A Grand Illusion

Me on the new Stevie Wonder in Seattle Weekly.

Me on the new Stevie Wonder in Seattle Weekly.

The first review of Brokeback Mountain in a mainstream publication. J. Hoberman realizes that Ang Lee’s adaptation of the E. Anne Proulx story is the culmination of a genre rather than its end:

The western has always been the most idyllically homosocial of modes—and often one concerned with the programmatic exclusion of women. This is hardly a secret and thus the true cowboy love between tight-lipped Ennis and doe-eyed Jack precipitates the not-so-latent theme of early-’70s oaters like The Wild Rovers and The Hired Hand—not to mention Andy Warhol’s hilarious disco western Lonesome Cowboys and its more conventional Hollywood analogue Midnight Cowboy. (Conventional up to a point, that is: Midnight Cowboy not only made a gay fashion statement but included Joe Buck’s incredulous cri de coeur, “Are you telling me that John Wayne is a fag?!”)

David Thomson detected a similar repressed homo hysteria in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, in which Robert Redford and Paul Newman can barely contain their delight in each other’s company:

She knows that the real romance is those two handsome boys and their endless conversational double act. And she is obliged enough to Sundance for going through the amatory motions with her (because men were still gentlemen in those days), but she knew what Sundance’s little moustache meant all along. We all knew – same way we all knew when “W’ slapped “Brownie” on the back and told the world what a good job he’s done. The message is clear: some guys just have no sense when it comes to being with other guys

Speaking of containing delight, neither could Phoebe. Would she care to post an early draft of her review?

In the Vatican’s newspaper, Monseigneur Tony Anatrella outlines the Catholic Church’s new position on homosexuality and its effects on humankind It’s made me chuckle to myself all day:

In no case is this form of sexuality a sexual alternative, or even less, a reality that is equivalent to that which is shared by a man and a woman engaged in matrimonial life

So “this form of sexuality” is “even less” viable as an equivalent to marriage? Let the purges begin.

Charles Krauthammer’s recent column on the McCain torture amendment bears careful reading; it’s far more balanced than what we might come to expect from the likes of The Weekly Standard. Here’s his proposal:

The question is, would one trust this administration with not just enforcing these standards, but understanding what “the least inhumane treatment” is? Would John Yoo or Alberto Gonzalez have clarified this?

Sorry, but Capote, Ray, and Walk The Line have little in common. Capote is the best of the three. By concentrating on one episode in the title character’s writing life, director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman shun the layers of apocryphal nonsense which have attached themselves to Capote as firmly as Capote himself did to the likes of Bianca Jagger and Nancy Reagan. We have a film in which the creators, with little cant and with great delicacy, give the title character the space to condemn himself for his own bad faith. In its attention to the often violent collisions between the artist and his environment – is creation a mimetic process or one requiring the artist’s intervention to produce the desired results? – Capote says more than 8 1/2.

Walk The Line is more like Ray, only not as good. Where Taylor Hackford showed the legend making music, James Mangold shows us a one-dimensional, pill-poppin’ basso who incidentally wrote and performed some great songs; it was a Lifetime movie with spiffy production values. At no point is the Cash persona deconstructed; Mangold, his screenwriter, and Joaquin Phoenix really did believe The Man in Black bullshit (in Ray, we do see Ray Charles as the calculating sumbitch he was canny enough to become when it suited his purposes).

Finally, the film’s creators ignore the most interesting character. In Reese Witherspoon’s hands, June Carter sparkles with a vitality and wit that Phoenix’s Cash never approaches. Like Miller’s treatment of Harper Lee in Capote (played with quiet avidity by the amazing Catherine Keener), Carter’s marginalization upholds the fallacy to which every man succumbs when he produces a film about a Tex Bad Boy: art is for boys.

Madonna now has 36 Top 10 hits, tying Elvis‘ record.

If I believed in God, I’d thank him for these tunes; and ask him to help my readers find them:

The Mekons, “Only Darkness Has The Power” (1989)

Singer-guitarist Tom Greenhalgh spends the night in bed with his girlfriend. When morning comes, he’s afraid to leave, for reasons he’s too frightened to articulate. “I’m not going to explain myself, it’s not that important to me,” he says, the tremor in his voice quite audible through a skein of ugly guitars. Of course, articulating fear and rage is exactly what one expects from these members of the class of ‘77; this is the only song in which punks admit their mission’s impossibility – and it comes 12 years too late. “Do you trust me to tell the truth? Do you trust me?” Greenhalgh croons, before the chorus circles him once more, and the ugly guitars scare him under the covers again.

