Category Archives: Aesthetics

Annual Oscar Offal

Aesthetics, Britain, Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Music, Pop-Culture

The Oscar’s self-aggrandizing crowd is too much for me to stand, not even for you the reader. There will be some unfunny shtick. A precocious crappy kid will make a debut. At least one aging actor will be honored (in 2011, the distinction was Kirk Douglas’) and retired—Hollywood performs professional geronticide on the old—and hackneyed scripts filled with loud-mouthed, humorless, self-referential hedonists will abound.

The closest I’ll come to watching the 85th Academy Awards ceremony is “Fashion Police,” a sartorial send-up by Joan Rivers. She’s the only comedian and great wit who can get men to watch a program about fashion. Like me, my husband hates all “estrogen oozing” TV programing, but greatly appreciates Rivers. And rightly so. She’s lethal.

Adel’s monotone will be G-d awful, and while we will be spared Jennifer Hudson’s primal screams, Barbra Streisand will more than make up for the reprieve.

Other than lessons lost, “Les Misérables” represents great literature reduced to schmaltzy jingles, belted out by Hollywood starlets. The lesson lost: The “Les Misérables” I read as a kid was about France’s unfathomably cruel and unjust penal system, and the prototypical obedient functionary who worked a lifetime to enforce the system’s depredations. A similar power (Uncle Sam) and its enforcers recently hounded Aaron Swartz to death.

For those who care, here are the predictions. I’ve watched none of them. I’m most likely to watch “Flight” with Denzel Washington. The film got bad reviews, but I like the “disaster film genre,” although nothing will ever come close to Airport (1970) and its sequels.

Restless—I caught it on the Sundance Channel—is a BBC One production directed by Edward Hall of “MI-5” fame. With all its faults, Restless makes you realize that any British film, even a mediocre mini-series, is better than the American equivalent, big-screen productions included. (Britain retains the edge in this department.)

Today, ‘The Americans’ Would Be Ordinary In Their Un-Americanness

Aesthetics, Communism, Feminism, Film, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture

“A simple morality tale—and one conservatives should especially relish. … an unalloyed cheer for America … hagiography of the Gipper … Paranoid thriller … a staple of the Cold War and War on Terror life. …” That’s the left’s take on “The Americans,” a new “FX anti-Soviet drama.”

Writes National Journal’s Matthew Cooper:

In The Americans, there’s none of that, just a celebration of American values. Phil considers defecting to America, which he lauds in cheeky but sincere tones. “The food’s pretty terrific. There’s plenty of closet space.” We like the Soviet spies only because they were created by a monstrous totalitarian system and are struggling to break out. (Elizabeth was not only programmed to be a spy but was raped during her training.) Keri Russell was given her start in the chick drama Felicity by J.J. Abrams, and he cast her Mission: Impossible III, where she showed her high-kick bona fides.
By contrast, the America of the Gipper is free, recognizes the Soviet threat, and is even progressive. Beeman has a minority FBI agent partner, Chris Amador (Maximiliano Hernandez), who offers proof that the FBI is dropping is crew-cut ways and becoming less cloistered, and the show notes that “there are only like two or three of them so they can’t get fired.”

As readers know, not for me are today’s chick-centric action dramas, where, “With enough will-power, an 80-pound waif will wallop a 200-pound gangster, sustaining no punctures to the silicone sacks. Her hulking cop partner is made to trot after the Great Woman obediently, stepping in to save the day only when crime and firefighting are impeded by stilettoes on the job, and a lack of physical prowess .. all in the tradition of the men-are-buffoons; women-are-brawny-and-brainy narrative…”

I am unable to become engrossed in such a parallel universe.

Hollywood had its Golden Age, back when well-written scripts reflected well-developed, multi-faceted characters. Today, Tinseltown is a monolithic, left-liberal automaton, marching in thematic unison, and subjecting the viewer to the same impoverished, error-riddled, preachy themes.
The evidence is in. Activism and abreaction have replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories in the repertoire of the pretty, pea-brained community.
A giant digit wagging above a captive audience: that’s Hollywood.

While, National Journal is correct that the series is “cartoony and a bit cheap,” and, “In its Manichaean view of the world, more like World War II movies than the nuanced thrillers of the postwar era”—it’ll hold the attention of conservatives, more so because it depicts a much happier America, one (oddly, apparently, to NJ) still dominated by the much-maligned (small “m”) moral majority.

However cute, Keri Russell, however, has an all-American look. She does not resemble a Russian beauty. The Slavic women—perhaps the most beautiful in the world—look nothing like the all-American Russell.

Milla Jovovich would have fit the mold.

UPDATED: Football Frenzy (The Ravens And 49ers)

Aesthetics, America, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Pop-Culture, Sport, The Zeitgeist

Piers Morgan, who is warring against a quintessential and meaningful American tradition—self-defense—has declared his affinity for another: the Superbowl.

MORGAN: “Listen, I know what this game means to America. It’s going to be a hell of a day on Sunday. I shall be glued to it, as always. I love the whole entertainment. I love the commercials. I love the football. I love the fact that it’s such a huge part of American culture. And may the best team win.”

The truth is that we foreigners do not get it—and will never get it. Also true: One can never really be an American unless one talks the talk about the game and the scene.

