opening credits.

Like Malcom McDowell’s Alex in A Clockwork Orange, he is the fiend’s best friend. Even if it is Tommy’s fault his best pal Matt gets killed. While Cagney spent his career ducking his “you dirty, double-crossing, rat” line from Taxi, the actor wasn’t afraid to play one in Powers. He’s not a rat in the sense he’d snitch on anyone. He’s the last of the pack who sticks it out for his pals when his back is up against the wall.

A Hail of Bullets

Tommy Powers goes by this credo: live fast, die young, and leave a corpse so riddled with bullets, not even his mother can look at his body when he’s done. But then, no one can end a film like Cagney. He’s danced down the White House stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), been rolled across the concrete steps of a city church in The Roaring Twenties (1939), and was blown to kingdom come in White Heat. He gets two death scenes in The Public Enemy, a rain-soaked climax, and a denouement as scary as The Mummy. Tommy only brings one gun to the gang fight, and by the time he hits the pavement, he’s got more holes in him than the city sewage system.

“I ain’t so tough,” Tommy says on his final roll into the gutter. Cagney’s first professional job was in a musical drag act on the Vaudeville circuit, and he called himself a “song and dance man” long after retirement. For The Public Enemy, conductor David Mendoza led the Vitaphone Orchestra through such period hits as “Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye),” “Smiles,” and “I Surrender Dear.” But the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” is the one which lingers in the memory. Martin Scorsese has cited it as a reason his films are so filled with recognizable music.

Street violence comes with a natural soundtrack. Transistor radios accompany takedowns. Boom boxes blast during shakedowns. Car stereos boost the bass during drive-by shootings. In The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, mobsters feed quarters into a jukebox to cover up sounds of a beating.

In The Godfather, Part II, a street band plays traditional Italian songs while Vito Corleone puts bullets in the neighborhood Black Hand, Don Fanucci. The last thing we hear in the abrupt close to the mob series The Sopranos is a Journey song. The first thing Tommy’s mother does when she hears her boy is coming home from the hospital is drop a needle on a record.

The ending leaves us with two questions: Who killed Tommy, and what’s his brother going to do about it? We figure whoever did the job on Powers was probably a low-level button man from Schemer’s rival outfit. Probably even lower down the ladder than Tommy, and on his way up, until another Tommy comes along. Crime only pays in the movies, Edward G. Robinson often joked.

Mike’s reaction to the bandaged corpse is ambiguous. He’s already shown outward signs of the trauma following the horrors of war. Is he clenching his fists in anguish or anger? Is he broken by the battlefield or marching off in vengeance, a soldier on one last duty? Cook’s exit can go either way.

After 90 years, The Public Enemy is still fresh. It’s aged better than Little Caesar or Scarface. Cagney wouldn’t play a gangster again until 1938, but the image is etched so deeply in the persona, audiences forget the vagaries of villainy Hollywood could spin, and the range of characters Cagney could play. He and the film continue to influence filmmakers, inform culture, and surprise audiences. Tommy Powers was just a mug, but those streets are still his.

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[followcb]

Shoot That Poison Arrow

caveman to rocket man

north korea to afghanistan

no battlefields only blood

nothing less than fresh kill

steak oscar rare on a grill

we hunt it, bleed it, kill it, eat it

carnivores are predators

flesh for dinner to the highest bidder

barbaric, prehistoric

no lessons learned till we get burned

don't agree, so hate me

the flavor of today is apathy

sip it slowly like a moscow mule

fool in the streets of istanbul

stoned in another galaxy

foreclosure and bankruptcy

none of this shit makes sense

isn't everything reprehensible

where lives are dispensable

trigger pulled, gun fires bullets

shoot that poison arrow, cupid

who isn't dressed to spill

Copyright @followcb | December 11, 2019

[ruminativerabbi]

Virginia Beach

Those poor people in Virginia Beach! They weren’t children. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t young people dancing the night away in a cool nightspot. They weren’t worshipers in synagogue or people gathered in church for Bible study. Nor were they high school kids rushing from home room to their first classes of the day. In other words, they were just people—regular, grown-up, working people busily attending to their non-flashy jobs in a non-flashy office compound in a city known mostly for having a pretty beach. And now they appear actually to have met posthumous the fate that I feared—but also half-expected—would end up being theirs: front page news for a day or two, then the subject of a follow-up story buried somewhere in the back of the first section a few days later, then, depending on the newspaper and the politics of its editorial board, either forgotten entirely or followed up a couple of days after that with a human interest piece describing of some of the victim’s funerals and then allowed to sink into gun-violence oblivion.

Mass shootings are resembling more and more hurricanes in this violent land of ours: named in the first place to make it possible to keep them all straight in your mind, but mostly forgotten anyway as soon as the skies clear…other than by the people whose homes they ruined or whose livelihoods. Yes, everybody remembers Sandy…but mostly because it inflicted something like 70 billion dollars’ worth of damage. But what about Beryl, Chris, Florence, Helene, Isaac, Leslie, Michael, and Oscar—to name only Atlantic hurricanes that hit the United States in the last year? My guess is not so much. Unless you had to deal with the destruction these storms left in their wake personally, probably not so much at all!

