Tucker Stone over at the Comics Reporter. I’ll admit I didn’t manage to read the whole thing, but the parts I looked at were thoroughly entertaining.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
My New Second Favorite…
John Carpenter movie! I finally saw Christine, and it’s great! Not quite as good as the Thing, but actually, definitively great, so I can get behind it 100%, which is not so much the case for any of the other John Carpenter movie’s I’ve seen. Part of it is the acting by the lead; the Arnie Cunningham transformation from hyperbolic nerd to hyperbolic fifties greaser is completely over the top, and actor Keith Gordon seems to be having pretty much the time of his life. More than that, though, I think the whole aura of repressed sexuality and manly bonding/competition just suits Carpenter down to the ground. Christine the car is, of course, supposed to be a woman…but any car is obviously literally genderless, and the secretive nature of his relationship with her, plus her violence and the fact that, hey, she’s a car…if she’s a woman, she’s awfully, awfully butch, is all I’m saying. Arnie,of course, gets more and more manly and tough and evil the more time he spends with the car — which on the one hand suggests that, hey, he’s got a girl now, so he’s a man — but on the other hand suggests that he becomes more of a man by caring less and less about girls. Yeah; total agonized male fantasy of being simultaneously consumed by femininity and consumed by masculinity; the orgasmic collapse/reification of male identity — being castrated so you can turn into a penis (at the close Arnie is penetrated by a piece of glass from Christine’s windshield, caressing her one last time before he dies. Being violated by her, having her in control, is what makes him most male; emotionally inaccessible, commanding, finally murderous. Christine is ultimately masculinity itself, which possesses Arnie; but at the same time that masculinity is feminine — since it doesn’t reside in a particular body, and ambiguous genders are always coded feminine.
I probably need to think that all out a little more clearly. But the point is it is, like the Thing, the movie is totally obsessed with gender and masculinity, and able to riff on it in ways which are thoroughly entertaining and smart.
In the DVD commentary, Carpenter crowed about how great it was that the forklift that crushes Christine looks like it is sodomizing her. I think he says it “sodomizes her to death” even….
Oh, right, and there’s the whole thing where the evil bully defecates on the car. And Arnie’s increasing obsession with all the “shitters” who are trying to thwart him as Christine takes more and more control of him….
So, yeah, I’d rate this, if not a masterpiece, at least pretty darn close. (It loses a point or two for Carpenter’s lame-ass score, and because it feels overly cut; the relationships between Arnie, his best friend, and his girlfriend sort of come out of nowhere — though I might see that as a strength if I saw it another time or two….)
If you want to see me natter on at length about other John Carpenter films, a good place to start is here.
I’d love to write a book about John Carpenter’s weird gender politics. Don’t quite see how it will ever happen though. Sigh. That’s what I get for quitting grad school.
Miriam and Bill Links
I’ve added links to Miriam’s web site and Bill’s solo blog; look over on the right there and click over for additional content from Hooded bloggers!
Yes Crap
I have an essay up at Culture 11 about Yes Man, the new Jim Carey movie. Here’s a quote:
Indeed, the whole Yes Man concept is charged with a kind of lobotomized libidinousness. Saying “yes” to everything allows Carl to absolve himself of all personal responsibility. By replacing his conscience with an arbitrary shibboleth, Carl escapes from Adam’s curse. He no longer knows good from evil; he now literally knows only what he says. Liberated from moral choice, he is invested with an irresistible prelapsarian glamour. He charms his immediate supervisor, Norm (Rhys Darby) by attending his Harry Potter costume parties; he charms his best friend’s fiancée by agreeing to host her bridal shower; he charms a jumper back from the ledge by leading the onlookers in a rousing singalong. Moroever, Carl’s newfound charisma has a definite erotic edge. Women in bars and in bridal stores swoon and giggle when he flirts, his toothless septuagenarian landlady neighbor comes onto him (and more); Alison falls seamlessly in love with him. Even his ex-wife wants to get back in his bed.
Ciara – The Evolution
I’ll probably be posting only lightly for the next couple of weeks or so, and I assume that’s the case for Tom, Miriam, and Bill as well. I will try to put up some older reviews though, so things won’t entirely grind to a halt. So, without further ado…
****************
This review ran in Bitch a while back.
The Evolution
Ciara
{LaFace Records}
Ciara’s first album, *Goodies*, had some great hooks but was marred by an odd impersonality. On “*The Evolution*, her sophomore effort, she hasn’t so much transcended that failing as embraced it — she’s evolved (as it were) into a robot. On “Like a Boy” (in which the singer imagines what it would be like to be as emotionally inaccessible as her man), the heavily processed vocals and machined beats strip her of gender altogether; on “I’m Just Me,” she declares that she’s “ghetto” over alienated backing tracks that suggest she actually fell to earth from Saturn.
These incongruities, and the attendant guffaws, probably aren’t quite what Ciara intended. Still, she’s clearly enjoying the sci-fi goofiness — why else would she appear on her album decked out in giant silvery pants like some sort of intergalactic aerobics instructor? And the line-up of A-list R&B producers Ciara’s brought along seem equally thrilled at the opportunity to drop some Afro-futurist insanity. On “I Proceed,” the Neptunes lay down rhythms stiff enough to make Devo involunarily herky-jerk ; will.i.am provides glorious Kraftwerk-like blips and bloops for “Get In, Fit In”; and on “Can’t Leave ‘Em Alone” Rodney Jerkins does the best music box impersonation this side of Aphex Twin. These echoes of space-ages past are expertly blended with current top-40 technology; walls of harmony, intricate songwriting, guest raps, and (as indicated above) lyrics right out of your high-school journal. The combination is ridiculous, exhilarating, sublime, and genuinely startling. I’m glad Ciara has finally found herself — and delighted that the self she’s found is, counterintuitively, a cybernetic organism.
Listen To While Reading: *Do Androids Dream of Electric Boogaloo?*
Danger! Prolonged Exposure Will: Cause you to merge with your ipod.
Hunter on Form
Check this out. Having raised questions about Donald Phelps’s use of the term “form,” TCJ message-board pillar Mike Hunter has whipped together a Photoshop image to get his point across. Very snazzy, and fast work.
Here it is, a pictorial representation of “form” as the word features in the Phelps essay. With luck we’ll get the left two-thirds; you can see the whole thing at TCJ (scroll down). UPDATE: Yikes, more like one third. Still quite an effect, though.
Majel Barrett Dies
Since I’m on a Star Trek kick.
I think Barrett was pretty good. I’ve been watching a bunch of the old episodes and thought she was fine in “Amok Time” (Nurse Chapel’s big episode). Also in the first pilot, “The Cage,” as Number One, a very different role. Never saw her in NextGen, but I gather her part there was broad comedy, again different.
In Star Trek Memories William Shatner says something catty about her along the lines of “Majel was basically a proficient actress.” (Quote to be corrected when I have the book with me.)
The AP reports:
NEW YORK (AP) — Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, has died. She was 76. Roddenberry, an actress who appeared in numerous “Star Trek” TV shows and movies, died Thursday of leukemia at her home in Bel-Air, Calif., her representative said.
At Roddenberry’s side were family friends and her only son, Eugene Roddenberry Jr. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991.
Her romance with Roddenberry earned her the title “The First Lady of Star Trek.” A fixture in the “Star Trek” franchise, her roles included Nurse Christine Chapel in the original “Star Trek,” Lwaxana Troi in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the voice of the USS Enterprise computer in almost every spin-off of the 1966 cult series. She recently reprised the voice role in the upcoming “Star Trek” film directed by J.J. Abrams.