Aventurina King

  

    Its hard to distinguish amongst vh1’s mediocre hodge-podge this thanksgiving, but two videos sink lower than the rest:  “The blower’s daughter” sung by Damien Rice and “Breakaway” by Kelly clarkson. Both are movie sountrack songs, and must therefore incorporate a few film shots in their videos.  But these two have flipped over the hierarchy. The movies practically eat up the 3-minute air time and leave only remant seconds to the artists.  The blower’s daughter fleetingly depicts Damien Rice’s bored face (and no wonder, he’s been staring at the same woman and forced to mantra “i can’t take my eyes off of you”for the past 3 minutes)and then jumps to even less interesting shots from the movie “Closer”. 

Breakaway’s video goes further, shying away in fear of its artist.  It refuses to even show Kelly until the chorus. A 14 year old lip synchs the first verse in the back of a BMW while she suffers her siblings’ squirmishing (Poor thing!)  The rest is Kelly hovering around the movie “The princess diaries” like a moth around a flame (she might even singe her Louis-the-14th style night dress). We see her sitting in a movie theatre watching the key moments of the film (the protagonist uncovering the royal jewelry, innocently sleeping by her prince) or an crashing air plane frowning with fear as she sings: “I’ll spread my wings and I’ll learn how to fly”.  Yes, the films inflict indelible wounds upon these videos.

But even more criminal are the videos themselves.  They reduce the movies they advertise to a cluster of sappy scenes. All that we ever see of “closer” in “the blower’s daughter” is the protagonists staring at each other in awe. The viewer might intuit that “closer” is more than a soap opera but the video sure won’t help. 

Thank god there are videos which actually concentrate on their musicians, although I don’t know if Lenny Kravitz singing “Lady” inside a circle of pin-ups isn’t just pure egocentrism.

 

  

Yes! Great film!  But the greatness oozes from its explosive collision of G and R ratings.  It is a PG film, it has inherited the power to poke fun at the adult world–infidelity, divorce, torture, death; yep their all there–without falling prey to its irony and depression. After a good many laughs, the family reunites, Mr Incredible vainquishes the evil Syndrom and baby incredible finally develops super powers.  What more could you ask for?

        The list of 20th century art movements rolls out in an infinity of -isms.  Surrealism, neo-impressionism, futurism… it’s almost impossible to keep track of them.  More than an increase in linguistic creativity, this abundance heralds the arrival of a new art era.  In this era, artists first think up a concept (an -ism) and then apply it in their pieces.  In 1910, Umberto Boccioni along with other painters proclaimed futurism.  Their “manifesto of the futurist painters”, rejected classical painting and embraced the technological revolution.  They infused their paintings with the machine’s strength and speed: their colors boldly cried out, their lines multiplied to create movement. 

 The futurists are far from being the only such creators of a 20th century artistic style. The fauvist’s paintings burst with color, the expressionist’s strokes sway to the rythm of their subjects emotions.  All of these styles though reflect a particular ideology. 

Ideas, concepts more than beauty are the main preoccupation of artists.  The futurists even rejected aestheticism and one of their members, Boccioni, painted an unflattering portrait of his mother(The Materia).  

Contrasting the fat bulk of The Materia’s subject with the delicate features of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa highlights the distance between classical and modern art. In the classical era, visual harmony was the priority.  Paintings were judged on how pleasing they were to the eye.  Why have modern artists changed these priorities?

A few days ago, a conversation (over an army of korean dishes) produced a plausible answer.  The friend sitting accross the table suggested that it was due to a change of art’s function.  Before the 19th century, pieces were produced for individuals, they were hung on living-room walls, scattered around marble mansions.  In the 20th century museum era, pieces are destined for the public.  They are spectacles which art pilgrims travel to see.  And people travel to witness originality, the never-seen. In their homes though, they prefer to be surrounded by comforting beauty.  A pair of wax legs sticking out of one of the MOMA’s walls is suitable, even admired.  The same pair of legs sticking out in a well to do dining-room might be bad taste.

 

Woe to reformed feminists and replete man-eaters; to fiery misandrists washed cold with resolutions of maturity and tolerance!  As testimony to their bleak fate: an offering: Destiny Fulfilled, the fourth album of the Destiny’s child trio.  Stamped as one of the most ravidly pro-women R&B girlbands, their new creation relinquishes their hatred of the male sex and exudes an I’m-above-negative-feelings attitude.   