People think about things in the abstract entirely differently than when they are asked their opinion about the very same issues not as pristine philosophical concepts but rather as nuts-and-bolts issues set into the real-life world of actual people. The most famous example, known to most from Philosophy 101 in college, is the famous “trolley-car problem.” It has a thousand different versions, but the basic concept is always that the same people who speak loftily and movingly about the inestimable value of human life—and who claim wholeheartedly to accept the corollary of that idea, namely that it is impossible (i.e., not only morally reprehensible but actually not doable) to place a specific dollar value on a specific human life—those same people when presented with the dilemma of a trolley-car driver having to choose between plowing his run-away vehicle into a crowd of thirty healthy kindergarten children or veering off to the side even though it will mean hitting a terminally ill centenarian who has just a few days left to live invariably say they would aim at the old man rather than take the lives of thirty little children. So much for the inestimable, thus uncalculatable, value of human life!

There are lots of variations. You may have heard the version featuring an individual standing next to a hugely fat man on a bridge and watching a train (not a trolley in this version for some reason) hurtling towards the thirty children. The only way to stop the train is to shove the fat man off the bridge onto the tracks below, which act will almost certainly save the children’s lives at the expense of the fat man’s. It’s basically the same situation as the one with the trolley-car conductor, yet whereas a clear majority almost always say that they would be okay about flipping the switch to save the children at the expense of the elderly sick guy, a majority almost always also say that they would not go so far as actually to shove the fat man off the bridge to accomplish exactly the same goal. (For a fascinating examination of these issues from a Jewish point of view by Tsuriel Rashi, a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel, click here. You won’t be disappointed!)

To translate this into modern American terms is simple: we all say that we think that the loss of even a single life is tragic, but we have become so inured to gun violence in our country that we only respond viscerally when there is something particularly horrific about the incident: merely being shot to death by a maniac with a gun is nowhere near enough in today’s America to sustain the interest of the nation over more than a day or two. (Oh yeah? I heard that! Columbine is near Denver and Parkland is near Miami…but where exactly is Highlands Ranch again?)

The question, as always, is how we should respond to yet another of these incidents. I have to admit that I have trouble keeping them all straight in my head—and I’m guessing that that’s how we all feel. To militate for stricter controls on gun purchases, to insist that the government find a way to make guns useless other than in the hands of their legitimate owners (which wouldn’t have worked in Virginia Beach, since the shooter owned his guns legally), to push for more intensive background checks before people are permitted to acquire firearms—all these seem like reasonable steps forward, none of which would infringe on any non-criminal, mentally-stable citizen’s right to bear arms. But there’s also an attitudinal change we need to work towards and, at that, not one specifically related to the NRA or to the Second Amendment but rather to the way we think of the victims of these shootings.

They appear briefly on the front page of the nation’s newspapers for a day or two. If there is something particularly gruesome about the incident that took their lives, then their hold on our national imagination is stronger—and, indeed, the victims at Columbine, Orlando, Parkland, Pittsburgh, and Charleston actually have become part of our national narrative. But what of the rest?

I took note the other day of the two-hundredth birthday of the most original of all American poets and Long Island’s greatest son, Walt Whitman. I’ve been a fan for a long time—the boy in my story “Under the Wheel” who walks around high school with a copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in his knapsack was my adolescent self—and my admiration for the man has only grown over the years. I mention the anniversary of his birth on May 31, 1819, in Huntington, New York, however, not merely to take note of his bicentenary, but because he, of all people, suggests to me how to respond to the endless spate of gun murders in our nation.

If there was one thing Whitman stood for, and in every conceivable way, it was the sacrosanct autonomy of the individual.  Over and over in Leaves of Grass the poet returns to that specific idea, but also to the one he presents as its corollary: the paradoxical notion that the justification for democracy itself rests in the core concept that the individual possesses an inviolate right to live free of the constraints of others and the restraints of society…and that the perfect nation (in his unabashed conception, our own) is one in which citizens band together to promote a society that promotes the inalienable autonomy of the individual.

In other words, the core concept that permeates all of Whitman’s work is that, unlike in the world of insects where the swarm is the thing and the individual bugs that make it up are basically indistinguishable from each other even in their own eyes, in the world of human beings the individual is not merely the building block of society but an entire universe unto him or herself, one that has no more need of the permission of others to rotate on its own axis and at its own speed than the Milky Way needs the permission of other galaxies to travel endlessly through the cosmos on its own and in its own way.

My proposal is that we honor Whitman’s memory by rededicating ourselves to the notion that each man, woman, or child killed in an act of senseless gun violence is best to be taken not a mere individual, but as the nation itself, and that the incident that took that person’s life is thus correctly to be understood as an act of aggression not against that one man or woman but against the American people itself. That core concept—that the individual is the nation and the nation is each of its citizens—is Whitman’s personal gift to the question of how to respond to gun violence in America. 