Madonna, “Gambler” (1985)

Little-known gem, eclipsed by the success of “Crazy For You” on the otherwise forgettable Vision Quest soundtrack. This is Madonna at her most slatternly, her lower register drawing strength from the synthesizer and drum machines making an unholy racket. It’s also more convincing pseudo-satire than “Material Girl.” Only Shakira could get away with this today (and kinda does, on “Don’t Bother”). Why haven’t any of Maddie’s umpteenth compilations ever included this? Because she doesn’t want to show Lourdes her dirty panties.

Karyn White, “Romantic” (1991)

Another obscurity, “Romantic” was the biggest hit for Karyn White, going to #1 on the Hot 100 in the fall of ‘91. Before “Romantic” she scored three top 10’s, none of which get much airplay anymore except on urban quiet-storm stations (”Superwoman,” “Secret Rendezvous,” and “The Way You Love Me”). Like fellow neglected late ’80s/early ’90s R&B songstress Jody Watley, White was at her best when she eschewed self-expression and allowed producers to set her innocuous voice in a boisterous setting — in this case a Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis song and production stitched from Alexander O’Neal and Janet leftovers. One of the last new jack swing hits before the Top 40’s acclimitization to hip-hop sent every diva except Mary J. Blige and Mariah Carey to the clearance bin.

Kelly Osbourne, “One Word”

Here’s the reason why this song and Visage’s “Fade To Grey” — the piece from which it draws its chords, melody, and Old Europe here-by-the-Seine vibe — flopped in the States. We Yanks have zero patience for anomic limeys with asymmetrical eyeshadow playing synthesizers and quasi-limeys with asymmetrical eyeshadow playing with our notions of what respectable celebrities do.

The Likud party is all about peace. From The Financial Times:

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former finance minister, yesterday denounced his long-time rival Ariel Sharon as a “dictator” a day after the prime minister quit the Likud party to form a new centrist movement to stand in the next elections, scheduled for March 28.

There’s more.

The Likud party, which Mr Netanyahu hopes to lead, would move away from the “one-man rule of Sharon, who apparently doesn’t recognise democracy and is setting up a party of puppets”, he told Army Radio.

And of course, buried in the story’s penultimate paragraph:

Meanwhile, Israel yesterday approved the construction of 350 new homes in one of the biggest settlement blocs in the West Bank, Maale Adumim. The Palestinians say such expansion, opposed by the US, encroaches on land they need for a future state.

I’m thinking of posting everytime Israel approves new settlement developments. I don’t understand how anyone could seriously mouth the words “Israeli withdrawal” in reference to what they did in Gaza.

From the National Journal:

From the National Journal:

Thank you, Josh, for helping me realize what I am.

At first, the Vatican’s declaration that it will not tolerate sexually active homosexual clergy seems beside the point; heterosexual clergy can’t be sexually active either. But this move bespeaks an attempt by Pope Benedict XVII to initiate a Palpatine-like purge of anyone with gay metachlorians:

In September, Vatican-directed inspectors started visiting all 229 American seminaries. Part of their mission is to seek any “evidence of homosexuality” at a time when some Catholics have put forward the highly contested premise that gay priests were more likely to be responsible for criminal behavior such as serial, same-sex molestation.

Of course, the Church’s unyielding devotion to the questionable psychology which links pedophilia with homosexuality is a large part of the problem.

And the Vatican can’t be too keen on this development.

Re the new Madonna, Confessions On A Dance Floor: I’m still hung up over “Hung Up,” the ravishing “Sorry” is her best second single since “Deeper & Deeper” if not “Express Yourself,” the allusions to her influences and her own work are subtle and sometimes winningly deployed (my favorite: the “Papa Don’t Preach”-meets-”Die Another Day” strings on “Forbidden Love”), and the infamous “I Love N.Y.” has beats and stereo effects that Annie wishes she could afford. Finally, while Stuart Price gets the cred for Dance Floor’s post-trance yumminess (the album is the aural equivalent of the fluorescent hand-me-down’s Madonna wears on the cover), it’s his co-producer who shapes these things into songs with indelible vocal melodies (her best, most unremarked talent).

I agree with Thomas: the album thumps rather too eagerly. We miss “I Deserve It” and “White Heat” and “Waiting” and “Candy Perfume Girl”: the decent filler and leaden ballads she insists on including and nevertheless add flavor and getsalt (the self-titled debut did the best job of hiding them: one per side, short and painless). Its most eccentric moment is the sample of Hebrew prayer adorning “Isaac,” a dandy bit of exotica which should please “Desert Rose” fans. Dance Floor’s consistency is wearying and worrying. If Maddie’s Kwicky Kabbalah can purge her muse of impurities with such ruthlessness, then Tom Cruise joined the wrong cult.

My review of the new Eurythmics comp, which you should buy only if you can’t find a copy of their 1990 Greatest Hits (you’re not checking your used CD store often enough) or are reluctant to own Touch or Be Yourself Tonight (in which case, you’re a fucking loon).