My trust-funded housemate opposes heating our place above 55 degrees due to the cost of energy.
I could protest, but this ridiculous advertisement is my new lodestar:
One of the kindest pieces of movie news this year is Criterion's DVD release of Metropolitan. Like Clueless, it is a clever, youthful Jane Austen adaptation, referencing Mansfield Park overtly and obliquely.
Take it literal-mindedly and Metropolitan is as conservative as its protagonists, Chicago School heiresses and heirs; go deeper and it is messy and progressive about timeliness (the film is set in the early or mid-1970s but never uses dumb retro symbols as shorthand for the period) and about what history and old books can teach us about wit, ethics, and sociability.
I haven't seen it in years but Metropolitan might be the right movie for a winter night when you feel alienated by upper-class colleagues who are in the throes of haut-bourgeois guilt, or when you are in those throes yourself.
"There's something a tiny bit arrogant about going around feeling sorry for others whom you consider 'less fortunate.' Are the more fortunate really so much better-off? Do you really want some much richer guy out there saying, 'Poor Tom Townsend can't afford a winter jacket. I guess that means that I can't go out for dinner tonight.'" - a Metropolitan lad's retort
"Il n'y a pas d'amour. Il n'y a que des preuves d'amour." - Jean Cocteau
("There
is no love. There are only proofs of love.")
On my customized Google News page, one of the top headlines for about 3 seconds today was a review of Hors de prix, a French romantic comedy about a prostituée de luxe - high-class prostitute - and an "accidental gigolo". They meet cute, bicker, and fall in love when not entertaining octogenarian clientele in a Riviera hotel that is essentially a retirement castle.
("Hors de prix" is pronounced "ohrh d'pree," by the way.)
On "Hors de prix", a movie critic from Libération ended his review not with a plea for sharper comedy, nor for pause before trivializing an issue that involves tremendous human-rights violations. Instead, he asked for some stupid-sounding cheeky rebellion:
"On peut
regretter que Salvadori ne profite pas de la comédie pour bousculer
les valeurs admises, la bonne morale qui condamne la prostitution
au nom de l'impératif de l'amour vrai et gratuit. Tout le monde
sait que ça n'existe pas [...]."
("You might regret that [director]
Salvadori does not take advantage of comedy to challenge permissable
values or the morality that condemns prostitution in the name of free, true love. Everyone knows that that doesn't exist [...]")
Though stereotypes of French culture promise sophisticated attitudes
towards sex and love, reality can be rife with
adolescent conceptions of l'amour, etc. - the movie and its above-cited review, for example.
Where can you find intelligent reflections on these topics? Some initial suggestions, in ascending order...
- movies, interviews, and writings of Catherine Breillat. Seriously. Her best movie might be Sex is Comedy ("comedy" here means theater, or performance, more than humor). It is the imagined "behind the scenes" story of a film helmed by a beyond-feminine director. We see the banal origins of what appear to be romantic moments on screen; we also see the labor involved in seemingly trivial or "natural" details. The ending is, in context, harrowing: in it, the fictional director embraces a distraught young actress:
- or, if you prefer to skip CB for now, look to the 19th Century!
What are the things in life that you're truly passionate about?
Submitted by Jess.
"Booze doesn't tempt me anymore; ideas do." - Dylan McKay, "Beverly Hills 90210"
Show us your favorite mode of transport.
Submitted by NomDeCocon.
What song gives you the most holiday cheer?
Submitted by Roxy.
"Santa Claus Goes Modern"
Sufficiently sophisticated to merit a spot on a running Holiday Cheer soundtrack loop at Walgreens, or at the place of your family gatherings later this month.
My interest was piqued when I heard that Yo La Tengo does a cover of a song with this title - but their version is an atonal spoken-word thing with different lyrics and no melody.
A reminder that preemptive war, military equipment, and nuclear weapons just don't mix with holiday spirit.
my favorite rhyme:
"Instead of my favorite teddy bear
He gave me a gun that was a laser."
No, I am not pregnant, but all this week I have been twitchy and shiny like a rabbit's septum, or like Hugh Grant in the French poster for a rom-com about unplanned pregnancy,
How to feel better?
1. Drink fashionable fluids
2. Recuperate with the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld
3. Use dizziness as excuse to postpone grading a particularly tedious assignment
4. Dream of Empress Eugénie and Emperor Napoléon III while sleeping for eight hours per night
5. Check email only once a day
6. Chop scallions and drop egg whites into simmering lemongrass-kaffir lime-chili rice-noodle soup
What's your favorite heartbreak song?
Submitted by esta86.
Is your true self a drama queen alla maniera italiana? If this song makes you sway and pout: si, è probabile.
This song comes from an album whose title translates as: "Having seen a man weep and suffer, God transformed Himself into music and poetry." Dig the ablative absolute!
"Stop sobbing. Anyone would think you're Italian."
- Gosford Park (R.I.P. Robert Altman)
Show us why you love the city you live in.
Submitted by meg.
Crusty fresh bread
Handmade lemonade
Only available on Thursdays and Fridays between 11:30 and 1:00
Thanks, Le Monde, for a fabulously stupid photo accompaning an article about Ségolène Royal, the presidential candidate nominated by the Socialist party (in France, Socialism is the biggest leftist party; it is not extremist nor particularly connected to history-textbook Socialism). The photo semi-consciously represents politicians' and pundits' dumbass quips about Royal: "why doesn't she just read recipes?" (direct translation) and "shouldn't she take care of children?" (also a direct translation). All tedious echoes of comments made about Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, etc.
The caption on this photo was: "How to counter a woman without being accused of chauvinism?" Feminism has supposedly put men at severe disadvantages - or, at least, it's placed men in permanent anxiety-ridden states of impotence. See the oeuvre of Laura Kipnis, among many others arguing this very 1760s idea. Kipnis perenially pops up to declare herself the only "serious" intellectual woman in print, yet she limits her conception of reality to the boundaries drawn by Cosmopolitan magazine and "Sex and the City." Yes, I remember being 15 years old and taking these sources seriously. No, I don't need to be so illogical and facile again.
The reality of feminist practice isn't anxiety-producing or anti-male. A powerful man can take a woman seriously by breathing deeply and getting over it. I sympathize: I'm trying to transcend my own self-hating lust for "Sarko", aka Nicolas Sarkozy (the raven-haired tempest in the center-background of this photo; he is minister of the interior for the UMP, a conservative party, and will likely be the major opponent to Royal during elections next spring).
Preferably one titled "Visual Rhetoric and (the) Political Subject(ive): (Un)thinking Eurocentric States of Postmodern Queer(i)(ed) Velocity"
