This video essay explores how self-discovery is conveyed in the dance films of the 1980s, utilising the four most well-known examples: Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987), Footloose (Herbert Ross, 1984), Flashdance (Adrian Lyne, 1983), and Fame (Alan Parker, 1980). These films are notorious examples of the ways in which dance is used to reflect a transition from adolescence to adulthood, alongside predominant societal issues during this period in America that denote how the characters undergo a process of self-discovery. The essay uses montages, that are reminiscent of the montages seen in these films, combined with voice-over narration to illustrate how this is conveyed visually in the films. Susan A. Reed outlines key ideas in ‘The Politics and Poetics of Dance’ and I apply her work to these films in terms of how “dance may reflect and resist cultural values simultaneously”.
I explore the ways in which Dirty Dancing subverts the dominant male gaze and instead positions Patrick Swayze’s Johnny Castle as the object of desire as opposed to Jennifer Grey’s Baby Houseman becoming the object of male sexual fantasy and desire. Swayze is typically considered to be sexualised and an object of sexual desire to a higher extent than Grey, whose desiring gaze we see enacted through frequent point of view shots throughout the duration of the film as can be seen in the scenes I have chosen to include in this video essay. Visual and thematic connections are made between Dirty Dancing and Footloose here in terms of sexual freedom and self-discovery.
These joyful moments of expression found in the electric dance sequences represent shifting attitudes and a promise of social mobility that is reflected in the visuals of this video essay due to the use of montage. Characters that are otherwise marginalised are allowed momentarily to become rulers of their domain and split screen comparisons are used to illustrate this. My use of music is that of the soundtracks from the films in order to replicate and convey the energy seen within the narratives that the presence of dance sequences create.
First discussed by Charles Baudelaire in the 1860’s in Paris, and further elaborated on by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin in the 1920’s. A ‘flâneur’ (as written in Charles Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, 1863), is someone who finds ‘immense joy to set up house in the heart of multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement’[1]. In her work ‘Discovering the Beauty of the Quotidian: The Contemporary Flâneur in Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson”’, with regards to Benjamin’s work on the term ‘flânerie’, Qingyang (Freya) Zhou says ‘Benjamin reconfigured the flâneur as a decipher of urban and visual texts’[2]. This addition to the term removed the geographical specificity applied by Baudelaire and allowed for more media to be viewed with the lens of ‘flânerie’.
With Flânerie first originating in Paris with Baudelaire, I note in the video essay that the modern flâneur can be ‘a native of any given city’. I do however highlight two films that contai elements of observational people within the city of Paris, Cleo from 5 to 7, and Frances Ha. These two clips are played with their own music to allow the separation tonally between these films to be fully recognised.
Paterson, released in 2016 and directed by Jim Jarmusch, follows a week in the life of a bus driver called Paterson. Paterson also lives in the town of Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson as a character, played by Adam Driver, is also a poet. Within the film we see him writing various poems as he is between driving the bus. Paterson has a girlfriend called Laura, played by Golshifteh Farahani. Laura is a stay at home girlfriend, within the film we see her passion for baking, interior redecoration and country music. This constant outward display of various passions is a contrast to the character of Paterson.
The film Paterson shows the character of Paterson (Adam Driver) following his daily routine, waking up early to eat a small bowl of cereal, walking to work, driving the bus, walking home, taking his and Laura’s dog (Marvin) on a walk with him to a bar, where he has one drink before coming home and getting ready for work the next day. Throughout his day he writes poems. Paterson keeps his poems in a book that he doesn’t show to anyone. These poems are often written to reflect his thoughts on what he is observing within his day to day life as a bus driver, a boyfriend, and a part of a town. These observations being made, and turned into creative writing fits the definition of the term ‘flânerie’.
My video essay is split into three chapters, ‘seeing double’, ‘hidden from the world’ and ‘connoisseur of detail’. These three chapters allow the video essay to adequately explore the key elements of the film that best demonstrate Paterson as a character to be a flâneur. ‘Seeing double’ dissects how paterson is consistently observing, seeing twins specifically due to a dream he is told at the start of the film. These moments within the film present Paterson as someone who has been ‘gifted the capacity of seeing’[3].
The second chapter, ‘hidden from the world’ views Paterson through the lens of ‘incognito’[4], with this being a necessary element of flânerie, with the title itself coming from Zhou’s essay ‘Discovering the beauty of the quotidian’.
‘Connoisseur of detail’[5] refers to a key part of Paterson as a film, the poems. The transformation of Paterson’s observations into creative writing, he is shown to have the ‘power of expression’[6] that Baudelaire claims only few people possess. These poems are, as Richard Brody writes, ‘imbued with the modest substance of his life’[7].
My aim for the video essay tonally is to match that of the film, hence why I allow sequences such as the ‘love poem’ and the first clip from the ‘hidden from the world’ chapter to play out over a substabtual length of time. Paterson as a film takes its time, and whilst still maintaining the viewer’s attention and allowing for them to learn about this theory and how it relates to the film, I wanted to present my video essay at a calming pace, to create a ‘pensive mood’[8] similar to that of the film itself. This is also why thmusic from the film plays throughout almost all of the video essay.
[1] Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Phaidon Press, 1863.
[2] Zhou, Qingyang (Freya). Discovering the Beauty of the Quotidian: The Contemporary Flâneur in Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson. Film Matters, 2020
[3] Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Phaidon Press, 1863
[4] Zhou, Qingyang (Freya). Discovering the Beauty of the Quotidian: The Contemporary Flâneur in Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson. Film Matters, 2020
[5] Birkerts, Sven. “Walter Benjamin, Flâneur: A Flanerie.” The Iowa Review, vol. 13, no. 3/4, University of Iowa, 1982, pp. 164–79, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20155922
[6] Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Phaidon Press, 1863
The notion that Blade Runner is a culturally significant film, is not a new idea. Countless books, articles, documentaries etcetera have explained in painstaking detail the effects this film has had on the science fiction genre, depictions of the future and studies of postmodernism in film. “What remains striking about Blade Runner is that, despite the fact we are quickly approaching the year 2019, the year in which the film takes place, its depiction of the ‘future’ still resonates. The future of Blade Runner still looks like our potential future”[1] This statement still stands 3 years after the film’s setting in 2022, it is the reason that in 2017, a sequel to the original was released. Blade Runner is a film that exemplifies the past, present, and future, regardless of time.
