I’ve got two pieces in the Chicago Reader this week:

a longer essay about Ariel Schrag’s Potential

a blurb about Grandmaster Flash’s memoir

Apologies for the light posting recently. I’ve been kind of swamped, and probably will continue to be for a little bit. But more blogging is in the offing….

I just saw the two halves of Grindhouse. Robert Rodriguez’s bit is pretty lame; instead of a tribute to exploitation films, it comes off as just another comedy-action thriller, though without (quite) the smarts of Charlie’s Angels. It’s all tongue-in-cheek gorey special effects, boring, supposedly ironic revelations (the random dirtball hero is some sort of incredible martial arts, gunman guy. The evil zombified ex-husband comes back at the end. The little boy who was warned not to play with guns kills himself with the gun accidentally…but only offscreen, because the film is just that chickenshit.) It’s not horrible; just another interchangeable bit of Hollywood product, where the line between the thing and the pastiche of the thing has been crossed so many times already it might as well not exist.

Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, on the other hand, is a brilliant movie. The surprise twist in the middle is actually shocking (and is why I’m going to try to be a little circumspect to avoid spoilers.) The violence is brutal and not at all chickenshit. It’s also really rare to see a male director take such care with so many different female characters; the movie really ends up being about female friendships, both as a network that gives women’s lives depth and meaning when the worst happens, and as a protective bond as well. I think that Tarantino also manages to celebrate female violence without fetishizing it, something that is very rarely done (and wasn’t done, for example, in Kill Bill.) If there’s a sexual charge in the second half of the film, it’s one the women feel on their own behalf; they get to enjoy their own violence, rather than having their violence tied into a parade of nudity and phallic symbols (as in, say “Ginger,” or even “Buffy” in a lot of ways.)

I mean, Death Proof is obviously exploitative, and self-consciously crap. But it’s also really heartfelt. The instant before one character dies, when we can see she knows what’s going to happen, and she registers sadness which seems as much for her friends as herself, is really moving. Of all Tarantino’s movies, this is the one that I think most shows Jack Hill’s influence, which is (and which Tarantino would take as) very high praise.

Update: I was poking around online, and it looks like Death Proof was more or less critically panned. I wonder if part of the reason is the genre. Though there isn’t an actual rape, and though payback is administered by a second group of girls related only structurally to the first, the movie is really a rape-revenge film. And if there’s one genre critics tend to loathe, it’s rape-revenge films. Maybe the most critically despised film of all time is “I Spit On Your Grave,” a movie Ebert made famous with his loathing. Carol Clover in her study “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” speculates that movies about celebrating castration freak male critics right the fuck out, and that seems like a fairly safe bet. In this case, too, I wonder if people were thrown by how thoroughly Tarantino focuses here on female concerns. A ton of the movie is devoted to women talking about their relationships, with men and with each other. One of the funniest laugh-lines in the film involves an issue of Italian Vogue, a joke I got because, you know, I married a woman, but I certainly wouldn’t have known what the hell they were talking about otherwise. It seems possible that a lot of reviewers were hoping for Enter the Dragon or Godfather and instead ended up with what looked to them like Waiting to Exhale.

I didn’t see Waiting to Exhale myself, though I did skim the book, and, at least to my (admittedly male) sensibility, Death Proof is way better. One of the most interesting things about it is the way it seems to be thinking about male and female genre conventions. The girls in the first half of the movie are, the script is at pains to tell us, almost completely unfamiliar with male genre conventions (specifically with car chase movies.) They’re less butch than their counterparts in the second half — and this lack of butchness is linked both to their vulnerability and to their age. Part of getting older, more settled, and more comfortable in your skin for women, Tarantino seems to suggest, is becoming more butch, or at least having more access to a masculine side, and its potential for violence. This neatly inverts the usual girl coming of age story, with a tomboy childhood being left behind for a fully feminine adulthood. (I’d be really curious to see what Judith Halberstam, author of “Female Masculinity,” would say about this movie.)

One thing there isn’t in Tarantino’s movie is any suggestion of lesbianism. (There is a lesbian relationship in Rodriguez’s film, but the movie assiduously avoids dealing with it.) It’s an interesting omission since exploitation films were, as near as I can tell, pretty thoroughly obsessed with lesbian themes. On the other hand, Tarantino also avoids the “final girl” slasher sterotype; victims are not chosen on the basis of their sexual activity (everyone is pretty much sexually active) and, even more importantly, survival is about relationships, *not* individual bravery or resilience. The movie also, and adamently, rejects sadism (or, at least, sadism by men). Kurt Russell is certainly charming and compelling as the evil Stuntman Mike, but the movie spends much, much more time telling you about the girls — their ambitions, their hopes, their relationships. I don’t see how you could really be rooting for him at any point. You do feel a little sympathy for him when the tables are turned, perhaps…though even then, he kind of turns into a snivelling crybaby…no going out with glory for him.