 

It was only a few years ago that the band damned male lousiness and celebrated a life without the opposite sex.  2001’s Bills Bills Bills‘s mantric refrain fulminates against the unresponsible guy who shirks his bills by asking his girlfriend to pay them. In Survivor, Beyonce lashes out for female intellectual independence: “you thought that I’d be helpless without you but I’m smarter”she sings.

The message of these hits infuses the other songs on their albums.  Both Writings on the Wall(1999) and Survivor (2001) beat with this same urge to dominate the relationship.  1999’s track Say my Name may seem a girl’s desperate plea for her boyfriend’s attention during the refrains: “When no one is around you, Say Baby I love you”.  But its verses reveal a woman hardened by her partner’s infidelity as she imposes her ultimatum: “what is up with this, tell the truth who you with, how would you like it if, I came over with my clique”

            During 2002-2004, Beyonce, Kelly and Michelle each went their solo way.  Unfortunately, as cautionary-tale sticks which are stronger together than isolated, this separation brought instant subjugation to the previous male arch enemy.  Their solo career music pinned this individual from his impotent position onto a pededestal.

            Beyonce was the most successful of the three.  Suffice it to note that in her top selling album’s title track, Dangerously in Love, she coats the trite guitar strums with: “baby I love you, you are my life, the happiest moments were incomplete if you weren’t by my side”.  Michelle turned out her “Do You Know” album in January 2004, an impressive collection (from the quantitative if not qualitative point of view) of Dangerously-in-Love clones.  Last, and maybe most humiliatingly not least, Kelly Roland is pleased to share with us the only thing she thinks about, the rapper Nelly, her partner in the song Dilemma.  He provides her cutsy “no matter what I do, all I think about is you” with a not-so-cute “she got the hots for me, the finest thing my hood’ll ever see” (hood is derived from hoodlum and refers to the ghetto).

 

And here the three are, back on the same album.  But the sticks broke and the male idolatry of the solo years leaked onto their vehement feminism. The male partner is now treated with either awe, or benine indifference. The album’s ‘break-up’ song cluster—tracks that explore the my-boyfriend-is-cheating-on-me-theme (though god forbid it should ever be vice versa)—lacks a thrashingly man-hating masterpiece. In what seems a typical break-up track, If, the girls threaten to leave a cheating guy; yet listening to the track astounds.  Could this be the first instance of Zen R&B? Unheard of, Beyonce, Kelly, and Michelle “ain’t stressing about a doggone thing” (they sing).  They have transcended the pettiness of caring about what happens to the other party.

 

And as form inevitably reflects content (like they’ve taught you in your literature classes), mourn the departure of the fiery survival songs and fear the usurper: a meditative R&B, a hodge-podge of sappy violins and no-doubt expensive sound effects—like Bad Habits’s pervasive chimes, which are themselves a bad habit of the album—drowning the remnants of voices and beats. 

Aside from its first track Lose my Breath, the album is ill-suited for dancing (farewell rehearsed kung fu dances moves).  It’s a girl-sleep-over-party album.  Picture teenagers, hugging pillows, talking about guys (what else?), and sipping Coca- Cola until late at night with the CD on repeat. 

 

Thus, 10 out of the 12 tracks have drowned in the mild mixture.  Who are the two survivors?  The first one is T-shirt, a desperately sexy monologue of a girl who sleeps in her boyfriend’s shirt when he’s gone.  Spacy vibes ripple in and out as Beyonce half-whispers a faintly husky praise to her absent lover.  The following verse makes us wonder weather she could sing any slower.  Yet who could complain of her deliciously deep vibrato?  Beyonce brims the tempo with an unequal softness and sensuality as she moans “I couldn’t turn me on”.  Meanwhile, the other girls sigh the song into sexual fantasy.  The lyrics could hardly be more explicit.  They lead you straight through to the climax: “Ah, give it to me deeper” then “keep it right there, oh wait, yeah”.  Even though the song is their raunchiest to date, it touches through the sincere loneliness of its dreaming girl. 

I’m Through with Love, conjures the apocalyptical choir in its refrain.  Moreover it is reminiscent of the band’s successful Say my Name with the simple beats, the minor arpeggios and breathless lyric repetitions.  It’s still not quite as intense as Survivor unfortunately.  It more closely resembles an angrier version of Alicia Keys’ Falling.

