Arbus:Borges

One accepts those incompatible things which, only because they coexist, are called the world.

-- J L Borges, The Book of Sand

The world is a Noah’s Ark on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable, and heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is.

-- Diane Arbus

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Diane Arbus took this photograph of Borges in Central Park in 1968. Three years later, she took her own life, aged 47. Borges, 69 years old when this picture was taken. He would die, a blind old man, in 1986.

Borges; the writer who invented paradoxical universes. Arbus; the photographer whose lens saw the hidden.

Borges was fascinated by Jewish mysticism and Arbus was a Jew whose eye seemed to unlock mysteries hidden in the world before us. The word of God hidden in the world of reality is the essence of Kabbalism and when Arbus says: "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know" she writes in the tradition of her forebears. Arbus' photographs of strange worlds hidden in plain sight, her vision so complete it's as if she constructed an entire life in her own image. Borges stories of wdreams and edifices built on riddles, his writing so complete that though he could not see the world, he created vast universes of 'awful symmetry' and complete logic. The two of them seem to belong together. The photographer's image of the writer seems to speak something.

I wonder what they said that day in the park.

Football & Fascism

Two events in football this week. Arsenal's victory in Spain, the first British team to ever beat Real Madrid at home. Real were Franco's team during the Fascist years, a key element in the state militarisation of the culture. They were the nemesis of Barcelona who were doublecrossed and hindered at every turn, because they were both communitarian and separtist and therefore a grave threat to the totalitarian order.

Which segues us to the second major game - Barcelona's defeat of Chelsea. Chelsea are owned by a Russian oligarch who made a vast amount of money in a rapid series of opaque deals and has made some kind of arrangement with the ex-KGB crypto-militarist order in Russia. The manager of Chelsea is a Portuguese autocrat with unpublicised but not unclear hard right political notions.

Football and populist politics have always dissolved into each because large crowds defined by regional sympathies assemble every week at football games, and that in itself is some kind of a political act. The manager of Chelsea has taken this a step further because he clearly sees himself, in image and in context, as a charismatic leader who preaches a total creed of action and control.

Which brings us to this article by a British intellectual on Jose Mourinho and Portuguese fascism, which is really quite awesome. And that brings us to this observation on Mourhino, which is not in the article, by the Portuguese journalist Joel Neto:

He doesn't just work with people. He controls people. He dominates people. He works with people's minds.

Which summons up the image of none other than Dr Mabuse, Fritz Lang's criminal mastermind who psychically controlled the Berlin criminal classes from his prison cell. Mabuse was an allegory for Hitler, Lang had to flee Germany after making that film not so much because the Nazis hated it, but because Goebbels was so impressed he wanted Lang to work for them.

Football, fascism, mass entertainment.

In Mourhino's bronzed gaze clutching a Samsung phone I see sword & sandal fascism given a Gucci rubdown. And in some way, I see a cold, metallic shard of mass culture. 'The people need a leader'... and in the pouting cashmered sponsored-up-the-ass, touchline Mabuse that is Jose Mourinho those who really need it - have one.

And Barcelona's victory becomes even sweeter.

The Cheney Visual Hunting Aid

Courtesy of: http://www.needlenose.com/

Mad, bad and dangerous

Of course, I can't resist a small nod to the Veep. I also can't resist this picture which combines one of my favourite films with one of my favourite assholes.

What to say? Veep shoots man at 30 yards.

I have nothing new to add, only to remark that this rather elegantly backs up the 'psychotic buffoon' meme. This guy shoots a friend at 30 yards whilst aiming for quail (quail fly, men walk, right? so why was he aiming at ground level?). Now, assuming this was not premeditated - which would be a whole level of craziness I can't engage in right now as it'll fry my fiction circuits - we're talking about the same guy who just rewarded his worst enemy, ie Iran, with a Shiite theocracy next door and lots of looted nuclear equipment from the same place to help boost their nuclear programme.

And someone gave this idiot a gun?

'Backlot Mountain'

This was a pretty interesting piece reporting on Ian McKellen's response to Brokeback Mountain. In a nutshell, Brokeback might might lead to more honesty about homosexuality on the screen, but probably not behind the scenes in Hollywood. The piece points out the following, a real world analogy remarkable for its crispness and clarity:

in 2006, Jake and Ennis would find it easier to live as openly gay sheep farmers in Wyoming (where Casper has an openly gay mayor) than as openly gay stars in Hollywood.

Now, here's an idea for a challenging indie film: tell the story, behind the scenes, unvarnished, warts and all of a gay star who pretends to be straight. Show the technologies of commerce and power that force this dichotomy, show the stresses - mental and otherwise - on our character and show what it means to live a life of high-intensity exposure whilst nursing a half-hidden secret (because what these days cannot be sucked down the rumour funnel?)

