In the Company of Men

One was the Prince of Darkness; the other, a Prince. Yet both were giants who defined their worlds, and they recall us to a time when the country believed in the connection between action and consequence, not only in the political realm, but in the private as well.

50 years ago tonight: Kennedy/Nixon Debates, Round One.

Maggie

In Centre Stage (1991), the greatest of all Hong Kong movies, Maggie Cheung plays herself, plays immortal silent-screen star Ruan Lingyu, and plays Ruan Lingyu playing various tragic heroines. Yet we are always watching Maggie. How could we not?

Centre Stage is one of the rare viewing experiences which restore and deepen one's love and understanding of movies. From a negative point-of-view, the film reminds us (by embodying a whole other approach) of the tawdriness and triviality of US movies and pop culture generally. What if this were an American movie about an American female icon (Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Margaret Sullavan, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland)? The character (and no doubt the approach taken by the woman playing the character) would be defined by whom she slept with, whom she didn't sleep with, what sort of drugs she took, how many times she beat up her kids, how many times she showed up drunk on the set. "Truth" defined as filth. Yet (of course) the movie would end with some sentiment telling us how terribly misunderstood the American legend was and how basically good she was. Most important, there would be no connections made between the woman, her life, and the power relations surrounding her.

Positively, Centre Stage is pure tenderness -- pure joy, heart, and magic. Cheung, one of the most beautiful women of her time, also happens to be one of the greatest movie actresses (the greatest?) of her time. Her look is always mesmerizing, but Centre Stage is another place entirely: the 1920s and early 30s visions she embodies as Ruan Lingyu make her unearthly -- director Stanley Kwan's desire: for Kwan defines Lingyu in purely spiritual terms -- as a great, beautiful soul: great because entirely moral: incapable of evil, or rudeness, or anything degrading of life: beauty outside because beauty inside. Kwan tethers physical beauty and grace to moral and spiritual grace. But of course it's as much Cheung as Kwan. Perhaps she is as strong a moral agent on set as was Cary Grant. Here, she makes the movie glow with holiness, she and Kwan rejecting postmodern morality, particularly as it applies to private life.

One of the most beautiful women of our time turns out to be one of the strongest movie forces for "goodness" in our time. Maggie Cheung is the anti-Madonna. (Or, actually, the true Madonna. . .)

Beginnings

My daughter starts elementary school today. She's pretty scared. Me, too.

In her honor, Part V of Haibane Renmei: "The Beginning of the World"

Other parts, go here.

Con Men

In light of the recent Emmys sweep -- a brave and brilliant voting organ that's never given a single Best Show award to the likes of Steve Allen, Have Gun Will Travel, The Fugitive, Columbo, Bob Newhart, Rockford, WKRP, SCTV, Miami Vice, Seinfeld , Curb Your Enthusiasm, or The Wire(!) -- a repost.

Look at this asshole. Does this feel like 1963 to you? Or, does it seem like a shot from a Sex and the City out-take wherein the cast all dressed up for a Days of Wine and Roses party?

Mad Men – that perfectly shallow and narcissistic show by and for shallow urban narcissists – bears as much relation to the emotional, psychological, moral and political moods of the early 1960s as does Twitter, So You Think You Can Dance? (no you can't), the iPhone, and places like Salon.com. Far more a version of Sex and the City with cooler clothes, cars, music and girls, what's left out of this piece of plastic is everything we truly know about the time, which is everything its smarmy Yuppie audience has had a major hand in exterminating: earnestness, optimism, a sense of community, grace, complexity, self-deprecation, hatred of the rich and big business, a refusal to demonize others and puff up ourselves, and (perhaps most important) the assumption that people are basically good.

Not only were slick and shiny dime-a-dozen ad-men no one's idea of a role model in the early-1960s, they became the embodiment of everything corporate, compromised, materialistic and oh-so-1957. ('Course one of the wonderful things about that time is no one thought along the lines of "oh-so-1957".) Take a look: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Lilies of the Field, the Beach Boys, Henry Mancini, Stanley Elkin, David Janssen, Jasper Johns, the 1962 Dual-Ghia, Steve Allen, Ornette Coleman, Rosemary Clooney, The Hustler, The Ladies Man, the TWA Terminal at Idlewild, and of course Jack Kennedy himself.

What we get here, rather, is the same old campy, self-referential "I gotta go right out and buy that tie!" mutant elite ass-kissing. Creator Matt Weiner tries very hard (and very successfully) to pull the wooly over the eyes of the self-enchanted mind-travelers who read/watch/listen in order to feel even more self-enchanted, for this glamorama soap opera has all the subtlety of a Bloomingdale's store window. (Come to think of it, Mad Men is the ultimate Bloomingdale's store window.)

Just take the role models. We have the ubercompetent corporate drone. The hysterectical stay-at-home worthy of Desperate Housewives. The frail, tremulous heroine buried under an avalanche of agency problems. (With the coming gravy of sexual harassment ladled over her. Abortion anyone?) The porcine connected jerk invulnerable to retribution because of his seniority. The burnt-out case, with bad job, bad marriage, stacks of unpaid bills. And everyone always chirp-chirp-chirping at those oh-so-important client meetings. (My kingdom for a cell phone!)

Sure smells like 1963 to me. Or is that the Starbucks down the block?

What’s most repulsive about Mad Men is how this time (the “last time before America became a slave to anxiety,” as Mailer put it) is seen through the Weiner-ish prism of contemporary Yuppoid self-congratulation. Yeah, sure they had the music and the cars and a real man as President. But we’re so much smarter now. So much more dedicated to our work, our appearance, our health, our environment. So much more civilized about race, and gender, and sexual preference. So much more educated with so much more knowledge right at our fingertips. And how ‘bout that clunky and pathetic old technology?!

An incredibly stupid show for its appropriately stupid audience. How is it possible to make a series about a time that seems more golden as the years go by, especially from the POV of the emotional and cultural cesspool America has become, without so much as a glimmer of regret, sadness, or melancholy toward what's been lost? But then, what narcissist is capable of regret?

Back to the top: which one feels like 1963 to you?