New brand of exploitation

February 22, 10: 52 pm. Sitting in the kitchen riddled with spray paint fumes and sticky pasta, Erin asks Dave what he thought of Billy the Kid.

Erin: What did you think of Billy the Kid?

Dave: I didn't like it. It was really boring. It didn't go anywhere. You weren't learning anything. It was "hey, remember that kid with the wolf t-shirt and the fucked up mullet in school?" It was kind of a guilt trip movie. It goes with midddle class white people saying "oh isn't this taboo." There was nothing thought provoking. Very fishbowl; tapping the glass watching the fish swim around. I felt gross watching it. He was in the boiler room class with all the other miscreants and social outcasts pushed to the side by society. You're putting the spotlight on them like you did in school.

Erin: But didn't you find it charming at all? The kid's a performer, he seemed to enjoy the attention and worked with the camera. Everyone is acting for the camera to a certain extent.

Dave: No I didn't find it charming. I was questioning the validity of the subject matter the entire time. These are the people who used to come in to my store. They're people not spectacles. They make them out to be sideshows, freaks because we have chosen them to be for our elitist groups. We're talking about people who can't function in society. "oh look, they have feelings too." Fuck that.

Erin: Why do you think we make and watch these movies?

Dave: To feel better about ourselves, to seem interesting, to win awards, to educate others.

People fortunate enough to have an education are the only ones watching. He's smart for his age, but so what. He's not gonna have the same opportunities. He's going to have to fight his entire life. I hope he becomes happier or a performer.He's a spectacle for privelaged people to look at.

Erin: Do think all documentary film is spectacle?

Dave: It's entertainment. Especially the documentaries you are watching. Not many of them are educational. We're not watching any on the Sahara, space, or penguins; those are cut and dried. Factual. In your documentaries science and art is convoluted. Are we learning something? Is this the real world? If so what do we take from it? Why is it that the miscreants of our society are really what brings the Pulitzer home?

A transparent plea for time

If my goal was to induce some kind of neurological malfunction from watching too many documentaries, I'd say I'm well on my way (despite the lack of writing about them, but I will eventually, really. I've been busy, okay. All six Leprechaun movies don't watch themselves). This next week I will try to devote most of them to text and possibly say something intelligent and thought provoking (albeit a stretch). I keep coming across lists and lists of documentaries that I want to watch. Here are a few that I'm really looking forward to writing about:
Please accept the minimal picture and link to trailer.

The Cruise

Billy the Kid

Speedo: A Demolition Durby Love Story

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

Belarusian Waltz

This, that and the Other.

First things first. The Cats of Mirikitani was fantastic. My only complaints were regarding the narrator's lazy up-talking and the extraneous 9/11 coverage. But aside from that it was top notch, heart-touchingly inspirational, contextually rich, and hilarious; all things a good documentary should be. As I mentioned previously, I didn't want to sound flippant about calling him the "artist that draws cats" but that was all I had gathered from the DVD cover. In reality he draws and paints landscapes, animals, flowers, etc. The most stunning of his collection was the recurring drawings of the interment camp in which he had spent 3 1/2 years as a wrongly suspected Japanese spy/alien/ terrorist during WWII.

Mirikitani developed a justified distrust and ambivalent hatred toward the U.S. government which is reflected most potently in the footage immediately after the fall of the twin towers. A shot focusing on the TV-lit, stoic face of Mirikitani as he watches the news reports is devoid of emotion. He listens to the anchor's death toll estimate and a palpable tension of mournful reflection and judicial satisfaction fills the scene. In this moment, the director is able to capture the overall tone and pathos of the film.




However, the tonality isn't all melancholy reflection and silent hatred. The inclination of the possibility of redemption infuses the finale. We find Mirikitani's citizenship that had been revoked in '40s was given back in the '50s, but he had never received it in the mail. This allowed him to collect Social Security and eventually own his apartment and teach a few painting classes, which is more than some of us could hope to do.
And as if by divine decree, this week I also happened to read (very much coincidentally) a few essays on the construction of the Other during WWII. If anything, the readings and the film left me heavily plagued by a hatred of America and a shamefull embarassment of America's past. But then again, I am not the country I live in, or so I tell myself. I'd like to exclude myself from the national identity, whatever that may be, but the further I go with the documentary project the further I'm realizing the films I'm watching are reflections of a national identity; one of specified class, race, and socioeconomic standing favoring the white middle class. Basically, the documentaries I've been watching would have made a sensible addition to Things White People Like. All of this made me think about the frivolity of what I'm doing and how in the hell I'm getting college credit to do this. A middle class white girl from Montana attempting to "enrich" her life with stories of other middle class Americana. So this is my (re)starting point for trying to find deeper meaning, implications, and significance in the culture that has raised me. Who are making these films and for whom? How do these films reflect the shaping of an American identity? How is "otherness" exploited or countervailed in a contemporary media environment? I will attempt a discourse of these subjects and try, with as much integrity as possible, to index the class values and sensibilities of American culture through documentative media ...and all that jazz.

