A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story (2006)

director: Agnieszka Holland

This movie tells a story in a very simple/uncomplicated way (it is made for tv after all) with a huge impact on the viewer. It avoids the melodramatic perspective by equally focusing on the mother and her own dealing with a transdenger teen (after the tragic events narrated here, she becomes an important transgender activist in US). The ethnic/class context is well emphasized in this intersectional story where sexism and cissexism are way more complicated when other forms of inequality are dangerously at play. Not only focusing on the individual drama but on constellations of inequality and by decentering a form of detached/uninvolved narrative (that follows only the hero/antihero), "A Girl Like Me" is a rare gem that must be seen by teenagers at school and adults alike. This is how education functions.

Freud (1962)

director: John Huston

This biopic focuses on some of the events between 1885 and 1890 from, as the title says, Freud’s life. The personal perspective and the expressionist focus on characters and their well-documented dreams are violently contradicted by the opening and ending parts that are narrated by the director in the most positivist/scientific manner. Freud (Montgomery Clift) becomes just another case of a great dead man, a scientific genius in the line of Copernicus and Darwin. In that sense the whole story moves towards the discovery of the Oedipus complex (revealed in the last part of the movie).

Male hysteria or in Freud’s own term, little hysteria, becomes a major theme of this movie and the dramatic engine in the search of an over-arching theory to cure his patient and his own painful neuroses.

Besides the cinematic portraits of Freud, Breuer (Larry Parks) or Viennese physicians, the exploration of Charcot’s persona is one of my personal delights in this movie. Charcot (Fernand Ledoux) and his practice with hysterics (male and female), hypnosis and celebrity are depicted in the way that I imagined the whole business by reading tons of literature on this phenomenon. Freud’s role as PhD student under Charcot’s supervision is explored in a delicate and faithful manner in relation to the written materials on the subject.

Freud's therapy with Cecily Koertner (Susannah York) represents the discovery of the talking cure with its free associations and hilarious “Freudian slips” and also “the cure” for male hysteria in the sense of abandoning it and Freud becoming a father of a major theory. The focus falls on a scientific/ not-fully-embodied discovery of the Oedipus complex and the martyrization of the individual rational scientist in the face of a retrograde society that denies progress. No indication of Viennese anti-Semitism or scholarly masculinism. Freud’s struggle with the Viennese society becomes an individualist fight for novelty and innovation. In this sense, John Huston’s movie is an ode to modernism in scientific discourse.

The cinematic language follows the film noir/expressionist aesthetics and gets mixed very well with the accurate theoretical/psychoanalytical language. What I particularly liked about it was the lack of fear in dealing with theory. There are some complicated ideas out there that you would never hear in more recent biopics, but Charles Kaufman managed to squeeze them in the script (or better say Jean-Paul Sartre, who’s name disappeared from the project after his second draft was considered too long). Surprisingly the narration works better this way. The story becomes more engaging, this is one of the few theoretical thrillers that I have seen.

At the level of acting-directing, Montgomery Clift was under a lot of pressure on the set: the director used the Freudian setting for outing his main actor, emphasizing the repression part (as a direct connection to him being gay) while filming and provoking Monty to speak about his sexuality. No wonder Monty tried to avoid this movie or any contact with its director, to the point of being sued by Universal for the delay of the production.

All in all, Freud is not easy to forget.

image: the Polish version of the poster, from here 

The return of the ugly

How can we think more positively about beauty? As I observe on a daily basis, beauty is used (as a highly popular term) to define multiple privilege, as a sort of intersectional subjective projection that explores personal entitlement (I am talking about the outside/ inside/ me/ other/ world/ transcendental level). Beauty is always exclusionary, it is always constructed in opposition with the despicable ugly. Instead of claiming the new beautiful (and also a re-assignment of a new ugly), why not claiming the ugly and its negativity? Instead of looking for a positive version of beautiful, why not embracing the ugly but without transforming it into the new beautiful?

Jill wrote a strong manifesto in this sense (I took it from here and even if I have some problems with the whole concept of choice detached from structural inequalities, it is a courageous step against beauty discourses):

The Ugly Manifesta

I’d rather be courageous than beautiful. I will not be demure, quiet and pretty… instead I will be loud, I will get into the face of those who try to oppress others and I will confront them. I will be that loud, “ugly” feminist.

I’d rather be unique than beautiful. I will wear the clothes that make me feel happiest in whatever manner I desire. I will wear as much or as little makeup as I feel comfortable with each day. I will shave as much or as little as I see fit. If I happen to fit some standard of beauty one day, fine; I will not care one way or another because my confidence does not depend on anyone’s approval but my own.

I’d rather be happy than beautiful. I will not waste a moment of my life worrying about how I look to others. I’d rather spend my time concerned with how I am trating others, and interacting with them!

