Proper Totem

Halle Berry's carefully preserved physique is another reason I avoid her new series. Her beauty, like any real beauty, was once a passport into a realm of privilege no homily woman could attain without some form of extraordinary circumstance, one of the subtexts of Catwoman, one of the worst comic book revivals on record. In Gothika, too -- a movie I meant to apply to but forget why (it is coming back but we'll leave it for a momentary resilience) but in Extant she exhibits the braggadocio of surgical vanity, the curse of the nascent has been, no longer the red swimsuit sensation in a witty homage to the high tech Fleming fantasy which seems as far removed from our times as we are to Nicolas le Floch.

Perhaps her father was a lust fuck for the mother. I could go right back in my 22 year old body, despite everything, even my softly hardening racial prejudice, and fuck Michael Washington, my first apartment manager, til the cats yowled. His sexual heat radiated with such force that he could have swooned any woman alive, and those busy covalent bonds undoubtedly made Halle that rare female who parts the sea, not that she is necessarily conscious of this, but for all its conspiratorial overtones, in Extant she is parting with her fecund exceptionalism, that, similar to Obama, frees her from black identity. She may tell herself psychologically that she's black, but this isn't really the case. Oprah is black.

Halle is neither one race nor the other, and many of her films presage this, including Catwoman, but the series cannot revitalize her former dazzling, rarefied radiance. My eyes need to look away.

Decadent Pairs

In Siena the Tomasi revealed that powerful and single-minded religious vocation which later made them famous in Sicily. One went to England as papal legate and tried to settle the dispute between Henry 2.0 [my emendation] and Thomas a Becket. David Gilmour, The Last Leopard, p11

I believe I shall focus my attentions on Giuseppe Tomasi for now, then perhaps work my way back to Henry James. The Prince of Lampedusa presents the demise of the petty nobility as a foregone conclusion. Gilmour presents their obliteration as an almost radical reaction, and to the extent that I understand Dr. Cristina Coletta's abstract in her critical study, Plotting The Past, she is examining the diachronic discourse between historic episode, narrative, and how this frames contemporary perception. Dr. Coletta was very kind to me, and told me she would send me a copy of her book but she only had her reader's copy; not a total ingrate, by dint of my own obstinacy I have nearly all my tools at hand, except a visit to the point of origin. I see where I am going with Il Gattopardo much more clearly than with the work of James, and Tomasi may actually give me my framework to back into James [the New Mobility bloggers who follow my twitter account glaze over at this point saying she goes very far]. Mmm, like Mr. Ramsay's throbbing mind in his theoretical struggle, I am defying much more than domestication in my outreach. Cannot the same be said of Fellini's mastery as an auteur? La Strada is more than the sum of its parts; it borders on the magical realism that Shakespeare invented in The Tempest, which means if you are Julie Taymor you are going to be fanatical in your canonical felicity because you cast the magisterial Helen Mirren in the lead.

It borders on post war fabulism, La Strada, but it is not simply a love song to Mussolini, who in turn was a deluded optimist to the point of insanity. All of us miss the Roman Empire, whether we know it or not. We keep recreating the Colossus, not restoring the past, only reinventing the application of power. I cannot bring full brunt of analysis to on La Strada today, but did want to point out to you how commercialism exhausts genre, much as Haggard exhausts great Victorian contributions. His work is almost an Edwardian squeal about the terror of progressive erosions yet to come. The same can be said with European directors against Hollywood. Fellini is nearly Jamesian when engaging in cinematic ambiguity. Identity is a clever knife thrust into liberal pretensions, but never truly veers off the expected prescription.

Pruitt's Carrot, Body's Stick

the artist's young spouse, wore a great billowing pastel housedress and flattened espadrilles and was, for better or worse, the sexiest morbidly obese woman Atwater had ever seen. -- David Foster Wallace, "The Suffering Channel", loc. 3973

Everyone remembers Pruitt Vince. The involuntary eye movement, his weight, pasty face. The unique signature of his character makes him easy to recall. The obscenely heavy foil in House, the one submissive john in Monster spared by Aileen Wuornous. Pruitt's part was small but crucial because the tables had turned. The trick was vulnerable and the hard luck bitch minimized herself for the few moments it took to bring on ejaculation. Harsh scene. With the right casting director Pruitt does the good guy, the bad guy, and the acerbic Manichean in the middle. In Identity Mangold makes an interesting choice to pit Molina against Vince, suggesting over-classification of mental defect and the loss of our own agency to it are two sides of the same coin. Molina's countenance also leaves viewers uneasy-- not quite one type or another, almost Byzantine. The ying and the yang meta-fictional reality book end the formulaic red shirt elimination plot so popularized by Agatha Christie. Cleverly done, where even the sanest parts of Malcolm Rivers are corrupted.

Dissociative identity disorder, however, may not be a real mental illness, and it is not so sweet or succinct as famously brought on by the author of Sybil. This has not prevented the industry from mythologizing it, conflating it as a fascinating morality play, and it will no doubt stay that way until a pupil of Aaron Eckhart deconstructs it just as Eckhart deconstructs the dark side of secular liberalism with ruthless, painfully funny, veracity. Pruitt Vince will always have work due to his mild yet egregious condition. Would there ever be a day where he'd get lead billing?