Anyway, after Kill Bill 2, which was something of a disappointment, this really restores my faith in Tarantino. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out — go forth and rent it at once.

I’ve got two pieces in; one a review of Ashanti’s new album, and one a brief critic’s choice about Fred Camper’s new show

I just finished the second volume of Tove Jansson’s collected Moomin comic strip. I’m a long time fan of the Moomin children’s books, and the first volume of the comic strips was amazing, but this one…I don’t know. A little disappointing, I think. The goofy stream-of-consciousness wackiness of the first volume seems to have hardened here into a formula; in each story, an outsider comes into the Moomin’s lives, tries to change the Moomin’s ways, succeeds briefly, but is then sent packing when the Moomin’s realize that their quiet bohemian life of domesticity shot through with occasional imaginative flights really is perfect, and they don’t need to become healthier/neater/freer/more moral.

The targest are fine; I’m all for sneering at health nuts and hippies. And there are great moments; The strip where Moomin declares “In moments like this, there is an inner soaring, a will to…” and then cracks his head diving into a sheet of ice is goofily literary in a way that’s almost Schulz-worthy. And the third story is pretty great all through, largely because the outsider here, the violent and mischievous Little My, is granted as much sympathy as the protagonists. But overall, the Moomins end up portrayed as naif moral paragons, and that makes the comic seem kind of smug. Hopefully, though, this is just a blip, and Jansson will be back on her game for the third volume….

I’ve got a short review of a show at the Hyde Park Arts Center online here at the Chicago Reader.
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I’m going to be DJing (yes, Djing!) at Deadtech art gallery for my pal Bert Stabler’s Vulva O’Keefe vs. Angry Goldsworthy show. It’s this Thursday 6/5, and I believe will run from 7-9; click on the link for the location if you’re in Chicago. The gallery show is antagonistic-gender-themed, and so is my playlist, which will include everything from black metal weirdo Xasthur to Judy Garland. So come on by if you can.

Here’s the official press release, hot off the email.

Hey All

didn’t get a chance to see VULVA O’KEEFFE versus ANGRY GOLDSWORTHY, the show Bert Stabler organized at Deadtech?

Come over this Thursday night (June 5) or next Thursday (June 12). See the show, take free stuff from my piece, revel in refreshments and …

GET ENTERTAINED!

this Thurs June 5: NOAH BERLATSKY, helmsman of the Gay Utopia, critic for the Comics Journal & Chicago Reader and secret WHPK guy, is playing music for us. A two-hour set of stuff from Slayer to Judy Garland.

next Thurs June 12: Ha Ha Hell — it’s those guys KILL COMEDY, straight from alienating audiences at every venue in the fair city of Chicago. Also making the scene — NEIGHBORS, featuring the “single gals” of Lil’ Manitoba (yep — me and Meg want to tell you about it).

Doors open, I mean, I’m getting there at 6:30 each night. Performative stuff starts around 7.

There’s work from Kimberley Baker, Davey Ball, Tyler Britt, Matt Davis, Chris Hammes, Taylor Hokanson, Maximillian Lawrence, George Monteleone, Flo McGarrell, Huong Ngo, Andrew Roche, Josh Rosenstock, Chris Santiago, Justin Schaefer, Edra Soto, and Matthew Steinke in this show. You can see a little more about it at Deadtech’s site.

So to recap —

Thursdays (June 5 and June 12)
6:30 – 9:30 pm
at Deadtech, 3321 W Fullerton

Internet-based informations:
http://www.deadtech.net
http://gayutopia.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/holyshitcomedy

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And finally: we did have a zine reading of the Gay Utopia at Quimby’s, which was remarkably well attended (they ran out of chairs!) Paul Nudd read an ode to Robert Mithcum’s scrotum; Dewayne Slightweight read a bit of an interview with Donna Haraway (the part of Donna Haraway was taken by a paper bag/hand-puppet); David Erik Nelson, an emissary of the Giant Squid, discussed said invertebrate’s time in the Gay Utopia; Bert Stabler read from his essay “The Glory and the Hole,” Alexander Stewart showed G-rated and off-color cartoons from the 1920s, and I read the giant-wasp-on-human sex scene from Tabico’s “Adaptation.” Other gay utopians in attendance were kinukitty, Lilli Carré, and, in a surprise appearance, Paul Mack, who drove all the way from Arizona! (Not just for the reading, he assured me.) Pizza was consumed, a lovely embroidered banner created by Dewayne was admired, and we maybe even sold a zine or two.

And speaking of zines, I still have many, many, many of them. You can buy them at Quimby’s, or, you know, email me (noahberlatsky at hotmail) and we’ll work something out.