To exemplify this a detailed analysis of the film’s themes, cinematography and plot are usually utilised. However, the element of costume design is often overlooked when evaluating the impact, even though it is one of the clearest markers of Blade Runner’s influence that has lasted even until today. Evoking the noir style of the 1940s and 1950s is noticeably clear in the costuming. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is dressed throughout the film in a large, popped collar trench coat, replicating the unmistakable image of Humphrey Bogart, noir’s primary hero, especially mimicking The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) and Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942). Although, minus Bogart’s trademark fedora, at the refusal of Ford following the success of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) and the hat that became Ford’s unmistakable symbol.
The most overt combination of noir and technology arguably comes from Deckard’s love interest. The classic femme-fatale but also replicant, Rachael (Sean Young) is often dressed in hugely shoulder padded ‘power suits’ and large fur coats. Not only a prominent icon of 1940s femme fatale style in general, but more specifically of one noir icon, Joan Crawford. Exemplified in Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945) and Sudden Fear (1952). Emblematic of classic styles Crawford was known for after her prolific working relationship with Gilbert Adrian, one of Hollywood’s most prolific costume designers.
Blade Runner is often cited as one of the major inspirations behind the subgenre of Science- Fiction, Cyberpunk. As defined in The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, “a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on the effects on society and individuals of advanced computer technology, artificial intelligence, and bionic implants in an increasingly global culture, especially as seen in the struggles of streetwise, disaffected characters.”[2] This is demonstrated exceptionally throughout the film as a whole but more specifically by the character of Pris, the ‘basic pleasure model’ replicant, who brings these exact ‘streetwise’ and ‘disaffected’ characteristics to life. Her costume and makeup inspiration was taken directly from Breaking Glass, (Gibson, 1980) a gritty independent British music film starring Hazel O’Connor, depicting her rise and fall from fame. These clear comparisons to film costumes of the past are not only used as an indicator of genre and style but as a key visual indication of technophobia and reluctance to move forward with the times, especially if this is what it is going to look like.
More notably than the effects of the past on the film, is the effects of the film on the future, as shown by its influence on the fashion industry. From directly after the film’s release even until the present day, many fashion designers have been heavily inspired by the visual style of Blade Runner in their designs. As early as the spring-summer collections of 1983, Blade Runner was already beginning its long presence in the fashion industry and beginning with one of the biggest designers in the world, Vivienne Westwood. Her collection ‘Punkature’ (A contraction of the words ‘punk’ and ‘couture’) featured skirts bearing the print of Alexis Rhee, dressed as a geisha, featured on a billboard in the film and other bearing images of the ‘love scene’ between Deckard and Rachael.[3] Its resurgence in fashion came about in the mid-1990s, following the release of the director’s cut in 1992. Major fashion house Givenchy, headed by Alexander McQueen at the time, released a collection in 1998, undeniably influenced by not only Rachael’s costume but her hair and makeup, which was a key part of her look being as recognisable as it is. The final cut also being released in 2007, inspired a resurgence with Jean Paul Gaultier’s Autumn/Winter collection in 2009. Most recently the sequel released in 2017, Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017) brought the Blade Runner trend back, arguably stronger than ever before with collections from Bottega Veneta (AW 2017) Raf Simons (SS 2018), Marine Serre (SS 2019) and Oliver Theyskens (AW 2019). In one way or another, each of these collections have been explicitly confirmed to be inspired by the film. Those more overt, such as the Westwood collection featuring images from the film or Simons’ collection whose models walked down the runway, set up to look like the lower level of the Los Angeles of the film. Conversely, those more obscure, either with subtle references to which the designer had to explain was influenced by the film or in the case of the Theyskens collection, the models walked down the runway to the theme in reverse. In any sense, the collections depicted in the video essay is merely a sample of what is out there based on the film, both confirmed and unconfirmed. Despite being the first collection to feature inspiration from the film and the most overt, printing the scenes onto her skirts, due to inaccessibility of footage, the Westwood collection was unable to be featured.
It is clear to see that Blade Runner has had an immense impact on the fashion industry beginning with its initial release in 1982 and expanding with each subsequent version/sequel. It is a concise representation of the past and future that (without the intertitle identifying the year) appears timeless in both its themes and aesthetics, as a result succinctly representing the present, resonating with people across all decades. “We have seen that Blade Runner exemplifies postmodern pastiche in its combination of sci-fi and film noir […] despite this combination of past and future, Blade Runner, is undoubtedly a film about the postmodern present.”[4]
Flisfeder, Matthew. Postmodern Theory and “Blade Runner.” New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Lack, Hannah. “Michael Kaplan on Blade Runner’s Iconic Costumes.” Another, Another Magazine, 22 Oct. 2012, anothermag.com/art-photography/2286/michael-kaplan-on-blade-runners-iconic-costumes. Accessed 30 Nov. 2021.
Page, Thomas. “‘Blade Runner’ Influenced 35 Years of Fashion. Can Its Sequel Do the Same?” CNN, CNN, 3 Oct. 2017, edition.cnn.com/style/article/blade-runner-2049-costume-design-fashion-renee-april/index.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2021.
Prucher, Jeff. Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195305678.001.0001/acref-9780195305678-e-100?rskey=eTlVdX&result=1. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
Westwood, Ben. “Punkature Video – Vivienne Westwood.” Vivienne Westwood, Aug. 2014, blog.viviennewestwood.com/punkature-video/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2021.