It would be an extraordinary film, not very expensive to make (behind the scenes means behind the scenes) and full of the kind of character conflicts that make great visceral drama and of course intensely controversial. But whoever made it... would have their career closely and concertedly hunted down and taken apart. They would be signing a career death warrant only to be exhumed years later in the new dawn of an openly gay Hollywood to be feted as a brave pioneer on their death bed.

Father mucker!

Ye Gods!

Not working.... is really hard work.

Tough Decision

Sometimes, in my other incarnation where I do not sweat heavily over a keyboard regurgitating half-imbided conspiracy theories culled from the further corners of the web, I work - or as is sometimes the case, don't work - in a profession of whores, idiots and madmen.

That is right, the film industry.

As a noble practitioner of the arts of writing and direction (or not writing and not directing) I'm a member of the venerable British Academy of the Film and Television Arts which means I get to drink at their recently reappointed bar (they deliver a frosty pint of Boddingtons) and every year at this time I get to vote on who picks up a gong on the big stage.

The voting process occurs in 3 stages. In stage one you're given a list of every film ever released in the UK over the last year and get to vote for whatever you want. Seeing as the final nominations always end up being crassly predictable - c'mon, you telling me 'A Beautiful Mind' caught you off guard? - I refuse to vote for anything that's likey to go all the way on the principle that everyone else will be voting for it too. So I give the forgotten films a chance. Avalon, Mysterious Skin, Head On, Shattered Glass... Haven't heard of them? Well, I tried.

Stage two, where you have a shortish list of 15 films I try and do the same. Alas, my attempts to bring The Bourne Supremacy to the attention of the British Academy voters also failed. By the time we get to the final nominations, maybe there'll be one (two if I'm lucky) flicks in there that I half admire. Last year in particular was tough: I found it very hard to get worked up about the Aviator and it's always a dismal experience for me to see Mike Leigh mumbling darkly in the half-light as he's spray-painted with praise for his particularly cartoonish version of 'realism'. As for the actor nominations! Ye gods... should there be anyone playing a physically or mentally disabled damaged soul who achieves a redemptive epiphany then my vote is as effective as that of a black felon in Broward county.

But this year, I cast my eyes over the nominations and for the first time I find it genuinely difficult to decide who should earn the gong. The films this year have been good - not great - but very good. There's an intelligence and awareness emerging that suggests something may, just may be afoot. But in the acting categories in particular, every single nomination holds outstanding performances. Take Best Actor:

DAVID STRATHAIRN - Good Night, And Good Luck.
HEATH LEDGER - Brokeback Mountain
JOAQUIN PHOENIX - Walk the Line
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN - Capote
RALPH FIENNES - The Constant Gardener

Now, with the exception of Fiennes who's fine in Gardener, I'd say every one of those actors delivers a - for them, up till now - outstanding, career defining performance. Strathairn and Seymour Hoffman are both character actors rooted in theatre. They possess awesome talent and great history, so it's just great to see them up for best man gongs with searing, densely layered performances. Phoenix I've always admired but he can miss sometimes, so it's great to see him in there with - yep, you got it - a densely layered, searing performance. And as for Ledger, he was in danger of being written off by some as a pretty Aussie beefcake so, forget about the gay part, it's great to see him deliver a... Searing, densely layered performance. And it's bloody hard to choose which is most deserving. That's a hard fight there.

Here's Actress in a supporting role:

BRENDA BLETHYN - Pride & Prejudice
CATHERINE KEENER - Capote
FRANCES McDORMAND - North Country
MICHELLE WILLIAMS - Brokeback Mountain
THANDIE NEWTON - Crash

I haven't seen Pride or North Country, though I wouldn't want to be duking it for an acting gong with McDormand. But again - Keener, Newton and Williams turn in outstanding performances. I've never seen Thandie Newton any better than she was in Crash and although her role in Capote is subdued and subtle Keener provides a kind of zenlike balance to the Seymour Hoffman performance that suggests without her the film could keel sideways, holed below hull by camp acid and high-pitched asides. To paraphrase Hollywoods greatest and mostly cruelly victimized of Scientologists, in Capote Hoffman can say to Keener "you complete me".

Here's best film:

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Ang Lee
CAPOTE - Bennett Miller
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Fernando Meirelles
CRASH - Paul Haggis
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. - George Clooney

I wasn't particularly touched by Gardener, but it's good work. Has more intelligence and craft than many a past nominee. Capote too. Good Night, Crash and Brokeback - that's another tough league. They're all directed with resounding accomplishment. I wouldn't like to have to choose. But wait...

I just did.