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| Allegedly, a DVD company with an impressive history of reissuing classic Japanese film on DVD may be releasing Mikio Naruse's When A Woman Ascends The Stairs on DVD in the US in the not-too-distant future. I'd strongly encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out.
Naruse was oft-compared - unfavorably and unfairly to the more revered Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu's films are notable - to me - for their sense of exhaustion in the face of cultural change, and for their one-of-a-kind visual artfulness. Naruse's appeal - to me - is quite different.
If Naruse superficially recalls Ozu, in other ways it would be Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk or Luchino Visconti - masters of a visually elegant, ironic and very, very queer melodrama, and within this framework Naruse's take on tradition departs rather sharply from that of Ozu - where Ozu's protagonists are resigned to a certain reconciliation, Naruse's protagonists are doomed to be thought of as outcasts. And - at least occasionally - they embrace the implications of such a designation, even as they also struggle through moments of bitterness: Naruse makes the potential heroism of their position explicitly clear, dares an audience to empathize (and question their own 'place' in society as they do so), and rarely ends a film with the conciliatory notes that Ozu preferred.
Film critics and scholars - mostly male and mostly straight - typcally have held Naruse's films at arms' length - perhaps for all of these reasons. Certain films: When A Woman Ascends The Stairs and Late Chrysanthemums both could acquire the kind of semiotic queer significance that certain Western films (Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, Visconti's Le Notti Bianche, Wilder's The Apartment) have, and for essentially the same reasons. Interest in Naruse - whose films have never been widely seen outside of Japan - largely rests upon a handful of traveling festivals that made it to the US during the 80s and 90s, and a handful of now-out-of-print VHS releases. This sporadic distribution has still managed to auto-generate a slow-building clamor among cinephiles to see restored releases made available on DVD.
Naruse's beautiful, smart but world-weary women, and the very attractive but oft-shady men around them are overdue for a second look - beyond the potentailly campy melodramatics of Naruse's films, there is the lush, extravagant, unforgettable aesthetic sense, which finds beauty amid clutter, and great virtue among those a society would cast as rejects.
Coming soon to a DVD player near you? | | |
| I have been - at various points between the ages of 18 and 36 - a gofer fro a map publishing company, a section editor at an arts alterna-weekly, freelance writer for 3 small newspapers, a retail manager, a buyer and project for a music distribution company, and a museum guide. The idea of lifetime careers or lifetime emplyment has gone the way of the dinosaur.
As I interview for various academic support things, I'm now doing some temp stuff for a net-based marketing research and consultation firm; mostly secretarial stuff, but the work atmosphere is very collegial - no suits and ties, the founder is friends with the Gang of Four and was listening to an X cd in his office on my first day. Most intriguing.
There are two copies of Richard Florida's rather acclaimed The Rise Of The Creative Class laying around the office. I've read chunks of the book - which looks like a watershed work of pop sociology, based on the amount of controversy and discussion it generated. I read other bits of it over the course of this week, in between varied other assignments.
I so strongly believe in what Florida is suggesting, that I'm rather surprised that I also want to argue so strongly against it. Perhaps a Devil's Advocate instinct. Florida's assertions do have some downsides, which he glosses over a bit.
I live in the RTP area of North Carolina (in the creative class top 10, alongside Austin, Seattle, San Fran, L.A., D.C., Boston, NYC, Atlanta and a few other estimable places), and have previously lived in Charlotte (which didn't fare nearly so well). So - this area is cool?
Gay-friendly - yes, very much so - in relation to other places in the South (Atlanta and Miami beat us, but we do have out elected officials in the area, so plenty of progress). Ethnic diversity - again better than anywhere else in the South. Youthful demographics, yada yada.
Creative meccas do have to deal with a certain compression in the job market, the downside of which is lots of underemployed people - there are tons of people in this area who'd much prefer waiting tables here to working corporate in a right-wing sprawl-a-thon like Charlotte. I know plenty of people with masters' degrees here who work retail, as more people move to the area as can be absorbed by the current job market. Having Rolling Stone once pronounce Chapel Hill to be the next Seattle (?) may have been more curse than blessing. Meanwhile, the influx of a bright hipoisie has pressurized the local real estate market, turning this into North Carolina's very own San Francisco, in cost-of-living terms. 70% of the people who work in Chapel Hill can't afford to live here.
And for such downsides, this creative mecca is NO New York. No mass transit. Urban sprawl that has loosely drifted over 4 counties. Smog problems. Civic pretensiousness as a cure for local provincialism. The local gay community is infamously cliquish and casually racist at times. And the rich-poor divide (ahhh...we are still in the South) is stark, and getting worse, with little beyond lip service from leaders in the community. And the area is heavily reliant upon tech-and-net stuff as the cornerstone of the local economy, and as we all know, tech workers are the textile workers of the 21st century - what kinda political shifts will we see when those jobs migrate abroad? There is definitely a smugness, and a lack of forward thinking beginning to creep into the local creative class status, which is why I think that local success may be highly transitory.