A young man of eighteen, Kendrick Ray Castillo, gave his life on May 7 in the STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Douglas County, Colorado, while trying to disarm one of the two shooters who had entered the school building. (Two others joined him in the effort, both of who survived.) Kendrick was lionized in the national press briefly, particularly since the Highlands Ranch shooting occurred just a week after the shooting at the University of North Carolina Charlotte campus in which a different young man, Riley Howell, also lost his life while selflessly and bravely trying to tackle the gunman and thus to give his classmates time to escape. Both men were heroes and deserve to be remembered as such, but as the days pass and the stories of these two particularly school shootings—just two among eight shootings in American schools this year so far and surely not the last—join non-school incidents (148 this year so far and counting) in becoming impossible for any of us to keep straight in our heads, we need to resolve to consider each loss separately and to feel personally aggressed against whenever an innocent life is taken by some angry person with a gun. E pluribus unum does not mean that when we come together as a people we abandon our identities as individuals, but just the opposite: that, as Whitman wrote over and over, the republic exists as a monument to the supreme value of the individual and so, from membership among the many comes the strength of the one to endure….and to flourish unimpeded by the violent machinations of others. The attacks that took the lives of 6,027 Americans (not a typo: click here) in acts of gun-related violence so far this year alone are attacks against the republic itself because each American individual is the nation. That was Whitman’s greatest lesson and it the one I suggest we all take to heart as we attempt not to file Virginia Beach away as just one more tragedy to take stock of and then to move on from.

[nickgerlich]

Leggings and Draggings

It was only a couple of weeks ago that United Airlines took a flogging for not allowing a couple of legging-wearing women to enter one of its planes. Never mind that important details of the story were left out (like the fact that the two females were in fact guests of an employee, and therefore bound by United’s dress code). Online discourse in the aftermath left the airline looking like it was run by curmudgeonly sexist dweebs.

But wait. There’s more.

Leggings were quickly forgotten this week when a passenger was dragged kicking and screaming off a United flight from Chicago to Louisville, ostensibly so that four United flight crew members could be repositioned for duty the following morning in Kentucky.

We are now left to dissect and interpret press releases and CEO apologies to see if the company can clean the mess from its latest encounter with a dogpile.

I can understand the need for employees and their guests to dress respectably because, after all, they are representing the airline. I was once a guest in a similar manner, and had to ditch my flip-flops, shorts, and t-shirt for nice threads. And since men’s and women’s clothing are not exactly 1-to-1 comparable, there are going to be separate items and instances that necessarily pick on one sex or the other. If a man were to wear tight leggings, he would be just as rule-bound as women. It’s just that United did not do a good job extinguishing that fire.

But when it comes to dragging off paying customers because the airline hadn’t planned well enough in advance for getting its flight crew in position, a big line has been crossed. Never mind that cash offers were made for those willing to be bumped. What United did was reprehensible.

But wait. There’s more.

What followed this week were mealy-mouthed apologies, along with a letter from the CEO to employees lauding their supposed proper handling of the situation. In other words, way to go, guys...drag those belligerent innocent bystanders off the plane in front of God, family, and friends.

Even worse, the CEO has been slowly trying to backpedal, stating that the flight was not oversold after all, blah blah blah. “No one should ever be mistreated this way," but hey, shit happens.

And now that same shit has hit the fan, with the company’s stock losing $255 million this week. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now. Take your seats, we’ve got a plane to fly.

There are many takeaways from this boondoggle, for everyone from CEO Oscar Munoz to all of my students, to ponder:

1. This is the digital era. Nearly every passenger has a smartphone capable of shooting pics and video, and, worse, yet, livestreaming it. Do not forget for a second that your every move may be recorded and posted for the world to see. And that stewardly admonition to turn off our devices? Ha ha ha. Ain’t happening.

2. Remember that social media never sleep, and that Facebook, Twitter, et al., bring out the very worst in people (and seldom the best). Expect a disaster, and pray it doesn’t happen. But it probably will anyway.

3. Hashtags are free on the internet. Anyone can create one; millions can use it. Worse yet, a company or its ad agency can create one and encourage people to use it, often forgetting that it can be reappropriated with malice and forethought. Like #UnitedJourney. How do you like that hashtag now, United?

4. Be careful what you say in press releases or publicly. More importantly, don’t waffle or provide incomplete and inconsistent information. It will all come back to haunt you.

5. Take customer boycott threats seriously, even though the severity of these personal vendettas has not been studied closely enough to conclude if they will be short- or long-term. In a market like Amarillo, with only three airlines serving it (including United), it may be difficult to boycott United and still reach your destination without a lot of extra inconvenience.

6. At minimum, the short-term impact can be severe, as the stock market has shown United this week. Will it rebound? Probably, given that thanks to deregulation, there are far fewer airlines today than 35 years ago. But with emotions raging, people may be willing to go to great lengths to avoid United, at least for now. It will take a lot of advertising dollars and genuine customer service to pull out of this mess. I’m pretty sure that United wished it had only to deal with leggings on airplanes.

It is a sad reality that a different major company steps in a dogpile every few days. I have no shortage of stories and lessons to share with my students. Don’t let your company be the next one to appear in this space.

Dr “Dragging The Line“ Gerlich

[joneswilliam72]

The Film Academy: 4 below-the-line Oscar categories will be announced during commercial breaks this year.

