Althouse: A view of "Love."

March 17, 2018

A view of "Love."

At the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Feel free to talk about anything.

18 comments:

320Busdriver said...: "Wisconsin Democrat U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan offers fired FBI deputy director McCabe a job"

Term limits, it's whats for dinner.

Why not wait to see how dirty the rat is first?; 3/17/18, 8:40 PM
320Busdriver said...: Looks like I missed the post below..; 3/17/18, 8:43 PM
Triangle Man said...: There ‘s rally very little arguing against the existence of God and the righteousness of Roman Catholicism witnesses by Loyola Chicago’s performance in the NCAA tournament. I hope you heathens (Protestant and otherwise) get a clue and take steps to save your immortal souls.; 3/17/18, 9:06 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Not surprising but a little sad. The boss from hell.

John Kelly says Trump is likely the one fueling rumors about White House exits; 3/17/18, 9:55 PM
jwl said...: New York Magazine - To Catch A Predator:

Early in the evening of March 27, 2015, a young Italian model named Ambra Battilana walked into the NYPD’s 9th Precinct house, a few blocks from Tompkins Square Park. She was so physically and emotionally distressed that the desk sergeant almost called an ambulance. When two patrol officers transported her to the 1st Precinct house, in Tribeca, she cried throughout the short drive. There, at 8:20 p.m., she made a formal complaint that she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.

By nine o’clock, the commander of the NYPD’s Special Victims Division, Michael Osgood, had been notified. He and Lieutenant Austin Morange, head of the SVD’s Manhattan unit ...

Then Morange called Martha Bashford, head of the Sex Crimes Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, to apprise her of the complaint. The call was made reluctantly, after much internal debate. Osgood’s team felt that ever since 2011, when District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had been blasted in the press for dropping a sexual-assault case against IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the DA’s office had been gun-shy about taking on powerful defendants ...

On April 2, under the direction of Osgood, the SVD put Battilana in a hotel, registering her under a false name. For the next five nights, she was kept safe from Vance’s investigators, first at the Franklin Hotel, then at the Bentley. A 22-year-old woman had come forward to accuse one of the most powerful men in Hollywood of sexual abuse, and the police decided she needed protection — not only from her alleged assailant, but from the elected official responsible for prosecuting him.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/michael-osgood-special-victims-commander-harvey-weinstein.html; 3/17/18, 10:06 PM
traditionalguy said...: Great idea. The Department of War once was changed to the Department of Defense. Now we could change it to the Department of Love. It being well known that All's Fair in Love and War.

Then Trump can love the FBI. And Congress can increase the Love Budget.; 3/17/18, 10:22 PM
RNB said...: Ah, Robert Indiana. Visiting a college campus in Indiana (the state) some years back, I encountered another example of Mr. Indiana's stencil-and-straightedge art: Entitled 'Mississippi,' it reads: 'JUST AS IN THE ANATOMY OF MAN, EVERY NATION MUST HAVE ITS HIND PART.' The piece is one of a series entitled 'The Confederacy,' in which the identical sentiment is expressed for Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida.

So full of LOVE. (Copyright); 3/17/18, 10:31 PM
William said...: I finished off The Crown, the BBC series about Queen Elizabeth. It was intelligently written and it's fun to learn all those gossipy details about the British royal family. They threw in some gossip about the feud between Jackie Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth. Who knew?.......I enjoyed it far more than is proper and fitting for an honorable man. I can only say in my defense that at my age the estrogen levels are astronomical and one finds it hard to devote as much time to Marvel superheroes as in younger days......I think the proper attitude towards the royal family is disinterest bordering on antipathy, but the series succeeds in dramatizing their absurdly privileged lives and in generating sympathy for them. That's a neat trick. Claire Foy, in particular, can be boring and dull in a way that excites your interest and affection.; 3/17/18, 11:35 PM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: Looking at Althouse's observational museum photo made me think of the museum scene in Brian DePalma's "Dressed to Kill."

In the scene Angie Dickinson wanders through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a game of cat-and-mouse attraction with a stranger.

Great film-making, and wordless. Scene here: Dressed to Kill: Museum

In the previous post Althouse writes about a commenter seeing Althouse in Valentina Lisitsa; Althouse then adds: "I still do believe I traipse about in my natural habitat looking like broken-wrist Hillary."

Hillary? Really?

Would it not be easier to picture Althouse as Angie Dickinson in the museum?

Reading up on the scene, I see that Out Magazine identified the movie as a Gay Landmark:

What makes De Palma’s Dressed to Kill a gay movie landmark

"Eyes meet. Glands swell. Hopes rise. The museum sequence of Brian De Palma’s 1980 Dressed to Kill is the moment the film first rises to greatness. It is also a superb dramatization of urban sexuality — especially, by-proxy gay sexuality..."
"De Palma depicts an urban habit — cruising — that once defined gay life in New York City of sexual alertness and readiness. These prerogatives were liberated by the 1960s-'70s sexual revolution. The scene’s combination of lust, apprehension and opportunity idealized cruising as a particular social ritual of desire. It’s a promiscuous male habit as much as a tendency of sexual rebellion. But decades before social media sites — like Grindr, Bender, Mister, Tinder, and Squirt — depersonalized sexual connecting, cruising was the way people met; where mutual attraction was immediately — instinctively — acknowledged..."