Filmography
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945)
Sudden Fear (Miller, 1952)
Breaking Glass (Gibson, 1980)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Barbarella (Vadim, 1968)
Scarlet Street (Lang, 1945)
Vivienne Westwood & Malcom McClure (SS83)
Alexander Mcqueen for Givenchy (AW/98)
Alexander Mcqueen for Givenchy (AW/99)
John Galiano for Dior (AW/06)
Jean Paul Gaultier (AW/09)
Bottega Vanetta (AW/17)
Raf Simmonds (SS/18)
Marine Serre (SS/18)
Oliver Theyskens (AW/19)
[1] Flisfeder, Matthew. Postmodern Theory and “Blade Runner.” New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
[3] Westwood, Ben. “Punkature Video – Vivienne Westwood.” Vivienne Westwood, Aug. 2014, blog.viviennewestwood.com/punkature-video/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2021.
[4] Flisfeder, Matthew. Postmodern Theory and “Blade Runner.” New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Think of how to rephrase this. Can one be ‘regardless of time’ in relation to past, present, and future when considerations of time are inherent to the very definition of each?
When Joe Dante was convinced by Warner Bros. to make Gremlins 2, it was due to the fact he was promised he could do anything he wanted. Dante took this and ran with it, creating a sequel that challenged the very worth and necessity of sequels. This video essay seeks to explore some of the ways in which the film does this, through its relationship with the original Gremlins, as well as its relationship to sequels as they’re commonly understood. Utilising the writing of Stuart Henderson and Thomas Schatz it first explores the forms that sequels take, followed by the industry incentives behind them, then going on to approach how Gremlins 2 interacts with both these facets of the sequel. I implicitly engage with the fan culture around Gremlins 2 through the conscious choice to include modern day artefacts about it, both by fans in the case of the Chapo Trap House interview as well as wider cultural perception as seen in the Key & Peele sketch. Gremlins 2 is a sequel about the nature of sequels, how they are produced, how they can stifle creativity, and whether or not they are even necessary in the first place. Dante was fortunate to have complete control over his project, and he used that ability to the fullest to produce the opposite of what any studio executive wanted to see from a Gremlins sequel.
I read YOUNG MAN FROM THE PROVINCES: A GAY LIFE BEFORE STONEWALL mainly because Alan Helms is one of the people photographed in David Leddick’s NAKED MEN TOO, and I thought he might have something to say about the George Platt Lynes circle. I was wrong about this. He only arrived in New York after Platt Lynes died in 55, and ,as we’ll see, the circles Helms moved in were even more moneyed and famous, if also a bit sleazier. The other reason is because I am interested in the lives gays and lesbians made for themselves between World War II and Stonewall. This is a very particular account. As he writes, ‘It would be wrong to think of this book as a chapter of social and cultural history; it’s more like a memoir containing some of the social and cultural history others might have written if they hadn’t died of AIDS’.
Helms arrived in New York from Indianapolis to go study at Columbia, thinking he was the only one of his kind, still doing things others grew out of. This was confirmed by his first lover, a pre-med student he lived with for a couple of years who left him to get married. Bereft and suicidal, his sexuality already under investigation, monitored and recorded by the authorities in ways that would later deprive him of scholarships, dropped by his closest friend, the only person he dared come out to … an acquaintance invites him to a party…and the whole world of queer Camelot New York opens up to him.
Everything takes place behind closed doors, in secret, at private parties or downstairs clubs that nonetheless get regularly raided. He’s of Anglo- German descent, fits the ideal of male beauty of the period, and he’s been swimming and doing weights since high school. He’s told that with a tiny operation on his nose, he could model. Luckily, a plastic surgeon is mad about him and Helms lets him blow him in exchange for the operation, setting a pattern. Soon Helms is a leading male model of the day, photographed by Scavullo, on the cover of GQ, even on Broadway with Elaine Stritch in Noel Coward’s SAIL AWAY.
He describes himself as the golden boyman of the period, a star of the gay world, the one everyone wanted to be with. And many of the rich and famous lookers of the day were: Larry Kert, Stephen Sondheim, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, Nureyev, Tab Hunter. For a while he lived in an apartment under that of Coward, who offered tea and sympathy at the various disasters that were his love life; he became close friends with Luchino Visconti, one of the people the book is dedicated to.
Even for an autobiography, I don’t think I’ve read a book that’s as self-involved as this one. Helms is resolved to be desired and popular, it’s his main goal in life, so he recounts his routine before going out, the gym, running, the hair, the dressing. Who he was with, how he was looked at, this was of main importance to him. His excuse is that his self-worth was based entirely on his looks. He treated people very badly, making various overlapping dates, going to the best one and standing up all the rest, including his mother at an opening night on Broadway: she wasn’t chic enough to take to the party. He’s entirely self-critical of it all, which somehow doesn’t compensate
Helms speak of his beauty and the social and financial passports it afforded him in a way that seems matter-of-fact rather than conceited: ‘A typical week of my life in New York had included a conversation with Katharine Hepburn at Scribner’s on Fifth Avenue (about Elizabethan biography; she knew lots), an evening at the Blue Angel to hear a new young singer named Barbra Streisand, and a small party for King Hussein of Jordan’. In the meantime, Henry Wilson, the notorious agent of Rock Hudson, Robert Wagner and other stars of the period, is eyeing him up for a ‘screen test’; and Leonard Bernstein is gagging to get into his pants.
Part of the problem with the book is that the level of self-involvement makes Katharine Hepburn’s ME seem modest. So it’s all about his place, his feeling, his doings. There’s little attempt to explore other people’s desires or motives, or even to describe them in that period. Thus, all the celebrities in his life come across as a sketch; even the main people in his life seem distanced and shadowy. There are areas that remain under-explored: why do so many of his friends in that period and in that milieu commit suicide before 30? And perhaps not unrelated, there are seedier aspects that are mentioned but not explored: is there no downside to being a kept boy for fifteen years, however jet-setty the style; what drove him to accept money to sleep with trade for a voyeur, was it only the 100 dollars?; what drove him to steal 300 dollars from Luchino Visconti?