Captain's Log

January 29th, 2010.

I'm skipping the American Popular Music time-suck to spend some time focusing on my thesis. So far, I've two blank word documents; the first entitled "Why I Hate School" and the second "American Aprioristic Urban Pastoralism: Reasons for Academically Induced Self-Flagellation" of which I'm still working out the meaning. It came to me in a dream, so, you know, it must be profound.

Research is proving difficult. The Interlibrary Loan office keeps canceling my requests because they're "too new" or "we have it at the library but it'll be checked out until September." If it weren't "free" I'd suspect they were trying to ruin me. I've requested the following books: Documentary screens : non-fiction film and television by Keith Beattie and First person Jewish by Alisa Lebow. Of course those are the only two the lovely library could procure. I was hoping a book might give me some kind of direction. I'm sort of, if not entirely, directionless. I'm realizing what I'm doing is frivolous and trite and am out of ideas on how to fix it. So now my efforts will be toward narrowing down a topic without trying to sound like an asshole.

In my production efforts I've made a schedule of movies and readings to go along. It's pretty much like being in class, but without someone talking at me. For next week I've arranged a Camp-a-thon. I'm reading lady-boner-inducing Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp" of which I plan to compare with the documentary Paris is Burning and possibly The Eyes of Tammy Fay or Wigstock. Or maybe I'll stay up all night and watch them all while wearing my velour cheetah print smock and matching heels.

Tonight, on a more serious note, I will be watching The Cats of Mirikitani (not meaning to sound flippant) about a Japanese artist who paints cats. I'm excited for this one.

And now is time for the mandatory time-suck of the Salvo.



Doherty out.

Herb and Dorothy part I

I just finished watching Herb and Dorothy, a charming documentary released last year from the director Megumi Sasaki who had spent the last twenty years in New York cultivating a production company with roots in independent journalism. This informs the straightforward, unbiased presentation of Herb and Dorothy Vogel as an elderly couple living in a small New York city apartment impregnated with Minimal, Conceptual, and Modern art. The Vogel's story comes as a refreshingly purist approach to art collecting; if a piece moves them, they buy it. But only to display within their one bedroom shoebox apartment.



What Sasaki meant to create (via her interview with Elston Gunn) was an alternate view of the Vogels (as opposed to their media coverage in the 80s and 90s) as unlikely philanthropists, but it fails in its attempt to convey what Sasaki calls the "much more profound message in Herb and Dorothy's story" but repackages the precedented years of media coverage and speculation prior to the official documentary. Overall, Herb and Dorothy was sweet yet unaffecting. I may be being a little cold hearted here, but I felt the movie was reduntant and didn't say anything aside from what I could find on wikipedia. 2 out of 5 best Chuck Close anecdote.

The Vogels' supposed magic eye for worthwhile artworks brought me to question the idea of taste and the value thereof. So I took to reading Edmund Burke's On Taste, although against my better judgement. I made it 6 paragraphs in and was so annoyed by his assumptions I quit reading. I didn't really learn anything about taste or the absurd rules and regulations Burke asserts it has. I left it more confused and enraged than when I started. Burke claims that taste, along with the senses, imagination, and judgement, can be quantified and logically reduced to a common denominator among all humanity. I disagree. Taste is not definable or reducible to universal exactitude. As Postmodernity has taught us, meaning and truth are never attainable as they are infinitely deferred. I agree. In terms of the Vogels, the volatility and meaning of taste is equally illusive. Their passively simple "because we like it" articulations of their buying motives leaves us to question and wonder. Their lack of verbal articulation about visual art alludes to an unspoken understanding of the artist and idiosyncratic appreciation of the artwork. Is this what artists want of their patrons, admirers, or consorts? As an art historian in training, I'd like to know some day, but doubt I ever will.

I like my women just a little on the trashy side.

Heiresses in terrycloth head wraps have nothing on waitresses in Dolly Parton wigs. Yes, that is a Confederate Railroad reference. What? You don't know (or care) who Confederate Railroad is? My humor is lost on the young and cultured.

Tonight's interest is in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens directed by Albert and David Maysels. And, as I'm sure you all were wondering, they do have a fansite.