The Academy – it appears – has shot itself in the foot yet again this award's season after their boondoggle of a "Best Popular Film" Oscar category which was subsequently nixed and the whole Kevin Hart affair. Now they have announced 4 below the line award categories will be announced during commercial breaks this year and – presumably – a reel of the ensuing speeches will likely be shown during the regular program, all in an effort to make the broadcast a bit leaner.

The Academy announced February 11 that Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Live Action Short, and Best Makeup and Hair Styling will all be cut, with the Academy saying people will get to see the speeches of the winners in these axed categories, just not in real time.

Plenty of Oscar luminaries have spoken out about this, with Guillermo del Toro leading the charge, tweeting, "If I may: I would not presume to suggest what categories to cut during the Oscars show but – Cinematography and Editing are at the very heart of our craft," del Toro tweeted. "They are not inherited from a theatrical tradition or a literary tradition: they are cinema itself." A handful of other screenwriters, directors, cinematographers and those of other specialties also chimed in after del Toro. A few assorted reactions are below.

In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.

— Alfonso Cuaron (@alfonsocuaron) February 12, 2019

The Oscars get shit for being elitist but they are one of the only awards shows that televises winners in the craft categories. This decision is reprehensible. Shame on the Academy. Shame on ABC. If you don’t love a 3+ hour Oscars, you don’t love the Oscars. https://t.co/zSNOTDHhSQ

— Chris Schleicher (@cschleichsrun) February 11, 2019

“So excited to watch the Oscars this year because it’s a few minutes shorter!” - millennial who still wont watch the Oscars https://t.co/Ma4p4bbx7l

— Beck/Woods (@beckandwoods) February 11, 2019

This would be a historic upset for another historic marker that took place with the nominations being announced this year. Roma director Alfonso Cuarón was nominated for Best Director and Best Cinematography – a first in Hollywood history if he wins as a director has never won for shooting his own movie. If Cuarón wins, we will not see his historic live reaction now.

The 91st Academy Awards will be held Sunday February 24 on ABC.  

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2RYXt8h

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again

http://fashion-trendin.com/chers-fabulous-journey-from-camp-diva-to-serious-actress-and-back-again/

Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again

Of all the pop stars who have attempted to act, Cher’s track record is arguably the best. “Silkwood.” “Mask.” “The Witches of Eastwick.” “Moonstruck.” “Mermaids.” “If These Walls Could Talk.”

As her post-Sonny & Cher solo career waxed and waned in the ’80s and early ’90s, Cher’s movie career flourished ― a true achievement, given the ostentatious displays that had made her a walking glitter bomb since the mid-’60s. Shedding her eccentricities in a way that many pop stars cannot, Cher was able to transform onscreen time and again, so much so that she won an Oscar after uttering one of the most quotable lines in cinema history. 

But when Cher out-glittered herself in 1998 with her mammoth “Believe” comeback, her acting career atrophied. At 52, her diva status had become mythological, even a bit comical. She was too decadent to disappear into the same down-home movie roles, and Hollywood no longer saw her as a profitable actress. Cher played along with the joke, though, portraying exaggerated versions of herself (see: “The Player,” “Will & Grace,” “Stuck on You”) even when she wasn’t actually playing herself (see: “Burlesque”). 

That tradition continues today. Cher is the grande dame of the new “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” making a flamboyant eleventh-hour entrance that only someone of her renown could pull off. (She plays Ruby, a famous singer who has a thorny relationship with her daughter Donna, portrayed by Meryl Streep.)

But as we relish Cher’s septuagenarian divadom, it’s easy to forget how we got here. We got here because Cher commanded maximum respect at a critical time in her career, challenging anyone who assumed her pop panache would prevent her from becoming a great actress capable of playing everyday women experiencing everyday struggles.

So let’s revisit just how Cher became the greatest pop-actor of them all, and why she maintains that superlative even if she’s graduated from Hollywood’s leading-lady graces.

Getty/Alamy

The Beginning

“Chastity” (1969)

To trace Cher’s acting ambitions, we have to go back to 1967, when Sonny & Cher’s musical comedy “Good Times” flopped. Wanting to prove the “I Got You Babe” duo could cut it in the film world, Sonny Bono wrote her first solo lead: the title role in “Chastity,” an 83-minute oddity about a free-spirited drifter who talks to herself in public and manipulates men’s weaknesses to get ahead.

This was Sonny & Cher’s bid to appeal to young counterculture audiences who had deemed the duo square after Bono bemoaned the era’s sex and drugs. “Chastity,” released in June 1969, tried to be a gritty derivative of the French New Wave, packing big ideas ― Bono apparently said it was about society’s sudden “lack of manhood” and “the independence women have acquired but don’t necessarily want” ― into a whiplash-inducing downer involving a lesbian romance and childhood molestation.

It was another flop — an especially embarrassing one for Cher, because she alone was the face of the project. But bad movies can be testaments to good actors’ skills. Cher is at ease in front of the camera, never letting her fame announce itself before she opens her mouth. The same qualities accenting all her best film work — a scrappy confidence that reads as a proverbial middle finger to anyone who crosses her — become the highlight of “Chastity.”

Too bad the experience drew her away from movies for 13 years, during which Cher released 11 solo albums and divorced the controlling Bono, finally escaping the Sonny & Cher brand.

“Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (1982)

In 1981, with her music career sputtering and her split from Bono six years in the rearview mirror, Cher trekked to New York to study acting with renowned teacher Lee Strasberg. Robert Altman, the celebrated director best known for “M*A*S*H” and “Nashville,” was casting the Broadway debut of Ed Graczyk’s play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” Altman gave Cher the part of Sissy, a wisecracking libertine employed at a diner in small-town Texas. 

When Altman rehired the Broadway cast for his big-screen adaptation of “Jimmy Dean,” Cher’s movie career was reborn. The scope of the film, released in November 1982, mirrors that of the play, with a single set and overly theatrical dialogue. But Cher has one of the meatier roles, nailing a teary monologue about Sissy’s failed marriage that Altman shoots in revealing close-ups. Sissy is a vixen who uses her sultry appeal to mask self-doubt ― something Cher related to after her split from Bono. She crimps Sissy’s smile, revealing an impressive vulnerability as the character laughs through her pain.

“Jimmy Dean” wasn’t a smash, but it provided a vote of confidence at a murky time for Cher, yielding her first Golden Globe nomination. 

“Silkwood” (1983)

Cher’s next role was make or break: Can the queen of glamour become the fledgling of frump? For “Silkwood,” she was again working with one of Hollywood’s most gifted directors, Mike Nichols (“The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), playing a dowdy lesbian working at a nuclear power plant where employees are exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation.

It remains one of Cher’s best performances, even though she almost didn’t take the job because she was intimidated to act opposite Meryl Streep. (“When we did ‘Silkwood,’ I didn’t even know what a close-up was,” she told The New York Times.) Here, Cher achieved a stripped-down everydayness that defied the anthemic pop-rock for which she was known. Near the movie’s bittersweet end, Cher sits slumped in Streep’s arms, her outstretched legs growing more lax as her tears multiply.  

“Silkwood” opened in December 1983, earning Cher’s first Oscar nomination and winning her a Golden Globe. In her acceptance speech at the Globes, she jabbed the “Hollywood moguls” who wouldn’t give her a chance before Altman came calling ― evidence that, no matter the doubts Cher had in accepting “Silkwood,” she knew how to trumpet her own worth.

“Mask” (1985)

If “Silkwood” proved Cher could transcend her “Half Breed” fantasia, “Mask” proved her acting was bankable. Taking a hiatus from music after the 1982 album “I Paralyze” failed to deliver a hit single, she paired up with another great director, Peter Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon”), to portray Rusty Dennis, the real-life mother of a charming teenager (Eric Stoltz) with a cranial deformity.

Her third consecutive film to include a tear-stained breakdown, “Mask” was perfect for Cher. Rusty is a biker groupie with a penchant for drugs but an unwavering dedication to her son, letting Cher convey a contentment that softens the reality of Rusty’s strained life. As she would again in 1990′s “Mermaids,” Cher was playing a single mom who lives by her own rules (e.g., trying to get her son laid by picking up a girl at a bar). The role earned her a third Golden Globe nomination and the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious best-actress prize, but she was snubbed by the Oscars.

No matter: “Mask” stormed the box office, and Cher joined the ranks of Streep and Jane Fonda as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actresses. At the Academy Awards, she donned her infamous midriff-bearing Bob Mackie getup, complete with a cape and a spiky headdress. The look was more punk rock than Tinseltown elegance ― an oversized fuck-you to the fusty Academy and an ebullient reminder that she wouldn’t tidy up her image to appeal to Reagan-era conservatism. 

Getty/Alamy

The Gold

“The Witches of Eastwick” (1987)

Coming off of “Mask,” some studio executives were still questioning Cher’s ability to attract audiences who knew her as an outrageous pop doyenne who hadn’t had a hit single in several years. Her credibility was put to the test each time ― and each time, she passed.

In 1987, at the critical age of 41, Cher landed a troika of commercial hits in which she was the centerpiece, starting with the delicious lark “The Witches of Eastwick,” her first comedy since her variety show a decade earlier. Then came the overwrought legal thriller “Suspect,” which required her to pull off boxy suits as a strapped D.C. attorney spouting verbose monologues. And following that was the snappy romance “Moonstruck,” which demanded a thick accent that was Italian by way of Brooklyn. In each, Cher captured a quotidian version of American life ― and what’s more transformative than Cher pretending to be quotidian?

Playing another single mom in “Eastwick” (directed by “Mad Max” maestro George Miller), she held her own against Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson. Cher clearly relished the role. During a tart takedown of Nicholson’s lothario, she trades the maximalist energy that many actresses would bring to the scene for a soft smirk, savoring every word as she calls him “physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish [and] stupid.” 

“Suspect” (1987)

For “Suspect” and “Moonstruck,” Cher was the directors’ first choice, netting a salary of more than $1 million apiece ― an impressive figure in the mid-’80s, though notably less than what men like Bruce Willis and Robert Redford commanded.