That this remains under-explored becomes surprising as the first chapters of the book, dealing with what it’s like to grow up in small town Indianapolis with two alcoholic parents is excellent. And the last part of the book, dealing with coping with the real social, sexual and financial effects of the loss of his looks is self-lacerating, if very American: all the self-help books, the discussion groups, the therapy.
But it’s all about the self or rather himself. Thus Stonewall happens but his mind is on whether he can still get the top guys at a Pines party, top here basically referring to whomever is the current GQ coverboy. The social changes from Eisenhower to Vietnam are traced mostly through the places he goes to, chic secret parties, then the Everhard Baths and Bette Midler, then exiled to Boston and an academic career.
It’s a very well-written book. Helms went on to become a professor of Literature. And it covers many areas I’m interested in, not least what a beauty feels like upon the loss of his/her looks. But this is a me, me, me book about exploiting one’s looks for 15 years and then mourning their loss for another forty that feels narrow in outlook, over-invested in nostalgia for a particular world, and lacking even the personalised account of social and cultural history circumscribed in the beginning. Thus, a well-written book but one devoid of context, insight, motive; and a bit dull for that, despite all the glittery names that dot its pages.
If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is to be believed, CODA, a comedy-drama about the tension caused in a deaf family when the one child who can hear wishes to pursue a career in singing, is the best film of 2021. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not to be believed, and the fact that a straight-to-video Hallmark film can win the most prestigious award in cinema is a damning indictment of film culture today. Still, taken on its own merits, CODA is perfectly likeable and you’ll enjoy spending time in its company. But really. This isn’t good enough.
In THE YOUNG AND EVIL, Julien (Charles Henri Ford and Karel (Parker Tyler) are fleeing a homophobic attack by a gang of sailors when they run into the police and get arrested. I start with that because the novel seems so modern. Neither has a problem with their sexuality; each is looking for love or at least a good time; they all too briefly think they may have found it in each other but remain friends. It’s set in Greenwich Village bohemia of the early Thirties, during Prohibition. Julien and Karel drink too much, have parties, take a lot of drugs, go up to Harlem for drag balls, get involved with married men, sometimes trade sex for rent money….or a fur coat, and sometimes even with a woman. Mostly, they fall in love with the wrong people. They don’t suffer psychologically because they’re different. They like being different: they want to be poets. But mamma mia! The world they live in! They’re constantly being robbed, thrown out, beaten up, arrested. Their sexuality is a problem for the world, and that is what creates problems for them, which they mainly shrug off because, l’important c’est d’aimer and to create art. It’s a very uneven book, with some chapters written in a surrealist, stream of consciousness style, others in a more linear narrative. Part of the pleasure of reading is that it is a roman-à-cléf and it’s fun to try and figure out who is who. The book was published in 1933 by the Obelisk Press in Paris and considered so scandalous it wasn’t allowed to become a scandal. 500 copies were seized and burnt at port in the UK; shipments to the US were intercepted and turned back. It’s not a great novel, but it’s a great document of a particular structure of feeling. It was compared to Fitzgerald’s THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE; and I suspect young queers might recognise more aspects of their conditions and experience in this almost hundred-years-old book than they’d like to . I love the title of the Italian translation: POVERI PERVERSI.
PS
Tyler wrote Screening the Sexes, an early study of homosexuality onscreen. He is a key American film critic who should be studied alongside Manny Farber, Otis Ferguson, and Agee… he was their contemporary…Kael came a bit later… but isn’t, or at least until recently. Adrian Garvey reminds me that Gore Vidal named his film critic Parker Tyler in Myra Breckinridge — Vidal claimed to have resuscitated Tyler’s career as Albee had done for Virginia Woolf — and of this below:
In The Rhapsodes, David Bordwell ranks Tyler, alongside Ferguson, Agee and Farber as the most significant American film critics of the 1940s….’largely ignored by official culture, they came to a wider recognition decades later, after film criticism emerged as a legitimate area of arts journalism’. (p.3, Kindle edition) but he acknowledges that ‘Tyler is still an obscure figure compared with his contemporaries. James Agee and Manny Farber are celebrated as great critics…and Otis Ferguson occasionally attracts some minor tributes. I’ve been surprised how many people have told me they were unaware of Tyler’s work. (p. 112).
…and Andrew Sarris wrote the foreword to Screening the Sexes, partly to make up for what was, in his own words, ‘a cruel review with more than a tinge of hip homophobia — of Tyler’s MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE MOVIES –to the introduction to the 93 Da Capo Press edition of Screening The Sexes, where he writes of Tyler’s film criticism, ‘He was neither a witty, warm humanist like James Agee nor a brilliantly iconoclastic pop maverick like Manny Farber. Whatever humour emerged in his writing was not derived from his florid, pedantic style, but from a genuinely subversive psychosexual penetration of even the most banal cinematic texts. Only Parker Tyler ever noticed that Red Skeleton was more gracefuland had better legs than the starlets among whom he cavorted in Bathing Beauty. Only Parker Tyler was discerning enough to figure out the homosexual subtext of the extraordinary verntriloquist sequence in Dead of Night with Michael Redgrave in one of the great performances of his career, pp. x-xi)
Ford was lover of Pavel Tchelitchew until his death in 58, the editor of the leading Surrealist magazine of the day in America, View, and brother of Ruth Ford, part of Welles’ Mercury Theatre, who married Zachary Scott, the oily gigolo in Mildred Pierce.