The economic divides of the new South (shiny, spotless, explosively growing burgs like Atlanta, Orlando, Charlotte, Raleigh-Cary-Durham, Nashville, Northern Virginia - all standing in stark relief against the declines and poverty in the rural South and older cities like Memphis, Greensboro-Winston and New Orleans) have in some ways been brought out of the closet by recent natural disasters, and hint at a new divide that is just as stark - and may well have just as severe repercussions - as the racial divides of the (not so) old South.
In such an environment, striving to raise the hipness quotient of your city is a band-aid on a head wound - the South still needs to get down and dirty in examining and exorcising it's demons. Until that occurs, the sparkly coolness found in certain enclaves (the nudist/pro-pot-legalization dude who recently ran for mayor in Asheville, NC - another bohemian mecca officially put that city on the freak map, after a Rolling Stone profile) isn't much more than skin deep. Unfortunately. | | |
| So...an eventful summer continues...
Aided and abetted by some unknown denizen of the cyberworld, my computer's operating system decided to pull an auto-destruct on me a few nights ago. After the first few frantic hours, a quiet resignation creeps into the picture - you realized just how little actual info you'll be getting from the 'technical support' staff of your favorite multinational electronics manufacturer, and simply write some things off. Music files, pictures of naked men, etc. There's a greater world out there.
And then you reinstall everything.
And, somehow all is right in the world.
Like everyone else in the Chapel Hill / Carrboro vicinity of North Carolina, I'm in a band. I've played bass guitar since I was 17, electric starting in the mid-20s, and have been in a few other obscure punk-pop and garage bands of very, very little notoriety.
Nonetheless, my current ensemble (Monsonia - www.monsonia.com) has managed to get ourselves booked at the 169 Bar on E. Broadway in New York. Playing in NY is always a blast, even in dingy and tiny punk clubs; the buzz of the city is always incredible. It's been a while since I've played there (several years ago, in one of those previous bands), so I am very much looking forward to it. | | |
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First - three posts in a day. I'll note that I'm not that prolific. I'm recovering from a recent injury, nothing major or life-threatening, but just enough to use up sick days and take advantage of insurance options. In other words, I'm on crutches, cooped up, out of circulation, and going a little stir crazy. Given that I'm also shopping the resume around, it's just as well. But even with that considered, I'm not used to having some time on my hands.
Second - I have another blog, on Yahoo 360 (http://360.yahoo.com/profile-s06w9FMlfrCN1n0QgK1FoO.ETVMX), launched for the same reason at about the same time. Ideally, I plan for for these two little projects to diverge and depart a bit in ton e and subject matter, but for now - the growing pains. In any case - a different version of this post also appeared there - the Yahoo blog has lots more pics, including a slideshow gallery of guys that I find sexy, along with various other odds-and-ends.
Which leads me to more shaking my fist at the monstrous heaviosity of life, the world, and all found within. The guy gallery on my other blog was specifically tailored as a nice, enjoyable little gallery of reaally hot non-white guys (a few of my favorites are pictures on this page as well). The idea came to me after flipping through Out magazine sometime back in the spring - the only black guy was in an ad for HIV meds, there was an Asian guy in another ad, and that wazaboutit. And people wonder why some non-white gay communities are so aloof to the gay world in general.
And - as the years pass - I am more often attracted to other black, and Asian and Latino guys; I guess my taste has broadened. And when I first came out, the ONLY images you'd find in the gay press were lean, Nordic-looking types, so I think it was natural at the time that I went for guys who looked like that. Everyone did.
But then, after getting a little lucky with some of the same lean, Nordic-looking types (and a few others), I started to notice how easy everything was for those guys, and how hard everyone else had to work it. Which sometimes made the everyone else (y'know - those of us who don't have the luxury of taking anything for granted) a lot more fun to be with.
I recall a friend who grew up in Asia bitching about the ubiquity of clones who look like rejects from an Abercrombie & Fitch ad (someone should show those Aryan youth a Leni Riefenstahl film; halfway through Triumph Of Will or Olympiad and they'll never view body fascism in quite the same way, unless of course they simply surrender to Nazi-themed sex fantasies); after several years the look is starting to get a little played out and - to him and me as well - it betrays a certain lack of personality and originality, which of course are two of the primary things that keep the gay community going. Of course, its also kinda creepy to spend your days worshipping 6 ft manboys who look like emaciated Yale fraternity rejects - y'know - the next generation of Young Republicans. It's kinda the gay erotic response to the concept of the house ...ahem... negro.
I keep coming back to diversity - it's exploding in the area in which I live, but not so much in the gay community here, which is strangely far more segregated  than the rest of the area's population. Several big universities, plus Research Triangle Park have a lot to do with this - the Asians and Latinos make up the fastest growing demographic in this area, and though the area remains far too provincial in far too many ways, and though the state remains overwhelmingly conservative, this little left-wing pocket of left-leaning internationalism is exciting. However, spending time in the local gay community is - racially speaking - almost like taking a trip back in time - lots of little separate gay (psychological) ghettoes.
