Bravo Appreciates Art Like It's 1984!

While I never expected Bravo's newest competition reality show, Work of Art, to be anything more than an Andy Cohen-approved showcase of lame pop culture references and unfounded smugness, I was brought to uproarious laughter last week when resident sorority girl-cum-artisté Jaclyn found herself swimming in a sea of praise from the hackneyed committee of NYC art wonk judges. In her absurdly cliched collection of photographs of anonymous men looking at her bronzed, tumid fun sacks as they walked past her on the street, the judges found an 'impressive' and 'successful' effort to subvert the so-called 'male gaze'--a chestnut of an idea about as interesting and revolutionary to artists and intellectuals as Myspace is to teenagers. Perhaps next week she will subvert capitalism by setting fire to dollar bills taped to an Audi? Viva la revolucion, Bravo.

(Please find below selections from my current fine art wishlist ~ in case you're wondering what it takes, creatively, to please an old crank like me.)

Pouring Some Out For The L-Word

For most, The L-Word ended last year, but for me--basic cable subscriber that I am--it ended earlier this week when I finished my rented DVDs of the disappointingly truncated sixth and final season. Like most premium cable shows of any repute, it ended with a surprise death and a parade of extant past characters, presumably trotted out to remind viewers saddened by the show's end (and perhaps the season's horrifying writing) of its many dramatic zeniths. Though I won't necessarily miss the show (which had become a bit tiresome thanks primarily to the aforementioned writing and the wooden performances of Daniela Sea and Pam Grier), I will miss the refreshingly cool looks the show's stylists crafted for lez girls--most especially quirky girl Alice, power bitch Bette and dramatic femme Jenny (c. seasons 2 & 3).

Though I'm well aware of the criticism leveled at the show's producers for their narrow focus on white yuppies with the type of disposable income necessary to craft these covetable looks (as quirky and 'thrift' as Alice often looks, for example, she's clearly wearing a lot of Marc Jacob$ and Kate $pade), I'm also aware of the unenviable position the producers of this high-end lesbian soap were in; in order to capture an audience share big enough to sustain the show, they had to at once appeal to a lesbian-identified audience eager to see itself finally represented on the small screen and a straight-identified female audience unsure of its connection to the (often explicit) dyke drama. As Candace Moore notes in her formal and textual analysis of the show, the premiere episode works overtime in this respect by ensuring that the steamy lesbian pool scene (ostensibly meant for a queer audience but also very much enjoyed by straight male viewers, as it turned out) is seen through the eyes of the show's cute, cornfed straight girl, who peeks safely at the scene from behind a slatted fence. Jenny, the straight protagonist, usefully conveys to straight female viewers that they too can watch the lesbian drama unfold from a safe distance without fear of being 'turned out' (or on). By the time Jenny drops her guy for a gal at the end of season 1, straight viewers are presumably too invested to care that they no longer have a heterosexual proxy with which to explore the secret world of lesbianism.

In addition to this 'straight ally' strategy and a few clever straight-gay sex scene echos designed to de-marginalize lesbian sex, high fashion is very obviously drafted by the show's producers to help ingratiate the characters with straight female viewers, many of whom, producers rightly wagered, were Sex and the City castoffs looking for something to fill the void left by the show (hence the "Same Sex, Different City" L-Word marketing campaign). Indeed, as with SatC, all of the women of the L Word are insanely fashionable and unnervingly fit. What's more, like the insufferable women of SatC and every gay man ever depicted on American TV, they are excellent consumers of high-end goods, be it cars, coffee, cocktails, gym memberships, clothes, computers, housewares or mobile devices. These are women, the show practically yells at its straight female viewers, who you may not want to be with, but who you most certainly want to be. And they're right, really. In the end, we're all a little bit queer for the good life.

Pictured Above: A "Greatest Hits" fashion montage (and, yes, I know this is embarrassingly 'fan girlish' of me. So What. Who Cares.)

Open Letter to SPIKE TV

Pictured Above: Single scariest shot in all of American cinematic history (courtesy of Deliverance)

25 January 2010

To Whom It May Concern:

I might have respected your decision to edit out the notorious and narratively integral rape scene in last night's cable broadcast of John Boorman's classic 1972 story of white bourgeois masculinity in crisis were it not for the fact that you are the same network that brought the world a little "show" called Manswers and a little segment on said show that culminates in a man firing a gun at a breast implant in the name of answering the daft question: How much force is required to burst a fake boob? Obviously taste is not among your channel's top priorities, so why julienne a perfectly excellent film?

If I have overstepped my boundaries in issuing this letter because I am a woman viewing "TV for men," then I sincerely apologize.

Respectfully,

Distracted Academic

Hi-Def Make-Up For A Lo-Def World

We here at HuZzah! Vintage have a day job of sorts that demands that we read and write and think about television so that we may one day begin producing periphrastic books about its untold complexity that perhaps seven people will actually ever come to read (or, more likely, skim for cheap moments of rhetorical weakness in the desperate minutes leading up to a graduate seminar meeting).

In the throws of some of this week's research, we came across a veritable treasure trove of photographs depicting some of the earliest experimental television transmissions commissioned by NBC and RCA in the 1930s. As magnetic tape had not yet been invented and other means of recording these ephemeral blips were expensive and cumbersome, images such as these of television's gestational period are incredibly rare (and, I think, incredibly haunting in their nebulousness). 

Pictured Above: Rare photographs of early (mid-1930s) experimental television transmissions via the truly incredible and surreal private collection of Russian inventor and "father of television" Vladimir Zworykin

Less moving images of people than shadows, these photo stills illustrate the necessity of making up the face in hilariously exaggerated ways to ensure a mechanically 'readable' likeness. Though they looked absurd in real life, the painted people of the then very small screen appeared normal to the unwitting television viewer--much like the elderly cast of Desperate Housewives does to us today (though by virtue of Botox and intricate lighting, presumably).

Pictured Above: (Top) Unlike Richard Nixon c.1960, Minnesota democrat Hubert Humphrey wasn't too macho to wear a little rouge in his bid for political glory [1948, Life] (Bottom) Articles illustrating the make-up requirements for early television [1938, Popular Science; 1939, Mechanix Illustrated]