I had seen A FAREWELL TO ARMS ages ago on TV and didn’t think much of it in spite of being a great admirer of Borzage. Seeing it again at the BFI yesterday on a big screen in a restored print was a revelation. Charles Lang’s cinematography glistens, and every glistening is meaningful, the lights and shadows over the bombings, the sadness of the rain, the way the tear on Gary Cooper’s face shine at the end helping to evoke his love and hopelessness. It is absolutely gorgeous. There are so many elements that dazzle: the camera taking on Gary Cooper’s point of view on the stretcher, so we see those grand Italian ceilings as he is most in pain; the way the camera becomes Gary Cooper’s mouth as Helen Hayes goes to kiss him. It’s full of subtle imagery purposefully deployed, some of it religious (the crucifixes amongst the battlefield) some of it sexual (the satin shoe). There’s one shot where a man with a totally bandaged head, looking outside the window as the city is being bombed where his knees buckle that becomes a metaphor, one created using a series of elements from the avant-garde of many arts, including here dance, that I found extraordinary. And the last scene, Helen Hayes’ death played almost entirely on Gary Cooper’s face, and then when he swoops her in his arms and the bedsheets make a bridal train. There’s a combination of all powerful belief in love and in God, that makes for a romantically transcendent ending. There’s a million things more to say on this film of course; but I wouldn’t have been able to see or think about any of them without being able to see this screening. I’m only sorry the BFI was not able to get a greater audience. There were only a handful of people in the large NFT1. Mubi is showing the restored original alongside the remake with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones.
Aside from Allan Ellenzweig’s marvellous new biography of George Platt Lynes, my greatest find so far has been THE YOUNG AND THE EVIL, not the notorious novel by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, but the catalogue of an exhibition curated by Jarret Earnest that set out to map a milieu, to some extent covered in biography, but largely absent from standard accounts of American modernism and which the exhibition labelled as ‘Queer Modernism in New York 1930-1950’. The show illustrates the ‘gravitational forces of emotional, intellectual, artistic and sexual attraction formed by the group’. It was sparked by death.
George Platt Lynes and Monroe Wheeler, photo by George Platt Lynes
An archeology of how some of the materials landed in the exhibition itself speaks a queer history. When Joseph Scott and Vincent Cianni went through the contents of the estate of their deceased friend, Antole Pohorilenko, they discovered a series of boxes marked ‘MW/ GPL PRIVATE’ and ‘INTIMACIES’. Pohorilenko had been the last lover of Monroe Wheeler who had himself inherited from Glenway Westcott. This plus additions from the heirs of Platt Lynes and Lincoln Kirstein form the basis of the exhibition, and what a find it is: erotic reveries of practically every sex act a homosexual can think of, alone and in groups, rendered explicitly but aimed for private consumption, and in a few cases drawn specifically for Kinsey, presumably it took them a while to suss out that Kinsey already knew more than he let on, and from personal experience. The images are by some major twentieth century artists (Cadmus, Jared French, Pavel Tchelitchew) and includes also explicit photographs, famously an early selfie of Platt Lynes giving Monroe Wheeler a blow job). The drawings are characterised by a longing and desire but also a dreaminess, a personal and idealised fantasy of sexual want, direct and unashamed; some romantically rendered; some evoking a roughness, clearly desired; some longing for the particular other; some for the anonymous group. They simultaneously speak an individual, an era, and a personal instance of a structure of feeling: They are marvellous.
George Platt Lynes giving Monroe Wheelr a blow job
Apart from Jarret Earnest’s excellent introductory essay, the book also includes, and interview with Jason Yow, Leonard Kirstein’s long-time lover and heir, an explanatory linking of the novel of THE YOUNG AND EVIL to the exhibition, and a superb essay on the paintings Paul Cadmus and Jared French both did of the HERRIN MASSACRE OF 1922 where striking miners laid a siege to the mine, fired on strike-breakers and ended up brutally massacring some of the scabs, Kenneth E. Silver’s essay situating the paintings not only in the labour struggles of the early 20th century but also of the anti-gay ‘clean-ups’ of New York City in the lead-up to the 1939 World’s Fair, and how the paintings lend themselves easily to readings of murderous homophobia, and the significance of that possible anti-labour reading combined with that murderous homophobia.
by Cadmus
by French
A wonderful book that offers information, sparks thought, and stimulates the senses.
The Lion Boy by Pavel Tchetlichew. It was owned by Glenway Westcott for many years and hung over his bed.
Drawings by Cadmus, French, Tchelitchew
One of six gouaches Tchelitchew drew to illustrate the original novel
Following on the HEARTSTOPPER trail, I moved to YOUNG ROYALS, a Swedish teen series about the younger son of the royal family who’s such a party boy he gets sent to boarding school, where he promptly falls in love with the only mixed-race scholarship boy in the place, a situation made more difficult when the Prince’s older and much-loved brother gets killed in a car crash and he becomes heir to the throne, his love now denied him for reasons of state as well as everything else. How to overcome this? It’s all very teen: intense feeling, lots of attempts to hold hands, finding secret places to kiss, sneaking into bedrooms. The camera’s look on the boys is more eroticised than HEARSTOPPER – it’s aimed at a slightly older audience — though still relatively tame, the emphasis more on the heart than the groin — but drugs and alcohol now figure in a way they didn’t in HEARTSTOPPER. It’s a boarding school setting and fans of the genre will find all the familiar tropes here: the alliances, groupings, performances, initiations. It is also a fairy tale which follows the tropes closely; the prince is lonely and isolated and finds his other half amongst the people, though as is usual, this particular person, whilst he ends up not being royal himself, is marked as special because he looks divine and sings like an angel. Interestingly, the poor boy chosen by royalty here, and despite his rough background, is pictured as femmy, keeping with the trope that it’s always a girl who is raised up socially by the princely alliance (I can’t think of an instance in traditional fairy tales where it’s the other way around). The series has a great focus on the girls in the boarding school; dressing up, putting make-up on, their conflicts with their mothers, their mutual support. So a fairy tale about young gay boys aimed primarily at teenage girls. I enjoyed it but did giggle when I chanced upon a review praising it for its realism.