 Crossing those lines is an unnecessarily odd experience as well - imagine the looks you get (usually it's surprise, or absolute befuddlement, sometimes actual anger) in an interethnic relationship when neither of the guys are white. I want to write a story or a screenplay along these lines - a big, multi-character gay drama, where nothing revolves around anyone who looks like a big, blonde, blue-eyed Abercrombie model. The racial politics and fetishes of the gay community are strange and comical, and oft swept under the rug.
But - after diving into the politics - we also just don't see enough sexy non-white guys. Everyone knows blue-eyed, lean Nordic types are gorgeous - they're pretty much a dime-a-dozen these days - even straight guys are trying to cultivate the look. But there's a greater, much more vast world of beauty, life, culture and humanity out there. I guess I do my small, and self-interested part in expanding the view.
And...as for the pics? No - I didn't take them. My involvement, unfortunately starts and stops with creative use of photoshop on found images. Sigh. | | |
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We have a definite, serious crisis in black America.
The first hint is that such a term even exists - in a nation that has always been propagandized as a melting pot, such race- (and ethnicity-) specific language betrays the open wounds within our society - the jargon indicates little cultural respect (or respect for diversity), and instead signals a certain level of balkanization.
In the post-civil rights act years and decades, many Americans think we've moved on. There have been occasional indications otherwise - the Klan shootout in Greensboro, NC, or the rioting in Miami in the wake of the Marielito boatlift, the L.A. riots, or the completely surreal O.J. Simpson trial fallout. Hurricane Katrina is the latest indication.
This disaster isn't just about race or class, but that's obviously part of it. To the extent that it is about race and class, one could spread the blame around evenly. We've just witnessed a catastrophic failure in leadership, and there are any number of local, state and federal officials behind that failure. And it seems obvious to me that there are tremendous, massive, inexcusable levels of insensitivity throughout our society to people who have fallen through the cracks - including a vast number of African-Americans. After the first day, this became a man-made disaster, with the third-world status of swaths of this country becoming highly visible. I wonder how long our focus will remain on this issue before a distraction pulls our gaze away. And - as we ponder the sudden reality that our political leadership is generally incapable of protecting us, and may not care at any level that runs deeper than the ballot box - I wonder what will happen with the next major hurricane, or earthquake, or a volcanic eruption in the Cascades.
As a part of the African-American community, I should also note a few of our own failings.
The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and continued, structural racism is incalculable; it has essentially created an unofficial caste system in this country, with African-Americans largely at the bottom. One aspect of this - I think - lurks within the collective unconscious of the African-American community. There's a psychological component - an unconscious element of rage, depression, and defeat that can be found free-floating within segments of our communities, and there are those among us who seem to expect salvation - God, a black leader, a white leader, a politician - to redeem us, to rescue us, and shove us into non-third-world levels of accomplishment. This will not happen. There are no saviors out there, and the empathy and idealism of others has limits.
This is no pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps sermonizing - serious structural issues need to be addressed: the education gap (parental involvement? political leadership? a greater emphasis on the value of educators?), job creation (beyond the burger-flipping level), finance (the ongoing difficulty of African-Americans in getting credit, loans, low-cost mortgages), health (which also relates to education, while also exposing African-American communities utter lack of awareness of certain health concern within the community, and absolute inability to confront homophobia within our communities), crime & addiction (which connects to all of the above issues - African-American leaders should retain a focus on the structural causes of crime, while also clearly stating that it will NOT be tolerated in our communities). These factors interlock and conspire from within and without to limit achievement, eliminate opportunity and maintain an underclass. And - though no one will admit it - this country couldn't function without an underclass, and for most Americans - better that underclass be 'them' than 'me.'
There are tremendous (there would have to be) levels of intelligence, creativity (a creativity oft exploited, ripped off, or enjoyed at mostly superficial levels), survival skills and resilience within African-American communities. To the extent that we already draw upon these, we need to do more of it. We need to set the standards for our own achievement very, very, very high - our political leadership will not lead us in this department, and if we don't, our achievements will forever be limited. And we need to be fearless in critiquing our own when they humiliate our communities (O.J. Simpson or Marion Barry, two prominent embarrassments to us all whose gross misdeeds are generally swept under the rug by the African-American community; and why have no prominent African-Americans condemned those who looted TVs and guns in a drowned city? There is NO excuse...), or when they fall asleep on the job (like most of the current civil rights leadership).
We need to have these discussions - which is unbelievably depressing, considering that we've been dealing with these issues for centuries. Unfair though this may be, the world is inherently unfair - great cities, classes, races, and nations have been screwed by history for absolutely no reason, and the world continues to turn; there are (aside from cultural achievements) few silver linings to be found within the African-American experience. We have a lot of work to do.
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