 

Can these two songs justify the purchase of the album?  Yes, if you can wade through the remnant mixture and delight over the competent, though short riffs and accapella moments.  If not, pray that Destiny is only temporarily Fulfilled (I can’t even imagine what a Destiny Satiated would be like) and that their feminism—both beloved and dreaded—will soon be out to feast again.

 

 

    The preparation behind a president’s canned debates and over-rehearsed speeches is no secret. What may be less apparent, though, is the extent of this preparation. Evan Cornog’s Power and the Story, a slightly tedious yet enlightening essay, reveals how finely a president molds each of his actions to fit a personal story, true or not, that will earn him public support. Thus “rather than clinging to categorical and implausible denials of past misdeeds involving alcohol, and possibly cocaine, Bush and his aides crafted a narrative of suffering and redemption” writes Cornog.

    And Bush is not alone. All past presidents, even before their campaigns, have chosen roles to play, most often from a pool of military heroes, businessmen, and politicians. These characters must relate to the nation’s problems.  In a 1992 presidential debate, Clinton connected emotionally with the African American audience by demonstrating that “he, too knew the face of suffering.” All of the president’s actions must match the crafted story. Bush regularly returns to his Texan ranch to “maintain the image of the new president as a Washington outsider.”

    Cornog follows each step of a candidate’s experience, from the beginning of the campaign to the last day of the mandate (and even beyond).  At every moment of the process, he describes what is expected of the candidate, then compares and analyzes candidate’s actions and their effecgts. He details the standard behavior of the politicians after receiving the election results “both sides try to appear above partisanship, with the defeated man urging the nation to support its elected leader and the president-elect promising an inclusive administration. ” To exemplify successful and failed inaugurations, he contrasts Washington’s jubilant welcome to the capital with President Clinton’s bus travel to DC line with opponents brandishing defamatory signs. 

    Cornog supports every one of his claims concerning the relationship between power and stories with historical evidence. Most of the time, the number of examples greatly exceeds the need of the point.

    This, paired with the repetitive claim-example construction, can be tedious. Yet this excess testifies to the researcher’s rigor.

    Moreover, Cornog spices things up by digging into a diverse pool of primary sources—comic strips, advertisements, movies—to add to the biographical examples.

    Cornog’s analysis of various mandates is enlightening, partly because it’s unclouded by partisanship. Cornog only judges a president on how well he tells his stories. The last chapter features a refreshing view of the Bush mandate.  Cornog skips redundant comments on the president’s speech impediment to criticize the narratives of victory and terror with which he reacted to 9/11.

    Cornog does not deny the value of stories. By simplifying situations, they enable decision-making. Instead, he warns against oversimplified, irrelevant, and untrue stories which can cloud an individual’s judgement. The Power and the Story provides a refreshing and critical lens through which to understand today’s politics.

It’s not everyday that a magazine boasts of “world domination.”  But then again, this isn’t everyday for Lucky Magazine’s Editor in Chief, Kim France. The publication has just reached a one-million circulation, right in time for its fourth anniversary.  Its recipe for success: 300 pages of advertisements.

Lucky is the mother of a growing category of shopping magazines (also known as ‘magalogues’) which show readers what to buy and where.  Its 50 page editorials do not feature articles—there are no discussions of the direction of haute-couture, no predictions about life without Tom Ford.  Instead, price tags escort endless processions of lipsticks and dresses through the pages.

Readers compare these products and then buy them directly at the shop location or website address (both provided in the magazine).  This saves hours of frantic window shopping.

     Lucky’s content is more accessible than that of feminine magazines such as Vogue.  Readers can become a Lucky woman by simply following its buddy-buddy beauty how-tos (mainly buying the advertised products). 

In contrast, the image of the Vogue woman is glamorous and rich.  Piano Ferlisi, Vogue’s November ideal of a low-profile woman, designs for Gap and lives in a mansion outside of New York.  Lucky devotes a short paragraph on Sally Abemarle, a humbler looking sculptor mom who “lives in jeans” and “combs the Chelsea flea market.”

The fashion spreads also clash. Vogue’s unearthly beauties pose in luxurious forests or apartments.  Lucky’s clothes simply hang from invisible coat hangers over a white background, or upon smiling, yet quasi-common women. Lucky uses very MODELy- models. They do photo-spreads, too.

