Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Because of the unblushing dishonesty of strident activists and campus "queer theorists," whose general knowledge of science would fit into Marie Antoinette's thimble, we are ironically further from understanding homosexuality than we were in 1970, when popular culture was moving into the seductive gender-bending era typified by the brilliant David Bowie. With the emphasis on external "politics," all respect for psychology has been lost. Did no one notice the grotesquely misogynous dialogue put into gay men's mouths on "Queer as Folk"? That kind of catty aversion to the female body is learned, not inborn, and it can be partly traced to early family relations, before personal memory has even gelled.
My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility. In vicious attacks like the one on Spitzer, gay activists, with all their good intentions, are aligning themselves with the forces of ignorance and repression. Too little reliable work is currently being done in homosexuality because free inquiry cannot be conducted in a politicized atmosphere of harassment and intimidation.
On to another, lesser matter of media groupthink, HBO's series, "The Sopranos," which has been wildly over-praised by middlebrow commentators whose critical judgment is clearly bankrupt. I have yet to watch a single entire episode of that show, which I find vulgar and boring as well as rife with offensive clichis about Italian-Americans that would never be tolerated were they about Jews or blacks.
What I find especially repugnant about "The Sopranos" is its elitist condescension toward working-class life, which it distorts with formulas that are 30 years out of date. Manners and mores have subtly evolved in the ethnic world that "The Sopranos" purports to depict and that extends from South Philadelphia to central New Jersey and metropolitan New York. The critics who have raved without qualification about "The Sopranos" have simply exposed their own bourgeois removal from real life as well as their reactionary attachment to "plot" -- which is so mechanically and even neurotically obtrusive in that show that it betrays the authoritarian tendencies of its confused creator, David Chase, who has no instinct for psychology, his own or anyone else's.
It's not the Mafia theme that I detest, tired and pointless as that is after its canonical treatment in masterpieces like the first two "Godfather" films, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It's the sickening combination of effeteness in conception and crudity in execution that no major media article on "The Sopranos" has even noticed much less analyzed. Last week's panel discussion at the New York Hilton about "The Sopranos," sponsored by the National Italian-American Foundation and featuring James Wolcott and Bill Tonelli as well as myself and others, is tentatively scheduled to be broadcast by C-Span on June 2.
Favorite media moments since my last column: Pam Grier showing more charisma, energy, classy style, molten sensuality and Amazonian panache in the exhilarating psychedelic credits to "Foxy Brown" (1974), broadcast on Black Entertainment Television, than a whole tangled truckload of today's blithering, porridge-cheeked Hollywood inginues who, even when flinging their stick limbs around in canned martial arts moves, can't summon up the personality of a turnip.
The fresh, fabulous, pinpoint dancing of the raffish James Cagney in his absorbing new profile, narrated by the annoyingly bland Michael J. Fox, on Turner Classic Movies. The comedic charm and sylphlike vitality of Maureen O'Sullivan in an eye-opening series of films broadcast back-to-back by TCM including "Hide-Out" (1934), "Woman Wanted" (1935) and "The Bishop Misbehaves" (1935). O'Sullivan may have retired in 1942, but her quirky intelligence and dramatic timing obviously lived on in her daughter, Mia Farrow, who used them masterfully in films like Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" (1968).
The blazing heterosexual heat and tension -- which puerile p.c. Hollywood is evidently no longer capable of -- emanating from three enduring movies of the late 1980s: "White Mischief" (1988) on the True Stories Channel, with the delectable Greta Scacchi as an upper-crust blond vixen preserving her perfect makeup and coiffure in Kenya; "Scandal" (1989) on Bravo, with Joanne Whalley-Kilmer doing a bang-up job as feisty Christine Keeler shaking the pillars of British government; and "Fatal Attraction" (1987) on UPN, with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close smoking up Manhattan with their ill-fated adulterous fling. Lust of that compulsive high charge is a vanishing commodity on the silver screen these days.
Laurie Metcalf doing her priceless comic turn as a bossy, sarcastic New Jersey diva (heroine Rosanna Arquette's sister-in-law) in Susan Seidelman's now classic "Desperately Seeking Susan" (1985) on Comedy Central Channel, a delightful film with a splendid cast and a great sense of place and mood. Yes, Madonna, who outshines poor Arquette, can at times even be said to be acting! In retrospect, the director should have gotten an Oscar for that alone.
As a trained dancer, Madonna is superb in simple or complex movements: in "Desperately Seeking Susan," she's riveting just strolling down the street, grandly stepping clothed into a bathtub, or languidly flopping over in her garters on a suburban bed. It's when she opens her mouth that we're in trouble. How interesting that Jennifer Lopez, in contrast, has been able to make the transition from pop singer to movie star with such silken ease. Lopez seems composed and at home with herself, while Madonna is still tearing up the landscape looking for that ultimate persona. Discuss among yourselves!
Question: when will there be a rebroadcast of that entertaining 1977 TV drama "In the Glitter Palace"? It was Diana Scarwid's debut: She played a rich, depressive teen, if I recall correctly, who falls in love with Barbara Hershey, who once dated Chad Everett, who gets beat up by bulldykes.... Well, you get the picture! It's also puzzling that PBS has never rebroadcast "The War Widow" (1976), a quiet, skillful story starring Pamela Bellwood as a proper wife who falls in love with another woman during World War I. Both those programs dealt maturely and fairly with homosexuality without today's smug, in-group preachiness.
A final note before I go off as usual on summer hiatus: my homage to Bob Dylan appears in the "Dylan at 60" tribute in the June 7 issue of Rolling Stone. See you in September!
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