Yes, there was a sequel to the male nude an it has a similar structure: A banal Quentin Crisp introduction; chapters in relation to period (from 1950-2000), a contemporary update on the picture’s subjects, here often unnecessary as those pictured are often very famous indeed (Yves St Laurent), movie stars (Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Joe Dallesandro, Rupert Everett, Maxwell Caulfield) or later on in the book, porn stars (Jeff Stryker, Ryan Idol, Aiden Shaw. Casey Donovan, Peter Berlin) The racial representation in this is better. But the book feels partial and idiosyncratic; what Leddick likes and could get rather than what was significant or influential: still some Platt Lynes from the 50s (he died in ’55. I only have the 2020 Kindle reprint of INTIMATE STRANGERS which shockingly doesn’t refer to an original publication date –or I can’t find it — but clearly that research fed these coffee table books), a bit of Bob Mizer but less of that whole 1950s Physique Pictorial genre than is warranted, no Tom of Finland, no Bruce Weber, no Herb Ritts. And why is Helmut Newton in this collection? We do see Mapplethorpe pictured and there are some striking Pierre and Gilles photographs and a lot of gorgeous Tom Bianchi photos but it doesn’t cohere as a work of history or analysis. It all gets more explicit, sleazier, and even less satisfying as it progresses, and this in spite of the beauty of particular images. It did introduce me to new photographers and it did win a the Lambda Award and it was a long time ago. But I wouldn’t buy it again.
Rupert Everett by Greg GormanAiden Shaw by Pierre et GillesPeter Hinwood by Helmut Newton
Naked Men: Pioneering Male Nudes, 1935-1940 is a book full of beautiful images, overly focussed on George Platt Lynes and his circle, with merely a nod to the other arts (except those practiced by that circle) and to European art production (much less the rest of the world): a Voinquel photo here ; a Duncan Grant painting there …the rest is American, mostly Platt Lynes. The pictures are gorgeous, and some of them are of very famous people (Tennesse Williams, Yul Brynner). And there’s a great central idea behind the book; to search for the subjects of the pictures, find out what they are doing, and juxtapose photographs of them in the present with those of them in their youth (and which some of them had forgotten they’d posed for as many of the photos were only circulated privately).
I used to read Quentin Crisp avidly when he was writing for the gay monthlies in the 80s; but his introduction here seems posy, mannered, thin (and he was that but also much more than that). He talks of his own past posing nude and makes a common distinction between naked and nude; how nude was in the service of art and naked would have frightened the horses and resulted in jail time. Okey Dokey.
The book would have been better titled as Pioneering Male Nudes in the USA or some such. It’s organisation is meant to exude comprehensiveness: The Depression Years, 1935-1940; The War-Years; The Post-War Years, 1945-1950 but there are major photographers missing (Carl Van Vechten) and there is not a single photograph of a black man in the whole book. The work exudes US cultural imperialism in its choices and racism in its absences, and it’s not just because all of these nudes depict a particular Aryan ideal (even in the rare instance when the subjects are Latino).
Don’t mess with a queen: ‘George Platt Lynes was the true pariah amongst (Lincoln Kirstein’s) classmates’, who seem uniformly to have regarded him as a foppish freak, a sneering little bitch who fancies he is too pretty to look at and saunters in like Fifi D’Orsay. The turning point came when Lynes, endlessly bullied, teased and in utter desperation, ‘whipped out his knife and melodramatically stabbed another student,’ who fortunately survived.
From Martin Duberman’s THE WORLD OF LINCOLN KIRSTEIN
My mind keeps drifting back to poor George Platt Lynes – a rare instance of poor being used in conjunction with his name – so bullied for being visibly femmy , and so powerless and enraged by it, he’s finally driven to stabbing the oppressor; a trauma and rage I’ve never seen in the glamorous, controlled and desirous images of male perfection he produced. Also, I was watching HEARTSTOPPER, the new gay teen romance on Netflix, and noting how things had changed and not changed; bullying and violence are still what the young teens in the drama face, even in a context where some of them are now out and at ease, and their potential to touch is animated by electricity, and their kiss by floaitng butterflies: continuities and breaks. I found it very sweet and touching though I did wonder if I’d have found it more twee had the protagonists been heterosexual.
Writer-director Robert Eggers, who previously wowed us with The Lighthouse, returns in style with a brutal, bloody Viking epic, based on Amleth, the figure in Scandinavian legend that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It’s the first of his films to see a wide, mainstream release and large-scale ad campaign to match, and it’s perhaps for that reason that it is in some sense less demanding that its audience put the work in to understand and interpret it – although there remains plenty of room for that, and it’s in a different league to the blockbusters with which it’s competing. It’s a film to put down what you’re doing right now and see at the cinema – it’s vicious, atmospheric, and beautifully shot, and you won’t regret seeing it where it’s meant to be seen.
Upon revisiting our podcast on the previous entry in the Harry Potter-adjacent Fantastic Beasts series, The Crimes of Grindelwald, we find that we could virtually have copied and pasted its content for our discussion of The Secrets of Dumbledore. It’s again less than the sum of its parts, a fantasy adventure with some charms, several good performances, but incoherent storytelling, and too little that convinces us to get invested in the characters’ lives and the fate of the world they seek to save.
The film begins with a powerful avowal of love between Jude Law (Dumblemore) and Mads Mikkelson (Grindewald), linking their lives together eternally and preventing one from acting against the other. It goes downhill fast. Famous as the film where Johnny Depp got replaced. Ezra Miller makes an impression.
Young Mungo is a beautiful book; a page-turner in which poverty, violence and addiction all intermingle and are buoyed up but never quite excused by love. It has a dual structure in which a forbidding fishing trip designed to make a man out of Mungo is set in the present; and chapters alternate with the other narrative, Mungo’s relationship with his family and his growing feelings for Jamie, the boy who lives across the way, forbidden by the violent homophobia of Jamie’s father and Mungo’s brother, and also along sectarian lines: Jamie’s a Catholic. The book is a rich evocation of time (the early 1990s) and of place – those who’ve only been to brief visits to Glasgow might discover a different one – of a sub-prole, geographically located language usage that feels both rough and lyrical.
Douglas Stuart has written of how one has to become middle-class to write about working class experience, interesting in its implication that something gets lost along the way, or that memory and perception might be tainted by that transition. And perhaps that’s so; but it doesn’t feel that way when reading Young Mungo. The characters in this novel are aware of the fear, disgust, and aggression their poverty sometimes incites in those more fortunate, and there’s a homology in this with the question of sexuality. The limitations (geographical, educational, material) their poverty imposes is also known to them.