Vogue’s ‘life with André’ section pours out a torrent of haute couture and celebrity names as the frenchified André Leon Tailley writes of his excursions in the glamorous fashion showspaces.  Lucky’s friendly Liz and Joyce explore the under-300-dollars range of clothing (granted 300 dollars is quite a sum, but still an improvement on Oscar de la Renta’s stream of digits)

And readers have been listening to Liz and Joyce.  Kim France thanks them for “shopping the hell out of our pages, just as we’d hoped you would.”  Could Vogue boast that its readers went to Chanel and bought the dresses displayed in the magazine?  Probably not.

In its last issue, Vogue photographs the “hautest Paris couture” in the new Museum of Modern Art.  The dresses are unaffordable to the average reader.  Selling them isn’t the publication’s intention.  The scary prices aren’t even revealed. Moreover the dresses, although exquisite, are too impractical to wear.

But this encourages readers to be creative.  If wearing the clothes is impossible, they must emulate its style by choosing other clothes.  During this process, they create their own style. 

Lucky presents only limited combinations of the month’s must-haves.  This reduces the reader’s choice.  Albeit simple, there are only a few ways to be a Lucky woman.

If, as Kim France hopes, Lucky really attains fashion world domination; ladies, prepare yourselves for a bleak fashion future.

Jamies Foxx is the driving force behind Ray.  The quality of his performance makes even the long winded script and over intrusive flashbacks particularities rather than flaws of the film.  His metamorphosis into Ray Charles is complete (one would hardly recognize the actor of “collateral”).  The singer’s charisma becomes his; he is a total eye magnet.  His limping stance, nervous hand ticks and expert piano playing are perfect his role.

     The film Alfie is the offspring of today’s increasingly marriage-less society.   Charles Shyer’s movie reacts to the spread of bachelorhood by posing the question: is a man better off trapped inside a loving family, or free with an endless sequence of loveless lonely affairs? 

    Initially, its protagonist goes for the latter.  Alfie (Jude Law), a handsome limousine driver, lives a Casanova’s dream.  Off-work hours, he scooters through a sunny Manhattan where sidewalks are synonymous to catwalks.  The beauties one after another wilt before his smile (and Jude Law’s astonishing good looks).  Relentless womanizing sessions are also one-man comedy shows in which he sporadically faces the camera to fill the audience up on what he is doing.  His disclosed thoughts flow in two constant streams: ’she has the best ass’ and ‘commitment is death”.  Basically, Alfie is a heartbreaker of a bachelor.
    Inevitably, a first setback (accompanied by an “erectile disfunction”) sours the ideal existence.  His past actions catch up to him under the guise of ex-girlfriends who reject his flirting this time around.  Confronted with spending the dreaded stretch of “thanksgiving to January the 2^nd” alone, he realizes he has no friends. 
    At this point, the tone moves away from its hilarious snappiness into a long-winded doubting as events relentlessly press him to change his ways.  The soundtrack’s Beach Boys jingle slides into violin moans.  The psychedelic pop art hues fade into starry silvers as the city streets endure rain and snow.  The added appearance of ridiculous dictums addressed to Alfie (a moral for all men, “think before you unzip” tops the list), dangerously tilt the plot toward the sappy.
    More annoying is the absence of a female point of view, let alone a laudatory representation of women.  Women are giggling, pestering, suffering, and retaliating objects of desire, but nothing more than that (even Susan Sarandon, enacting a more mature lover, is reduced to 50 year-old sex bomb status).  Never do we glimpse their thoughts, their questions.  The privilege of reflection, it seems, is reserved to Alfie.

    Unfortunately, this ‘Alfie centrism’ prevents the movie from fully exploring the issues in modern day relationships.  Its questions are unsatisfactory and unanswered because the discussion excludes the view point of one half of society’s population.  Jude Law offers a brilliantly hilarious performance that makes Alfie’s overblown ego irresistible.  But even he can’t boost the entertainment deeper under the “superficial things that matter”.