IMDB synopsizer Huggo sez:

Seventy-nine year old Edith Bouvier Beale and her fifty-six year old daughter, Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale, are Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin. Living alone with several cats, fleas and raccoons (the latter, wild, which live in the attic but who Edie feeds), the Beale's are discovered living in filth and squalor in Grey Gardens, their 28-room family mansion located in East Hampton, Long Island, the mansion which doesn't even have running water. Edie moved home twenty-four years earlier to care for her ailing mother.
[Hilarity ensues]

In my efforts to break away from the Jewish gentlemen's club I was backing myself into my newest attempt was to branch out and hear what the ladies had to say. But in doing so I was sucked back into the Maysles vortex; a vortex, I might add, that I never really wanted to leave (See the Maysles' link in the sidebar). They do a fantastic job, as always, but I'm not here to blabber on about them.

"The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration ... because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood" --Susan Sontag

Alright, I'll be out with it; I am terrified of the Edies and dread the day when my mother and I transmogrify into them. The first day I read about Grey Gardens was years ago in an article on the prolific careers of the Maysles and their remarkable cinéma vérité story of Jackie O's aunt and cousin living in near squalor with cats, raccoons, and in pools of their own detritus. It made me think of the basement in my mother's house (she's going to kill me for making this comparison, but it has to be done). Of course we never had their kind of money or self-righteous disdain for hoi polloi and having affairs with the rich and famous, but we are more than a bit on the odd-ball side and tend to be nostalgic pack rats who love cats and running around in our skivvies. We aren't full blown Bouviers, but are unhatched eggs of their psychological progeny. Watching those two felt like living the end of 2001: Space Odyssey. Horrified, I called the Moms to tell her to rent it immediately. She could only find the new Drew Barrymore, Jessica Lang version (still haven't seen it, but wasn't Drew Barrymore adorable at the Golden Globes? aside from her hair of course, I mean, blah!) Anywho, turns out, the Moms didn't see the resemblance as a problem. And why should she? The mother had it made: lounging in bed all day, freely disrobing as she pleased, and entertaining Jerry, the young handyman whom Little Edie called the Marble Faun. And as Big Edie asserts, "I haven't got any warts on me!" No warts! She was the complete package.

This is why I'm dropping the ax now, moving out of the state and leaving the cat (maybe). Am I afraid I'm squandering my potential? You bet. And this is what Little Edie partially represents to me: the harsh reality of letting go of one's ambitions. But she also represents much more; she was a larger than life character living on her own mad stage and for that I love her. Their entire existence in contradictory in this way; they live freely by their own rules, but are trapped by the lives they couldn't escape. Little Edie frolicked gleefully around the house, but also spoke of her hatred of confinement. Free, but emprisoned. Living, but dead. Post-aristocratic Schrodinger's cats. I also love this movie for that. And apparently so do gay men.

In 2006, the delightfully gay trio Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie adapted the film into a musical which went on to win several awards. In fact, while researching I found that Grey Gardens has reached an iconically gay stature. The Bouvier-as-outsiders and gay-as-outsider correlation swiftly brought the film into the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) cultural repertoire. In his essay "The Gayness of Grey Gardens", Matthew Hays quotes Albert Maysles:

"There was this weird kind of paradox about them being outsiders. They also became these ultimate insiders because they got to be in the film. So how did they do that? Outsiders often want desperately to be insiders. The women in Grey Gardens got both. I suppose that's true of homosexuals: they would like to be accepted for who they are, but maintain their individuality."

The gay cult following accrued by the film may also have its roots in a subject I've briefly mentioned in other blogs about the role and response of the audience. How the subjects are portrayed and how the audience reacts are manifest in several recurring ways in documentary films especially dealing with "eccentrics" or "outsiders." The bathetic moments are especially telling of the nature of the film. Even though I found the Edies hilarious and possibly insane, at no moment did I feel a sense of mockery. Little Edie was able to illuminate their absurd situation through freely choreographed dance numbers in their shambly old house. An air of camp lingers around those scenes--another issue used in Hays' gay attraction agrument. But for all the seemingly gay over/undertones Grey Gardens is relatable on an elementary humanistic level.


Now, please watch or rewatch Grey Gardens at your leisure and give a sheynem dank to the Maysels for making another fantastic film.



Your humble viewer,

erin d.





The performance on the Tony's.

Boys club

As much as I wish I had the time to troll the internet (of which I could be using right now to do so, but that's beside the point) in search of documentaries, I'd like to know what my humble reader(s) is(are) watching. And since my past entries have pretty much been kosher sausage fests, I'd like to choose a documentary with more of a feminine angle. I'm just going to say it: girls weird me out. I've never related to them aside from the boobs and Mao and think that maybe a documentary could act as an ersatz "girlfren" and make me feel slightly less gauche about being a girl. Any suggestions to help me fill this psychosexual void (which used to be filled by Designing Women) or whatever would be much appreciated.

Documentary+ladies-the "p" word= sort of what I'm looking for at the moment.