Come back Stanley, we need you
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Sent to me by Lizza Littlewort, in response to the Nick Ut pics further down the page:
I've spent some time recently looking at the transition from Westerns into war movies, and when I saw those incredible pictures by Nick Ut I was reminded of one of my favourite lines from my favourite anti-Vietnam-war movie, 'Full Metal Jacket' (see pic). So much of war-speak is about defending the women and children back home, and Paris plays a massive role in structuring domestic culture in America. She's the most visible protagonist in an enormous conservative backlash which seems to be taking women into a kind of schizophrenic X-rated version of the 1950's. One of the saddest features of this craze is not so much the sexual victimhood, but that it goes with a culture where women despise other women and become desperate for acceptance as 'one of the boys' in a spiralling absence of self which so reminds one of Paris's emptiness.
While on the subject of Stanley Kubrick's movie, I discovered in my recent movie-fest that 'Full Metal Jacket' is a direct response to John Wayne's pro-war movie 'The Green Berets'. This is probably something everyone gets told in Film Studies 101, but I stumbled across it by myself and it made me think about the media wars surrounding actual wars. Which brings us to the present and the horrible suspense we are caught in as America swivels its sulfurous sights towards its next victim, Iran. And what should emerge from Hollywood just at this moment but the most chillingly unambiguous pro-war movie since John Wayne, the 'historical drama' called '300'. I could no sooner actually watch a load of shit like this than watch Mel Gibson's Jesus Christorama, but here are some reviews which made me long for Stanley Kubrick to come back from the dead.
A Movie only a Spartan could Love by Dana Stevens
Go Tell the Spartans by Touraj Daryaee
Labels: 300, Lizza, Nick Ut, Stanley Kubrick
posted by Robert Sloon at 8:49 AM
4 Comments:
it has become fashionable (again) to deride hyporthetical linkages as evidence of conspiracy-theory thinking, but hell man one can only gasp at the sheer genius of the Team Paris P.R.O. guys 'n gals. Brilliant to re-brand and re-position (sic) her project by reference to Nic Ut's photograph. This whole thing has to be a set up. Consider the different effect had the (coincidental) photographer been ( rather than Nic) the one that snapped that other iconic Vietnam shot, the prisoner having his brains blown out in mainstreet Saigon, a handcuffed suspect vietcong supporter. How does this relate to her forthcoming tour of Iraq- The Virtual Tour? Its all so contradictory and intentionally so, that nothing except her CONTINUANCE makes any sense now...
it won't let me login...damn.it's julia rosa here...
just want to say thank you lizza and thank you mona.
was bit shocked whilst teaching some little six year olds today that one of them had watched "300"! i couldn't even watch the trailer for all the smacked out teeth and squirting fake 3D rendered shit effects. it scared me.and i am not really a scaredy cat. he happily described how he thought the monsters were the best (?) and that he loved it when so-and-so (name escapes me) got pushed into the black pit... where this lil cape townian chap gonna end up in this sordid century? spose it might be better than my six year old experience of propaganda: Bambi (prob was paris's too!).
Re the notion that Paris is the icon of what Sloon refers to as a 'conservative backlash which seems to be taking women into a kind of schizophrenic X-rated version of the 1950's. It is interesting that this conservative backlash is so sexual or sexuality is structurally intrinsic to it, and yet is an unreachable or unsatisfable sexuality. It is a kind of promise of fulfillment without the means for release or delivery. Perhaps this parallels the central narrative affecting the military misadventure where war is no longer able to deliver that final victory moment or point of resolution or indeed clear defeat of the enemy. Where even the purpose of the conflict has become obscured by the past few years of continual low level violence on the ground. Its as if the couple have managed to seduce each other, get to the bedroom, dim the lights and then can't really get it on because they don't know what to do with each others bits.
One concerned New York feminist wrote a book called "Female Chauvinist Pigs" (I forget her name) which was really interesting and echoed exactly what Mike Hammer has to say: that what comes up is a fantasy about sex in which the sex itself is something which nobody knows how to deal with. Like Paris talking on the cell phone during her porn video, and having no idea what she wanted or enjoyed, because she's not actually in touch with herself, she has an empty fiction in her head that consists of a whole lot of conservative Playboy Mansion-inspired TV roles.
Apparently Hugh Hefner's view is that women that have any level of sophistication are scary and repellent. Well, yes, we noticed that. Of course all those nice honest unthreatening farm girls in the Playboy mansion can think of nothing better than fucking a ninety-year-old crock.
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