Sheeba's Dirge

"I seek to root out the phallic mother from her real and imaginary place at the heart of what I call psychoanalytic modernism."-- Marcia Ian in her introduction.

I was fascinated by Milkman as a young girl, and yet, I have turned my back in defiance on the old guard of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker in my old age, and yes, it troubles me, especially as I accept the science of evolution. Our DNA is primarily African. We're all hermaphrodites modified from a basic female template, and embryos go awry, much as I did, but biological explanations are one thing. Social dynamics are another, and I am not predisposed to be optimistic about transhumanism or our future, merging ourselves to technology and robotics. Perhaps I demand too much of Toni Morrison, demand solutions of her that I absolve in Richard Wright or Ralph Ellison. I respect Ellison. Invisible Man is as yet an argument in my psyche, still wrestling in the ring, with little love lost, on my part, for African American contra indicators as Philadelphia and other venues have presented it. Certainly there is a difference between behavior and the equality of opportunity, but equality is a bad thing. It lies about strata. It lies about caste and it lies about difference, dependence, and fails to address what liberty and freedom are in a world burgeoned with a successful species that is toppling under its own weight. The stupidity of how we entertain ourselves, whored to impulse products and mediocrity of content, and by the same token, to dazzle with masterpieces, is at the same time disjunctive with routines, patterns we fall into, aging into risk adversity, sating appetite with culinary ambitions, intensity of erogenous sensation.

The deft cruelty of Baker's character in Prada toward Hathaway's Sachs is something no woman ever truly gets over. She moves on, wises up about sexual motives, but that deflating blow against superlative romantic inclination shows what can be done with a golden boy vanity in the right hands, despite the fact that Baker comes off as vapid and somewhat clueless when lending himself out for interviews, or doing banal move to DVD flicks like S&D 101. Nothing wrong with a light sexual comedy that makes fun of itself, but no idiot would mistake a sick old woman in the dark for a centerfold offering coitus for being a good front. The script and direction could have been slightly more integral, biting, at least sufficient to offer pause. Oversexed as we are, we shield ourselves from the consequences of aging, the inability of the medical model to do anything but contain the decline, offer props. Oxygen, catheters, face lifts. We break, yet epitomize the vanity of perfect chic and the convenience of style, with less fortunate in looks relegated to being lesbian office assistants.