“Suspect” let Cher check off a requisite movie-star box, as it was all but decreed in the ’80s and ’90s that every serious actor make at least one blandly entertaining legal thriller. Like the best of them, Cher’s was a courtroom drama with an ethically dubious love story nestled into the center. (Young Dennis Quaid was irresistible.) It might be the least Cher-y of any Cher performance ― can you imagine her sporting a no-frills power suit today? ― and yet she is comfortably forceful in the role. Amazingly, the woman whose assless one-piece would soon get her banned by MTV looks cozy amid mounds of paperwork.

“Moonstruck” (1987)

“Suspect” was a modest box-office hit in October, but it was largely forgotten by December, when Cher turned in her career-defining performance in “Moonstruck.” Playing a widowed bookkeeper who falls for her fiancé’s unruly younger brother (Nicolas Cage), Cher cycled through a wider range of emotions than any movie to date had asked of her, lending realism to what is ultimately a Cinderella fairy tale. That she does so with the same physical charisma is a wonder, especially considering she didn’t think Cage was a generous scene partner. (She must have savored that slap.)

“Moonstruck” became the fifth highest-grossing release of 1987 and attracted Cher’s warmest reviews. The following April, she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Wearing another audacious Bob Mackie gown, Cher delivered an earnest speech that was more movie-star sleek than pop-star chic. 

“I don’t think this means I am someone, but I guess I’m on my way,” she said in a rare moment of modesty. Every now and then, even Cher plays along.

Getty/Alamy

The Wobble

“Mermaids” (1990)

As if emboldened by the respect her film career had garnered, Cher signed a new record contract with her friend David Geffen’s label. “Cher,” released in 1987 after five years away from music, produced a couple of mild hits (“I Found Someone,” “We All Sleep Alone”) and paved the way for 1990′s “Heart of Stone,” a rock record with enough big-haired power pop (namely “If I Could Turn Back Time”) to place her in the same league as Madonna, Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston.

She’d set up a production company with Tri-Star Pictures and bagged her next film role, “Mermaids,” a 1960s-set dramedy about an image-conscious firebrand raising two very different daughters (Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci). The role perfectly married Cher’s pop image and film image. Her character was progressive about sex in a way that most mildewy mom roles weren’t, but with enough working-class gumption to make her more than a head-in-the-clouds prima donna. Cher, a child of divorce who grew up without much money, nails that paradox.

But “Mermaids” was also a turning point. Having launched a lengthy world tour in summer 1989, Cher was exhausted to the point of illness, and she found herself sparring with director Lasse Hallström (“My Life as a Dog”). Production shut down so Cher could rest, during which time Frank Oz (“Little Shop of Horrors”) replaced Hallström. Cher didn’t get along with Oz any better ― “she emotionally beat the shit out of him,” a source reportedly told Vanity Fair ― and he left the project. (“Look, I’m only difficult if you’re an idiot,” Cher said.) Richard Benjamin (“The Money Pit”) came aboard and steered the movie to completion.

This backstage drama was splashed across the press, cementing the cantankerous reputation that most divas achieve at some point or another. “Mermaids” made OK money ― far less than it should have, since it’s such a delight ― and Cher mused that her acting days were probably numbered, partly because she was well past the age of 40, at which point Hollywood women become biddies.

“The Player” (1992) and “Ready to Wear” (1994)

After the “Mermaids” theatrics, Cher’s agent tried to push her to take more film roles, namely one of the leads in “Thelma & Louise.” But she needed a break. (Cher had also turned down Danny DeVito’s “The War of the Roses.”) Instead, she released the album “Love Hurts” in 1991 ― but it’s biggest single, “Love and Understanding,” stalled at No. 17. She then embarked on another tour and did hair and skin care infomercials that turned her into something of a punch line. 

But instead of fading away, she did the Cher-iest thing of all: She played herself, in ultimate diva form, twice. The first time was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire “The Player.” The second was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1994 fashion satire “Ready to Wear.” Both movies saw her walking red carpets as a VIP at industry events. 

Waltzing into “The Player,” Cher glides down a gala red carpet as a TV announcer says, “Well, leave it to Cher to wear fire-engine red when the impossible-to-come-by invitations call for black and white only, please.” In playing along with Altman’s joke, she shattered a wall between person and persona. She’d accrued the sort of diva caliber that can feel mythological, the kind that doesn’t have to abide by the industry’s rules — and she wanted us to know it.

During an interview with a TV journalist in “Ready to Wear” who balks at how good she looks, Cher replies, “Well, yeah.” The cameos were brassy ways of asserting the stature she’s accrued after three decades in the business. Also essential: They let Cher poke fun at her own attention-seeking iconoclasm.

For as much as “The Player” verified Cher’s stardom, it did little to vault her back into Hollywood’s top tier. An Entertainment Weekly article from 1993 — written by a young Ryan Murphy — quoted an anonymous Hollywood producer who said casting Cher was now a “risk.” Her bankability had waned. “I’m not sure if I want to continue to be Cher,” she admitted in 1994. 

“Faithful” (1996)

But Cher pressed on, attempting to mount “Tabloid,” about an actress and a tabloid editor, with her “Witches of Eastwick” pal Michelle Pfeiffer. She also wanted to remake the 1945 fantasy “The Enchanted Cottage” as a musical (with the encouragement of Francis Ford Coppola), but she lost the rights and the project never came to fruition. (She would continue to discuss it well into the 2010s.)