""The spark of cruising was rarely portrayed on screen (Hollywood regularly emphasized the socially-sanctioned “meet-cute”) which is part of why Dressed to Kill was a huge hit — not just among fans of suspense thrillers, but for those who dared admit the thriller of romance. (What novelist Erica Jong called “the zipless fuck” in her bestseller Fear of Flying). Gay viewers recognized, in that museum sequence, a familiar, uniquely personal experience — a special thrall..."

In this article another film of the era is mentioned: Al Pacino's "Cruising."

(to be continued); 3/18/18, 4:47 AM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/18/18, 4:48 AM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: (continued)

At the time it was roundly condemned by the gay community, even as it was being filmed:

"When the production hit the West Village in the summer of 1979, so, too, did a large and vocal segment of New York's gay community determined to make filming difficult, if not impossible....
Protesters threw bottles and cans at the cast and crew, blew whistles and chanted anti-Cruising slogans. They gained access to apartments adjacent to where Friedkin was filming and turned stereos up loud to ruin the sound recording. Some even climbed on to rooftops and ingeniously shone mirrors at the sets to disrupt the lighting patterns..."
(from The Independent)

It was released to BluRay in 2007, and the reaction was muted; times change. Reading some of the reviews of this period, it is seen as more camp than condemnable.

Cinemaqueer gave it a negative review, but in a self-contradictory manner: it criticizes the film for portraying the seedy gay S&M scene as representative of gay culture:

"The book that Cruising was based on did, in fact, end with the cop turning into a killer himself. Friedkin may have toned this ugly theme down, but he also added the leather bars which did not appear in the book. I'm sorry, but even if his intentions were good, they were certainly misguided and it doesn't get him off the hook..."

But then these scenes bring the writer fond memories:

"Again, I think it is a mess but I can enjoy parts of it as a guilty pleasure - especially for the sequences filmed in the leather clubs. Watching Michael Corleone in leather (and sniffing poppers) is not without its humorous aspects. The scenes where Pacino misconstrues hanky codes, or shows up wearing leather on "Precinct Night" (and is immediately presumed to be a real cop) are both hilarious...."
"...Cruising, for all its faults, is a great time capsule of the actual pre-AIDS leather scene in all its rough and tumble glory. The men couldn't be hotter to this queer writer who came of age in the 70s - hairy chests and moustaches and muscles and leather vests, oh my! ..."
"... Even Pacino looks good as rough trade - despite that horrible 70s perm. These scenes are great to watch because the men were not extras, they were the actual patrons of the bars, giving it a nice documentary sheen when seen today..."

So it was not representative, yet had "a nice documentary sheen."

This is not a symptom of gay culture, but the contradiction found in most art when viewed through a political lens: true can be untrue, things can be wrong for the right reasons, etc.

Could not an older journalist 'who came of age in the 70s' look at the recent Tom Hanks' film "The Post" and feel the longing for a previous time of newspaper culture? Does that have anything to do with the film's historical accuracy (or inaccuracy)?

The Nostalgia of Revolution can be a stronger pull than the actual perceived Revolution.

Which, to bring it back to "Dressed to Kill":

The Nostalgia of Angie Dickinson in the Shower can be a stronger pull than the actual perceived Angie Dickinson in the Shower.

Yeah: stronger pull.

The Germans have a word for this.; 3/18/18, 4:50 AM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: This (early) morning's poll:

If Althouse is to be likened to Angie Dickinson, which Angie Dickinson role fits Althouse best?

• Feathers (Rio Bravo)

• Sheila Farr (The Killers)

• Miss Betty Smith (Pretty Maids All in a Row)

• Wilma McClatchie (Big Bad Mama)

• Kate Miller (Dressed to Kill)

• Sgt. Suzanne 'Pepper' Anderson (Police Woman)

• None of these

• All of these

• Most of these, but mostly Pepper from 'Police Woman'

The Germans have a word for this.; 3/18/18, 4:56 AM
rhhardin said...: It's a beast with two fronts.; 3/18/18, 6:01 AM
wildswan said...: People who meet me usually think I'm a liberal because it's obvious I'm from the East Coast. The idea of an individual life story in which crucial events alter the whole course of a life seems to have fallen into oblivion although that is what liberal once meant. Oh well.; 3/18/18, 6:53 AM
Just asking questions (Jaq) said...: Not surprising but a little sad. The boss from hell.

I agree Beloved, Obama was a much better boss! Too bad the country did so poorly under him in so many ways... It’s a conundrum, what’s more important, that the employees of the White House are comfortably cosseted in cushy sinecures, or the country as a whole does well?; 3/18/18, 6:58 AM
charis said...: I often visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art when I was a student at Christian Theological Seminary, which is right nearby. What a lovely museum!; 3/18/18, 7:19 AM
Just asking questions (Jaq) said...: I have been considering retiring abroad, and was just looking into Canada and ran across this howler of a paragraph from the Seattle Post Intelligencer

As a general surgeon still in practice, Bannon knows Canada’s medical system firsthand. The major differences between the U.S. and Canada are less medical than cultural, he said, evident in Canadian patients’ tolerance for wait times and moderated expectations of their health-care providers.

I mean, come on.; 3/18/18, 7:45 AM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: I'm going to feel free to talk about how fucking derivative Indianoplace is. Everyone knows that "LOVE" statue is from Philadelphia. What a rip-off.; 3/18/18, 10:34 AM