Troubling Every Day conceals its disturbing vampire gore under wordless, contemplative shots, that is, until it comes out to bite.  In that respect, Claire Denis’ film much resembles its protagonists, vampires vainly struggling to suppress their craving for blood.  Shane’s pulsions plague him during his honeymoon in Paris.  Abundant sex scenes where his lips rub, nip at the sea of femine skin taint aesthetic pleasure with foreboding.  Out in the suburbs of Paris, a husband locks his wife up to prevent her from devouring the local male population.  When he puts an end to her exits however, the victims come to her.
Like any gore movie, troubling every day is disgusting.  Though scarce, these scenes provide more than enough images of drenched tissues bleeding their flood.  Yet it is also more than that, it is genuinely troubling.  It’s exploration of the vampire’s psychologies reveal minds that are not that far off from our own.  I’m not only talking about the protagonists indiscreet stares at female genetalia or deliciously bare necks.  Struggles between love and the selfish will to destroy the other are the lot of human kind.  Are these individuals really vampires?  Or are they just  human beings that indulge in desires which we refuse to see as our own?

New York City Opera’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”, based on a Salman Rushdie short, is a daring combination of atonal music, tongue twister lyrics and film. In the fairytale’s ‘once upon a time’, an adulterous wife leaves her son, Haroun (portrayed by soprano Heather Buck) and his story-telling father, Rashid (Peter Strummer).  Distraught, the husband loses his “gift of gab” and Haroun’s attention span shrinks to 11 minutes. The tyrant Snooty Buttoo (Joel Sorensen) hires Rashid as a propagandist and hosts the pair on the one-thousand-plus-oneth Arabian night.  Haroun’s dreams fly him to the Sea of Stories. The sea supplies story-tellers, by a “Process Too Complicated to Explain” (P2C2E), with their tales, but it has been polluted by the prince of silence, Khattam-shud. The boy saves the sea, cures his father’s teller block and brings his mother home.

The delightful libretto could stand alone as a play. Jokes and witty puns infuse the lyrics. Moreover despite the story’s glibness, it dramatizes significant modern issues. Reminiscent of today’s propagandistic media, Buttoo orders the story-teller to praise him before the people. The repeated line “what’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” questions the age-long human fascination with fiction. Moreover, the performers’ flawless diction enables the audience to appreciate the work as a play without needing to read the supertitles.

Riccardo Hernandez’s minimalist sets add to the plot’s creativity, forcing the audience to imagine most of the setting.  Haroun drinks from an invisible Sea of Stories.  He and his father sail upon a bottomless boat or lose themselves in a treeless forest. Peter Nigrini’s film projections supply other elements of the setting. In a memorable scene, Haroun and his father are sitting (or more accurately, shuffling) in an invisible bus crossing a dangerous mountain area.  As they melodiously cry out in fear, background animation reveals the tortuous path, flanked with humorous signposts.

Along with the sets, Candice Donnelly’s costumes are a treat for the eye.  As Arabian-night inspired figures prance in and across the stage, each dress vies with the previous in colorfulness and creativity.  Buttoo’s beaded necklaces jingle over an ornate golden caftan.  Other characters wear enormous bright silk fish on their heads.  Some costumes even challenge their character’s bizarreness.  The gardener of stories dresses like a green punk, his tight leather and spandex suit atop his over-compensated heels.  As Haroun, Buck wears a simpler striped nightgown under a tomboy haircut. 

The music’s relationship with the lyrics is original. It is “music built to match the metric scan and theatrical intention of the poetry” explained Charles Wuorinen, the composer. Flutes merrily chirp, as Haroun jokingly details the P2C2E. The score paints each character musically. The evil Khattam-shud hisses over a chromatic scale which reflects his crookedness. The singing itself never settles into a definable song. It flows freely like the dialogue, driving the plot forward in an endless recitative.

Unfortunately, the score’s sporadic pitch variations strain the performer’s ranges.  Tenors literally sing mezzo soprano parts. At times, voices broke or dangerously wavered off tune. Joel Sorensen struggled to sustain the final pitch of Buttoo’s mantra “vote for me.” Other tenors adopted a different technique, becoming overly nasal in the heights. Only the soprano and baritones were spared. 

In particular, Peter Strummer provided his soulful interpretation with a full voice. Heather Buck’s vocalization of Haroun was near flawless. She mastered the complex pitch variations and, with effortless grace, carried her voice throughout the higher register. Her acting, although a little simplistic in its mannerisms and boyish frowns, was endearing.

It’s a pity the audience didn’t appreciate such a daring production.  The atonal music discomfited the unfamiliar listeners.  By the end, a portion of the seats had emptied, and although the performers received an ovation, it was modest, and seated.