1995 and early ’96 were especially rough for Cher commercially. Her Southern rock-inflected album “It’s a Man’s World” flopped, as did her first lead role in six years, “Faithful,” which opened April 19, 1996. Cher is, unsurprisingly, the most compelling thing about “Faithful,” portraying a vulnerable housewife whose philandering husband (Ryan O’Neal) hires a hitman (Chazz Palminteri) to murder her. But the script, written by Palminteri, isn’t funny or tense enough. It was the first time her reputation preceded a character: We never believe Cher’s life is in danger, possibly because she’s too famous to be killed off.

“Faithful” earned a piddly $2.1 million, but Cher shrugged off its reception: “It was no loss. At least the reviews said it was nice to see me acting again.” 

Cher’s movie career could have perished altogether, as most established pop stars can’t afford to flounder that hard. A bad single comes and goes, but a bad movie has millions of dollars riding on it.

“If These Walls Could Talk” (1996)

Cher has never been a quitter, though. Toward the close of 1996, she returned with a project so intrepid no Hollywood studio would touch it. Demi Moore had spent five years producing “If These Walls Could Talk,” seeking a home for it on a television network willing to back an unapologetically pro-choice triptych about women ― one in 1952 (Moore), one in 1974 (Sissy Spacek) and one in 1996 (Anne Heche) ― seeking abortions. That home turned out to be HBO.

Nearing 50 and recognizing that meaty roles were growing rare, Cher saw “If These Walls Could Talk” as a chance to advocate for reproductive rights (she’d had two legal abortions, and her mother and grandmother both nearly died from illegal abortions when they were younger). She also seized the opportunity to direct, something she’d talked about doing for years. So she took a small role and helmed the movie’s third segment, playing a self-possessed doctor co-existing with a protest mob outside her Chicago abortion clinic. It was a different role for her —  more austere — and Cher pulls off an appropriate blend of fatigue and perseverance. 

When “Walls” premiered on Oct. 13, 1996, it became the highest-rated movie in HBO’s 24-year history. Cher earned a supporting-actress nomination at the Golden Globes ― an inadvertent fuck-you pitched at anyone who said her movie pilgrimage had ended. 

Getty/Alamy/Universal Pictures

The Redemption

“Tea with Mussolini” (1999)

Cher took a breather in 1997, paving the way for what would become one of the glitziest comebacks in pop history. She was 52 when “Believe” became her first No. 1 single since 1974. Producers had urged her to embrace her gay fanbase via a dance jubilee, and suddenly she was competing with younger artists like Britney Spears, TLC and Mariah Carey. By the end of 1999, it was the year’s most popular song. Her divadom flew off the charts, far more than it had with the caricature of “The Player.”

“Believe” is also the song that made autotune a phenomenon. That someone who wasn’t known as a remarkable singer would distort her voice in such an unconventional way read as an act of rebellion, a boldfaced “look at what I can do.” Cher’s record company insisted the effects be removed, to which she said, “Over my dead body!” 

Around that time, Cher co-headlined VH1′s all-star concert “Divas Live ’99” and launched a massive world tour so grandiose it was almost comical. Furthermore, she had divas who were once considered her peers (Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle) opening for her. 

Cher was bigger and bolder than ever when “Tea with Mussolini” opened in theaters on May 14, 1999. On the Italian set the previous summer, she was the only actor to arrive with her own makeup artist, hairdresser and personal secretary ― which didn’t stop her from feeling intimidated by Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Lily Tomlin. Director Franco Zeffirelli (“Romeo and Juliet”) based the World War II-set ensemble dramedy on a chapter of his autobiography, centering the story on a colony of English women living in Florence in the 1930s.

Smith is the movie’s MVP, but Cher saunters in as a rich American widow possessing a caustic but wacky regality. It makes sense that the height of Cher’s bedazzled pop career coincided with a movie in which she flits around in gaudy costumes. Her persona no longer fit the rural threads of “Silkwood” or the juridical garb of “Suspect” ― and it never would again.

“Tea with Mussolini” made a stolid $14.4 million domestically. Moreover, it was tossed aside during Oscar season despite being prototypical awards bait. That’s not necessarily her fault, but it does lead to an interesting takeaway: What people wanted, post-“Believe,” was to see Cher simply be Cher.

In late 2000, she was working to get that “Enchanted Cottage” musical off the ground, imagining the lead character to be a composite of “me and Tina Turner and Madonna.” But nothing ever came of it, and Cher didn’t take another lead role until 2010′s “Burlesque.” She mounted a so-called farewell tour and leaned hard into the Cher Plays Herself trademark. It worked to her benefit.

“Will & Grace” (2000, 2002) and “Stuck on You” (2003)

In 2000 and 2002, she appeared as a sassy Cher on “Will & Grace.” In a beloved 2000 episode titled “Gypsies, Tramps and Weed,” a twist on Cher’s thundering 1971 song “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves,” Jack (Sean Hayes) is obsessed with a Barbie-sized Cher doll. Who else would walk in on his infatuation but Cher herself? Except Jack believes she’s a drag queen ― a tongue-in-cheek crack about Cher’s campy image. They have a sing-off in which Jack, convinced his impression is superior, greatly exaggerates her husky warble and dramatic hair toss in a way that essentially mocks Cher to her face. Amused, she gets the last laugh, slapping him and administering that quotable classic: “Snap out of it.”