Oh well. Not belonging to the cool kids’ fraternity has never bothered me terribly. And at least one great American agrees about the obscenity of the whole scene.

“I don’t pay much attention to it, replied Ron Paul to a Piers Morgan question, in February of last year, during the 2012 campaign.

My sentiments exactly.

… the American football scene is obscene, starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down.

The ads are always a big point of contention. Thus, in 2012 too, Freedom Watch’s “J-Nap” (a coinage by Jack Kerwick for Judge Andrew Napolitano) struck a blow for “liberty” by calling on a middle-aged Madonna to challenge The Censor and repeat the feat of another peer, Janet Jackson. (Yes, “Libertarianism Lite” carries the day.)

The apparition the Judge wished upon us was described, in 2004 (“JANET’S SACK OF SILICONE & OTHER SYMBOLISM”), as a “sack of silicone-filled skin, awkwardly positioned on Janet Jackson’s chest. Few will forget how pop singer Justin Timberlake released The Thing from Jackson’s bustier during the Super Bowl halftime show.”

Add the effects of age and gravity to a surgically over-stuffed breast, and you end up with a veiny mass, mounted inorganically on the breastbone. Take my word: This is not something you’d want to wave about. It looks like a stretched-to-the-limits Bota Bag (also known as a wine skin), only not nearly as inviting. The photograph also captures the gaze on Justin Tinkerbelle’s girlie features. The reviewers, mostly groovy hip-hop heads, described the sequence as “a sex-charged duet.” Justin, Jackson’s partner in the “stunt,” looks as turned on as a surgeon removing a suture. The “sensuality” was, er, a bust.

Contra “J-Nap,” I was comforted to learn that a quaint Old-World, quintessentially American gentleman like Ron Paul was baffled by America’s annual football frenzy. (And is guaranteed to find the commercials as off-putting as the frenzy.)

UPDATE: I’m one of you. Hear me talk Ravens And 49ers.

The two coaches are brothers. One quarterback has been a starter for barely half a season. The sport itself is under a microscope for its violence, and the setting, New Orleans, is where the home team found itself recently caught up in a so-called bounty scandal — bounty — excuse me — scandal.
The spectacle and the game, Super Bowl XLVII, between the Ravens and 49ers, it’s all set for Sunday, with an expected worldwide audience of more than 160 million.

MORE at PBS.org. I won’t be reading this. It’s for you.

UPDATE II: How Hard Is It To Stay HOT? (The Market Will Help, Not The Military)

Addiction, Aesthetics, Democrats, Feminism, Free Markets, Military, Sport

How hard is it for a “mature” lady to look beautiful?

Ask Ann Romney.

Granted, Mrs. Romney is a natural beauty. Still, she is not a healthy woman. At her age, she would have to work hard at looking like this:

We ladies know that as we age, it’s harder to look fine and stay fit. It takes an effort. We all face the same aging process, although some, like Ann Romney, have genetics on their side.

Given America’s veneration of the victim, I expect that what I am about to say next will draw ire.

Understand: No one here disputes that Holly Petraeus has a hideous husband. It should be stressed too that Mrs. Petraeus is not to be faulted for her husband’s whoring.

Nevertheless, Holly herself, who can’t be much older than Ann Romney, looks like Mrs. Romney’s grandmother.

Why is it that so many American women—so often Democratic—conflate the greying, fat and unfit look with a statement of individual authenticity? It’s as though the less feminine and more unkempt a woman appears, the more she is said to be comfortable in her own skin.

Why does Mrs. Petraeus wear those Mao suits? Why not dye the salt-and-pepper hair and get it styled? What about a lick of lipstick?

And yes, the idea that a woman should make an effort to look nice contradicts all feminist strictures, but then I’ve never professed feminism.

UPDATE I (Nov. 17): This Facebook thread is fun. Some good and funny points. My point: you are not responsible for your genes. But you can honor yourself above all by taking care of yourself. Mrs. Mao is not old. She was pretty as a younger woman. It’s my non-feminist opinion that to let your body go, above all, is to dishonor yourself. However, you honor yourself and you show respect to those around you by dressing and making up nicely. That’s all. (I’d be grey without hair color too. ..)

I have a neighbor who was an elite-unit army man. I have never seen this man (in his 60s) walk his dog looking less than spiffy. The carriage, the fitness level, the care he takes with himself—these all show a respect for self and others. When I walk around the shops, some of the girls are dressed like whores (white, dimpled flesh oozing out of short pant, crotch and cleavage for all to see). This to me shows disrespect for what nature (or G-d) gave you and for humanity. For such a vision assaults the eye and offends the sensibilities.

Mrs. Mao doesn’t work; she fiddles with charity on base. She is part of “Rome’s marching camp.” She has time to get fitter, color her hair, and dress less like a commie official.

UPDATE II (Nov. 18): The market, not the military, will help you look hot into middle-age, and beyond. Reply on Facebook thread:

Looking good is tiring? Rubbish: Stay out of the sun (Tampa tarts will look like crocodiles in a couple of years). Use a good skin cream. Get your hair cut and colored. Buy a couple of nice items online. You can find great items (made in the USA), dirt cheap. Get glorious service to your door step, b/c of the MARKET, MRS. Mao, NOT THE MILITARY.