Family is coercive in this novel. People love, but only if you conform; and they’ll beat you, endanger your life, kick you out, until you do. The masculinity in this novel is certainly toxic, beautifully narrated, with an eye to suspense, a certain tension between what is said and what is done, and the odd turn of phrase you want to savour. One of the elements that contributes to the exquisite sadness of the novel is that Mungo and Jamie are 15-16, on the cusp but not quite adults, one forbidden by law to go off on his own, the state thus condoning the violence he is daily subject to; teens on the cusp of change. But it is a transformation they fear they might not live to experience. A fantastic book. I’ve been thinking about it non-stop.
Also note the interesting difference between the UK and US editions:
Continuing with my reading of the Platt Lynes Circle, David Leddick’s INTIMATE COMPANIONS: A TRIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES, PAUL CADMUS, LINCOLN KIRSTEIN AND THEIR CIRCLE, is a comparatively lighter work, very readable, with a wider scope. I wish I’d read it first. I learned more about the painters in the circle — Paul Cadmus, Pavel Tchelitchev, Jared French, George Tooker — and their inter-personal, sexual and professional relationships. It well illustrates what Gregory Woods in his great book has conceptualised as the or at least a ‘hominterm’, an international network of lesbians and gays that could be seen as a creative force and/ or as a ‘sinister conspiracy against the moral and material interests of the state’.
This particular grouping can certainly be seen as both; all of them ‘discrete’ to greater or lesser degrees; all of them out to their immediate circle and beyond. Working in art, major institutions such as MOMA, or indeed, like with Kirstein, helping to create the American Ballet Theatre but also discretely working for representation and inclusion; Monroe Wheeler through his influence on what MOMA programmed or published; Glenway Westcott through his work with Kinsey; Kirstein through his financial and institutional patronage of painting and ballet; Platt Lynes through his private nudes, circulated underground; Cadmus needed only his painting, where homosexuality seems ever present.
The book is divided into chapters, covering mainly the trio at various stages of their life, but also others who were important to at least one of the trio: Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein (Cadmus’ sister; Kirstein’s wife), Katherine Anne Porter, Jared French etc. My only reservation is that the book is interspersed with first-hand observations, an eye-witness account, of either the people or events such as parties and funerals. In the end it’s revealed that it’s by a certain ‘Sandusky’. But who is this Sandusky? It’s never as clear as it should be whether this is fiction or an eyewitness who wishes to remain anonymous. If it’s a real person it adds insight; if it’s fiction….well it’s interesting but speculative and potentially undermines aspects of the book. I wish this element had been better handled. It brings to mind a niggle with the title: the tension between ‘a triography’ and ‘their circle’. Why not just eliminate triography? Any biographic work would have to deal with ‘their circle’: INTIMATE COMPANIONS: GEORGE PLATT LYNES, PAUL CADMUS, LINCOLN KIRSTEIN AND THEIR CIRCLE.
I’m grateful to Leddick for enhancing my appreciation of Cadmus’ very beautiful drawings more traditional than his paintings, in a ‘classic’ style that reminds one vaguely of Da Vinci; more lifelike. The paintings I also love. But along with the social commentary, they also remind me of more greatly textured 30s cartoons; the drawings are both representational and also idealised, and in a sexual way. Democratic too. How many people have pictured factory workers like this below:
With all the superb visual materials in circulation, someone could make a great documentary on this. It certainly skewers contemporary notions of the rigidity and fixity of sexual identities between Wilde and Stonewall. This particular circle dances all over the Kinsey scale.
Now well and truly down a rabbit hole prompted by Allen Ellenzweig’s GEORGE PLATT LYNES. I’ve just finished Jerry Rosco’s book on Glenway Wescott, the often odd-man-out in the Lynes-Wheeler-Wescott trio. It’s a rich book, benefitting from hours of reminiscences Westcott recorded towards the end of his life, almost a lifetime of diaries, and a well-documented life. Wescott, only vaguely known to me until now, was famous before Hemingway (and the cruel butt of his homophobia. He is ostensibly the model for Robert Prentiss in THE SUN ALSO RISES, of which, according to Wiki, after meeting Prentiss, Jack Barnes, the narrator, says, ‘I just thought perhaps I was going to throw up’); wrote two best-sellers (THE GRANDMOTHERS, 1927; APARTMENT IN ATHENS, 1945) and received quite extraordinary critical praise for THE PILGRIM HAWK, including a two-part appreciation from Susan Sontag in The New Yorker in 2001, where she deemed it, ‘among the treasures of twentieth-century American literature’.
Monroe Wheeler, Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes by Paul Cadmus.
His life is an illustration of a particularly American kind of re-invention. The son of Wisconsin farmers, himself farmed out to relatives when the family didn’t have enough to eat, who went on to become a celebrity, peer of Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, then firmly entrench himself in the upper classes without himself having a penny to his name or indeed working on anything but his writing. He brings to mind Truman Capote but without the dizziness of that particular kind of success, the self-destructiveness, a better internalisation of Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People, and an innate niceness and cheer. In ‘The Loves of the Falcon’a lovely essay on his work in the New York Review of Books, Edmund White writes: ‘He was a confidant who also confided in others (intimacy is not always a two-way street, which egotistical friends don’t notice at first but come to resent in the long run)’
Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler, by Jared French
In many ways he is the ideal clubman. Had he not been queer and a writer, he might have made an excellent Elk or Rotary. As he dined with Pauline Rothchild, he also contributed greatly to the Kinsey Institute, not just by being a subject or through donations but by actually working towards the organisation of the archive. He directed many of the writers’ associations of the day; and amongst other ‘contributions to literature’ that don’t have to do strictly with writing, he and Christopher Isherwood arranged for the publication of E.M. Forster’s Maurice.