There’s no movie-star move more powerful than playing yourself with an ironic wink, and “Will & Grace,” like “The Player” before it, let Cher poke fun at herself in a refreshing way. She is treated as an empire, at once pointedly self-aware and deliciously aloof ― a perfect way to master her own narrative without being beholden to it.

In 2003, she appeared as a sassier Cher in the one-joke farce “Stuck on You,” starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins who move to Hollywood when one decides to launch a movie career. Stomping around in a fitted leather jacket and a spiky thatch of jet-black hair that resembles David Bowie’s in “Labyrinth,” Cher yelled at her agent (Jackie Flynn) about the state of her acting career: “Why am I doing this lame-ass TV show when I should be doing movies?” she says before reminding him that she has an Oscar.

Cher’s “Will & Grace” appearances were hardly lame, yet one can’t help but wonder whether Cher was bitter about her acting career’s ebbs. Further complicating matters, Hollywood was drifting away from idiosyncratic character dramas and toward inflated action spectacles. Between 2004 and 2009, she didn’t appear onscreen at all. And so began the Vegas residency phase, which continues today.

“Burlesque” (2010)

When Cher returned with “Burlesque” in 2010, the punch lines wrote themselves. A hammy musical about an aspiring actress (Christina Aguilera) who coaxes her way into the tutelage of a nightclub matron (Cher), the movie went through major script rewrites (by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody, “Erin Brockovich” scribe Susannah Grant and “Moonstruck” scribe John Patrick Shanley, no less) but still felt like a collection of rhinestone-studded music videos. Cher seems bored by the whole affair, which makes sense: David Geffen, who once dated “Burlesque” director Steve Antin, had to talk her into doing it. Cher is miscast ― would someone with her magnetism really be running a beggared cabaret? ― but she still manages to bring a sense of pride to the character. 

“Look, I have a very narrow range,” she said in 2010. “I’ve never tried anything more than playing who I am. If you look at my characters, they’re all me.”

The thing is, she’s wrong. Cher is no Cate Blanchett, but she’s far more transformative ― or at least more instinctive ― than she gives herself credit for. Regardless, her big statement in “Burlesque” reverberated loud and clear during a ballad written specifically for her: “I’ll be back / Back on my feet / This is far from over / You haven’t seen the last of me.” 

It also makes sense that Cher ended up viewing the movie as a reflection of her legacy: “I’m in a strange place right now,” she said in 2013. “I’m too old to be young and I’m too young to be old, so I have to be used creatively. In ‘Burlesque,’ which was horrible, I had no love interest, I was running this [troupe], that’s who I was. It could have been a much better film. […] Terrible director! Really terrible director. And really terrible script. I remember him saying to me, I don’t care about what you say, I just want to shoot the dance numbers. Had it been shorter, it would have squeaked by and been a really good popcorn movie.”

“Zookeeper” (2011) “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh” (2017) and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” (2018)

In the same breath, Cher vowed to keep acting. But other than voicing a lion in the Kevin James comedy “Zookeeper” and voicing a self-referential alien who “knows how to make an entrance” in Netflix’s “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh,” no other projects had materialized until now.

“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” like “Burlesque” before it, finds Cher playing Cher, insofar as her snazzy attire and snappy dialogue herald her diva bona fides. Oh, and because she is the sequel’s show-stopping main event, of course.

She shows up in the final 15 minutes, helicoptering into the Greek hotel now run by Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). You know it’s Cher the second the chopper appears. In dramatic fashion, we see Cher’s pant leg touch down before we ever glimpse her wrinkle-free face. It’s a moment that practically begs audiences to cheer.

“Mes enfants, je suis arrivé; let the party commence,” she announces after emerging from the plane. When she sings ABBA’s “Fernando” with Andy Garcia, fireworks explode across the sky. 

In almost no time, Cher steals the movie, snapping and shimmying as if onstage at one of her concerts ― the ultimate marriage of her 55-year-old career’s many tentacles. If it’s possible for Cher to outdo Cher, “Mamma Mia!” is it. But “Mamma Mia!” also crystallizes what we’ve long assumed about Cher: Even at 72, she is still in on the joke that was christened in “The Player” and confirmed on “Will & Grace.”

She’ll probably never spawn another Top 40 hit ― see: her 2013 album “Closer to the Truth” and her recently announced collection of ABBA covers ― but she can still capitalize on the Cher brand to electrify audiences familiar with her diva cachet. Today, her biggest transformation is wearing a bleach-blond wig. Maybe that’s all the transformation we really want from Cher anyway, even though “Mamma Mia!” doesn’t quite know what to do with her, plot-wise.

If pop stars are meant to be mythological and actors are meant to be aspirational, Cher has mastered both domains. She did so by never shying away from how the world metabolized her iconography, and by forever laughing at the absurdity of fame. That sense of humor is now her lifeblood. No matter what happens in the years to come, we haven’t seen the last of her.