I’D RATHER BE UGLY THAN BEAUTIFUL. Being ugly means saying fuck you to the beauty norms and embracing the person I am, not the person that the world is trying to tell me to be; being ugly means being totally happy with the person I am and never hiding that girl from the world, no matter what.

 photo from Improbable Research

white supremacy and hip hop

Parazitii (the most popular Romanian hip hop band) collaborated with Raekwon of Wu-Tang on their album "Slalom printre cretini" and opened the Wu Tang concert in Bucharest (2006). In 2010 Cheloo (one of the leading members) appears in a video wearing a Tshirt with "white and proud 14" with a direct connection to the neo-nazi David Lane and "The Order". Roma Civic Alliance reacted legally against this. Cheloo responded: "White and proud is correct. I like the color of my skin. Everyday I feel good because I am white. It is not right to be attacked for this. I am totally offended." No misinterpretations here.

Since Wu Tang has collaborated with this person in the past, should they have any reaction to this situation? How do white supremacists associate themselves with anti-racist popular figures in the first place? Is artistic success sufficient to erase radically-different ideological  positions? So many questions...

and a link to the news (in Romanian).

subjectivities and the shared cultural context

The other week, during a seminar one of the students asked why do we have to focus all the time on subjectivity in gender studies and not move into "the big picture". She was quite annoyed with it. I didn't answer it right away because I tried to avoid being dismissive with the student in case but there was a good debate in class on this issue.
Today, in a vintage article from 1988, I found a good answer. Let the Butler speak: "...the feminist claim that that the personal is political suggests, in part, that subjective experience is not only structured by existing political arrangements, but effects and structures those arrangements in turn. Feminist theory has sought to understand the way in which systemic or pervasive political and cultural structures are enacted and reproduced through individual acts and practices...my pain or my silence or my anger or my perception is finally not mine alone, and that it delimits me in a shared cultural situation which in turn enables and empowers me in certain unanticipated ways."
Subjective experience is not detached from the political matrix and politics cannot exist without the internalized ideologies at work. Leaving one side out of the picture limits any understanding of personal OR political processes. And this is why, for example, psychoanalysis is still useful in understanding sexuality and sexual difference in patriarchal cultures.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Yesterday was Parnassus day at Puskin Cinema. Last Terry Gilliam flick makes you think a lot, besides the escapist joy of the theatricalities of his filmmaking. The story(ies) (autobiographical somehow..) have so many levels and they trick you somehow by actually breaking with any narative line. The jump into the unconscious of various characters is hilarious and engaging. Not to mention the pleasure of watching the evilness of the Bekettian Mr.Nick (Tom Waits). Reading some reviews by proffesional film critics I discovered the shocking easyness to tell everyone things like: "makes you wish Gilliam would get outside his own head a little more and try harder to get inside of ours" (James Kendrick), "There's a fine line that separates fantastical from nonsensical. Too often, Gilliam's film comes down on the wrong side." (Mike Scott), "Once again Gilliam has made a movie probably only he can truly understand or find very interesting." (Jeff Bayer) or "As for who other than Terry Gilliam might enjoy it, I'm at a loss." (Eric D. Snider)

What I found engaging was Johnny Depp's rather long comment on the movie: "Maestro Gilliam has made a sublime film. Wonderfully enchanting and beautiful, 'The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus' is a uniquely ingenious, captivating creation; by turns wild, thrilling and hilarious in all its crazed, dilapidated majesty. Pure Gilliam magic! It was an honor to represent Heath. He was the only player out there breathing heavy down the back of every established actor's neck with a thundering and ungovernable talent that came up on you quick, hissing rather mischievously with that cheeky grin, "hey... get on out of my way boys, I'm coming through..." and does he ever!!! Heath is a marvel, Christopher Plummer beyond anything he's ever done, Waits as the Devil is a God, Lily Cole andAndrew Garfield, the very foundation, are spectacular, Verne Troyer simply kicks ass and as for my other cohorts, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, they most certainly did Master Ledger very proud, I salute them. Though the circumstances of my involvement are extremely heart-rending and unbelievably sad, I feel privileged to have been asked aboard to stand in on behalf of dear Heath."

Chautauqua!

Chautauqua! from UTRFestival on Vimeo.



What is Chautauqua?  According to New York Times, it was an American theatrical educational movement from the 19th century based on traveling performances where professors, scientists, preachers, musicians and artists had to share some form of knowledge. James Stanley, writer and performer explained the idea: "Brown tents would go from town to town with scholars who enlightened people with knowledge. It was all based on the idea of civic duty and creating a common culture through education." A theatrical project of rediscovering Enlightenment.

The National Theater of the United States of America designed a performance with the same name & concept that addresses contemporary issues in a 75 minutes format. It includes  "speeches, monologues, puppetry, musical numbers, history lessons and a sing-along". Different guest speakers are lecturing on various topics, the format proves to be succesful nowadays in order to "explore cultural production, knowledge production, commerce and community." I would be curious to see this performance and to explore the concept myself: the Brechtian techniques can do wonders in such a well-thought format where entretainment, political, scientifc and academic discourses met.