Wescott with Kinsey
What interested me most in the book and in his life, what interests me most about biography, is the insight it offers to how people live, the choices they make, how they manage their life. Wescott’s circumstances were inherently difficult, though nothing in this book makes it seems so: people were queer and they dealt with it. On the edges of the book, however, one deduces other stories; handsome, gifted people who intersected with these lives and didn’t manage so well; drugs, alcohol, despair, oppression, suicide, all having an effect that Wescott’s cheery disposition and strong support network circumvented, though they do appear here. As well as being nice to others, Wescott was very honest with himself, particularly in relation to questions of sex…and of love. He was never confused as to which was which and when they coincided; and he was a very loving person, maybe a reason why he was able to maintain such a rich network of relationships right to the end.
The Lion Boy, by Thcheltchew, a painting Wescott hung above his bed for most of his life.
The book, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, might have been improved by sharpening the narrative and eliminating ‘doings’ that don’t much enhance our understanding of the man – the post sixties chapters suffer from too much listing of events and activities . I woud have liked more on psychology. Perhaps what surprised me more in the book was that someone so clearly good looking though of himself as physically unattractive, and this despite being regularly in sexual demand through much of his life. I would have liked to have understood this better — Edmund’s White’s explanation that he thought he had a small penis and that a youthful illness resulted in the removal of a testicle are surely a contributing factor but don’t quite fully convince: it’s undoubtedly true Westcott felt this, but why, when, for how long, did this often intermingle with a knowledge of his own sexual pull; how did he he rationalise this with the constant stream of long relationships with much younger lovers as well as with Wheeler throughout and right to the end of his life? I would have liked a fuller account of this.
The book leaves one uncertain of Wescott’s place in 20th Century American Letters but convinced that he is a major figure in a history of twentieth century queer cultures in the West.
This is really a collection of facebook posts spurred on by reading Allen Ellenzweig’s George Platt Lynes, which I think might be of interest to others (and which I’d like to keep in one place)
Dan Callaghan’s excellent review reminded me I had the book in hand and I’ve been immersed in it ever since. A monumental work for those interested in 20th century American art and culture. The ménage à trois between Monroe Wheeler, Glenway Westcott and George Platt Lynes, which lasted for two decades and which ended partly because rumour threatened Wheeler’s job at MOMA, is an endless source of fascination. The honesty and clarity of feeling; the love, longing, and desire so freely expressed in the letters is very moving.
Last year’s obsession meets the current one: Burt Lancaster by George Platt Lynes:
I read David Leddick’s Intimate Companions alongside Ellezweig’s biography and found this on Platt Lynes declining years: ‘He continued to give great all-boy parties (liquor was frequently paid for by François Reichenbach, a rich rather fey Frenchman, nephew of Jaques Guérin, a quite talented documentary movie maker and heir to a French fragrance fortune; François was quite possibly the only unattractive person George tolerated’. Guérin had been the lover of Glenway Westcott, part of Platt Lynes’ ménage with Monroe Wheeler. Reichenbach is to me a most attractive and an important if still relatively under-appreciated figure in queer culture, whose work was recently highlighted by the Cinémathèque Française and the subject of several podcasts John Mercer and I did in the last year, of which a trailer below:
The above and this were filmed at this period in the early 50s, when he was ostensibly supplying the liquor for Platt Lynes’ parties:
The full film , discovered by Thomas Waugh at the Kinsey Institute, can be seen below:
Below, E.M Forster and his lover, Bob Buckingham, photographed by George Platt Lynes. Buckingham was a married policeman; and Foster lived out his last days in the Coventry home of the official couple. Another trio; another way people had to invent lives outside the mould and make the best of it:
I’ve now finished reading Allan Ellenzweig monumental work on George Platt Lynes, which I can’t recommend enough. The last connection to surprise me was that of Platt Lynes with Samuel Steward. I suppose it shouldn’t have. Steward had written novels and was also a friend of Gertrude Stein. But I hadn’t realised the extent of their correspondence, that both were close to Kinsey and contributed greatly to the archive, Steward even allowing himself to be filmed in an SM scenario getting beaten. Steward is at least as fascinating a figure as Platt Lynes, a novelist and professor of literature who left it all to become a tattoo artist in California and the writer of romantic porn under the name of Phil Andros (amongst other pseudonyms). Steward was himself the subject of a superb biography by Justin Spring (see below):
There’s a wonderful review of the Justin Spring biography by Geoff Nicholson that begins:
‘On July 24, 1926, Samuel Steward, one day past his seventeenth birthday, got word that Rudolph Valentino had just checked in to the best hotel in Columbus, Ohio. Grabbing his autograph book, he made his way to the hotel and knocked on Valentino’s door. The actor appeared, wearing only a towel, and after signing his autograph asked whether there was anything else the boy wanted. “Yes,” said Steward, “I’d like to have you.”
The Latin lover obliged. Steward performed oral sex on him and at some point procured a lock of Valentino’s pubic hair—a souvenir that Steward kept in a monstrance at his bedside for the rest of his life. He also entered the encounter in his “Stud File,” a card catalogue recording details of his sexual partners, eventually a few thousand over the course of his lifetime.’
Ken Monteith informs me that Steward wrote his own account of moving away from academia into tattoing and gay porn here:
So these links keep cropping up and revealing a whole now not so hidden culture.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe has given us a charming Venom origin story, a rather less charming Venom sequel, and now another film about a well-intentioned man inadvertently possessed by something that demands he feed on humans. In Morbius, Jared Leto’s brilliant scientist finds a cure for the blood disease that has tormented him and his best friend throughout their lives – except that it comes with a side of vampirism.
In short, Morbius is not a success. José describes it as what people who claim to hate Marvel, which has produced some very good films, truly do hate. It’s as blunt, CGI-laden and uninvolving as that kind of criticism implies. Mike tries to be fair to it – the hallway bit isn’t too bad – and we agree that there’s one actor to like in it, although we disagree on which one that is. José accuses the film of failing to appreciate that one thing a star should deliver in this type of work is physical appeal; Mike accuses José of shallowness.
But as fun as it is to tease José, Morbius is not a fun film to have to sit through in order to get to do that. One to avoid.
