Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Weapons of Mass Deconstruction
It is interesting to note that in her day Katherine Hepburn was considered “box-office poison”, despite the fact that she is remembered as one of the greatest actors of her era. I have to wonder if perhaps the big studios somehow stamped the “box-office poison” label on Hepburn, through poor distribution or lack of advertisement, as some kind of punishment. Was she perhaps “box-office poison” only because someone said she was? If you repeat a lie often it becomes… etc. David Thomson in his “New Biographical Dictionary of Film” describes her so: “Like Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse, she was a moral being, sometimes at odds with herself, deluded or mistaken, but able to correct herself out of a grave and resilient honesty. Nobody on the screen could be so funny and so moving in making a fool of herself, or so touching in reclaiming her dignity. That is why screwball comedy seemed in her hands one of Hollywood’s most civilized forms...”
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/08 at 08:53 AMThanks for the link to Pressman. Yours and other good essays.
Posted by Rhondda on from Canada 03/08 at 01:51 PMThank you for the intriguing dialogue. I’m interested in the rules (mainly unwritten, but terribly strict) on this issue in courtrooms and politics. Hepburn was an actor ahead of the curve, because we still haven’t got past this hang-up. Here’s a quote from another admirable poison:
I wasn’t thinking that I was going to break any boundaries. I just like dressing like Baudelaire.
- Patti Smith, June 1996, The Guardian
Posted by Lee Hall on from 03/08 at 11:12 PMI love the boldness of Kathryn..she was a great example for us girls to not follow the rules..
It’d be cool to see others articles on other women that said no way to the mainstream..
mPosted by Philippini D'bronney on from NYC 03/09 at 06:59 AMHepburn rocks.
She’s on a list of outstanding women whom I admire:
Jane Addams, social activist
Rachel Carson, environmentalist
Emma Goldman, “queen of the anarchists”
Fanny Lou Hamer, founder of the MississippiFreedom Democratic Party
Barbara Harris, first Anglican woman bishop Harris
Barbara Jordan, African-American orator and Congresswoman
Georgia O’Keefe, artist
Eleanor Roosevelt, human rights activist and author
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist
Wilma Rudolph, athlete
Sojourner Truth, abolitionist
Victoria Woodhull, first woman to run for President
Shirley Chisholm, congress member
Wangari Maathai, Green Eco-activist and Nobel Prize winner, 2004
Ruth M. Vos, my dear sainted mother, may she rest in peace
Posted by Jay Vos on from Burlington, VT, USA 03/09 at 04:29 PMOnce I get started with women I admire and learn from, I can’t stop. Here’s an ad hoc list that came to mind (adding to Jay’s excellent choices): Ani DiFranco, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Lizzie Jennings, Ida Tarbell, Helen Keller, Dorothea Lange, Lolita Lebron, Patti Smith, Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, Winona La Duke, Vandana Shiva, Janine Jackson, Ruth Hubbard, and Arundhati Roy.
Then, of course, there’s my wife Michele and my mother, Ann Zezima.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/09 at 04:53 PMExcerpt from Mickey’s thought provoking essay:
“Such freedom is not only revolutionary, it’s threatening to some. That McCarthyism appeared shortly after the above-mentioned artistic breakthroughs is no coincidence. That box-office-ism is rampant today is, in no small part, a reactionary response to the artistic revolutions spawned in the 1960s and 1970s...from New Wave cinema to Pop Art to rock and roll and punk.”
It’s pretty clear, imho, that the quality of the better movies from the 70’s (a few from late 60’s also) is far higher than even the so called independent stuff being churned out these days. I recently saw again or for the first time
movies like Mean Streets, Godfather I & II, Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, Il Decameron, Satan’s Brew (Satansbraten), Salo, etc. The last two, created by supertalented artists who came of age in postwar Germany and Italy, were particularly useful in getting a better handle on Fascism…Posted by sk on from 03/09 at 07:51 PMI agree, SK.
I recently got to see “Bonnie and Clyde” (with Beatty and Dunaway) in a theater setting. Arguably, America’s first “modern” film. Amazing.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/09 at 08:24 PMThis is partial list of great 20th century women writers who are not read as much as they deserve to be: Brigid Brophy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Molly Keane, Olivia Manning, Angela Thirkell, Hortense Calisher, Ivy Compton Burnett, Elizabeth Taylor (not M.J.’s pal), Anna Kavan, Rosamond Lehmann, M.F.K. Fisher, Eva Figes, Patricia Highsmith (who wrote a bunch of great books that were not made into a recent so-so movie), F.M. Mayor, Edna O’Brien, Barbara Pym, Kate O’Brien, Kay Boyle, Elizabeth Jane Howard… I could go on with this for a while and this does not even get back to the 19th century.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/10 at 05:58 AMCheck it: Art and Revolution: A critical analysis (http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050310203820253)
Posted by Aaron. on from 03/11 at 01:21 AMThanks, Aaron. I’m glad the essay provoked you in such a way. I don’t have time now to reply at length but I would like to say that this piece never stated that “the capitalist structure is threatened by art.” I was talking more about social structures. However, such a sentiment, I feel, is not silly. Unlikely and overly hopeful...perhaps. Not downright silly.
Anyway...gotta run. Thanks for sending me the link.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/11 at 06:16 AMThanks for the thoughtful reply. It (as well as the other responses at Infoshop.org) will be taken to heart. I guess I’m just a little more pessimistic about it.
Posted by Aaron. on from 03/12 at 01:35 AMHey Aaron,
I just went back to Infoshop and read the comments. It seems you and I have sparked a good discussion. Never a bad thing.
Thanks,
MZ
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/12 at 08:28 AMAgreed. :o)
Posted by Aaron on from 03/12 at 02:16 PMA discussion of Mickey and Aaron’s pieces are on the Living on Less blog, too.
Scroll to March 11, 2005.
http://livingonless.journalspace.com/Posted by Jay Vos on from Burlington, VT, USA 03/12 at 02:40 PM[I]t is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories not eternal ones. Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. Our fist task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate “women” (the class within which we fight) and “woman,” the myth. For “woman” does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary foundation, while “women” is the product of a social relationship. We felt this strongly when everywhere we refused to be called a “~woman’s~ liberation movement.” Furthermore, we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. “Woman” is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates “women” (the product of a relation of exploitation). “Woman” is there to confuse us, to hide the reality “women.” In order to be aware of being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of “woman” including its most seductive aspects (I think about Virginia Woolf when she said that the first task of a woman writer is to kill “the angel in the house"). But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to her/his oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well...For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one cannot constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to an object of oppression), that one can become ~someone~ in spite of oppression, that one has one’s own identity. There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can only fight with others, first I fight for myself.
- Monique Wittig, “One Is Not Born A Woman” (1981).
Posted by Lee Hall on from 03/12 at 11:03 PM
Next entry: Vegans invade Manhattan
Previous entry: Rumsfeld on the run
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
